The Widowhood │ The First Days Back

I had my first contact day with students today. It felt like slipping into an old glove. For the first time in years, my professional life felt good and like I was where I belonged. It made sense.

I stood up in front of over 100 kids today and began setting up what my classroom was going to be like with them in it. It went well and the kids responded positively to me.

I had one student in my morning classes stop me from speaking and told me I was a beautiful soul. That touched me deeply. Sometimes I think that as we grow older, we become so jaded that we can not see or speak of what we see freely. It is something that kids, of all ages, I have felt hold onto and you will get these little quiet moments with them beyond teaching and learning that just hit you right in your heart.

I held onto that for most of the morning until my final class when another student who is severely disabled raised her hand to remind me that God loves me and has a plan for me, and that there is love out there for me that will forever change me. Another sweet moment that was totally unprompted that makes me stop and reflect on my life and day. I am in a season of wondering what God has in store for me and for my kids and sometimes I think he works through people to remind me that even though I do not have it all together, that I am where I need to be and that the hand of God is always near.

For now, I am enjoying the quiet in my life as lonely as it is most days. The quiet also gives me more time and focus on my own kids and things that I am passionate about like creating art, reading and teaching myself how to knit socks on my new loom.

That all said, I have enjoyed sharing segments of The Widowhood: A Semi-True Story of Surviving Widowhood Without the Fairy Tale Ending. These segments are smaller pieces of a larger manuscript that I am looking to publish next year, so be sure to stay on the look out for it!

For now, I am picking up the pieces that were left of myself following having my husband die in front of me only to find out he was cheating on me and then to try for love again with a man that decided to simply leave one day, which was something I always feared because I always felt my kids and I were at the harder side of risk than he was. We had suffered a traumatic loss and were allowing someone in again, he was a single man with nothing to lose. What if it worked out, he would say to me when I would talk about it, but in the end he did just that. The hardest part of it was when I had to tell my kids and I sat them down and said how he had chosen to not be a part of our family. My younger two were upset, my younger son even saying, “But I wanted him to be part of our family.” And I did too.

I am very lonely and I am sad quite a bit, but my new professional life and my children are what keep me going and the hope that somewhere out there is a man who will love me completely, my children included. I think the saddest part of my story is the reality that my younger two will have no memory of their dad and my eldest will only have some fuzzy ones. If God does have a life partner out there for me, he would ultimately be their dad and I think that is what keeps me hoping beyond my shattered heart that there is someone out there because they are great kids who deserve to have a dad that loves them beyond measure.

Until that day comes, I find my happiness in being their mom and looming socks.

Dr. Katherine Kuzma-Beck Hart1 Comment

The Widowhood │ The Hand of God

     By the time that Violet was born, I was losing my mind at the idea of having to go back to my job in the Capital City. I wanted to be home with my kids or at least able to be more present for them. However, I never seemed to be able to get something closer. When we lived at the shore, I never got an interview and then when we moved, I would get to the final interview and then not be the candidate. It was a difficult time and I was terrified about how I was going to be a mom of three and go back to a job that because I had been identified as a good, strong teacher would often be given the hardest kids without much support.

     Into my lap fell a long term substitute position at a bougie district that would have kept me paid for the rest of the year and would have turned into a tenure track position. I was ecstatic and so was Phil, I would have an under 10 minute commute to work and I would be present for the kids. I would actually be able to teach kids who wanted to learn my subject. My days would not be spent on mitigating behaviors and getting to some of what I wanted to teach. The relief was palpable in our house. I resigned from the Capital City, I was board approved, I was ID’d and I was being given an email. I left to go to ShopRite and pick up overpriced cheese for Phil and I to eat with the kids as a celebration of my new job and for our wedding anniversary.

     I went to Kohl’s and spent too much money on new clothes so that I could look the part of the English teacher who worked in a more well-off district. I was so excited that I would be able to get my eldest from school. I remember how the day felt like change and newness and I was looking forward to getting to see my new room. I was pulling into my driveway when I saw the school’s number come across my car dashboard. I eagerly picked it up.

