lift and carry

Its been 2.5 years ago today.

I’m trying to focus on… not the day, but instead, what positive changes… growth… leaps… bigness I have stepped into since. The progress. Instead of focusing and rewinding myself right back to those moments 2.5 years ago….

What beauty have I created in the space he no longer occupies?

Thats what I want to give myself today. What can I do to elevate my process?
Is there a higher level I could be at today that feels both honest and peaceful?

Widowhood, for me, began straight away with an army of support virtually and where I lived, love, help, outpouring of motivation to just.keep.going and nothing short of lifting and carrying me and the girls. I have been fortunate.
So fortunate that I feel and have felt tremendous guilt even “complaining” about an ounce of my life, or not feeling like the gratitude I have given would ever be enough to some people who stuck their hands in the fire.

My first weeks and months in this, I was meeting people who seemed to be dropped by Shayne himself from the sky. We were surrounded by love warriors who fed us, gifted things to us, cried with us, hugged us, loved us, helped us move, packed us up in Texas, unpacked us in Florida, and supported us through it all.

There are widows that did not have this and/or do not have access to a supportive community. The world leaves you alone after awhile… thats not a dramatization.
The majority of your people back away after any signs of “you’re okay.”
Its just real and the truth.

And even as much support as I had had, I still felt alone. I still felt like I was abandoned and the person who was supposed to be thinking of me every day in some way, was gone and therefore no one really thought of me now.
I hated to think any widow who is already going through the loneliness and feeling abandoned by her person, to feel like she has no community rallying for her the first year and beyond.

Because I know I have had this and the difference it made in my new life…
I must give it back.

That was why I created this space.
It was my way of telling the truth about all this, because being quiet and shoving it down was not going to work for me. It was, a place to lay my grief down in a way I knew how and felt authentic… my own sacred healing space… but eventually, I held a knowing that it would also make the room I needed to serve in the way I know I was called. I had to empty out so I could fill back up and serve.

This would somehow become bigger than my own pain and be useful.

Since this site’s beginning, I had this deep gut feeling I wasn’t going through what I was going through to just keep it locked in my locker.
I knew that someday, someway, it was going to find its way out in precisely the timing it needed to, to help someone else, anyone.
I am too passionate about connecting with women, accountability, and helping that person who doesn’t have the “tribe,” and no matter how much time has passed since their person left… they can find one.

In the bigger picture in my mind with Soulshine… it would evolve into a community of steady hand holders and fierce empowerers.
I have sat with several widows and held space with them as they cried, we cried, and shared the ugly truths, …there’s something undeniably Earth-shattering witnessing a woman standing in her raw truth of her grief. I want to gather that power.

Once I was ready and armored myself, this was inevitably going to become a space bigger than my own hurt that could bring likeminded widows together to rise.

I have envisioned it… a group of true love warriors and phoenixes rising.

The “we’re still here” widows. The ones who subscribe or have a desire to, to self care.
The ones who feel it all and still give grace.
Give me all the ones who are blazing hot with all the grief and loneliness and anxiety or depression and “wtf!?”, and choosing to life full out, and leveling up, anyway.
Each of us is not always our best, so our strength is in numbers to do heavy lifting. Locking arms with others is our way out of this in peace.
The ones who feel it in their bones, our lives didn’t end with our life with that person ending.

So at this mile marker of 2.5 years, and the signs I have received in the last month, I’m focusing on turning my mess into my message and into actions.
Do what I set out to do when I was gifted the moment of inspiration to even start letoursoulshine.com. This can’t be a thing I start and don’t finish. It just can’t.
It still feels as big as it did when it hit me in the forehead. It took me 6 months after that moment I had the idea to even launch it, but I did. And it still feels just as important I don’t stop.

Its always scary beginning the thing, right. You don’t know who’s on the other side, if anybody, waiting for you to begin, hoping you will.
But I know the fact is, there are people waiting for you to show up and begin. In your hurt, your struggle, your mess of a message… they’re waiting precisely for you to show up.

First action…
Invite. Come together. Join hands.
I opened a closed Facebook group Widow Speak Community today.
One thing I learned from coaching people through weight loss and lifestyle transformation was, accountability is king.

Widowhood is hard enough without being in the groups that keep us feeling like crabs in a pot, pulling each other down.
I want to lift and carry. Lets do it together and be honest about it and more importantly, with ourselves.
All widows welcome
Please join us on Facebook in the Widow Speak Community, click here.

joy+health+peace,

caroline