“Widowed? Who am I now?”

“If I am widowed, am I still a wife or husband?” 

This is a million dollar question for so many of us after spousal loss.

I guarantee you that perspectives on the answer to this question vary widely. 

Nevertheless, in efforts to connect us around the topic of secondary loss, particularly identity loss as a widower/widow - I want to share a a bit from my journey as I sought to answer this question as a widow.

I tried so hard after the loss of my husband to embrace this identity of the seemingly ideal, “saved, single, and satisfied” woman. 

Confident. Independent. Ambitious. Decisive. This seemed to me what a “successful, single Christian” woman was supposed to be and I am thinking this idea was perhaps derived from years of church teaching, media, books, and/or my perception of others. 

Needless to say…this attempt didn’t work for me.

I didn’t feel independent. How could I when all I wanted was someone else to drive my car at night because my husband always drove at night because it made be nervous? How could I when I didn’t feel decisive?

I suddenly had all these decisions to make for my children and I that I never imagined I would have to make alone. I didn’t want this solo life. I wanted someone to hold my hand, to hold me while I cried, to listen and make decisions in partnership with me. 

No matter how hard I tried to distance myself from my “wife identity” or desires it did not work because that version of me was so deeply ingrained and the only adult life I had known. I wasn’t married, but I definitely didn’t identify with being the kind of “ideal” single I thought I was suppose to be.

So, I let that go. I stopped trying to get in a box. 

I accepted I was going through a huge transition. Sometimes I would feel like a wife whose husband was away on a long trip. I knew that wasn’t true, but it was okay that the experience felt like that to me. I accepted that I would have to LEARN how to be single and that was okay. I would have the privilege of deciding how I wanted to show up as a new version of me in a new season of life.

Can you relate to this question/process? If so, how did you/are you handling it?