Tag: Hope

Forever and no time at all

Various images depicting the pandemic in the UK

Cast your mind back to this date five years ago. Can you remember what you were doing? Probably not. It’s a pretty insignificant date really. 9 March 2020. It means so little to so many people. I can’t really remember what I was doing other than knowing I’d have been at work. I went back and looked at my work calendar as I started writing this. I started out in one office, travelled to another office to have a lunch with a member of Alumni network and a colleague and then worked from a different office for the rest of the afternoon. No doubt I then went home, did some bits with my daughter, had dinner with my husband and probably did some chores. Before I got up and did it all again the following day (with the exception of the lunch).

Except. I do remember one of the topics of conversation over that lunch. I remember talking about a conversation I’d had with my husband two days previously in our local supermarket regarding buying some chocolate. “I really fancy some chocolate,” he said, and I merely responded with “Go for it. Pop it in the trolley. If coronavirus doesn’t get us, the asteroid that my colleague told me about will.” This was the topic of that conversation at lunch and a number of conversations with family, friends and colleagues. Coronavirus. Pandemic. COVID-19.

Did any of us really anticipate quite how long we’d be talking about this for when we first started discussing it in early 2020? The impact and devastation that it would cause? The complete and utter changes to our lives as we knew them? I, for one, didn’t. Maybe I was naïve. Maybe I was delusional. Maybe I was just clinging to hope. It definitely wasn’t down to the fact that I wasn’t taking it seriously, it’s just because it felt impossible that the UK was going to be hit hard. I didn’t understand and couldn’t really begin to process and fathom living through a pandemic in my lifetime.

The following week, on 16 March 2020, I was on a call with work on my way home, planning how we were going to organise our team to avoid us all being in the office at the same time, when the then Prime Minister of the UK, Boris Johnson made the announcement that, if people could, they should work from home with immediate effect. I sat on the train, almost dumbfounded. This was really happening. The pandemic was beginning to affect my day-to-day life. It was going to affect my family. I worried about the impact on my daughter and her mental health.

Over the course of that week, it was confirmed that her dance lessons and summer show were to be cancelled and that she would not be going to school as of Friday, 20 March, I couldn’t tell her how long this would last. I had no idea just how serious and horrible it was going to get. And I vividly remember her looking at me with the innocence of a 10-year-old and asking a question that I couldn’t really answer. “Why did this have to happen?”

Were similar conversations going on in my friends’ houses? In my family’s houses? Across the country? Across the world? We weren’t special, I was pretty sure of that. But by the end of that weekend, we did become special in a way. Because on 22 March 2020, my husband started sporting a temperature. He updated his Facebook status with an image of Mickey Flanagan and the words “So……..  I appear to be running a temperature. Have not been out in days but I guess I am now In In. Take care of yourselves and I’ll see you on the other side.”

Reading that back still sends chills down my spines. Whenever people use the phrase “I’ll see you on the other side” my stomach drops. I have to ask them not to. Because little did we know how significant his post would become.

We became special on that day because this was the day when we suspected COVID-19 had entered our house. I didn’t know of anyone else going through this experience. Family. Friends. Colleagues. No-one else was suspecting it was in their house. If we weren’t living with it, I might have struggled to believe that what I was seeing on the news was actually real. Just watching the news reports, seeing the headlines, hearing the numbers of people in hospital, the numbers of people dying and knowing we were living through a pandemic, did, and still does feel surreal.

My daughter asked me why this had to happen. I kept asking myself how this had happened. The UK is an island. How on earth had we allowed this airborne virus to enter our country? To begin spreading like wildfire. Why had more not be done to stop it? How? Why? Two words that would repeat themselves in my mind over and over again. They still do in a way. I’m not a vituperative person by any means, but five years on, I still cannot fathom how and why the UK was allowed to be affected as much as it was. I openly admit I don’t do politics in my writing, but I do have incredibly strong views on what I believe are the answers to these questions. The UK COVID-19 inquiry has shed an awful amount of light on the answers to these questions. None of which should really have come as a surprise to anyone. Even the COVID-19 conspiracy and hoax brigade would be hard pushed to deny the facts that have been presented.

The next week saw my husband steadily deteriorate. It saw me trying to juggle working full time while caring for him, looking after our daughter who was now at home full time and trying to process what the hell was happening in the world. 30 March 2020, my 39th birthday, saw me dial 999 after his deterioration had reached a level that I felt he needed medical intervention. That was the last day my daughter and I ever physically saw him. He walked down the stairs to the waiting ambulance and that was that. Two hours later I learnt he’d been taken to ITU, sedated and ventilated. For two long weeks, the only information I was able to glean from the hospital about his condition was via phone calls.

On 13 April 2020, less than 24 hours after I’d been told to prepare for him to never come home, I had my first Skype call with him. He was unconscious. I don’t know if he could hear me. Over the course of that week my daughter and I did a Skype call with him every single day. And then. On 19 April 2020 I got the call that I was almost expecting. Not prepared for. But expecting. He was going to die. All hope had gone. Just a few hours later we did our final call to say goodbye. A few hours after that, I got the call to say he had died. The pandemic that had seemed so surreal just six weeks previously had now robbed me of my husband and my daughter of her father. Our lives irrevocably changed.

It’s no coincidence that I’m telling this story today. Because today is the 2025 Day of Reflection. The fourth one of these and according to the Marie Curie website, it’s an opportunity to come together to remember those who have lost their lives since the pandemic began and to honour the tireless work and acts of kindness shown during this unprecedented time. In essence, it’s a day to reflect. To think about all those who were lost. But. And forgive me for sounding slightly cynical, just how many people in the UK are aware that this day exists? Of the significance of today’s date this year? How many people will be reflecting? Thinking about the impact of the pandemic?

I say this with the greatest respect, but it is something that I have been thinking about more and more recently. Have we already consigned the COVID-19 pandemic to the history books? Filed it in our memories and moved on? Have we learnt anything from the first pandemic in living memory?

Sadly, I can’t help but feel that the answer to that isn’t an emphatic yes. The political unrest the world is seeing. The cost-of-living crisis. The inability to make decisions quickly and responding to the world at large. The organisations requiring their employees to return to working in an office. Mandating it. Monitoring it. The era of working from home and hybrid working for those who can feels like it’s coming to an end. I see it on my commute. The trains are once again rammed. Sometimes I’m lucky to get a seat either on the way into the office or the way home and I’m an hour’s train journey from London. I see people on the train, the tube or in the office coughing and spluttering. No longer as mindful of the fact they’re spreading germs, or not feeling able to stay at home.

I see some people wearing masks, but these are exceptionally few and far between. I’ll be honest. I no longer wear a mask. But I did pay to have a COVID-19 vaccine last year. The headlines about the new strain were making me uncomfortable. Colleagues and friends knew of people who had been very ill with it. I can’t afford to be ill. And certainly not with this virus. The one and only time I did have it, I was fortunate not to be overly ill, but looking at my daughter and telling her that we needed to change our plans because I’d contracted the same virus that had killed her father wasn’t the easiest thing I’ve had to do. And believe me, there’s been a multitude of things that haven’t been easy to do since 2020. But this was one of the hardest ones.

I think back and remember the real sense of community and kindness in 2020. Remember Thursday nights standing outside your front day clapping for carers? Remember making more of a conscious effort to check in on friends and family because you couldn’t see them? Remember enjoying the slower pace of life because everything was shut? I don’t want to sound like I’m trivialising the pandemic, I am painfully aware of what life was like for those who watched someone die during that time. Of all those people who lived alone and felt beyond isolated. Of all those people who were living with mental health challenges that were exacerbated by the pandemic and the effects of which are still felt today. I don’t honestly know how many people can say they came away from the pandemic unscathed in one way or another.

I always wanted kindness to be my abiding memory of the pandemic. Because I really did experience so much of it. The tweet from Jason Donovan sending love and strength the day after I was told to prepare for my husband to never come home. The food packages that kept arriving. The cards. The surprise and thoughtful gifts. The care packages. The video calls. The people on my doorstep just talking to me. The WAY Widowed and Young members who let me vent when I needed to. The phone calls, the legacy of which still continue to this day at 9pm on a Wednesday night. Please don’t try to get hold of me at this time, I’m busy talking to one of my oldest friends after she decided that just because the pandemic wasn’t affecting our lives in the same way and we could meet up again, it didn’t mean we should stop speaking once a week.  

I’m still very lucky to be experiencing kindness. My life as a solo parent is a constant juggle. I have to ask for help and call in favours constantly just be able to work. And then I have to add in living and having a social life. My mum and stepdad didn’t sign up to still be doing the school and dancing run in their mid-60s. My friends didn’t sign up to be looking after my daughter for me so I can go out for nights or weekends away (amusingly she is saved as “R lodger” in one of my friend’s phones. I don’t abandon her that much. I promise.) My friends didn’t sign up to feeding her once a week and taking her to her dance lessons for me. Yet they do it. And I am so exceptionally thankful for every single person who still extends kindness to us. In whatever capacity. I couldn’t do my life without it. I will never, ever take it for granted.

It is all of this that means I will never be able to consign the pandemic to the history books. Mine and my daughter’s life changed forever on 19 April 2020. The ripples are still affecting our daily lives five years on. The tension and the arguments because the grief and anxiety it caused are still a massive part of our lives. The therapy we’ve both needed to help us process the trauma of it all. We live with it, and we move forwards, yes, but we will never, ever move on.

When I’ve written blogs on this Day of Reflection in previous years, I’ve asked readers to reflect, to think about all those who were lost and for those whose lives were never the same again. But this year, I’m asking you to do something else too. Think about what you learnt during that time. Whether you’ve remembered any of it. Send a message to someone you haven’t heard from in a while. Pick up the phone to a friend and check in. Say no to something if it puts you under too much pressure. Let that be the legacy of the pandemic. Change.

As for me. 2020 will always be the year that my world fell apart. I can’t pretend otherwise. My husband died. I’ve since lost friendships. Relationships have changed. I’ve experienced further gut-wrenching bereavement. I’ve hit rock bottom. I’ve had to claw my way back on more than one occasion. 2020 caused all of this. But I refuse to let it just be a negative memory. I’ve learnt too much about the world since then – kindness, friendship and most importantly about myself. It was the catalyst for so much. That doesn’t mean I’m glad it happened – far, far from it. But I’m not the sort of person to experience something like this and not learn from it.

