Change Keeps Coming

Even when you cannot see it, you are blooming.

It is June 1.

The school year just ended. The trees are in full leaf. The grass needs cutting again. The grandkids are home all day. My fifth birthday without him came and went this week. The calendar has officially turned the corner into summer.

Change has been coming all week.

If I am being honest, change has been coming since the morning Gary took his last breath, and it has not stopped since.

That is something they do not tell you about widowhood. It is not just the one big change of him being gone. It is every single change that comes after. Seasons turning. Years passing. Birthdays you did not want to have. Grandkids growing. Houses sold. Furniture moved. Hair grown longer or cut shorter. Friends who shifted. Routines that rebuilt themselves around a new shape of family.

Change just keeps coming.

Even small changes feel bigger now. A first warm day. A song you have not heard in a long time. The grandkids being older than the last time you really looked. Ordinary things land heavy in a way they did not used to.

That is not weakness. That is the math of grief.

It is not that Gary is gone from me. Gary is still with me. He is in my coffee in the morning. He is in the jokes I still hear. He is in the way I move through the day. I carry him in every season I walk through. If you have been reading me for any amount of time, you know this is the heart of what I believe. When your person dies, the love does not.

But the way I carry him has changed.

Before, I could turn and tell him about the change. The school year ending. The trees coming in. The birthday I did not really want. He was the one I processed all of it with. We carried the changes between us, the way you carry a heavy thing with another person, one handle each.

Now I carry the same changes with him still here in my heart, but in a quieter way. He cannot say anything back. He cannot make me laugh about it. He cannot tell me what he thinks. The love is still right where it always was. The conversation just looks different.

That is what makes change feel bigger now. Not absence. Not aloneness. A different way of carrying.

I want to tell you something today, on this first day of June, on my fifth birthday season since Gary’s last breath, on a week that has been full of small turnings.

Change has always been part of being human.

The seasons changed before Gary died. The school year ended before Gary died. My birthday came every year before Gary died, just like it does now. The grass grew. The trees filled in. The grandkids got older.

None of that is new.

What is new is the way I am moving through it. Quieter. More tender. More aware. I notice things now that I never used to notice. I feel things now that I never used to feel.

If something this week has hit you harder than you expected, I want you to know it is not because you are doing widowhood wrong.

It is because you are paying attention.

The thoughts come up. The feelings come up. They are not trying to ruin your day. They are reminding you that the love is still here, still doing what love does, still showing up in every change.

Lean into them. Do not push them away.

If a song makes you cry in the car, let it. If the smell of fresh-cut grass undoes you, sit on the porch for a minute. If you find yourself standing in the kitchen at the end of a long day and the quiet is louder than you remembered, that is your love speaking. Listen to it.

The feelings have come up to teach you. Not to break you.

And here is the thing I want to leave you with today, because it is what I keep telling myself.

You are able to persevere. You are able to thrive. That is your nature.

The flowers push their way through the soil every spring and reach for the sun. Nobody tells them to do it. They just do. You are doing the same thing. You have been doing it since the day your person took their last breath.

Every season you walk through. Every birthday you survive. Every change you carry. That is the bloom. Slow, quiet, sometimes invisible to you, but real.

You are growing through this.

Even when it does not feel like it.

Even when you cannot see it.

Especially then.

So today, on this first day of June, in this week of so many small turnings, be gentle with yourself. Let the change come. Let the feelings come. Let the missing come. Your person is right there with you in all of it.

If all this change has caught up with you and you would like a quiet hour to talk about what your love is asking of you right now, I am here. The door is always open. You can book a free Holding the Ember conversation any time. Whenever you are ready.

For now, take a breath. Notice one thing that is blooming, somewhere near you.

You are blooming too.