When faced with grief… myriad emotional declines can grip your heart and soul.
I am an author, artist, and speaker, and this brief story exposes the universality of hopelessness and the feeling of loss in one's heart that other husbands of breast cancer patients and I experience living in the shadow of this disease — a testament to the inherent nature of men holding emotions deep within, close to the chest.
My Story
I grew up in the restaurant business. My parents owned a diner, and working in that hectic environment engendered a strong work ethic. My wife Judith and I were born and raised in Rhode Island. It has four hundred miles of coastline and a haven for boating and fishing. We loved sailing and took short sailboat trips along the New England coast.
I met Judith during a divorce from my first wife. We grew up in the same neighborhood but didn’t know each other. One night while dating, we watched old VHF tapes (yes, I am that old) of family moments, and my communion procession came up, and Judith screamed, ‘Stop the film.’ She approached the screen, pointed to a girl in the procession, and told me it was her. There we were in the same ceremony and didn’t know each other. There were other situations when we both attended functions but didn’t meet. Our life paths crossed often.
There was a time when joy, acceptance, and appreciation filled our lives and nourished our ideas and dreams. We were partners, lovers, and friends. We were enjoying life with all the ups and downs. Then what seemed like an instant. We were thrust into chaos. I vividly remember when Judith was diagnosed with breast cancer. This is a story no different than one you may tell. The loss of a loved one is universally traumatic. It sent me on a difficult journey from my and our family's loss.
We began journaling together when she was diagnosed in 2000. It took me a while to get into the process, but eventually, writing opened the door to my soul. I had expected to find some solace in my effort to express buried emotions. It wasn’t that way in the beginning. The journal was a repository for emotional, intimate moments, outbursts of screaming in words, and things I wanted to remember or forget. When Judith died in 2004, her list of wishes took years to complete.
Two years after completing one of those promises by sailing to Bermuda, I realized there was more than fundraising as a purpose—more than challenging myself to celebrate my wife’s strength and dignity in her war with this insidious disease. The sail embodied an opportunity to banish my spiritual loss and deep-seated emotional demons through acceptance of my grief. A hard and long lesson that continued for over a decade.
The emotional disquiet surrounding the grief of losing a loved one stirs the pot of negativity and feelings of lack. I have written and shared in interviews that grief offers no solace, compassion, or gentle hand of support to hold someone up. I still believe that because I was physically and emotionally fragile and became sick. My negativity and the words and emotions of others fed my despair and sorrow.
After years in the darkness of grief and the merry-go-round of fulfilling her list of promises, I chose positive intentions of purpose to quell the tide of emotional disquiet and feeling stuck in the negativity of bouts with complex depression and despair from my grief.
People, family, and friends told me, “Get help.” I tried Hospice counseling. I was the only man in the group who lost his wife to breast cancer. There were no other men to feel a kinship of grief with. Later, I realized the reason. My feet were in two worlds. One reinforced by patriarchal mentors. My dad, uncles, and grandfather all taught me by example to be stoic, have answers, and be protective of family. That world held my respect until forced to navigate the trauma and chaos breast cancer delivered. This world left me overwhelmed with unfinished projects, short attention spans, despair, sleeplessness, and primal anger. I felt hopeless, sought isolation, and was fearful of outcomes. As a man, I quietly held things internally and deeply. The behavior I learned from my mentors.
Memories are created through experiences and stored at the junction box of trillions of neurons in our brain and nervous system. These tiny hubs send information to specific areas of the brain and body from a response or a reaction to a stimulus in our external environment. Well, breast cancer became my trigger or button to unleash anything primal in me. I asked myself where this negative emotion came from.
We all have this primal genetic code, which is stirred from aspects of learned behavior when growing up. That special period of childhood up to the age of seven. The period of learning to say no, or be told what to do, why, and how to do it. Especially the do as your told, you can’t do that, and my favorite, with the wagging finger-wait till your father comes home!
This style of negative directives from family, peers, school, church, and society. All played a role in card cataloging my experiences in life as memory. So, whether positive or negative, words recruit experiences or a language of emotion. Hence the importance of a journal.