2020 might have been five years ago. I might have become a widow nearly five years ago. I might have been a solo parent and been watching my beautiful daughter grow up without her father for nearly five years. But time has become the biggest juxtaposition of my life. Because to me it’s not five years ago. It’s forever and no time at all.

Goodbye 2024

Various photos of Emma and Rebekah Charlesworth taken in 2024

Discombobulating. Sometimes just one word can perfectly sum up your year. This for me is the word that works best for 2024. I’ve thought of some other ones, but the language might have been a teeny bit stronger than this. So, I’m sticking with this one. 

I ended my 2023 year end blog asking for one thing… “never tell me the odds.” Turns out once again I was right about not really knowing what 2024 would bring. I can’t sit here now and say it’s all been bad, there has been so much positive, but it’s not all been cupcakes and rainbows. I’d have been incredibly naïve to have expected it to be all truth be told. But I can’t help but wonder if I’ll ever have a year that feels settled for the whole year. When I might be able to look back and not have a tear in my eye as I remember some parts of the year. If I’m honest, I’m not convinced it’s possible for this to ever happen. Because that’s life. It’s full of the good, the bad and the ugly. And I guess you could say that’s been the biggest thing to have come out of 2024. Beginning to accept this. And accepting that I have to change. 

But let’s start at the very beginning. For that is a very good place to start. A few days into 2024, I experienced a leak in my house. Leaks became a definite part of my 2024. But I handled it well. I just got on with it, didn’t cry and just dealt with the consequences. It felt like I’d turned a bit of a corner from when I’d had a leak when I went to Butlins just a few months prior. I was on the up. I was focusing on the positive. It felt good. My daughter had her birthday in January and a group of teenagers descended on my house one Friday night, doing karaoke and playing Just Dance. They then all went shopping the following day and I spent the day mooching around, making the most of time in the sales and just generally relaxing. 

I’d like to say that February was pretty non-descript, but I suspect that if I didn’t mention a certain thing that happened in February, my daughter would write a letter of complaint to me. For this was the month that she undertook some coaching with Jac Yarrow, a West End star who we had first seen play Joseph in 2019. Granted, I only took my daughter to see Joseph because Jason Donovan was in it… that’ll teach me! But as I sat outside my lounge door and listened to her sing I Dreamed A Dream from Les Misérables, I couldn’t have been prouder. I thought back to the same time the previous year. When she had just been referred for counselling to help her manage her anxiety and how there wouldn’t have been a hope in hell of her being able to do this. Something so unexpected, yet so rewarding. Who knew when that happened that Jac would be going into Les Misérables in 2024 and she’d get to watch him on stage doing what he does best. Or that she’d audition and sing I Dreamed A Dream at her school’s Winter Festival. I guess this is what I meant when I said, “never tell me the odds.”

And while I’m not necessarily going to go through every month in order, I couldn’t not mention March and April. This was when things really started to shift. When I started believing in myself a bit more. When I started breaking bad habits. Or at least attempting to. I began watching TV after my daughter went to bed. Something that had taken me nearly four years to do. I began life coaching sessions with Sheryl Findlay. I invested in me. One of the toughest decisions I’ve ever made, because, let’s face it, how many of us actually invest in ourselves? And then. At the end of March, I pushed myself completely out of my comfort zone. My daughter and I got on a plane to California to do the trip that my late husband and I had always planned for my 40th birthday. I can’t lie, in the run up to the holiday I just keep thinking “I don’t know, I’m making this up as I go” even though the laminated itinerary had been triple and quadruple checked. But I was beyond nervous. It was the first time I had taken my daughter overseas to somewhere I’d never been before. It was the first time I had ever driven abroad. I was scared. But as we picked up at our hire car in San Francisco and the customer services adviser said, “You need to go to level C for Charlie in the car park,” I knew we were going to be ok. I knew that our guardian angel was continuing to watch over us.

Admittedly, I think that guardian angel would have been slightly despairing on hearing my daughter say “what is that? It’s weird” when she looked at the car. Because much to my surprise, we were given a Dodge Challenger. A proper American muscle car. I had to take a deep breath. Here was I, never having driven abroad and about to drive at least 500 miles in a big, scary car. It was black which only made it look slightly meaner. If I’m honest, red would have been the only other colour to have. I sent photos to male friends back home, most of whom were despairing because they knew I wouldn’t have been driving it the way it deserved to be driven! But the main point here is that I did it. My daughter and I did it. Yes, there were difficult moments and arguments during the holiday, there were always going to be, but we also made memories and had such a lovely time. I was so proud of us. And as we went whale watching in Monterey Bay, I knew that my late husband was proud of us too. We saw incredible pods of orcas, so much so that the tour guide asked who on the boat had good karma because he rated it amongst his top three trips (and he’s been doing this trip for nine years with three tours a day). 

The 2024 CharlieFest in honour of Mr C’s 50th birthday year then took place, it had felt like the right time to host our next fundraising event. I was so nervous going into it, more nervous than I had been in 2022 because it felt like there was more at stake. This was going to be the one that determined whether I could sell tickets and do another one in the future. I needn’t have worried. We raised just over £2,500 for the Intensive Care Unit at Medway Hospital. It was once again humbling. And once again, I had an exceptionally proud mum moment when I watched my daughter duet with her father thanks to the magic of technology and the wonderful dedication and hard work of his band members. I’m not actually convinced there was a dry eye in the house. I couldn’t have asked for more from her or the day itself. Yet as we rapidly approached my late husband’s 50th, I got my first real inkling of how much grief is still affecting me. The struggle as we hit our fifth Fathers’ Day without him. The admitting that his 50th was affecting me way more than I’d anticipated it would and the need to take some time out of from work and reset for a little bit. I wish I’d learnt my lesson then. I wish I’d realised just how much I needed to make sure I continue to rest and reset. But I didn’t. 

As I continued to push myself and do so much over the summer, including watching my daughter perform in Disneyland Paris (yet another proud mum moment of 2024) and being terrified by Darth Vader while I was there, I could see from our calendar that life was going to get hectic as we went into the autumn. The calendar that was always full. The insane trips we went on under my mantra “life is too short.” It’s little wonder that at the end of October, everything came crashing down around me. The life that I’d been living simply became too much. I knew I had to make tough decisions. Why? Because I couldn’t keep it up anymore. I realised I’d essentially been playing a bizarre game of peekaboo with myself. Hiding from the truth. Constantly trying to keep busy because being at home triggers too much in me of being in lockdown when my world fell apart. Being scared to say no to people because I worry that they might not like me if I do or that they might die. Not realising that actually everything I joked about as being normal for my life was, in fact, me living with trauma and not knowing how to process it. 

After being mentally and physically exhausted due to not sleeping, possibly for the first time ever, I knew something had to give. No longer would my sister have been able to say, “she’s good in bed” because I’m a heavy sleeper and don’t move (though this is definitely the line that’s going on my online dating profile should I ever attempt this again). Instead, had she stayed with me she no doubt would have been saying “she fidgets, she talks in her sleep, she’s an absolute nightmare in bed.” I made a call. I was assessed. I was referred to a therapist. I haven’t told many people this. Mainly because I felt like a failure. I’d been so proud in a blog I wrote in October that my daughter and I hadn’t needed therapy this year, that I felt I’d be letting so many people down if I admitted it. 

Yet I’ve since had a word with myself and reminded myself that I’m not a failure. If I’m honest, I think I’m probably the strongest I’ve ever been right now. So much of that is down to all the work I did with Sheryl. Investing in myself in this way has paid such dividends. She helped me realise things I was holding back. She inspired me. She helped me plan my future and look at all I want to achieve. Gave me realistic ways I could do this. She did, in essence, become one of my biggest cheerleaders. And I simply cannot thank her enough. There is one particular project I spent a lot of the year working on which would never have happened without her and other friends believing in me. I hope that 2025 sees that come to fruition. 

But the trouble with being strong, is that in a way, you also become weak. Because you accept your vulnerabilities more. They’re your superpower but when you’re strong enough, you realise you need to process and accept everything that is holding you back. Everything that you’re scared of. You realise your own self-worth. What you deserve. What you need. From so many different aspects of your life. This has been the biggest learning curve of 2024 for me. That all the external fears and worries I have pale into insignificance really. That the biggest threat to me, is actually me. When it comes to me, I am the danger. By not being honest with myself and hiding from me. I need to become comfortable with just resetting. Of not pushing myself. Of doing what is right for me in the moment. Of not trying to do 1,000 things all the time out of fear. Of not trying to be the one who saves relationships. Of not trying to rescue situations out of fear and worry. People have hurt me this year. But I’ve realised that it says more about them than it does about me. And fundamentally, if they don’t come with me into 2025, that’s on them. It’s their loss. Because 2025 is the year when I start focusing on and looking after me and my daughter. 

I’m doing this not just for us, but for two other important people who were a huge part of my life and for over two decades tried to get me to slow down. One of these was my late husband. The other, a close friend of mine who unexpectedly died towards the end of this year. In one of our last conversations, I shared what I’ve written about in this blog, and I went into more detail about my overthinking. There was no judgement, they were simply staggered that they’d never realised this about me. That my propensity to do so much came from fear, and not because I’m just a nightmare who likes to keep busy. I mentioned earlier that I got my first real inkling of how much grief is still affecting me back in June, but in December this really hit home. Shock deaths are likely to do this, but I could never have envisaged how triggered I would be by this. And in a move which would have shocked them both, I stopped. I took time out from work. I sat at home. I didn’t try to be everything to everyone. I put me first. I said no to people. I didn’t make additional plans. Christmas Day saw my daughter and I sit in PJs, cuddle on the sofa, watch TV and just be. It was our simplest and most underrated Christmas ever. It was, in amongst all the sadness and memories of Christmases’ past, the perfect Christmas for us this year. 

I go into 2025 with a heavy heart. I would be lying to say otherwise. The five year anniversary of the pandemic and my husband’s death is looming. But I also go into it with hope. It’s what’s got me through the last five years. I know I’m doing all I can to become a better version of me over the next few months. I have a cunning plan for what I’m going to do to mark what would have been our 20th wedding anniversary. I hope that by the summer I really will be able to appreciate the simpler things in my life. The breeze winnowing through the grass. Splashing in puddles on a rainy day. Just sitting. The minor things that happen every day but give cause to be thankful for. 

But above all else, I’m looking forward to finally being comfortable being me. Deep down inside I know I’m pretty phenomenal. 2025 is when I want to be able to believe it. I just don’t know what else 2025 is going to bring. But that’s ok. It doesn’t scare me as much as it would have done a year ago. 

