Hi there,

My name is Ketoria Kann.  I’m a first-time blogger, and I’ve chosen to begin at the point where my life was changed forever.  I was suddenly widowed almost four years ago.  The journey back from those first days has been challenging and I am living a ‘new normal’.  It has taken great effort to get myself emotionally unstuck and mentally unfrozen.  I have often wondered if the same is true for all of us.  The chronicle of my odyssey marks the path I’ve travelled.  It helps me see the way forward if I know where I’ve been.

Four years ago, I was trying to process widowhood on my own.  I achieved only marginal success.  I was able to function and perform the basics of daily life, but emotionally I was numb.  That first year, I simply responded to the needs and events of each day like an automaton.  I kept a daily routine of rising early at 4am, doing the dishes, working with my horse, stopping at the grocery store, preparing dinner, reading for an hour or so, and going to bed around 8pm.  The schedule helped bridge the transition from working fulltime to retirement.  It gave me a sense of purpose, albeit very basic.

I had held a fulltime job prior to widowhood but had to leave it after my loss.  My head just wasn’t in the game anymore.  I couldn’t concentrate or focus enough to remain accurate and effective.  I wanted to work, my mind didn’t.  I was only 63 years old.  My working life didn’t end the way I had always envisioned it would.  There was no happy retirement party, no retirement plans to look forward to as now they all needed to be rethought.  As I left the office for the last time, co-workers wished me well, I smiled.  As the door shut behind me, I realized that part of my life was over.  Forty hours a week, fifty if you count commuting time, would now be empty and idle.  I was like a workhorse turned out to pasture.

So, those first few months, I simply forced myself to function as normally as possible.  I pasted a smile on my face when in public and took it off when in private.  Looking back, that first year gave me time to begin processing my loss before I faced the profound grief and fear that was yet to come.  I now understand I was in the first stage of grief, denial.  At the time, I thought I was coping well.  I acknowledged my loss, but, didn’t let it stop me from most daily activities.  I realize now that wearing a phony smile to cover a broken heart and wounded spirit was an act of denial.  Perhaps the incongruency between the inward and the outward is a necessary step, our body’s way of protecting itself as it absorbs the shock we have experienced.

In the days immediately following my loss, I was advised I would need help and that I should seek out a counselor.  But, I had worked with counselors in years past relating to life traumas.  In my grief-stricken mind, I couldn’t bring myself to even begin thinking about talking over my pain with someone.  Grief groups weren’t for me either as I couldn’t envision myself sitting with a group of strangers discussing grief.  Spiritual counselors were out as I didn’t see myself belonging to any organized religious group.  That left me to my own devices – a dangerous predicament for a new widow.  We are a vulnerable group.  We are easy prey for phonies, scammers, and the scariest predator of all – ourselves.  How can we be predators to ourselves?  Easily!  I’m talking about self-sabotaging behaviors.

My own self-sabotaging behaviors began with denial (the first stage of grief).  Denial made it easy to ignore the necessity of moving on with my life.  I don’t mean moving on as in finding a mate.  I mean moving on as in making plans for my own future.  My future had always included my spouse.  I couldn’t envision a new life of my own, lived on my own.  Instead, I lived like a hermit, and thought like a hermit.  Social events were going to the post office, the barn, and the grocery store.  But, I wasn’t engaging with the people around me.  As one observer later remarked, ‘she always keeps to herself, walks with her head down, and doesn’t really speak with anyone’.  She was exactly right.  There I was, thinking I was fooling the world and turns out, the only one being fooled was myself.

My denial stage lasted three years.  I had been working with a life coach for about two years when, during one of our last sessions, I told her how deeply I had begun feeling the emotion of sadness.  As we talked, the tears fell in steady streams, and I realized I had begun to thaw out emotionally.  I didn’t try to block out the sadness.  I simply sat with it.  After a few minutes, I noticed how my body felt lighter and relaxed.  I had never understood how much energy it takes to block out emotion.  Now, nearly a year later, I can say that I battled Denial and won.  It was the first battle I would face in the coming years.  The enemy was within me, a part of me really.  Faceless, intangible, relentless.  Yet, knowing that denial is a stage of grief means my body was trying to heal itself.  It’s hard to hate a perceived enemy once you realize the intention was to protect you.

I believe we are complex beings with body, mind, and spirit.  When we are sick, when we are hurt, we have many types of doctors to turn to.  There are those who work to heal our physical bodies, those who work to heal our minds, and those who work to heal our spirit.  As I coped with the life-altering process of grief, I didn’t know who, or what, I needed.  I give thanks for my body’s ability to carry me through grief despite myself.  I survived grief because my body took me autonomically through the grief process.  Yet, if I had not accepted help and guidance from a life coach, I would not be able to tell my story today.  I would likely still be wearing my phony smile, still emotionally stuck, and mentally blank.  I would still be trying to make sense of my new normal, still coping with my world using skills that would keep me alive, but not enable me to thrive.  I invite you to follow my journey of self-discovery.