Exposing my feelings and emotions on paper made them less intimidating, helped ground me, and helped me move on. The body, mind, and spirit are tightly integrated. The mind and spirit need time to address, categorize, integrate, and modify whatever has interfered with their comfort zone. The physical act of taking pen to paper gave me hope.
The drama of self-flagellation through writing has a short lifespan. I am sure the period is different for anyone as consumed as I was with my loss and unresolved issues from my past. It took three years for me to turn around and head towards the light of my “aha moment.” Naturally, falling off the wagon has its place in time. Slipping back into comfortable moments of guilt and loss is a continuing challenge.
In an interview, I was asked, "how long after writing in your journal did you look at situations more objectively?"
To be transparent, I can be dense at times. My enlightenment often arrives ex post facto (smile). And, as with all things in life, it’s a process; I’m not sure there is any such thing as “objective reality.” The more I write, the better I feel and the more surmountable things seem. The ego of my youth told me I could do anything. Now, my physical response is slower, while my mental response is seasoned, mature, and quiet; my emotional growth has an assured manner.
I embraced acceptance and appreciation as avenues. You don’t get over grief. You can move forward with purpose and faith. I gave my emotional disquiet latitude ‘to-be and be with my loss and gaze beyond it. These were oscillating moments of ups and downs. Picking up the pen to write in my journal sometimes triggered and pushed my emotional buttons, thrusting me into a darkened rabbit hole of sorrow and despair from my loss. It felt like I was taking two steps forward and three steps back.
I wrote about this journey in my book titled:
A Promise Made, A Promise Kept, A Husbands Journey Through Journaling To Heal The Loss Of His Spouse
The book can be found on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/ B0BJQQZSNS.
There are five ways journaling helped me be more calm, mindful, and resilient:
It helped me understand my emotions because it forced me to view them more objectively. They become less daunting and more manageable.
A journal became an extension of my desires. Putting thoughts, dreams, and wishes in writing helps make them real.
Resilience is not just recovery from adverse circumstances; it exemplifies the malleable nature of the human spirit to move on against all odds. So, writing about those times I didn’t recover helps to wrap my determination, perseverance, and faith in an endearing spirit around the challenges with words of compassion and understanding.
Journaling brought the transformation of negative words used at any moment and balanced them with positive thoughts and uplifting emotions.
The simple act of taking a moment to pause, breathe, and write is calming.
This encompasses new habits. Being willing to change the negative prompts in my life with (H)ealthy (A)titude to shift (B)ehavior, and (I)nitiates (T)houghtfulness. My positive acronym for the word ‘habit’ is filled with positive intention-purpose. Thoughtfulness reflects the mindfulness of response rather than daily reactive behavior to negative prompts or stimuli. Being responsive requires forethought and a long pause—the right moment to find the ‘be and be with’ in living a purposeful life.
The person I most want to share this story with is husbands and spouses who feel overwhelmed by survivor’s grief. Because…they may not feel or reach an acceptable emotional healing level using traditional group counseling forums. Granted, the umbrella of grief is large and requires a generalized approach for aiding loved ones left behind, as offered by hospice. However, breast cancer is different it is an insidious disease like uterine cancer and prostate or testicular cancer in males. A patient is robbed of sensuality and left to find peace, with a portion of their identity lost. This loss spills over to the spouse and becomes unmanageable when their loved one dies. The chaos emotionally crushed me.
If there is anything you, as the reader, can take away from my journey and you’re a husband struggling with grief, find the moments of your relationship that filled the ‘be and be with.’
Remember the laughter, the child-like play, moments of surrender, and tenderness that filled your lives together.
Carry them forward, weaving them into the tapestry of your innate to be right-minded, living a life of pause, intention, and, above all, purpose.
I hope my healing process offers another husband an opportunity to discover peace and guidance in achieving personal spirituality. To learn acceptance, freeing them from anger, despair, and feeling stuck in mourning the loss of a spouse to breast cancer.
Visit my website and leave comments at:
Website: https://www.fjdwriter.com
Blessings in health…
Frank J DiMaio, DC, MS
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