I already know that there are two words which will feature heavily in 2025: Jason. Excessive. As for the rest of it and what else 2025 will bring? Never tell me the odds. 

Hope is everything

Various pictures of the Charlesworth family to promote Children’s Grief Awareness Week

Two years ago, to mark Children’s Grief Awareness Week, I wrote a blog because the phrase “children are resilient” had been playing heavily on my mind. I felt it was clouding our view of how children who have been bereaved are treated. One of the points I raised that seemed to resonate the most with people was this: Needing help doesn’t mean she’s not resilient, that she’s mad, that she can’t cope or that she’s weird. It just means she’s human and vulnerable.

A lot has happened since I wrote that blog, but as I sit here today, on the first day of Children’s Grief Awareness Week 2024, there’s a new thought that is playing heavily on my mind. The fact that my daughter won’t ever really remember a life without grief in it. She won’t ever really remember her mum when she wasn’t grieving. Imagine that. Growing up with grief being part of your everyday life. I hesitate to use the word normal, because that is different for all of us, but ultimately grief, trauma and sadness are part of my daughter’s normal and have been since she was 10 years old. It breaks my heart beyond all belief that her innocence and childhood were snatched from her so cruelly.

Yet when I started thinking about this a bit more, I started thinking about the theme of this awareness week. #BuildingHope. Hope is probably the most pertinent word in my family. It’s the word I have tattooed on my wrist in my late husband’s handwriting. It’s part of my daughter’s name. And the fact that this grief awareness week begins on 18th November is also something that feels pertinent for me. 18th November 1993 is the date that I first really became aware of death and grief. These two things put together are why I knew I needed to write.

I’ve never really spoken about the fact that I too went through grief as a child. Mainly because in 1993, mental health or speaking about your emotions and feelings weren’t really considered. And certainly not for a child. But more than that. As the years have gone by, I have never really felt it was my story to tell. Yes, my family and friends at the time knew about it. It crops up in conversation with people to this day at times. But I haven’t publicly talked about it. I’ve had numerous different bouts of counselling over the years, but it’s never been a topic of discussion, there’s always been what I’ve felt are more pressing things to talk about. Yet recently I’ve stopped to think about how that day itself, the immediate aftermath and the bereavement I went through, haunts me and continues to affect me to this day. I suspect it always will. It’s a part of who I am. Because it is a part of my story. Whether I talk about it publicly or not.

It almost feels a bizarre coincidence in a way that both mine and my daughter’s first real memory and experience of death happened in what were fundamentally national tragedies. That we’ve both had to deal with death against a backdrop of news headlines and TV images. Such completely and utterly different circumstances, but the similarities are there, nonetheless. I was 12 years old. She was 10 years old. Having to adjust to a new reality without someone they loved in it. Becoming acutely aware from a young age that death can happen to anyone. It’s not just old people who die. Being aware of your own mortality before you’re even a teenager. It’s a lot to have to come to terms with.

I think this is what has led me to the realisation about my daughter having grief in her life forever. And I also think this is part of why I have so vehemently pushed her to talk about her grief. To have counselling. To try to help her process and make sense of the trauma she went through. The secondary losses she has faced. The future she faces growing up without her father. I want to do all I can to help her manage this unfathomable loss. To have it be a part of her story but not her whole story. To help her grow around it.

Whenever I talk about her and what she’s faced in my blogs, I always, always check she is comfortable with what I’m going to write. Because ultimately her experience is her story. There are some things which are just too personal to both of us to ever share. I won’t talk about them. I respect her views. Yet when I spoke about this blog, I could see the progress she’s made since that blog two years ago. The little bits of her life she is more comfortable for me to talk about now.

Shortly after I wrote my blog in 2022, my daughter and I joined Winston’s Wish Ambassador Molly for an Instagram Live together with Grace Lee, Director of Marketing and Communications for Winston’s Wish. The concept was for young people to talk directly and openly about their bereavements and grief. It was a classic case of Instagram vs. reality, in the 10 minutes before we went live, my daughter and I had some minor disagreements, she was stroppy with me, I was conscious of time so was blunt back and then the second we went live we switched on the consummate professional act! But as I sat there listening to Molly and then my own daughter, I was struck by just how astute they both were and how much they understood the impact that their bereavements had had on them. My daughter said things about grief that I’d never heard her say before. There were some real lump in the throat moments for me. I’d have never anticipated quite what was going to come our way just a few months later.

Because it was in February 2023 that I took my daughter to our doctor to get her referred for counselling. Her grief had manifested itself into anxiety. And it was becoming more and more difficult to manage. I’d had an inkling that this might happen the day of her great-grandmother’s funeral in January 2022, it was at the same crematorium as her dad’s funeral, she had to face all his family and by the time we got to the evening, she was shaking on the bathroom floor and vomiting. She couldn’t go back to school the next day. The anxiety and the stress that day caused for her was simply too much for her to deal with. It was another loss for her to have to process.

But by 2023, her anxiety had got to the point where she couldn’t leave the house in the morning for school without eight different alarms. Each of which to tell her it was time to do something else, be that go in the bathroom, get dressed or have breakfast. It felt unsustainable. Any change to that routine, a few minutes lost here and there was enough to cause a meltdown. There were days she didn’t even make it into school. She simply couldn’t process change. Everything had to be regimented. I watched as she withdrew into herself more. We argued more because I couldn’t really understand what she was going through. Because I didn’t understand just how crippling her anxiety had become. Just how hard her life was. Until she started her counselling, all I could do was love her and watch her suffer as she tried to make sense in her mind of why she was like this. As she tried to answer the question she posed herself “why am I like this?” It was, quite simply, heartbreaking to watch.

She was nervous about the counselling. She didn’t really know what she’d say. But as I sat on the stairs and listened to her first session, I could hear her talking. I was astonished quite how much the counsellor got her to say. After that I didn’t listen to her sessions, they were personal to her and I knew if there was a major concern, the counsellor would contact me. But for someone who was such a sceptic, these sessions helped her. Even she would admit this. Just last week, she commented on how she only has one alarm now and it goes off 35 minutes later than it did last year. This might sound small to someone who has never experienced anxiety, but to her it’s massive.

And while a lot of her anxiety has dissipated, it is still there. I don’t doubt it always will be to an extent. It’s part of her grief. We have found ways to help her manage it, but if things come at her left field, they do still cause her to feel anxious or to panic. She will openly admit she has trust issues. She struggles to let people in. She has abandonment issues. I don’t doubt that as she gets older, she will need therapy again. Because at different points in her life, she is going to need help to process her emotions. It’s a fact of her life.

And she’s also had to live with my grief being a fact of her life for the last four years. The fact I find myself crying anywhere, a supermarket, the theatre, in the car, the cinema… the list is endless. We recently went to see Paddington in Peru (I cried!) and on the drive home, we saw an ambulance with its blue lights on. No siren, just lights on. My daughter started making the sound of a siren, I laughed and said, “why are you being an ambulance?” To which she simply said “I know you don’t like seeing the blue lights without the sirens. It’s hard for you so I thought I’d add them.” Deep breath moment for me. The realisation that things like that are on her mind. How acutely aware she is of how I feel and my triggers. Three years ago, she was interviewed as part of a study on childhood bereavement, they asked her how her mum was coping. “She keeps herself busy and doesn’t sit still, because if she stops, she’ll have to think about what’s happened to us and she doesn’t want to do that.” Another deep breath moment. Because there are times her emotional intelligence is off the scale. But this also breaks my heart. She shouldn’t have had to become this astute. She shouldn’t have had to live with grief becoming a part of her world at such a young age that she’s been able to gain this understanding.

Her understanding, vulnerability and honesty are just some of her qualities that I am most proud of. I do believe she’s growing up with an empathy that she wouldn’t have if she hadn’t experienced the loss of her father and watched her mother grieving. She knows this herself. Towards the end of last year, she and I had a conversation in what is known as the “Jac McDonald’s” (mainly because this is where we ate before going to see Jac Yarrow on more than one occasion.) And while I’d rather not be having a deep and meaningful over a Big Mac, sometimes you just have to go with the flow of the conversation. She told me that she wouldn’t necessarily change what has happened to her. I was quizzical over this but the way she responded again just made me so proud. Her rationale was that she likes the person she is now, and she doesn’t know if she would be this person if she hadn’t gone through everything she has. Another deep breath moment for me. There is no real response to that. Without question, she will never cease to amaze me with how she has approached everything and the way she now reflects on her life.

Recently she and a friend went to their first gig without a parent. No way would she have been able to do this last year. And while I was a tad neurotic, when I got the text message from her to tell me they’d found their seats, had bought some merchandise and what time they’d worked out they’d need to go to the toilet before the main act, I breathed a sigh of relief. She’s got this was my overarching feeling. And as her friend’s mum and I waited in the venue for the gig to finish, I listened to the lyrics of one of the songs. The words that Henry Moodie sang felt like the perfect way to sum up my daughter’s response to grief and anxiety:

  • I’ve learned to live with my anxieties
  • ‘Cause I’ve got some bad emotions
  • It’s just a part of life, it doesn’t mean I’m broken
  • At the worst of times, I tell myself to breathe
  • Count to three, wait and see that I’ll be okay
  • ‘Cause I’ve got some bad emotions
  • Took a minute, but I’m finding ways of coping.

Anyone who is parenting a child who is bereaved wants to make it better for them. Anyone who has experienced childhood bereavement wants to feel better. Wonders when the grief and the pain might go away. Yet, as I’ve come to realise it doesn’t ever go away. But by talking about it and hopefully breaking some taboos, we can become more understanding of the impact, find techniques for coping and learn ways to support.

#BuildingHope is this year’s theme, and I cannot think of anything that is more fitting. It sounds clichéd. It sounds trite. But speaking as a mother who has watched her child ride the grief rollercoaster these last four years, I do truly believe that building and offering hope to those also experiencing this is one of the most powerful things we can do. 

Quite simply. Hope is everything.

Four and a half years a widow

Picture of Emma Charlesworth between 2020 and 2024

It’s been a while since I wrote a blog on the “half anniversary.” I think the last time I did this was in 2021 after a pretty tumultuous few months when I was reflecting on 18 months as a widow. But there’s something about this one that’s making me reflect as well. It’s the last one I have before the anniversary (or Dad’s Death Day as my daughter prefers) that already feels like it’s looming over me. Five years. The fact we are rapidly hurtling towards this one is something I am struggling to get my head around. And probably will be for the next six months. It just doesn’t feel real that in 2025 I’ll have been a widow for five years.

