Who's That Girl?

No one tells you that grief comes with a permanent role assignment.

When a spouse dies, the world gets gentle for a short period of time. There is food sent, hushed voices, understanding eyes, check-in calls. You are allowed to be broken. You are allowed to be lost. You are allowed to stand still.

What you are not allowed to do, at least for some and not without consequence — is move on or build a new life.

Starting over after loss is strange. It isn’t a clean chapter break. It’s more like writing over a page that’s already full. The love doesn’t disappear. The memories don’t evaporate. You just… keep breathing.

And one day, breathing turns into living again. For some that happens within months. For others, it takes years.  There is no rule book to define these terms.  It also really shouldn’t matter. Until someone has lived this type of a nightmare their opinions or suggestions really aren’t justified.

Yet, that’s when the trouble starts.

To some, a new love is not a continuation of life — it could be perceived as betrayal. As proof that you didn’t grieve correctly. That you didn’t love them deeply enough. That you didn’t suffer long enough to earn that grief. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I loved hard. I loved through the most difficult times that most couldn’t have endured.  I loved unconditionally. I loved until the bitter end. I still love. I always will.

There is no metric for “enough” grief — yet somehow, I failed it? Somehow, happiness and thriving feel less acceptable than remaining broken.

One thing about me is that I have always tried to lead with respect, compassion, and understanding — even toward strangers and in all situations. And I understand this, too: they’ve lost someone incredibly important. A relative. A friend. A sibling. A child. A piece of their own history.  My moving forward may feel, to them, like I am rewriting a story they want frozen in time.

But here is the part rarely said out loud by widows and widowers, but that I will say loudly today on behalf of all of us:

Other people’s grief does not get to sentence us to loneliness.

We do not have to live a life sentence in darkness to prove our love was real.

Living and loving again after loss is not erasure. It is not replacement. It is not amnesia. Widows and widowers are brutally aware of their loss every single day.

It is resilience. It is choosing life in a world that already proved it can be so unbearably cruel.

Still, I am the bad guy.

I see it in the silence. In the tight smiles. In the cold, almost formal messages. In the way our new life — the beautiful thing it has become — is not acknowledged. Not for me. Not for my daughter.

I feel it in the whispers. In the conversations spoken behind our backs. In the views with no “like.” In the absence that says more than any words ever could.

Some days I want to scream the truth:

I DIDN’T CHOOSE THIS!

I didn’t choose the nights I cried myself to sleep. The shower tears. The full breakdown. The years of silent pain — even before my late husband passed. I didn’t choose the conversations I still have with him in my head.

New love doesn’t arrive because we are ready. It arrived because life kept going whether we did or not.

Meanwhile, the world returned to normal days after their passing for everyone else. However, ours didn’t. It’s like a recurring nightmare—the daily reality that they’re gone and never coming back. The months, weeks, days and even minutes leading up to that painful last day replay in your head at the most random times. The reality of being truly alone.

That does not disappear just because our hearts found room for joy again.

Other days, I am simply tired.

So, I have made an uneasy peace with this truth: We may always be the villains in someone else’s version of the story. We don’t get to edit their narrative — nor would we try.

What we do get to do is live honestly.
Love fully.
And refuse to apologize for surviving — our way.

Grief does not end when love begins again. It just changes. And if being truly alive makes me the bad guy, then so be it.

I have already lost too much to lose myself, too. I worked incredibly hard to get here.

If you cannot be truly happy for one’s strength, that’s okay. You can live in the past. You can choose the side you want to be on. I will respect that.

As for me—and for the many widows rebuilding their worlds—we will continue to choose life and thrive in the present.

We only get this one life.

And we intend to live every single moment of it.

 xo LM