It’s important to own your emotions and not let others trivialize how you are feeling. Claim it by saying – “I respect the importance of what I’m going through”. When others minimize our emotions, it is important for us to stop and educate them.  Say something like, “I want you to know how my grief is affecting me”.  Don’t hide your grief, let others know how your life has changed and the effect it is having on you emotionally. It’s important for us to name and claim our grief for ourselves.  Claim it by saying, “I respect the importance of what I’m going through”.  It will be easier to explain your grief to others once you understand it yourself. Some widows seem to be constantly lost in a fog of confusion and that is totally understandable.  They go one way, then another – they try one thing and then shift to something else.  Facing the truth about how our lives have changed will give us the opportunity to acknowledge our emotions and start the healing of our broken hearts. If you deny your feelings of grief, they may fester inside and take a toll on your mental and physical health.  We don’t all move through grief in any predictable manner.  Grief and our emotions do not fit into a nice neat package that we can easily understand. Give yourself permission to step back from the world and recoup.  Take time to understand and own your emotions, and naturally heal as you move forward. Everyone grieves their own way.  There is no single correct way to express our emotions as we learn to live on our own.  Intense emotions are sometimes seen as “losing control”, when in fact it is simply how a widow is actively processing her loss. You can’t be expected to have all the answers, and grief is the most complicated of all emotions.  If you feel that you are slipping from healthy grieving into a deep pit of depression, then please seek out some professional counselling to help you understand and own your emotions.