Life updates, 2025

It's been a wile, okay... it's been thirteen years. I had every intentions of updating this blog on a monthly basis, but then life got in the way and, honestly, I forgot I even owned a blog. 

So  much life has happened in the last 13 years, for us and for everyone really. We grew, changed, survived a global pandemic, had significant life changes. 

I thought it was time to take a moment, reset, document what has happened, and how I am learning to live again. You see, in 2023, the most unimaginable thing happened, and it almost destroyed me. In 2023 I lost my husband of 24 years, Rick, to pancreatic cancer. I spent the next year fully avoiding the fact that my husband was dead. Not facing the grief. Telling myself, and everyone one else, that I was okay. That I knew he was going to pass. No one survives this disease. It has a 3.5% 5 year survival rate. That I grieved for him through the treatment and I was okay... moving on with my life. 

I was so very wrong. 

I was firmly in avoidance mode, making poor decisions. I didn't know who I was as an individual person. You see, I had been with Rick for over half my life. Who was I, if not his wife. I didn't know how to operate in a world where it was just me, and because of that, I jumped into a relationship with a man who validated me. Said all the right things. Did all the right things. Or so I thought. I overlooked warning signs that should have pointed me to knowing that he wasn't the man he said he was, compromised my integrity, my relationship with God, my family, because I didn't know how to be alone. I was avoiding facing the fact that I needed to walk through this grief journey (which I 100% did not want to do). 

Ultimately, through God's grace and guidance, the relationship ended. I realized that I had been using that to not face the fact that I hadn't delt with Rick's passing, and I needed to do that. I started going to a Grief Share group, and if you have lost anyone in your life I highly recommend the program. Through there, I learned how to face the loss, and how to walk through the grief journey. Because that is what it is, a journey. I don't think you ever really heal from something like this, but you learn how to manage and ultimately live again. 

What that looks like is different for each person. Whether you have lost a parent, sibling, friend, or a spouse, it's learning to live again in a world without them, and who you are as a person without them. Because, one minute you are a parent, child, friend, or spouse.... and in the next, you are not. 

It is a loss of identity. 

As I am coming up to the two year anniversary of my husband's passing, I hope that by sharing my journey, I can encourage others walking through this. 

I won't promise it will be an easy journey. It will be messy, a mix of sadness and happiness. Celebrating life's huge moments, while wishing he was with us to share them. Learning who I am as an individual person. How to navigate being single, and all that entails. 

If you have read this far, join me in learning how to live again, while navigating grief, and honoring my husband's legacy.