There are some dates that live in the calendar & others that live in the body.
Wednesday marked 2 years since I lost my husband, Mark, suddenly & unexpectedly.
You might think that the 2nd year would somehow be easier than the first. In some ways, it is different. Grief doesn’t work in straight lines.
Grief Anniversaries, Birthdays and New Traditions
My grief cloud arrived around our youngest daughter’s birthday at the beginning of September. She turned 12 just a week before Mark died, so birthdays will never quite be the same for any of us. We are learning to make new traditions, while keeping some old ones alive.
For years, Matilda & I decorated her birthday cake together. For the past two years, she has taken over completely. I buy the ingredients & provide the kitchen. She creates her masterpiece. Apparently, it was delicious.
Sadly, my gluten intolerance means I had to take her word for it!
Watching her become such a promising baker has been one of those quiet reminders that life continues to grow, even alongside grief. This child is incredibly resilient. She has lost her dad, yet she gets up every morning & continues to find her way through life, doing the best she can on any given day.
Next there’s Alpha, our little Silver Campine chick who is the sole survivor from a hatch of a dozen eggs.
This tiny creature has known nothing except humans, so naturally she has decided that she is one of us. If that isn’t resilience in action, I’m not sure what is.
And then there was me.
When Grief Returns Without Warning
Two days before Mark’s anniversary, I suddenly burst into tears at dinner.
There was no obvious reason.
Except there was.
Somewhere deep in my nervous system, my body had already recognised the date before my conscious mind had caught up.
Because two years ago, on the eve of Mark’s death, we had been to Tesco to buy steak for dinner. We took the two Labradors to the dog field at sunset. The sky was beautiful, the full moon was shining & the stars were beginning to appear.
We changed our minds about dinner and bought sausage and chips on the way home. I decided to open the ordinary bottle of wine rather than save it for a special occasion.
I had absolutely no idea that by the following afternoon, I would be giving CPR to my husband in our living room.
That memory has stayed with me & it has woken me up to life.
Heart health has become an important part of my own story too. Since 2023, I have been on my own heart health journey, including an arrhythmia and, in November 2024, a catheter ablation.
After Mark’s massive heart attack, looking after my own heart took on an entirely different meaning. Not because I could control what happens in life.
None of us can control that.
Finding Joy and Resilience Alongside Grief
I can choose to listen to my body, to rest & to notice when my nervous system is overwhelmed. I can choose to feel the feelings rather than continually push them down. And perhaps that is one of the biggest things grief has taught me about resilience.
Resilience isn’t pretending everything is fine. It isn’t forcing yourself to be positive. It isn’t bouncing back to the person you were before.
Sometimes resilience is simply allowing yourself to be where you are.
To cry when you need to cry.
To rest when your body asks you to.
To find moments of joy without feeling guilty for them.
To create new traditions.
To remember the people who aren’t here.
To keep growing anyway.
Life moves in cycles. Birthdays, anniversaries. Hatching & dying. Darkness, light. Loss & new beginnings. There are seasons when we feel strong and seasons when we need to be held.
And perhaps the circle of life isn’t about escaping the darkness.
Perhaps it is about learning that we can move through it & eventually find our way back towards the light.
That is something I understand on a much deeper level now.
And this is at the heart of why I do the work I do at Root & Rise. Because so many of us are carrying enormous mental & emotional loads while still trying to keep all the plates spinning.
We don’t always need another thing to achieve. Sometimes we need somewhere safe to pause, to breathe, to listen, to let the body exhale.
Two years on, I am still grieving & I am also still living.
And both things can be true at the same time.
Related Rambles: Blog Post 4 - The Whispers That Lead us Home, Blog Post 3: Listening to the Whispers
I’d love to hear your resilience stories.
What has life taught you about resilience, growth or finding your way through difficult seasons?
