Today, on National Grief Awareness Day, I find myself thinking about a word I know far too well: grief. Grief has traveled beside me during several chapters of my life. It has arrived suddenly, and it has arrived slowly. It has come through death, estrangement, illness, and the gradual loss of the life I once knew. I have learned that it is very hard to survive grief when you have low horizons.

To survive grief, I believe one of the most courageous things a woman can do is learn to think for herself, spend some time alone with her thoughts, and continue believing that to live is a marvelous thing. That does not happen overnight. Grief has its own timetable. You cannot command it to leave because you are tired of being sad. You cannot bargain with it. You cannot put it neatly on your calendar and say, “By next Thursday, I will be myself again.”

Darling, grief does not work that way. But I do believe that after moving through the shock, anger, sadness, and eventual acceptance of what has happened, a woman can begin asking herself another question: What am I going to do with the life that remains? And if that life no longer pleases you, or if circumstances have changed it beyond recognition, perhaps the answer is to begin creating something new. I know this because I was widowed in my forties.

My First Lesson in Grief

When I suddenly lost my first husband to a heart attack, my entire world changed in an instant. For nearly a year, I kept mostly to myself. I walked four miles a day with my dog. I cried. I sighed. I asked “Why?” out loud. I became angry. I replayed memories. I lived inside questions that had no answers. Walking became my medicine. Solitude became part of my medicine, too. And then, sometime around the seventh month, a friend asked me how I was feeling.

Normally, I would have answered, “I am so sad.” But that day, without thinking, I heard myself say: “I am feeling a little better.” I remember noticing those words. Something had shifted. Not dramatically. There were no fireworks. No grand announcement that grief had packed its bags and departed. I was simply a little better. And sometimes, Darling, a little better is a great deal.

My prescription of walking, thinking, crying, and allowing myself time was beginning to work. The shock of his sudden death was becoming reality, and once my mind began accepting reality, it slowly began clearing. More than a year after his death, I picked up a novel and realized I could concentrate again. That sounds like such a small thing, but it wasn’t. I knew I was gaining on my grief.

Grief Returned Wearing Different Clothes

Years later, grief found me again. This time, it did not arrive in one terrible instant. It came in layers. For eight years, I lived through the peculiar grief of adult child estrangement. My daughters and most of my grandchildren were alive, but they were absent from my life. There is a particular cruelty in grieving people who are still living. You know they are somewhere in the world, laughing, celebrating birthdays, enjoying holidays, living their lives, while you are missing from theirs.

That grief took a terrible toll on me. It weakened me physically and emotionally. It drained some of my joie de vivre. There were days when I wondered whether my family would ever return. Fortunately, and I use that word with enormous gratitude, my entire family has now returned to the nest. We are approaching a year of reconciliation.

Texts go back and forth. I see my grandchildren. My daughters and I are rebuilding the rhythm of family life. The silence that once surrounded me has been replaced by communication, love, and the gift of another chance. I do not take one moment of it for granted.

 

Learning Through Grief

That chapter of my life taught me two lessons I still carry with me today.

The first is this: I want to be proud of the woman I am.

For me, that means being able to put my head on my pillow each night and know that I acted with dignity, kindness, and self respect, even when life around me felt unfair or deeply painful. I cannot control another person’s behavior, but I can control my own. I can choose how I speak, how I respond, what I carry forward, and what I refuse to let harden my heart.

The second lesson is one I learned the hard way: dwell on the solution, not endlessly on the cause.

There is a time to ask why. Grief naturally sends us searching for answers, replaying conversations, moments, decisions, and all the “what ifs” that can keep a woman awake at night. I know that cycle well. But eventually, I realized that asking “Why did this happen?” over and over was not always helping me move forward. I needed to begin asking a different question: “What can I do now?” That shift gave me back a little power.

Sometimes the solution was simply getting through the day. Sometimes it was taking a walk, calling a trusted friend, writing, caring for myself, or choosing not to let grief occupy every corner of my life. That lesson has saved me more than once. Because just as one form of grief was beginning to loosen its grip, another had already entered my life.

Grieving Someone Who Is Sitting Beside You

Alongside the heartbreak of family estrangement came another kind of disappearance. For the past three years, I have watched my beloved Ultimate Concierge, Sheldon F. Good, the love of my life, live with vascular dementia. This grief is different. He is here. And yet, so much of the life we once shared has changed. I miss the man who traveled the world beside me. I miss the spontaneity of our days. I miss conversations we once had without effort. I miss our social life, our adventures, and the ease with which we moved through the world together. And still, I have him.

I sit beside him.
I care for him.
I love him.

This is what makes this kind of grief so complicated. Love and loss occupy the same room. There is gratitude because the person you love is still physically beside you and heartbreak because pieces of your shared life are disappearing. It is, without question, the most debilitating and heartbreaking experience of my life.

I sometimes sit in our apartment in the sky overlooking Lake Michigan and ask myself: How do I continue to face the world? And, believe it or not, part of my answer is red lipstick.

Why I Put On My Red Lipstick

I admit that red lipstick sounds terribly trivial beside something as enormous as grief. What could a little tube of lipstick possibly do? It cannot change my Ultimate Concierge’s diagnosis. It cannot bring back yesterday. It cannot erase one sad thought. Perhaps that is exactly why it matters. It is one small flaming touch of color in a life that can sometimes feel gray.

My red lipstick has become more than a cosmetic. It represents life. When so much around me is beyond my control, applying lipstick is one small, defiant choice that still belongs to me. I open the tube. I paint my lips red. And without saying a word, I remind myself: I am still here.