     “Hi Katherine, this is Sandra Fellows. I am so sorry to have to tell you this so late on a Friday, but they decided to make this tenure track so you won’t need to report on Monday.”

     I was too shocked to speak. “Wait, what?” I manage to choke out.

     “Your interview stands. I am going to have to interview some other people, but you will hear from me soon.”

     She hangs up and suddenly I am just sobbing in my car, wondering what I was going to do because I was now at the end of my maternity leave and was depending on getting a paycheck. I couldn’t fathom the idea of having to go back to the Capital City even though I knew that was what was going to have to happen and since they never responded to my resignation, it was probably going to be easier said than done.

     I cried harder at the idea of not being able to get my eldest from school and then got myself together enough to go inside and tell Phil. I remember walking inside and going straight for a drink and sitting down in my recliner with it, sobbing and telling Phil through broken sobs about what had happened.

     “And you need to be drinking,” he interjects, not at the right time.

     “Seriously? SERIOUSLY,” I am about to lose my mind. He walked away. He never liked when I drank and would judge me for it exponentially.

     Phil never took care of himself unless I made him. He would make promises about working more or getting a better job, but it never came to be and when it came to paying for our house or for caring for the kids like making sure everyone had health insurance, I did not want to put that into his hands even though I was beyond burnt out from having three kids in four years and working 16 hour days and taking care of him on top of it because I knew he would mess it up which he would ultimately do later that year when I let him have the summer.

     If I could pinpoint a time where I would say it was where I began to hate my husband, it was in that moment. How much more could one person take on for everyone else while they drowned and their husband allowed it? The loss of this also hit my ego hard and I began to believe that the best I would ever be is overworked in an inner city school that was happy to leave me in an unsupported position as opposed to giving me something that better supported me. I began to believe that this was just going to be my life.

     I never got a phone call again from that principal, just a form letter a week later that told me I was not selected for the job. I went back to the Capital City, full of rage and hatred for my marriage and for my job. I was very much over it all and after the 16 hour days ended, I would sit up with a baby and apply to anything I was remotely qualified for that allowed me to pick up my kid from school. It ultimately would lead to my job with the state which would give me the one skill I would add to my resume that would make me stand out to the public school I would ultimately leave the state for. That decision would lead me to be sitting next a woman in a training at the new job that would pick up on our connection to the bougie school district. It would turn out that she had left the same school that had hired and fired me within a week and she knew about the events that surrounded that event in my life.

     “I was there when that all went down. You were replacing a guy that grabbed a kid and then all of a sudden they pulled a long term sub from another building to be you but she left already. The entire district is out of money and everyone is leaving, be thankful it fell apart for you. You had someone up there on your side because you would have been cut either the next year or this year because the principal that hired you died suddenly and she was the one that was stopping all of it from happening. Once she was gone, the district came in and gutted everything,” she explained.

     My jaw was on the floor. Had I not lost that job, I would have either been struggling more leading up to Phil losing his job or would have been a fresh widow dealing with Phil’s financial mess he left me with and no job to save us.

You would think that with all that has happened to me in the last two years of my life, that things like this wouldn’t be so shocking to me, but it still surprises me when I learn about the hand of God in my life. The first time I truly saw the hand of God was the morning that my husband died. He died in our back yard, out of the house. He died an hour before I wouldn’t have been home and he would have either been at home with the kids by himself or worse, he would have been driving them in the car to what they had planned to do that day. He would have died and potentially killed the kids with him along with whoever he hit in the van that he would no longer be in control of. However, the hand of God protected us.

Then by keeping me in my old position, I was afforded time off to get my family together after my husband died before I went to the state. I think God delivered me to the state because it gave me almost two full years after Phil died to recover. The state was less work than what you do as a public school teacher and for awhile, I enjoyed the break before it was clear it would be in my best interest to return to public school. And in came the hand of God, delivering the position to me that I ultimately took. I do not think God does everything for you, but I think if you are working hard at your life, he has a way of directing you to where you need to be.

