Woman, Wife, Widow, Mother, Other?
"Where do you see yourself in five years?"
A question we are all asked so commonly, at job interviews, at various life checkpoints. We view life as a series of five-year intervals, as though we all have access to an infinite amount of time. It's a loaded question, often defining roles you'll then assume.
It was a question I could so easily answer in my previous life. I was so confident in what I expected life to just hand me. I was able to visualize my future - with Krunal of course, perhaps a baby or two, a home of our own, a good job and just live a well-rounded, conventional life. Yeah, it all sounded pretty good in my head.
And with this future came roles and responsibilities- being a wife, daughter, daughter-in-law, sister, mother.
And Krunal and I almost made it to this future that we so badly wanted, we were just so close to having it all.
In the last five years of my life, Krunal proposed to me and we promised to spend our lives together. We moved out of London, got new jobs, got married, moved to a new town, settled into married life, got pregnant, lost our baby, lost my father, Krunal got diagnosed, we had Siya and my world ended on the day Krunal took his last breath.
Five years. And I never saw this coming.
I look back at the girl I was five years ago, or even one year ago. And I'm not her any longer. And actually, I am absolutely fine with that.
Let me explain why.
I have always believed that life experiences change you. With new experiences come new perspectives, new ideas, new people even. It's not a bad thing, we are all work in progress continually throughout our lives.
I've gone from being a wife, to a widow, to a mother, to a solo mother in the shortest space of time. Change in myself was always going to be inevitable after this trauma.
Grief changes you, especially traumatic grief such as losing your spouse. Losing your spouse is considered to be one of the most traumatic life events a person can survive. It's not just the loss of your person, it's the loss of your life, your routine, your home, your comfort and even the person you were yourself. These are all called the secondary losses that are intrinsically connected.
I was recently speaking to my life coach about how to survive the loss of Krunal. It was his words that changed my perception about grief radically. He challenged me to think about grief in a positive way, about how I'm currently using my grief to transform myself.
"Grief is seen so negatively, understandably. When we go through such a profound loss, inevitably we grieve. But it also allows for transformation and that can be positive. Remember, the masses see life as a series of losses and gains, the master sees transformation."
And here was when the penny dropped.
I was already using my grief to transform myself. It was actually beginning to reveal who I truly am at my very core. Grief has stripped me right down, tore me apart and ripped out my heart.
I've had nowhere to hide, nowhere to escape it and I've been living purely on gut instinct, my survival instinct.
It's this instinct that has been guiding me on doing what feels right for myself and Siya. I've been feeling my strength and courage grow as has my ability to say no and set boundaries, allowing the natural evolution of relationships as well as the dissolution of some. I have been visualising a new version of a future for Siya and I, no longer laid out in a neat five year plan, but more what values we want in our life, the role I'll play for Siya, our new identities and how we can create a meaningful life together.
Nowadays, I refuse to let myself be defined into a role and seek to carve out a new identity for myself. I'm not just a widow, I will always be Krunal's wife. He is always alive in my heart. I'm a mother too and doing it alone, a path I never saw myself on. But that doesn't define me either. Truthfully, I have no idea who I am right now because I'm a work in progress.
But I like the person I'm evolving into. She's confident and self aware, she is courageous and she can do it. She's loving and she wants to give her baby the best future possible.
I want to cultivate a life that feels good for my daughter and I. Just not in five year intervals, here and now feels better.
