When We Were Widows

by Annette Chavez Macias

‘What’s the one thing you did this week that was just for you and it made you feel happy?’ This is important because sometimes our grief can overwhelm us, and we’re so busy just trying to not drown that it’s hard to see the buoys or life jackets that the universe is trying to throw our way.

I had a bad habit of shutting people out when I didn’t feel like baring my soul—or being judged about what my soul would expose about me.

Sometimes we have to do things we’ve never done in order to grow. Because when you stop growing, you die.”

It’s true what they say about first daughters taking on the weight of everyone’s world.

I’d tried to separate my feelings about him as a father from how he’d been as a husband. My memories of my dad were just that . . . mine. And my mom’s memories of him were hers. That didn’t mean that either was wrong or right.

My entire adult life has been spent putting others before me. I want to know what it feels like to put me first for a while.”

Grief, I’d learned, didn’t have a finish line. It was an endless journey. Some days the path was easy, and other days you’d be running perfectly fine and then, out of nowhere, you’d stumble, and the pain would come roaring back as if your loss had just happened.

It didn’t mean that she had suddenly turned into the perfect mother. And I was still far from a perfect daughter. The difference now was that we knew we didn’t have to be in order to love and be loved.