After meeting a new friend in training, I went back to my new classroom and began to unpack the bags of things I have had sitting in my garage since the spring from the state. I came to the bag of things for my desk and found the pictures of my kids and one of me and John. After setting the ones of my kids on my desk, I sat back in my chair a little teary eyed and ran my hands over the edges of the brown frame that had the picture of me and John on our first date. I began to wonder if his choice to leave was also another moment where the hand of God was involved. Was it all to lead me to whatever it was that was supposed to happen in my love life? I started to think about what I did not like about John. I did not like how he would be so intensely with me, but at the same time so distant with his own life. I also didn’t like how he would sometimes do things carelessly and when I would react, I was ultimately wrong and selfish for doing so, like when he really hurt me when I brought up a future and then had avoided talking to me about what our life would look like for two weeks and then just decided to throw us in the trash overall. It was beyond hurtful.

With a heavy sigh, I wiped my tears on the back of my hand and put the picture in the bottom drawer of my desk. I laugh when I see the name on the drawer. Apparently, this desk used to be Mr. Love’s. How ironic that a Dr. Hart is replacing a Mr. Love. This was a new beginning and wherever God was leading me, I told myself it was time to trust in the hand of God and build a beautiful classroom for my new students.

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The Widowhood │When the After Isn’t Forever Either

I follow a lot of young widows on social media. In the early days, it was how I got through the hard stuff. I would watch them and think that God has a plan for me and the kids and that in the end, we were going to be happy again.

I did not have an easy marriage. In order to make my relationship and eventual marriage work, I had to move to Phil. I had to take on over an hour-long commute despite constantly applying for more local jobs that never happened. I had to live 6 minutes away from his abusive family. And then when our eldest was only a year old his health stuff began, and I went from wife and new mother to his constant care giver. I did everything. I was the provider, I was the caretaker of the house and when I was not working, I was with our kids. He appreciated none of it and as I look back now, I realize how much of a narcissist he truly was. Everything was ALWAYS about him unless it came to his friends that he would bend over backward for because he liked how it made him look and if I didn’t do the one thing he wanted at that moment, it was always flipped into “I wonder if you love me?” Really? And even after he died, I stayed the very true widow and made sure he was buried the way he would have wanted. I did the duty that I felt I owed from my wedding vows. Imagine the gut punch feeling I got when I later discovered his mistress and six months after he died sat on the phone with her finding out how this had all begun in what I would have described as the happy years of our marriage. In the end, he was just like his womanizing father– something he said he always never wanted to be like.

That is another story all together, but it made me begin to pray a lot. I prayed that God would send me a life partner, someone who loved me and my kids. Who wanted to be a husband, someone who was just not looking for a wife. Someone who would want to have a baby with me and give me the chance to really be a mom, not the exhausted one my kids have been used to. Someone who wanted me to be their wife, because I really want to get to be a wife since that too is something I feel like I was cheated out of the first time.

And I believed what other widows told me, that I would meet someone and it would happen quickly because God has a way of watching out for widows. So, I began online dating and after talking to several people, I thought I had met someone that seemed to want what I wanted: honesty and connection. I have never in my life been as vulnerable or as honest as I was from the moment I entered that relationship. If asked, I shared it no matter how hard it was. Only as time had gone on I felt as though I had opened up my entire life to him, but he never did the same to me. Sure, he did very loving things, spent most of his time with me and my kids, but never seemed to want to take it further, never wanted me in his life. After a year and some months, I finally ask about living together and it was just met with a total stone wall. At first it was avoiding me altogether and letting me sit in very hurt feelings for weeks and then it was coming over to talk, but I knew if he came with a truck he had already made his decision. He was already packing up what he had here, and we hadn’t even talked about us yet. And then suddenly I am told how he doesn’t want to be a stepdad and it’s not like my kids can even talk (they can, but one is overcoming CAS and their siblings are overcoming growing up with an older sibling with CAS as well as the trauma of having their dad die in front of them). And then suddenly I am standing in my driveway, alone and crying at 2 o’clock in the morning with my heart doubly broken as first, a woman and then as a mother.