I first started thinking about it on Father’s Day this year. The realisation hit me a few days beforehand that my daughter was about to do her fifth Father’s Day without her father. There is something about the number five that just feels huge. I think in part it’s because my daughter was 10-years-old when he died. Five is exactly half of that. It scares me how quickly time is going and how much she is achieving without him. Fast forward a few weeks and we then had our fifth birthday without him. Which also happened be his 50th birthday. It hit me a lot harder than I anticipated it would, and I think this is what I’m still coming to terms with. How much of a part of my life grief is. How much of a part of my life it always will be.

I know that on the surface people don’t see this in the same way about me as they would have done in the early days. And that’s completely right, because I’m not as physically broken by it as I was in 2020. What staggers me is how much grief changed me not just mentally by physically too. I look back at pictures now and see how ill I looked. I’ve questioned my family on this, I’ve asked them why no-one told me that I looked ill or broken, and the response is always the same. “You didn’t need to know.” They are of course right; I didn’t need to know this because I would have just stressed about it and probably made myself more ill. But when I look back now, it makes me really emotional. Because I do know now. And I can see it.

Yet a couple of weeks ago when I was out, I had a comment that really took me aback. I was speaking with someone I’d never met before and the subject of what had happened came up. “Well, you look quite happy about it” was the response. I stood there, slightly unsure of what to say. What am I meant to do? Sit in a corner, wear black, have a veil over my face and weep until the end of my days? Or be like Miss Havisham and wear my wedding dress (granted, I probably wouldn’t fit in it) until the end of my days? I flustered a little bit and made a comment about how it was nearly five years, and I was learning to live with it, but I know I it was just waffle.

Because this is the thing, isn’t it? There is such a lack of understanding or knowledge about grief. I think this is the main thing I’ve learnt in the last four and a half years. To the majority of people I’m living my life, am happy and am moving on. But these people don’t see me behind closed doors. They don’t see me crying in a theatre, cinema or while watching TV because the music or storyline has triggered me. They don’t see the anger I feel at all the coverage the release of Boris Johnson’s new book has been getting. They don’t see me bristle at the term covid fatigue. They don’t see me exhausted at having to do absolutely everything. They don’t see me worrying that my late husband is going to be forgotten. The inane fear I have that people are over it and wish I’d stop banging on about it. They don’t see the constant juggle of being a solo parent, a full-time employee, perimenopausal, a friend, a family member and not to mention Emma. Me as an individual. Someone trying to forge a life for herself because she’s well aware that her daughter is just getting older, gaining more independence and building her own life.

I’m having to retrain my brain to adjust to this. I’m having to get used to time on my own. This should have been the time of life when my late husband and I had a bit more freedom, were able to take advantage of this and enjoy being a couple. I’ve spent a lot of time writing this year, and now I’ve finished that project, I’ve been at a bit of a loss as to what I’m meant to do with my time. Again. People don’t see me wandering round my house wondering how to fill time when my daughter is with friends or at dancing. They don’t see me coming up with oodles of jobs that probably don’t need doing because it still feels weird to me to be at home on my own without him. Even now. There are times when I still struggle with the fact he isn’t here, and I have to do it all. That’s the life of a widow though. The side swipes are still very much a part of my everyday life.

It’s this that I’ve found most interesting since he died. The expectation anyone in my situation puts on themselves. “It’s been X amount of years, I should feel different by now.” Not wanting to scare people who are newly widowed that the grief doesn’t ever go. When I talk with fellow members of Widowed and Young, this is a topic of conversation that crops up time and time again. People apologising because they’re further along and don’t want to cause worry to newer members that they’re still sad or struggling. Newer members feeling guilty because they’ve had a positive few weeks and feel they should be sadder. The guilt when you’re a few years in and have a bad day because you should be better by now. The crushing pain that can appear when you least expect it to. The complexity of emotions is vast. Navigating them has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. Trying to understand my emotions and my needs is at times beyond me. I messaged my sister a few months back and told her I was having an existential crisis. “Why now?” was her blunt response.

Because this is the thing. There is a lot in my life that feels tougher to deal with now and causes me to have a crisis more than it once would have done. Because I have to deal with it on my own. I recently had a leak in my house that resulted in the floorboards needing to be lifted up. I asked our plumber if he could stay for a cup of tea and help me rationalise it because it felt overwhelming to me to have to work it out by myself. It was the fourth leak I’d had in a year and each one had elicited a different response from me. Because each one came when my mental state and resilience were different.

And while it might sound daft. These leaks feel like a perfect metaphor for grief. The first one sent me into a bit of a spiral as I wasn’t sure I’d be able to go away with the girls the following day and needed a friend to come to my rescue. The second one I just dealt with, very matter of fact and didn’t even cry. The third one was the straw that broke the camel’s back after a full-on couple of weeks and caused me to capitulate. And the most recent one saw me having to rationalise it all out by talking to someone. Every single one of those reactions have been how I’ve dealt with my grief since becoming a widow. How I’ve dealt with the fact I’m a solo parent and no longer part of a couple anymore. It’s relentless. It’s exhausting.

Yet I’d be lying if I said that the people who only see the superficial side of me are entirely wrong. I cannot sit here and say I have a bad life. To do that would be disingenuous. I am moving forward. I am able to enjoy aspects of my life again. I have been able to have some amazing adventures. I know when I write my end of year blog this year it’s going to be one that I’m incredibly proud of. I’ve conquered a lot this year both emotionally and physically. I’ve achieved objectives that I set for myself at the start of 2024. So far, neither my daughter or I have needed therapy this year. The first year since 2019 when neither of us have been in therapy. Life feels settled. But this is equally hard. Because I don’t trust it. I find it very hard to relax into it. There is always this nagging little voice at the back of my mind telling me not to get to used to it. That something bad will come my way very soon.

I know as I head towards Christmas, my daughter’s birthday and the upcoming anniversary, life might not feel as settled. There’s going to be a lot of reminders. It’s not going to be easy. But I’m going to try to focus on a quote I heard at the Widowed and Young AGM last month to get me through. Because it feels like the perfect summation of my life as a widow.

“It never gets easy. It just gets less hard.”

Finding your WAY

Various photos from the Widowed and Young AGM 2024

It’s been a few months since I last wrote a blog. Life has been busy lately, we’ve had a fab summer and while I have been busy writing, it’s been for something completely different to my blog. And I always said I’d only write when I had something to say, I never had the intention of blogging just for the sake of it.

But a lot has been whirring in my mind since last weekend. You see, last weekend was the 2024 Widowed and Young AGM. This was the third AGM I have attended and once again, I trekked across the country to be there, this time to Crewe. It’s always a bit daunting getting in the car and driving quite a way by yourself, Mr C was always the one out of the two of us who did most of the driving, but there is always something reassuring about knowing you’re driving to spend the weekend with people who “get it.”

Yet, this was the first AGM where I headed off feeling slightly nervous about it. You see, I knew that Emma, my comfort blanket at these events wasn’t going to be able to make it until late on the Friday evening. So, I was going to have to go to the Volunteer’s Meeting and dinner without her. It might sound odd, I’ve been volunteering and an Ambassador for WAY for three and a half years now, have met numerous other volunteers and members of WAY at various events, but that thought of walking into a room by myself still feels me with a little bit of dread. I’m still not really used to being on my own.

Traffic delays meant I was slightly late to the Volunteer’s Meeting. Fortunately, Emma was on hand for me to ring to ask her to let them know! But being late also meant that I didn’t have a chance to get nervous and scared about walking in on my own, the meeting had already started when I arrived and so I just had to thrown myself into it and the initial icebreaker challenge. Within moments, I was wondering why I’d been feeling nervous. There were familiar faces for me to talk to and also new faces who I quickly got to know. It’s one of the weirdest situations really, we’re only in that room together because of one commonality, we have all experienced the loss of a partner before our 51st birthday yet somehow that almost feels secondary once you start talking to others. My team won one of the other challenges and we were presented with a bag of Heroes, an apt prize if I ever saw one! I then joined other members for a history tour of Crewe Hall Hotel and Spa, the hotel we were staying in, a really beautiful and fascinating place and then I trundled back to my room to get ready for dinner.

Once again, the nerves kicked in. Dinner was at 8pm and while there were messages on the Facebook page about meeting for a drink earlier, I started feeling apprehensive again. What if I went down and wouldn’t have anyone to talk to? What if people I didn’t know started to talk to me about my widowhood experience, did I really want to talk about it? What if, what if, what if…? The question that we really shouldn’t ask ourselves, but we always do. Worst case scenario planning, and I am very, very good at it! I snuck into dinner just before 8pm, not revealing to anyone the feelings I was having and instantly started talking to people. Again, some I’d met before but others I hadn’t. Conversation was easy and free flowing. If I’m honest, I knew it would be and I was berating myself in my head for the fears I’d been having leading up to it.

Emma had messaged to tell me the time she would be arriving and despite feeling tired, I knew I needed to wait up to see her. I suspected both of us would need the reassuring hug from each other, her because of the long drive and to help quell a number of anxieties she was feeling, me because I was also experiencing anxieties and just wanted a hug from someone who knows me well. I think we both clung on a little bit too tight when she did arrive. But that’s the power of connection through tragedy, sometimes you don’t even need to say how you’re feeling for someone else to just instinctively know.

The following morning was the AGM itself. A chance for us to learn more about the work of the charity over the previous year and plans going forward. But it always kicks off with an icebreaker challenge, there was a lot at stake with this one, I’d been on the winning table in 2023 and felt I had a title to protect! This year we needed to build the tallest swan, the swan being synonymous with WAY. There were other people on our table who had been on the same table and therefore victorious last year, but there were also some people who were new faces. Straight away we all got to work and after some potentially contentious entries, I’m delighted to report that my table was once again victorious. The winning sashes were instantly put on. The prosecco opened a short while later (it was early after all). The smiles and the laughter evident for all to see.

That continued throughout the day. Yes. There were some challenging moments. Hearing from a speaker who is also a member of WAY and hearing her story can’t help but make you reflect on your own experience and how you’ve come to be in a room full of people who have faced similar heartbreak. But as we all went off to the breakout sessions, me experiencing my first Soundbath and then candle making, I couldn’t help but think about just how important weekends and occasions like this have become to me.

