The Widowhood │ On the Eve of My 40th Birthday Weekend

I remember the days leading up to my 30th birthday. I had just gotten home from Chicago, having attained topic approval for my dissertation for my PhD. I was living with Phil at the shore and for the most part, life was pretty together, but I was totally freaked out about that milestone birthday. I was worried that Phil and I would just live in sin for forever and that I would never get to be a mom. I felt like I was reaching the accomplishments I wanted professionally but felt like I was going to miss everything I wanted in my personal life and that age was slowly creeping in. I think that is the big difference between men and women, men think their time is infinite while women are all too aware of the seasons that we age in.

If I could go back to ten years ago, I think I would hug that version of myself. I would let her know how absolutely hard and devastating marrying Phil would be. How she hadn’t known it yet, but that she had already begun and would continue to lose herself in Phil’s world and toxic family. And how those patterns would just repeat on and on until you would finally move away and ultimately to the day of his funeral where your mother would look at you after all the insanity was over and say, “You’re no longer married to him. This is now your life to decide.” She was right. It is my life and they are my children to raise. I don’t regret my life with Phil because at the time it was who I loved and wanted and if I had chosen any differently, I would not have the three amazing kids that I do have.

I got to be a mom and I was given the gift of starting over and giving my children a childhood that breaks free of the generational trauma and toxic family dynamics that killed their father. Looking back on the past decade of my life, I see how hard it was. I see how hard I worked for my family and for everything that I have. I also see how much it all burnt me out and how I lost myself in the early to middle part of my 30’s, only to have life hand me the biggest curve ball and find the strength and mental fortitude needed to move forward and start over again.

There’s something to your 30’s being the decade that you learn the most about yourself. About what you want, what you will deal with and finding that inner glow up that brings with it a new level of confidence after surviving some of the scariest moments of your life from giving birth to trying to save your dying husband. To the even scarier stuff, meeting someone new and having those kinds of feelings for them that makes you want to let them into your world. And as you approach 40, you begin to realize that because of your special person that you are awakening your interests and parts of you that you lost being married to someone who didn’t appreciate you or really respect you by the end of it.

To my 20-something self, I would say…calm down girlfriend it’s all going to work out the way it’s supposed to.

To my 30-something self, I would hug and say, you deserved more than you got, but I am proud of you for staying true to who you are despite spending much of your time here in the epicenter of crazy and then in the middle of someone’s deteriorating mental health. You didn’t come out unscathed, but you absolutely came out stronger because of it.

To my soon to be 40-year-old self…man it’s scary to be middle aged isn’t it? Don’t focus so much on the ending of your life. It may even be another 60 years before that happens. Instead, enjoy all of the things you worked so hard for. Enjoy being with the true love of your life and doing all the things you both are passionate about, gardening and nature adventures and traveling. Stay true to your own passions of reading too much and painting abstract vaginas. Hold onto hope that you and your love will get to have your own children and that eventually your teaching career will fade into the writing career that you always wanted…perhaps with a little college lecturing on the side. Just because you’re middle aged doesn’t mean it’s over, it just means a new life has begun and there is still time to do all of the things as long as you make them a priority. Your life deviated greatly from where you thought it was going, but in so many ways it has become better than you ever thought it could be.

Be proud of how well your children are doing and how much work it took both you and your love to undo the years of having been at home with a disengaged father. Be proud of losing 115 pounds from the morbid obesity that three back to back pregnancies and a chaotic over-worked lifestyle brought you. You’re just 20 pounds away from being at your goal weight and you’re still under the two year mark from when you started your journey–that is just amazing. Most importantly, don’t be so afraid or anxiety ridden of the future…especially trout streams.

Here’s to turning 40 and the chapter of life that is yet to come.

Dr. Katherine Kuzma-Beck HartLeave a comment

The Widowhood │I Wanted to Ask You Something 

August has been a very slow month for me overall, but I have been enjoying precious time with my kids and going on adventures together, creating memories that I will cherish forever. We’ve explored nearby parks, visited the beach, and even tried our hand at baking some fun treats in the kitchen. I am looking forward to the start of school again, as I believe it will bring a renewed sense of structure to our lives. At night, after my kids are asleep, my mind will often wander to what my life was going to become, filled with dreams and aspirations, and if I would ever stop crying all the time, wishing for brighter days ahead. I find myself reflecting on my personal journey, realizing that it’s okay to have these feelings, but I still struggle with them. I am gearing up for another night of telling myself that crying myself to sleep is not the way to go when my phone rings, interrupting my thoughts and pulling me back to the present moment. It’s Sasha, whose voice I know will offer a comforting distraction and perhaps even a bit of laughter amidst my swirling emotions.

“Hey, sorry I know it’s late, but I wanted to ask you something,” she says in a tired voice.

“Sure, shoot,” I say as I sit down at the foot of my bed.

“If you and John had worked out, but for whatever reason, you weren’t getting pregnant would you have left him?”

“No,” I sigh. “I could have made my peace with not having another baby if that happened. I wouldn’t leave a marriage to a man that I loved just because of that. I just don’t want to wake up one day and be 50 and not being able to, and regretting that I hadn’t even tried.” I lay back on my bed. “Why would you ask me that?”

“Something I was sitting here thinking about. You know, how much you would have held onto the dream of another baby over your love and relationship for a man.” She yawns.

