Do you tend to experience intense feelings and think you’re going to explode unless you find a safe place to express them? If you’re like most of us widows, you may find your intense feelings confusing.  You want to feel good, and a thousand different voices tell you that you should be over your grief.  Yet, you still feel terrible and wonder what is wrong with you? Everything we read tells us that we should be able to control our emotions, but we can’t seem to do it.  We may lose ourselves in work, social, church or even dating, trying to soothe ourselves.  We may even drink too much, use illegal drugs, or try therapy or prescriptions for antidepressant to settle us down.  The unspoken message is that our emotions will change for the better and if we don’t feel better, it’s our fault. Many widows today are confused and frustrated by their inability to feel the way they “think” they should.  Sadly, first you’re feeling bad, then you’re feeling bad about feeling bad.  I want to reassure you that there’s nothing wrong with you, grief is normal.  Instead of pushing away certain emotions, I advocate that you honour them as your truth. By the time we have grown up, we have learned that we need to control our intense feelings.  If we wear our emotions on our sleeves, we will be branded as difficult, emotional unstable, even crazy.  We are told, “Pull yourself together.”  But this just sets us up for failure and discontent. Sadly, grief may be labeled as a mental illness, but in truth, grief is a normal part of life and we all face it at one time or another.  Yes, you may find yourself living in a state of inner chaos or maybe you become emotionally numb, but that can still be a normal part of your personal grieving. We widows are not all alike.  Some of us respond to grief with more intense feelings than others, and that’s okay.  Even widows who decide to take medication to ease their grief and help with their sleep, are not ill.  They are grieving! You cannot use will power to rid yourself of grief.  Grief has to have its time so that your broken heart can heal.  You can’t do anything to change the fact that your spouse is gone, but you can be aware of how your intense feelings affect your decisions. I want to plant some seeds of hope in your broken heart so that you understand that even when we are knocked down, we don’t have to stay down. Being alive means doing the best we can and then learning to be more aware of just where we are.  If we can do that we might see our blessings and have more control over our intense feelings. To Our Shared Journey,                                                                                       Mary Francis is a Certified Grief Recovery Specialist® Certified Law of Attraction Facilitator, Early Intervention Field Traumatology (EIFT) Author/Founder of “The Sisterhood of Widows”