Those thoughts continued as we headed to the spa for a swim and time in the sauna and steam room. Emma and I chatting and putting the world to rights. Catching up with others and making plans for the evening dinner dance. It was just so ridiculously easy and comfortable. As we headed to dinner, posh frock on (any excuse to wear a posh frock!) I knew I’d be in for a fab evening. I was proven right. I was once again victorious in a game of Heads and Tails and another box of Heroes came my way. I introduced someone I had met the day before and someone I had met last year to Tequila Rose, I’m nothing if not generous. We tried to see how many of us we could squeeze into a Photo Booth to take a photo of the victorious winning icebreaker challenge table (the answer is eight people). Some of us crying with laughter at the most ridiculous and surreal conversations we were having. Some of us crying because the emotion had got a bit much being relatively new to WAY and widowhood. I instinctively went over and gave a hug to someone because I could just see that they needed it and if I’ve learnt anything, it’s just how powerful a hug can be at the right time. Some of us catching up and chatting, I spent a lot of time talking to someone I had met last year, we’ve continued to message over the past year but despite the fact we’ve now only seen each other twice in a year, it felt so normal and like old friends talking. At one point I and another volunteer were asked how long we’d known each other, I looked at my watch, did the maths and responded “about 29 hours” to be promptly told that it was as though we’d known each other a lot longer than that. I think a lot of that came down to the very warped sense of humour we both have!

And I noticed that while I was having these conversations, I wasn’t as solely reliant on Emma as I had been in previous years. Yes, I was so relieved to have my comfort blanket back and to know she was there, but we both were having conversations with others and finding our way. Together but also on our own. As I’ve had to do with the rest of my life since becoming eligible to join WAY almost four and a half years ago. Emma runs courses and is passionate about talking about growing around your grief, and I truly believe that this is what so many of us in the room have done or are in the process of doing. It’s different timing for everyone, no grief journey is the same, but we are all doing it. Anyone walking past that room and seeing the smiles, laughter and dancing wouldn’t have had a clue behind the heartbreaking reason that has brought us all together. They’d have just seen a group of people having a good evening. And after all the heartbreak and tears we’ve experienced, that can only be a good thing.

As we checked out of the hotel the next morning, I knew there was one more than I needed to do before I headed home. I needed to brave doing something else on my own. Finding my way to revisit a special place. Just me. Not with Emma or my WAY friends. Not my family. Just me. I was a short drive away from the castle that my nan spent five years living in while she was evacuated. The last time I visited it my family were all together. My grandad and my late husband were still alive. Alzheimer’s hadn’t taken hold of my nan. As I walked around taking photos and videos to show her when I next see her, I couldn’t help but think about how much my life has changed since that last visit. I sat on my own, had a coffee, did some writing and just spent time as me, as Emma.

It hit me that the same day four and half years ago was the day that Mr C experienced his first symptom of COVID-19. The tears fell and I found myself crying for a lot of the journey home. For what I’ve lost. The pain I’ve gone through. The hurt that has come into my life. But I also cried for the good in my life. The people who are only in it because of what I’ve gone through. Everything my daughter and I have been able to achieve in the face of such adversity. The hope we have for the future. The plans we have. It’s the most bittersweet of situations. I’d give everything I have for my late husband to still be here, but I know that’s impossible. And so, I just have to focus on what I do have.

Those of us who formed a close bond last weekend are now part of a WhatsApp group. It’s been quite active this week. Plans being made. Support being given. Conversations that one might say are classic examples of levity. I’ve had to find a new life and a new way since the pandemic turned my world upside down in 2020, but I just know that there is still a future for me, good times ahead and new friends to be made. I owe a lot of that to WAY. It’s one of the reasons my latest fundraising is raising money for the charity. It’s my way of both showcasing Mr C’s photography while also giving back to the charity that has done so much for me.

Because what WAY has shown me most of all is that it is possible to find your way in this new life I’ve found myself in and that you can go on. It’s why I intend to live my life to the full as the best way of honouring my late husband. As the quote on the candle I made last weekend from Elvis Presley says “What’s the good of reaching 90, if you waste 89?”  

I am the one thing in life I can control

Pictures of Emma Charlesworth taken during a photoshoot

So. The control freak is writing about control again. But this time it’s with a different perspective. Because she’s starting to realise that she can’t control and plan for everything. That she needs to just live life in the moment and stop the planning for all eventualities. Although, please don’t worry dear reader, I was still sat down writing a holiday itinerary the other evening!

I also want to mention that for the last two years we’ve seen Hamilton shortly before the anniversary of my late husband’s death and the blogs I’ve written for those anniversaries have been inspired by songs from it. But we were fortunate to win TodayTix lottery tickets so saw it in December last year too. The song “Wait for it” is the inspiration for this blog and title. It’s been going round in my head since we saw it then. Because it’s true. I am the one thing in life I can control. And on days like today I think about this even more.

You see, today is a particularly poignant day for me. It marks two years since I was told I was heading for a nervous breakdown if I didn’t stop. It marks one year since I took my daughter to the doctor because of her anxiety. February is also full of reminders and flashbacks to this time four years ago. What was to become our final full normal month as a family of three. I don’t believe things like this will ever leave me.

I last wrote about being in control in April 2022. Two months after the nervous breakdown comment was made. Two months after I was signed off work and was approaching the day I would return. At a time when I was trying to regain the control that I’d lost on 16 March 2020 when we were suddenly all told to work from home and my world felt like it had been flipped on its head. I felt like I was starting to take back control “one tip run at a time.” I said at the time “But I know that life will always throw challenges my way. I just need to make sure my mind is as strong as it can be to cope with them.” This last week has shown me that on that point, I’m making great inroads.

Just over a week ago, I received some disappointing news. Something that had been hanging over my head for just under two months hadn’t worked out the way I’d wanted it to. It hurt. It was triggering. Because it brought to the fore the feeling that I try to bury a lot of the time. That I am on my own. That I am the sole person responsible for mine and my daughter’s financial security and future. Almost as soon as I’d had the news I dropped my daughter off to go to the theatre for her birthday and then I came home to an empty house. The silence was deafening. The lack of anyone to put the kettle on for me. The lack of anyone to put their arms around me and reassure me that everything was going to be ok. I broke down on a phone call. It all felt too much for me. I took the dog for a walk to get out of the house. I just needed air and to breathe. To take stock a little bit.

But then I was reminded that while I am on my own, I’m not alone. Supportive messages started. Offers to come and keep me company came in. The amazing people that I’m so fortunate to have around me were there for me once again. I know just how lucky I am to have them. And I don’t take any of them for granted. I allowed myself the opportunity to wallow for a little bit, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t, but then I started to look for the positives. I put myself in control. Truth be told it actually scared me a little bit how quickly I was able to do this. Because it’s not who I am. It’s not what I do. I’ve never been that person that bounces back ridiculously quickly. I overthink. I try to plan ahead for problems that are years away. A prime example happened when my stepdad was making the Father of the Bride speech at the first wedding we’d been to since my late husband died. I ran out of the hall having a panic attack because I didn’t know who was going to give my daughter away. “She’s 11, I don’t think we really need to worry about it just yet” was my sister’s brutally honest response. Which, to be fair, I needed. She was right. My daughter might not get married, yet here I was trying to take control and plan for something that might never happen. Because it’s what I do.

Or rather. It’s what I did. I think I first noticed the change in me during that period in 2022. When I booked our “F**k It week” because life is too short and we were just going to do things because we could. I booked activities with a few days’ notice. I lived for the moment and for enjoyment. But, if I’m being honest, it probably just was for a week. I wasn’t really brave enough to go beyond this too much. I needed the stability and security of being the person I’d always been to keep me going. To help me get through life.

But that person is changing. I know she is. I feel it in a way I haven’t really felt before. When my world imploded, when I became a widow and solo parent at the age of 39, all I wanted to do was survive. I had nothing else. If we got through an hour, a day, a week or a month that was enough for me. I remember writing a Facebook post a month after my late husband died that said “This whole experience has irrevocably changed our lives. It’ll continue to do so. But I won’t let it define us or who we become.” Did I really believe we could do this when I wrote it? Or was I trying to take back some control? I’ll never know.

But in August last year, I knew I was taking control of my life again. I mentioned in my New Years Eve blog that I’d done a boudoir photoshoot with Style Photography. This for me was one of the most empowering things I’ve ever done. Because it made me see myself through different eyes. The one thing I told the photographer that I wanted to come through in the photos was the fact that I was taking control of my life again. Now. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t completely overthought in the run up to that day. I took way more outfits than I needed because I wasn’t sure what might work. I felt the most uncomfortable I’d ever felt for a lot of the session. But as I was having my hair and make up done, I remember saying “I’ve stopped dying my hair dark, because I’ve realised that getting grey hair is a sign of growing old and that’s a privilege.” Yet while I had this bravado approach, the second the photographer started it ebbed away. I felt I was being such a rubbish model! As much as I’d dictated the photos I wanted in a way to show me taking back control, I didn’t actually feel it or think I’d like them.

A few weeks later I went back to view them. One of me was on the big screen when I sat down. Yet. I didn’t realise it was me. I was in shock. As we went through all the photos, I repeatedly asked if they’d been photoshopped. I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing. And then we got to the one Mr C would have called the money shot. The one that completely and utterly showed me taking back control of my life. It was exactly what I wanted. It gave me probably the biggest confidence boost I’d had since becoming a widow. As I reflect on this now, I am so grateful for what it gave me. I won the shoot after I saw a competition and entered on a whim. There we go again. Not overthinking, just chancing something. It was beyond empowering. To think that you’re a really rubbish model. To think you’re not being any good at something and then to see the output. To know that that really is you. That at the age of 42 you’ve pushed yourself to do something so far out of your comfort zone. And you like the outcome. I’ve shown these photos to a number of people now. I am so, so proud of them. And while I won’t share some of the more risqué ones publicly because, quite frankly, my daughter will never speak to me again, the collage in this blog are all from that shoot.

And since that day I’ve probably been on a bit of a trajectory. When the world went a little bit mad and threw so much at me in 24 hours just before Christmas, I responded with levity (new favourite word). I didn’t overthink at the fact that things I had no control over were happening to me. I just responded to them in the best way I know how. Similarly, when I had a burst pipe at 10pm one Saturday evening in January, I didn’t cry. I just got on with it. It needed dealing with, so I dealt with it and moved on. No debate. No stress.

