6 Lessons in Learning to Live Life Without Your Loved One

My world crumbled when I lost my husband unexpectedly. The morning that my children and I discovered his body and realized that he had passed on, is one that will be forever engrained in my memory. At first, it was a memory that brought pain, grief, and sadness. And while two and a half years later, his death is still difficult to face, I’ve come to peace with his passing and have learned to live life well, and even joyfully without him.

There comes a day when every person will face the reality of losing someone close to their heart. Drawing on my own realizations of surviving without my husband, here are six tips to learning how to live life without your loved one:

1. Surrender: As long as you fight the feelings or the reality that your loved one is gone, the longer you will feel pain. Pain comes from resisting the truth, stop resisting and start going deeper into the real feelings. You will hit grief, sadness, anger, confusion, and many more emotions you may never have experienced as deeply before. Those emotions are perfect.

2. Know that you don’t have to ‘get over it.’ Loosing them is part of who you are now. That won’t change. There is nothing you have to fix. There is nothing you have to change. There is nothing you have to do. Nobody expects you to be anything you aren’t. That includes sad, angry, confused, all of it, for however long you want or need to feel those things. That may be until the day you die. And that is okay.

3. Lean on people who care about you. Look around you, there are most likely people who love you and who want to help; family, friends, even co-workers. Understand that they don’t just want to help; they may actually feel helpless unless you let them. Even if you’ve never been able to ask for help before, it is crucial within the first few weeks and months to allow others to support you. You may find that there are more people than you ever imagined who love you and want to help. This is a valuable reminder that you are not alone.

4. Take care of yourself. Once the initial shock wears off, it is important that you take care of you! Try your best to work yourself into a new routine; it doesn’t have to be anything extreme but enough to get used to a new ‘normal.’ Drink tea and read a book, go to the gym, see a funny movie, listen to music that is happy and soothing, and, perhaps most importantly, interact with positive people. As you start to formulate your new routine, stay away from negative things, like alcohol, drugs, the news, and people who bring you down.

5. When the grief pops up, let it! Feel it. Drop to the floor and let it wash through you for as long as it is with you. Savor it. Let it tell you that you’re alive, that you loved that person, and that he or she is still in your life even if only through the feeling of grief.

6. Find your joy. Whether it is coloring, singing, dancing, or just experiencing the beautiful tree in your back yard, dig deep and find out what makes you tick. Then, do it without abandon. Let the lesson of death teach you that life is magic, wonderful, wondrous, passionate and simply alive.

Enjoy every moment you are able to enjoy. Live like there really is no tomorrow, because after losing a loved one, that is the one fact that is absolutely clear.