All Blog Postings by Mary
Valentine Loneliness
Archive notice: This is a historical post from Mary’s years of blogging. Some older posts may mention products, courses or shop items that are no longer available, as Mary now focuses her time and energy on supporting widows inside her private Facebook community. The guidance and stories remain here as a free resource for widows.
For current ways to connect with Mary’s work, you can:
- Read her book on Amazon .
- Request to join her private Facebook group for widows .
Valentine loneliness is one of the greatest challenge faced by survivors. When it comes to accepting and dealing with loss, each day presents its own challenge but Valentine’s Day is especially hard.
Loneliness is judged to be more difficult to endure than fatigue, anxiety or memory loss.
Indeed, the intensity of loneliness can be so severe that widows and widowers may experience illusions and hallucinations of the deceased. About a third tell their doctors they have seen, heard or even talked to their dead husband or wife. These experiences do not in any way indicate mental illness as it’s just their way of dealing with the loss of their loved ones.
The oldest widows and widowers have the most consistent improvement in their loneliness over time – they do this by relying on friends. I suspect that friends provide a respite from daily routines and an outlet for confiding thoughts and feelings.
People who can talk about their worries and fears with friends are better able to deal with the challenges of loneliness.
When I became a widow at the age of 50 I knew that I had to make a life of my own. No one was going to do it for me. If I was to become a person unto myself I had to lift myself out of my grief. Overall, I’ve found that the more I do, the more I want to do. My activities keep me going so that I don’t have time to brood about my loss.
This Valentine’s Day take time to Love Yourself. One of the widows in my book buys flowers for herself every Valentine’s Day because as she puts it “I deserve to feel loved”.
As I approach my fourteenth valentine’s without my husband I think about being single in a world I once knew as a couple. I think that searching and believing in a soul mate can be dysfunctional and can even compound loneliness. First I need to find myself and be at peace with who I am, then and only then would I ever want to step out into the couple world.
It’s a myth to find a perfect mate. He does not exist and if he did I wouldn’t be able to stand him. I wouldn’t want a man to be too good because that would only show up own faults. I would want a man with all his faults that loved me with all my faults.
That was the way it was and I would never want less then what I had. So please enjoy Valentine’s with family and friends but don’t settle for less than you deserve. If a new love is meant to be then let it come naturally into your life and it will be a better fit for you.