The recent news I received could have pushed me one of two ways. I know that. But I’ve controlled how I’ve responded to it. I’ve looked at it from a ridiculously pragmatic perspective (once I got past the tears!) I’m in control of what comes next. It’s made me realise that I need to make changes. That my mindset is changing. That I don’t need to plan for all eventualities, because, let’s face it, they may not happen anyway. What matters in life is how I play the hand that is dealt to me. How I respond to all the challenges that come my way. The example I set to my daughter on how to deal with adversity. They are the only things that I really need to be in control of. Life will happen to me whether I like it or not, and I have absolutely no control over it. My husband dying is a prime example of that. As the song says:

  • Death doesn’t discriminate
  • Between the sinners and the saints
  • It takes and it takes and it takes
  • And we keep living anyway
  • We rise and we fall and we break
  • And we make our mistakes

We’ve fallen and we’ve broken. My god have we done that. It makes me so emotional to think about this day two years ago. But it also makes me so, so proud. I was at the bottom of a very deep and dark pit. I was, essentially, at rock bottom with what felt like no way to get back up again. It’s not been pretty, I’ll admit, but I’ve clawed my way back from the despair. I’ve had no choice. Likewise, when I think about this day last year and my daughter, it makes me emotional. But so, so proud. She has also clawed her way back from despair. I couldn’t have ever imagined writing a blog like this on either of those days. We’ve had to go through what we’ve gone through to make us the people we are today. I hate that in a way. But it’s true. Yet now is our time to rise. Now is the time to look forward and think about what next. Change doesn’t scare me in the way it once did. Because we’ve been through the most unimaginable change and sadness in our lives, yet we don’t, and I refuse to let us, live a sad life. And if change is going to continue helping us, maybe it’s time to start embracing that and letting go of the control a bit more. Who knows where this trajectory will take me. I refuse to be defined by being a widow. I’m me. And I like the person I am. I’m proud of her. There is no-one like me. As the chorus says:

  • I am the one thing in life I can control
  • I am inimitable
  • I am an original

Goodbye 2023

Images from across 2023


2023 will be done in a matter of hours. I can’t help but feel I’ve sort of blinked and missed it. And when I look back, I don’t really know where to begin. I can safely say that on 1 January 2023 I did not envisage going viral on social media, being in two national newspapers and a local newspaper because of my love for Jason Donovan, writing an article that would appear in another national newspaper, being attacked by the Easter Bunny, getting a tattoo, feeding a tiger, winning an award for my blog, braving a boudoir photoshoot or getting my middle out at Butlins. Amongst a myriad of other experiences that have happened this year. I guess this is why people say never tell me the odds. Because, quite simply, if someone had told me the odds of any of this happening, I’d never have believed them and placed a bet expecting to make a fortune.

So. Where to start? Probably at the very beginning, because it’s a very good place to start. I did what I always do when I write a blog summarising my year, read the one I wrote this time last year. I ended last year saying “bring on 2023… If I’m honest, it’s a little scary feeling more in control because I wonder what I’m actually capable of. What comes next for Emma…” I think I felt ready for what was to come my way this year. I think I felt that I was the strongest I’d been for a long time.

But within a couple of weeks, change came my way. My daughter started a new chapter in her life and became a teenager. I was unprepared for just how this would make me feel. I cried a lot in the run up to it. I had to sit and write because it was the only way I knew how to articulate the feelings I had about her entering this phase without her dad. I think it was one of the very first blogs of mine that she read. It made her cry. I didn’t intend for this to happen, but apparently this is what my blogs do to people. But as we got through her birthday and I watched her at her birthday party, I couldn’t have been prouder. My baby became a beautiful teenager surrounded by a lovely group of friends and she smiled. My word did she have a big smile on her face. She looked happy and relaxed. I simply had no real way of knowing what was heading our way just a few weeks later.

Before writing this, I made sure she was comfortable with what I was going to write. Because it’s her story and not mine. This year essentially saw her hit rock bottom. No-one would have known or suspected if they’d seen her at that party. But a year to the day since I was told I was heading for a nervous breakdown and a doctor signed me off sick, I had to take her to the doctor. It resulted in her being referred for counselling which she was then in for a number of months. As a mother, it’s the hardest thing watching your child go through something and not being able to fix it. To know how difficult it was for her to talk to a counsellor but knowing that she absolutely needed to do this. Knowing how difficult it was to make herself vulnerable. To talk about her anxiety with a stranger. But she persevered and did this. If you’d have told me after that doctor’s appointment that just a few months later she’d be painting herself green and performing as Elphaba in her dance school’s summer show, I’d never have believed you. I just wouldn’t have been able to envisage her having the confidence and self-belief to do this. But this is exactly what she did. She smashed it. It felt like the biggest win ever to see the progress she had made. For someone who has been told she’s loquacious (yes, it’s perfectly acceptable to Google the meaning of this word, trust me, I had to) I am pretty lost for words when it comes to describing just how proud of her I am and how far she’s come.

But equally, I’m proud of me and how far I’ve come. Yes. Broken Emma has been a part of my 2023 but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. You have to experience and live through the bad to be able to appreciate the good. I haven’t achieved all I wanted to this year. But I’ve still achieved a heck of a lot. I changed my role at work in January. I built a balloon arch and hosted our first big gathering without Mr C for the coronation. We’ve been on a fabulous holiday with friends which saw me shockingly wear a bikini and take photos of myself in it. We’ve been able to go to the theatre. We’ve had adventures with friends.

And all of this against a backdrop of a year that hasn’t been without challenge. It was never going to be. While the sun always shines on TV (come on, I grew up watching Neighbours, falling in love with Jason and believing the Australian sunshine!) that’s not real life. This has been the year myself and my daughter have fallen ill for the first time since I was widowed. The year the perimenopause has taken hold. The year the UK Covid-19 Inquiry started with many revelations coming out. A number of which sent me down a “what if?” path. Watching the programme Partygate was tough but something I needed to do. It’s been the year my nan went into a care home. Initially just for respite, but 11 months later she’s still there. It was the right decision for her. Yet leaving her that first night broke my heart. Caring for someone with Alzheimer’s is one of the toughest things you can do. Because you simply cannot explain to them what is going on. But she settled, there’s been some other health issues throughout the year but on the whole she’s been doing ok. And then, on 23 December, we got a call. She’d had a fall and was being taken by ambulance to A&E. I was on a train home from London having seen Harry Potter and the Cursed Child with my daughter. There’s talk of a magic train in that play, and by the time the night had finished I felt I’d been on a magic train on the way home that had taken me to a parallel universe! Because not only had Nan broken her wrist, but that night also saw me get stuck behind a car accident on my way home and needing the police to try to jump-start my car after the battery died resulting in me being awake for 24 hours straight. No sun shining on me that day!

Yet as hard as this night was and as much as the tears did come, it didn’t knock me as much as it might have done this time last year. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t cried in the hospital, not only because of what had happened to my nan but because I find being in A&E a challenge. It sends me down a path of wondering what Mr C’s experience in A&E was like. What machines beeped when he was there. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wake up after some sleep on Christmas Eve and cry some more. But I looked for the humour in what had happened. I saw the funny side. The fact that you literally can’t write my life at times. I joked in a Facebook post that if anyone had the police trying to jump-start my car on their bingo card for what happens next in my life, to mark it off. I’ve learnt this year that levity is the best way for me to cope. It’s what gets me through. I doubt that will ever change.

But more than that. I’m proud of me because I know I have an air of confidence, self belief and a sparkle in my eye that wasn’t there a year ago. A lot of that has come from that boudoir photoshoot I won with Style Photography in August. Prior to this I’d have always said that in my experience there’s no such thing as luck, but I do feel exceptionally lucky for that win and the fact it gave me something I didn’t know I needed. I suspect there is a whole other blog coming about this and what it taught me. But when you look at a photo of yourself and query whether it’s been photoshopped, you realise you’ve been looking at yourself through the wrong eyes for a very long time. I’ll never know whether it was this that led to me wearing a two piece at Butlins. In 42 years, I’d never worn anything like this. I’m still absolutely staggered I did. Again. I’d have got good odds on this at the start of 2023! However. I did also learn something else very valuable during that trip. Don’t go to Butlins for a Halloween weekend. There are zombies, scary clowns and people in all sorts of masks for example, Michael Myers, who completely freak me out (masks terrify me). It’s why next year we’re going in September!

Yet all joking aside. That weekend was another example of confidence. The phrase “she’s leaking” took on a whole new meaning when I was just sat in the back of the car crying on the way. That weekend came at the end of a particularly griefy week and my hot water cylinder leaking. I toyed with not going. So, to have turned that around to be out in 80s fancy dress on the first night and with my middle out on the second isn’t something I think I could have done a year ago. I feel so lucky and privileged to have my girls in my life who got me through that weekend. Equally I feel so privileged and grateful for all the opportunities that have come my way this year. For the new people who have come into my life. For what they’ve taught me. For the friends and family who continue to be such a major part of my life and support me and my daughter. Who help me to be able to go to work and live my life. And above all else. I feel so grateful to everyone who donated so that my daughter and I were able to donate another £2,020 in Mr C’s memory from the sales of calendars featuring his photos between The Big Cat Sanctuary and Medway Hospital ICU.

As I wrote this listening to my daughter on karaoke with one of her closest friends and I looked ahead to 2024, I did so with a smile on my face. For the first time in nearly four years, I feel a real sense of contentment. 2024 is already shaping up to be a busy one and one filled with emotion. Star Wars Day is going to be pretty special. It’ll see me mark 20 years at PwC, 15 years since learning we were expecting Miss C and the day the next CharlieFest will take place to raise funds for Medway Hospital ICU. And while we have other adventures planned, we also have Mr C’s 50th birthday looming. There’s going to be a number of emotions and triggers associated with that. But my daughter and I will deal with them together. It’s simply what we do.

As for what else 2024 will bring, who knows. I’m not even going to try to guess. All I can do is ask one thing… never tell me the odds.

A different WAY forward

Wow, it’s been a heck of a week. It’s been a full on juggle this week. Early starts for work. Dancing runs. Sorting childcare. Sorting doggy care. Travel. Three nights away from home. And the Widowed and Young (WAY) AGM and Annual Get Together.

This was the second one I’ve attended. Both times I’ve met some wonderful people with some heart-breaking and incredible stories. I felt more comfortable and confident this year. I knew a lot more people. I knew what to expect. It didn’t feel quite as scary to be walking into the room. And of course. I had my comfort blanket and angel there with me. The gorgeous other Emma, the brains behind Rainbow Hunting.