I don’t know why God directed me to him in this life. I spent too much time grieving an unfaithful husband and then I opened up my whole self, my whole heart to someone that despite the ridiculous marriage I had…that I trusted and in turn, looked at me like what I had said I wanted was the craziest thing, even though we had talked about all of this on probably or second or third time together. So, I have spent a lot of this summer crying and also cleaning out my life and facing the things I couldn’t before like the dogs I had to handle. And also, the toxic things that lingered in my life that I should have addressed when I was married but always let it go. I can see that is where I was not a good wife nor girlfriend and I should have handled that differently than I had.

I am starting a new job in the fall and that has kept me anchored in that I will once again be lecturing college and teaching high school seniors. Between that and the kids, it has kept me going even on the days where I wish I could just crawl into bed and cry myself to sleep for days. And at night I still say a prayer to God that out there somewhere is a man who is going to love me and my kids and want to be a stepdad to my kids and want to be my husband. And who wants to complete my family…our family with me. Sometimes your faith and hope are all you have because sometimes a widow doesn’t get her happy ending, but rather another heart break that she has to recover from.

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Book Review│The Bright Unknown by Elizabeth Byler Younts

bright unknownAs a Christian woman, I was super excited when I received the galley for Elizabeth Byler Younts’ The Bright Unknown. I was further geeking out upon my receipt of it because it takes place in the 1940’s and I just love that era all together. Sometimes I really feel as though I was born too late, but then you read a story like this one and you’re reminded of how dark and unfair society could be back then, especially towards women…and even more so when those women were poor.

The Bright Unknown begins with Brighton explaining, “I’m not sure whom I should thank – or blame – for the chance to become an old woman. Though as a young girl, sixty-seven seemed much older than it actually is.” We open at the end of the story, but are quickly thrown back into Brighton’s life before her freedom, in a place that we come to know as a horrific, malevolent institution where the darkest sides of humanity pervaded for many years.

Born in the Riverside Home for the Insane  in 1923, Brighton Friedrich’s life revolves around her unstable mother and her overall care. With little exposure to the real world, Brighton is ill-equipped for anything outside of the asylum’s walls and at times, the true nature of what really is within. Eventually, Brighton meets Grace Douglass, a young woman who is sent to the asylum by her parents for behavioral issues.

Just as naive as Brighton, Grace struggles to adjust to her life inside of the walls of the institution. Grace draws Brighton out into the world through her love of photography and the two soon grow close.

Staying true to the time, the therapies that destroyed people inside asylums in the 1940’s are at their peak use. Hydrotherapy, insulin shock, lobotomies…and so much more, are at the forefront of the treatment of patients. Brighton becomes driven to find a way to save herself and her friends from life in the asylum, eager to get the out and into a place where they can find piece. The Riverside Home for the Insane is not where these women belong and Brighton is determined to find her own life along side the people that she loves.

However, her unrest leads to a sudden change in how Brighton is treated by the staff and she goes from being a person to a patient. Undergoing the treatments that other have had, including insulin shock, sparks a fire in Brighton that sets her and Grace on a journey towards their own freedom. They grow up fast and hard, but their journey towards a new life is riveting and the overall prose of the novel keeps you engaged as you journey through the insanity that is an insane asylum in the 1940’s and the life that comes after.

“My driveway reminds me of the freedom I have to come and go as I please. Things were not always this way.”
-Brighton Friedrich

Book Information

The Bright Unknown by Elizabeth Byler Younts is scheduled to be released on October 22, 2019 from Thomas Nelson with ISBN 9780718075682. This review corresponds to an advanced electronic galley that was supplied by the publisher in exchange for this review.

Dr. Katherine Kuzma-Beck HartLeave a comment