“I want the husband too. I want a relationship too, this is not just about another baby, but the person I wind up with will want to at least try for our own, and if it’s not in God’s plan and it doesn’t happen, then so be it. I will make my peace with it. Just like if I never meet anyone again, I will find a way to at least try for that baby on my own.”

“Good. That makes me feel better hearing that because I didn’t want you to go full baby crazy lady.” She chuckles and I do too.

“I am realistic. I just want a chance with a new husband who loves me, loves my kids, and wants to create a family, and if that means we just have my three kids, then that’s okay too.”

“And I think you’ll get that. That is not a crazy wish.”

“I just don’t know why I have to go through John first. Some days it feels like grief all over again, and I am so tired of feeling it and so tired of crying. I really thought when I had that kind of connection with someone again that it would have gone very differently.”

“God has a plan for us all and you are grieving him. He meant something to you, and you wanted a life together. I think it would be weirder if you weren’t grieving it,” she says half-asleep.

The tears that I had been fighting off for much of the night start to flow. “Well, it looks like I am about to have another cry fest, so here is where I say good night.”

“Let yourself cry as much as you need to. It will cleanse you. Good night—one day it will feel better again.”

We hang up, and for another night of the second longest summer of my life, I sit alone in my room crying. I wonder why I had to go through this after all that I went through with Phil. It just didn’t seem fair. If I were a bad person or if I cheated people—I would understand the difficulty level of my life. But I am not those things. All I have ever done in my life is help people, work hard, and want to love and be loved. I cannot comprehend why God has me on this path when I look at the people around me living happy lives. I think, why hasn’t it ever been my turn?

I can usually pull myself out of the pity party thoughts, but tonight, I allow myself to wallow in them and cry as hard as I possibly can. I let the grief erupt from me in choking sobs until I am too tired to continue. As I lay down, the release feels both cathartic and exhausting. To my surprise, I eventually drift off to sleep, hoping that tomorrow might bring a little more clarity and peace to my heart. It’s a cycle of grief and longing that I am beginning to recognize but fear the weight of it still wears heavily on me. What does it mean to love so deeply, only to feel such an emptiness? I can only hope that with time, the answers will find me.

Dr. Katherine Kuzma-Beck HartLeave a comment

The Widowhood │Clarity

I think one of the things that no one understands until they themselves live through a totally traumatic experience is that there is a fog that settles over you. It’s almost like when you are small and jump into a pool and open your eyes. All of your senses are present, but everything else is dull and muffled. It’s all very real, but it’s also very filtered…foggy.

That is what the aftermath of trauma feels like. I think it is even worse when you continue to live in the same place where that trauma happened. Everything around you has stayed the same, but there is a big hole where the hand of God came into your life and ripped something big away. Well-meaning people come in and want to tell you all that you have to do, but that’s the worst thing you can do to someone who is traumatized. People need to learn that their opinions aren’t fact and what is more helpful is to just shut up for a long time because what comes after the initial trauma is the heaviest grief. The old metaphor of grief being like an ocean is so very real. Only that ocean of grief then sucks you into a tunnel. It’s a dark tunnel that you feel like you’re looking up from. You’re at the bottom, things are less muffled you’re feeling more again, but it’s still not the same as before so you keep squinting and looking up at the light of hope and remember that while your husband’s life ended, your journey has not and there is more to come.

You start to begin your life again. You start dating again. You start building new friendships. You start thinking about what life is going to look like without your husband who in end turned out to not be the life partner you thought you had. I still can’t tell you what the bigger betrayal is when I look back on my life– that one relationship you thought was going to be something when you were young and dumb or your husband choosing not to take care of himself and die at 43 years old totally abandoning you in a life that sets you up for one of the loneliest lives as a single mom of three kids. Anger begins to bubble.

Your anger turns into making your space your own again. Maybe it’s small little things like painting and clearing spaces. You get rid of their stuff, saving things for your children that in 20 years from now they too will probably throw into the garbage but at that point it will be their choice to have done it. You think life is moving forward again. Things are good.

Only then your little raft begins to crumble because these were merely bridges in the end. And you plunge back into grief again, but it’s a new grief. The grief of things not working out which in turn brings a clarity with it that you needed. The clarity over people and situations that for your entire life you tolerated their behavior, never speaking up because there would never be any talking, there would just be how you were the problem. Only with clarity you see that you never were, but that keeping your mouth shut to keep the peace was in fact a trauma response in and of itself. Then suddenly your voice erupts quite loudly and to your surprise people begin to shut up.

And you begin to face wrapping up the last of your life from before. This has been an entire series of events in my recent life, but the big one was finally addressing the dogs that I had with Phil. After another blow out fight with my dad about it, I realized that I had been holding onto the dogs because the kids got them with their dad and it was Phil who named them, one of the last things he did with us. And then on the morning that he died, he had died taking the dogs out that morning. It was all so wrapped up in that Saturday and the months before he died, but it took me this long to realize it. To everyone else it’s so easy oh, just start over, but starting over even with the dogs is a journey. A very personal one and the answer isn’t always just to do it to make your life easier. Sometimes, what you need is to hold onto something until you’re ready to let it go.

Dr. Katherine Kuzma-Beck HartLeave a comment