Over the past two years I think we’ve become each other’s biggest cheerleaders. We’ve become a bit of a dynamic duo and double act. Neither one of us really know which one is Emma 1 and Emma 2. We just kind of roll with it. We’re always there at the end of the phone for one another. And have so much fun whenever we’re together.

Emma was encouraging and championing me so much yesterday. You see, at the AGM the winner of the Helen Bailey blog award for best WAY blogger is announced. For the second year in a row, I was nominated. There are so many great bloggers who are part of WAY that I find it incredibly humbling to even be nominated. When I first started writing, I didn’t expect anyone to read my words. I don’t really write for others. I don’t sit down at the start of the month and plan what I’m going to write. I only really write when I have something to say. But I have grown to find it so incredibly cathartic. I often write before I go to sleep because it helps me get thoughts out of my head. It helps me to try to get a bit of clarity in my life.

Yesterday was triggering and emotional for a number of us in the room. When you have a room full of people who have been widowed before their 51st birthday, it’s inevitable that emotion will be high.

As we headed towards the end of the day, Emma was cheerleading and encouraging me about the nomination. It was so, so lovely. But I kept managing her expectations. “It won’t be me” I said. And I wholeheartedly believed that. Because despite what everyone tells me, I struggle to believe I’m actually good at this. That I’m good at writing. I went to university to study journalism but dropped out after three months because it wasn’t for me. Life took over and my path and way forward changed. The irony that I’ve now started writing and had an article published in the Metro online this year doesn’t escape me.

My friends and family always comment on my writing. They tell me how amazing it is. But the low self esteem and confidence that has plagued me for a lot of my life has often led me to wonder whether they say that because they feel they “have” to. After all, they’ve pretty much seen me at my worst, they must worry that if they told me my blogs were rubbish, whether they might tip me over the edge.

It’s why the nominations the last two years have meant so much. Because the nominations are made by WAY members. The winner is voted for by WAY members. These are people who get it. These are people who might have very, very different circumstances to me, but people who know the range of emotions to go through as a young widow. How utterly, utterly different your life becomes. In every single aspect. Everything about your life changes. Everything. So, when other widows tell me that they value what I write and it resonates, I always get choked. I just find it so humbling.

As the shortlist for the award yesterday was announced, Emma was holding my hand. As I had done to her just a few hours before when she was emotional following one of our speakers. And then the winner was announced. It was me. I had won it. The 2023 WAY Helen Bailey award for best blogger went to me and Life is a rollercoaster. I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t an element of disbelief. As I walked up to collect the award, the emotion hit. I could feel the tears coming. “Please don’t make me say anything” I said to Jo Sedley-Burke, the Chair of WAY. I knew that I simply wouldn’t be able to do this. Fortunately, she didn’t make me. She just gave me a really big squeeze and the actual award. Emma was next in line with the squeezes. I could tell how proud of me she was. And that also meant the world. Having someone champion you in this new world is beyond invaluable.

As I went back to my room to get ready for the evening, the tears were a bit more free flowing. There were people I knew that I needed to tell before it went public on social media. Certain family and friends needed to hear it from me. I wanted them to know and to tell them first. One of them was someone who has only become a friend because of this blog. That is the power of writing. That is the power of WAY. It brings people into your world who wouldn’t be otherwise. And my word. I feel so exceptionally lucky to have them into my world.

Last night, I danced the night away with Emma. With people I’d met at the AGM last year. With people I met this year. It’s one of the most uplifting and positive evenings. So much heartache and tragedy in the room, yet so much positivity and smiling. And then I went back to my room and reflected. I reflected on the win all the way home. Which was quite a lot given it was a four-hour drive. Before picking my daughter up, I headed to Mr C’s Memorial Bench. I sat there with the award for a little bit. It might be my name on the award, but the win is very much for him and our daughter too. For everything the three of us have gone through and will continue to go through.

This new world and this new path are not ones I would ever have chosen. I would give anything to swap them. But, without wanting to sound blunt, I can’t. This is my new world. My new now. My new way. I am beyond grateful and thankful to every single person who has taken the time to read my words. To every single person who took the time to nominate me. To every single person who took the time to vote for me. It might sound trite, but it genuinely, genuinely means the absolute world to me. I don’t and won’t ever take it for granted. Thank you. A million times thank you. By doing this, you have also helped me.

I sit here tonight, not only thankful, but also proud. Proud of everything this blog has achieved. Proud of every person it has helped, whether directly or indirectly. Proud that my words have been able to do this. I am now finally comfortable to say, “I’m good at this” and “I can write.” I have plans for my writing. I have things up my sleeve. My life has taken a very different WAY forward, but it’s taking me on a new and exciting path. The win yesterday was just the beginning. I have no doubt of that. And I know with the WAY crew, as well as my family and friends in my corner, I’m capable of achieving anything I put my mind to.

Have you noticed if I was wearing a ring on my thumb today?

Today I did something I haven’t done in a very long time. I tried to put a brave face on and chair meetings. I cried in the office. I cried on the tube. I cried on the train. And why? Because at just after 1pm today, I looked down at my thumb and couldn’t see my late husband’s wedding ring on it. It’s where I’ve been wearing his ring for a couple of years now. Admittedly, not every day, but more often than not.

Logic dictated that it had to be at home and that I’d just been so busy this morning that I hadn’t noticed I wasn’t wearing it from the off. I logged a Lost Property claim with the train company. I retraced all my steps in the office. I emailed Security at work to see if it had been handed in. I asked my colleagues the most stupid question “have you noticed if I was wearing a ring on my thumb today?” Of course, they hadn’t, we’ve all been busy, in meetings or on calls and it wasn’t like I was asking them something obvious like what colour dress I was wearing when I came into the office. But immediately they started rallying around me. I was reminded once again of just how lucky I am to have this support and care at work. To the point that one utterly amazing human even went through bins for me while I went on calls. Other colleagues brought me tissues, a glass of water and tried to persuade me to go home to look for it.

But what I couldn’t properly articulate to them though was that a part of me just needed to be there and to do calls. Because to go home and discover it wasn’t there would have made this real. I needed to cling to that one word that’s kept me going through the last three years. Hope. All the while I could maybe pretend my mind was playing tricks on me and I simply hadn’t put it on this morning, I could try to rationalise that it must be at home. Hope with everything I had that it was at home.

As I walked out of the office I was crying. I knew I was edging ever closer to finding out once and for all if it was gone. I messaged on the Widowed and Young WhatsApp group what had happened. I just needed people who “get it” to empathise. Their messages of support and understanding helped. They knew what this would mean if it was lost. I messaged my sister who also tried to calm me down. I corrected her grammar as I’m known to do, I felt I could be let off, I was trying to keep myself busy after all, but I knew I wasn’t really feeling it anymore. This pain was real. Absurdly real. And raw.

It absolutely blindsided me. I kept trying to keep myself calm and tell myself it must be at home but all I really wanted to do was sit and sob. Yet I couldn’t really understand why. The ring isn’t him. If I’m perfectly honest, he was a complete nightmare with it when he was alive. He’d fiddle with it, take it off, not wear it and forget where he’d put it. So much so that when the Funeral Director asked if he was going to be buried with jewellery I said no, I simply didn’t see the point of him having it. I felt like I’d probably end up wearing it more in the future than he had over our 14-year marriage!

Today though I realised it was much, much more than that. This ring was proof of our relationship and our marriage. Now, that may sound silly to some people but one of the more random things that has happened to me since being widowed is this bizarre feeling that I dreamt him. That I dreamt it all. And that none of it was real. It’s beyond difficult to explain, mainly because I don’t really understand it myself. I know he was real. I know our relationship spanned over two decades. I know we had a child together. I know we owned different houses together. I know we made a gazillion memories. But how much of that is tangible? How much of that is real? And outside of my head?

I think in part this is down to the circumstances of his death. The fact that none of it seemed real. It was two weeks before I even saw him on a screen and could verify that they had the right person. I didn’t get to physically see him in hospital. I didn’t get to see him in the Chapel of Rest. I didn’t get to say a proper goodbye. Everything just felt so, so surreal. So, I cling to anything now that proves he was real.

It’s probably why it’s been so important to me to have memory items made. We’ve had Memory Bears and Blankets made out of his clothes. Again. In the same way as the ring isn’t him, neither are they. But I can look at them and know that he did wear them. I can show them to family and friends who also remember him wearing them and we can talk about him. I’ve also had a ring made with his ashes in and my daughter and I both have a decoration for the tree made out of his ashes. It keeps him part of our future.

I’m also fairly sure that this upcoming Sunday was subconsciously playing on my mind today too. Sunday marks 18 years since we got married. My fourth as a widow. That’s another funny thing I’ve noticed the longer I’ve been widowed, I refer to things that I previously would have said plural as singular now. My daughter. My wedding anniversary. My house. I don’t actually know when I started doing this, but I’ve recently become conscious of the fact I’m doing it. And I don’t really know why. I guess as time goes by and our lives move forward, his absence feels more and more pronounced. That I feel even more on my own and without him than I did at the start of widowhood. The all-consuming pain and grief kept him very much part of me back then. And while I’m still relatively early on in the widowhood journey, I do know that I’m so much further along than I was. The pain and grief don’t consume me in the same way. But today, losing the ring, that pain and grief was strong. Because losing the ring simply felt like another loss. Another loss that I was unprepared for. In the same way I was unprepared for losing him. All of this going through my mind on the train on the way home. My brain working overtime.

Then the inevitable. I got home. And if I’m perfectly honest, I knew what was going to happen next. It wasn’t there. The ring wasn’t there. And while I did empty my handbag and laptop bag for the gazillionth time again and look in all the very obvious places, I didn’t turn the house upside down. But that’s because I didn’t need to. I know where I put the ring when I got home last night. It was with all the other ones I was wearing today. I know where I’d have picked it up from this morning. It wasn’t there. Or anywhere obvious. That gut feeling I had at 1:15pm was right. I knew the second I noticed that it was no longer on my thumb that I’d lost it since leaving home. I was just clinging to hope. The tears didn’t stop then. I just felt numb. Completely and utterly numb. I went into autopilot. I started cooking dinner. I started sorting things out. Because it’s my default. Rather than having to think about how I feel, I keep busy.