Red is vitality.
Red is courage.
Red is continuation.

My lipstick is not a cure for grief. It is a ritual and rituals matter. That little jolt of red reminds me every morning that I am not entirely powerless. It is my little flame of life.

Hope Keeps the Flame Burning

Red lipstick alone cannot carry me forward. For that, I need hope. I have written about hope many times because I believe it is one of the most powerful words in our dictionary. Hope during grief does not have to be enormous. Sometimes it is simply the little something that keeps us from giving up on tomorrow.  When grief enters your life, you know that some version of the life you understood has ended. Hope does not deny that, erase loss or promise that everything will return to exactly as it was. Instead, hope whispers: Keep going.

Hope reminds me there may still be something ahead that I cannot see from where I am standing today. Grief narrows my vision. Hope expands it. That is why I call hope my invisible elixir. To me, hope is the willingness to remain open to possibilities even when the outcome is unclear.

It does not promise that life will spare me further heartbreak. I am old enough and wise enough to know better. Instead, hope reminds me that there may still be discoveries ahead, new people to learn from, new ideas to pursue, places to see, meaningful work to accomplish, and little bits of magic waiting around corners I cannot yet envision. Somewhere between the red on my lips and the possibilities in my mind, I keep moving. Grief may travel with me. But I refuse to let grief decide where I will go.

My Little Olive Tree

After I apply my red lipstick, I often walk into my office and look at my little olive tree. I love that tree. Its presence nourishes my soul and brings me a sense of peace. My little Olive does not make a fuss.

She stands quietly.
She asks for care.
She grows slowly.

And she reminds me that slow growth is still growth. Her green leaves represent life. Her roots remind me to remain grounded. An olive tree knows something about endurance. It does not rush itself. Neither should I.

Some days, caregiving requires almost everything I have. Other days, I find a little room for writing, curiosity, a meaningful conversation, mahjong, a documentary, or a new idea that makes me feel alive. These may sound like small things. I no longer underestimate small things. Small things have helped carry me through enormous grief.

Finding Your Own Coping Magic

I am a creative soul, so symbols speak to me.

My red lipstick.
My olive tree.
The word hope.

They have become part of my private vocabulary of survival. The red lipstick energizes me and reminds me that I am alive. My little green olive tree reminds me to stay grounded and patient. Hope moves my thoughts forward and reminds me that I can still imagine something that has not yet happened.

Solitude has helped me, too. I have learned to seek time alone, not as an escape from life, but as a place where I can hear my own voice beneath all the noise. Every woman has to discover her own coping magic. Yours may not be lipstick. Perhaps it’s…

• Growing a garden
• Going on a morning walk
• Prayer
• Embracing a beloved dog curled up beside you
• Listening to music
• Painting
• Reading a book
• Calling a friend who understands without requiring an explanation
• Cooking
• Writing
• Sitting beside a window with a cup of coffee and allowing yourself five minutes to simply be

The object or ritual itself is not the important part. What matters is what it awakens inside you.

Grief Has Taught Me to Think Differently

Grief strips away a great deal of nonsense. At least it has for me. Things that might once have irritated me no longer deserve my energy. Conversations that are trivial float past me. I have become increasingly protective of my time, my emotional energy, and the people I allow into my inner circle.

That does not mean grief has made me cold. Quite the opposite. It has made me understand just how valuable love is. When you have lost people, feared losing people, and watched someone you adore change before your eyes, you stop treating love casually.

You say the words. You make the telephone call. You appreciate the friend who shows up. You notice the person sitting beside you. You become grateful for an ordinary afternoon. And you begin understanding that today really is a possession.

Yesterday is gone.
Tomorrow has made no promises.
Today is ours.

The Most Important Tool I Have

I left the most important tool for handling grief for last. It is the decision to keep choosing life. Not the life I had. Not the life I wish I still had. The life I have today. That choice is part of self care. There are mornings when choosing life means putting on my red lipstick. There are afternoons when it means writing to you. There are evenings when it means sitting beside my Ultimate Concierge, even if our life together looks nothing like it once did.

Sometimes it means helping another person solve a problem, walking America, sitting in silence or allowing myself to imagine a future without feeling guilty for doing so. I believe that is one of grief’s hardest lessons. You can deeply love what you have lost and still love being alive. One does not betray the other. Moving forward does not erase someone. Finding joy does not mean the grief was insignificant. Laughing again does not mean you have forgotten. Dreaming does not mean you have stopped loving. It means life is still asking something of you.

Red Lipstick, the Olive Tree, and Hope

So here I am. Red lipstick on my lips. My little olive tree standing quietly in my office. Hope somewhere inside me. The red in my lipstick is my insistence on life. The green of my olive tree reminds me to stay rooted. And hope is my willingness to believe in what comes next.

I cannot tell another woman exactly how to survive grief because every loss is personal. I can only tell you what has helped me survive mine. Give yourself time. Seek solitude when you need it. Keep people around you who nourish your spirit. Find rituals that remind you who you are. Take self care seriously. Look for solutions when you are able. Do something that gives you purpose. And protect your hope.

Darling, especially protect your hope.

Because grief may change the landscape of your life, but it does not have to become the entire landscape. I know. I have lived it. And tomorrow morning,I will open my red lipstick, glance at my little olive tree, and choose life once again. Amen.

What has helped you through grief? Do you have a ritual, object, person, or word that reminds you to keep moving forward? I would love for you to share it with our community in the comments below.