It’s why I then wrote a Facebook and Twitter post (sorry, can’t call it X). To stay busy. Ironically I tried to find a photo of the ring, but we didn’t get the obligatory one at our wedding of the hands. And in almost every photo I found of him, he wasn’t wearing it. Told you, he was a fiddler with it. I did find one though. But it’s not the clearest. But I also wanted to write these posts on the off chance that it might help find it. What I was unprepared for, however, was how quickly my phone would start going mental. How quickly my daughter would be saying to me “Mum, your phone is really annoying me.” And despite how rubbish, emotional and numb I felt about the lost ring, I was taken right back to when he fell ill and to when all I had was virtual support. I’d forgotten what it was like to have strangers sending good wishes your way. I haven’t actually been able to keep up with all the comments yet. It’s all a little overwhelming.

I feel exhausted right now. My brain still feels scrambled at what’s happened today. I don’t really know how I feel. Other than numb. People say things happen for a reason. I don’t always believe that; let’s face it, I’ve still not and doubt I ever will, work out what the reason for a global pandemic was. But if I’m going to take anything from today, it’s a reminder that there really is a lot of kindness in this world. That people care. That if you ask a friend to send you something to make you smile, there are hilarious videos on the internet to be sent. Which against all odds do make you smile.

Maybe this was a sign from Mr C to remind me of all this. Maybe this was a sign from him to tell me something else. I don’t know. But maybe, just maybe, I’ll work it out and I will know. And in the meantime, I’m going to pray for a miracle and hope that somehow it comes to back to me.

Widowhood is like a walk in the park

Imagine of the last selfie of Emma and Stuart Charlesworth plus a recent picture of Emma Charlesworth

Tomorrow marks our fourth Fathers’ Day without Mr C. I’m not sure there will ever come a time that this feels right, our daughter only had 10 with him, how can she possibly have done four without him by the time she goes to bed tomorrow night? And tomorrow also marks three years since I made my first post in the Widowed and Young (WAY) Facebook group, introducing myself, sharing the last ever selfie of the two of us and telling a brief overview of our story. Looking back now I think it’s fair to say that I didn’t really know what it was going to be like living as a widow when I made this post. And more importantly, what it was going to be like living as a young widow. I think the t-shirt my sister bought me for Christmas sums it up. It’s like a walk in the park. Assuming that park is Jurassic Park.

I’ve written before about being a little bit of a control freak. I’ve struggled at the complete and utter lack of control in my life a lot over the last three years. Yes. I do try to find ways to bring elements of control into it, but the simple fact is that I’m not sure I’ll ever be 100% in control again. And that is quite a scary prospect. A couple of months ago, after a particularly difficult day, I was sat just before midnight, with a bottle of wine, sobbing ( otherwise known as a Widow Wail (phrase I learnt today while hosting a WAY New Member Zoom)) and needing to read all the Facebook posts made in the days after he died and watching his funeral simply to feel close to him. This came from nowhere. I didn’t wake up that morning expecting it to be a difficult day for us. I didn’t wake up that morning and think “I know what’ll make for a fun Saturday night. I’ll watch his funeral until the early hours.” But this is what I mean about the lack of control. I don’t have a choice as to how I feel on any given day, it just sneaks up and hits me. Looking back to the day I made that initial post in the WAY group, I’m not entirely sure what I envisaged my life would be like, but a tiny part of me wouldn’t have expected days like this to still be happening nearly three years in. Naivete, I guess. But I didn’t really know what to expect. Who does? Grief is the most individual thing to experience, no matter how many others around you are also experiencing it.

The untold pressure I feel is huge. The ramifications of everything I do constantly weigh on my mind. Shortly before we went on holiday recently, I had a day whereby I just completely and utterly felt like I had let my daughter down. That I wasn’t good enough. That the juggle of working full time, being a mother, grieving the loss of my husband, trying to sort out care for my nan and still make time for me simply meant I’d dropped some balls along the way. And this was going to, and will have, an impact on us over the next year. My sister, quite rightly, put me in my place and told me that in no way had I let my daughter down, but it didn’t stop the feeling. It didn’t stop the tears that fell. Because I’m all my daughter has now. If I mess up, if I’m not at the top of my game, if I drop some balls, then it has a knock-on effect on what I can do for her, what I can offer her and there’s no-one else to step in and take that pressure off. The rational side of me knows that I am good enough, all she really needs is to feel loved and I give her that in spades, but that irrational, grieving widow just sometimes forgets it. And I simply don’t get a choice as to which version of me takes over and leads the charge when it comes to my thoughts.

And that leads me nicely onto another learning over the past three years. Choice. Or rather the lack of it. I wasn’t given a choice about this situation. Because I can safely assure you that I would have said no had this been the case! It’s one of the reasons I struggled so much in the early days with everyone telling me how brave and strong I was, I just wanted to shout at them that I wasn’t. That I was simply trying to live with the hand that life had dealt me. About six months in, I think I was ready to punch the next person who called me brave or strong (for anyone who watched the Kelsey Parker, Life after Tom documentary, you would have actually seen me say this on National TV!) but it’s true. I’m now better at acknowledging that yes, I have been insanely strong to not only achieve all I have in the most surreal of circumstances, but to still be standing. I’m not sure I’ll ever willingly call myself brave, but I will admit strength. It’s a strength I simply didn’t know I had in me until I was put through the toughest test of my life.

I’ve had to learn to adjust to the lack of choice about all aspects of my life. When I was growing up and imagining the marriage and the 2.4 children, at no point did I envisage being 42, on my own, solo parenting and having to ask my mum’s permission to go out! A prime example of this happened recently, I’d been in the office all day, my daughter was with my mum after school and some rather fabulous friends suggested meeting for a drink off the train. But I can’t just say yes anymore and tell Mr C what I’m doing, I had to ring my mum and ask if this was ok. When we then decided to stay out a teeny bit later, I again had to ring to ask if I could stay out later. 9pm was the agreed time that my stepdad would come and pick me up. 42 and on a curfew set by my mum, definitely living the dream here! But while I joke about this, the simple reality is that I couldn’t do anywhere near as much as I do without my mum and stepdad. From going to the office, to having nights out and the odd weekend away, I just couldn’t do it. I am forever indebted to them for all they do, and will continue to do for us. I don’t have the adequate words to express my gratitude, but it doesn’t mean I find it easy. To constantly have to check that they can help me out, and if they can’t, then have to ask friends or other family if they can. I absolutely 100% know that none of them mind in the slightest, and that people are happy to help, but it doesn’t mean it’s easy for me. While I might be Little Miss Organised and Little Miss Laminator, there are times when I wish spontaneity was a word that existed in my new life a little bit more.

It’s why I often do a bit of an eye roll when people ask me about dating again. Could you imagine what a catch I’d be? “I can offer you a Friday night in two months’ time once I’ve coordinated childcare, dog-care, work and around the other existing plans I’ve made months in advance because I have to get my life planned in order to do anything. Oh, and by the way, I also have an irrational love for Jason Donovan.” Who wouldn’t want me?! Again, the sarcastic, self-defensive side of me kicks in, because it’s just so, so hard to contemplate.

My daughter and I have recently had some very heated discussions about the prospect of me dating again. She inadvertently discovered the profile I’d created on a dating app, and it led to her feeling that I’d lied to her. But the simple truth, and as I told her, is I don’t think I want to date right now or go headlong into a relationship. I’m not actually sure where I’d find the time, but maybe that’s just because it’s not high on my list of priorities and if it was, I’d make time. But that doesn’t stop me feeling lonely. It doesn’t stop me wanting to have someone to care for. To have someone care for me. And have someone at the end of a long day send you a message asking how your day was.

It was the day after one of these discussions with her that I read an article by one of my LinkedIn connections, Alex Delaney, Co-Founder of Lemons.Life whereby she spoke about how she reacted after losing her husband. For the more easily offended among you, you might want to stop reading now! But I applaud Alex for being so honest about her experience and in particular about “Widows Fire.” Again. Another term that three years ago I hadn’t heard of. I can categorically tell you that this exists and is utterly real. There are days when you crave, long for and would do just about anything to have physical touch, to the point that it’s probably quite fortunate that our postman doesn’t have to ring the bell and can just leave parcels in the porch! Because it is that strong and overwhelming. It comes from nowhere. And there is no rhyme or reason for it.

But here’s the thing. Even if I wanted to go down the route that Alex chose to, it’s not that simple for me. We’re back to that choice and permission again. I very rarely go back to an empty house. Whoever is looking after my daughter always asks me where I’m going, who I’m going out with, and what time I’ll be home. Without question I’m exceptionally lucky to have so many people care for me, but could you imagine if I was to respond with “You wouldn’t know him Mum, I’m just off to have a casual night with someone I met on the internet.” I’m fairly sure that I know the response I’d get! And while there is a running joke amongst family and friends that I have 12 men on the go (I don’t, for the avoidance of doubt), I’m 42 now, I’m not sure where I’d get the energy from to do this! But if I’m being honest, there is a part of me that wonders what it must be like to be this age, to still want to feel desired, to act on those desires and not have to plan it weeks or possibly months in advance.

Yet, this is something my daughter cannot understand, because she simply doesn’t have the emotional maturity to. To her, it’s simple. I either love her dad or I love someone else. It’s not possible for me to do both. It’s not possible for me to love him but go out on dates. There is no just having a bit of fun. Even a friend with benefits would be out of the question if she had her way. Because in her eyes there is no grey. It’s black and white. And I completely understand that. I’m supportive of, and completely respect her views and do all I can do to reassure her that I’m not about to abandon her for a man. But it doesn’t mean that this is an easy situation for me to deal with. It doesn’t mean that I don’t want some affection, that I don’t think about it and wonder ‘what if?’ It doesn’t mean that I don’t get frustrated at what feels like a complete lack of choice or options.

Yet I’d be lying if I said widowhood had been all doom and gloom. It hasn’t. I have smiled, laughed, have had some brilliant adventures and am looking healthy again with a sparkle in my eyes. That’s not to say I wouldn’t give anything to have Mr C back, but I do find that you have to look for the things to be thankful for. For a start, I’d never have got away with the new flooring I chose in my kitchen and conservatory, decorating our utility room to be insanely pink or putting up numerous photos of Jason around the house. But more than anything widowhood has taught me so much about myself and what I’m capable of. It’s brought some rather brilliant and amazing people into my life who I’m fortunate to call friends. Again, I didn’t envisage that when I made that first post and while I hate what’s brought us together, I feel very lucky to have found them. None of us want to be in this situation, but that common ground is something that along with a dark sense of humour keeps us all going. It creates a bond. And without question shows that there is a WAY forward and that it is possible to keep living. Even on those very dark days.