My introduction

[Kimjo1974]

Hi everyone. My partner of 18 years passed away on Valentines Day this year. He was 71, we had a 27 year age gap, so I am just 44. He had suffered from smoke related emphysema for some years and both him and I and his daughter assumed that this would just get progressively worse and he would eventually end up on oxygen as the disease progressed. His daughter and I never ever imagined that he would get lung cancer, we just didn’t see it coming. My partner passed away just eight days after a terminal diagnosis of lung cancer that has spread to his liver. He must have been suffering in silence and kept his symptoms to himself. His daughter and I have been the very best of friends for about twelve years, even putting each other first before our own partners. We were both extremely close to her dad and have supported each other through our loss. I have been through so many stages of grieving, sobbed my heart out, tried to stay strong and held my head up high at how proud my partner would have been at how I have carried on without him. He has five children, two of which I am very close to. We have supported each other and tried to stick together as we try to soldier on despite feeling numb to the world most of the time. Recently I also lost my business partner and very close friend of thirty years who also died of cancer aged 52, after a year long battle. When he passed, I made a conscious effort to make sure that i would let this second loss bring me down, as I was doing so well and just couldn’t allow it to. However, I have struggled with accepting his passing and am now struggling with my relationships with my two step children. They do not seem to be there for me to help me through this second bereavement. They have never accepted that it is any different for me losing my partner to them losing their dad. They are both in relationships which are struggling as a result of them being shut down to their own emotions over losing their dad. Personally I feel that they haven’t grieved properly but that’s down to them. They don’t seem to care that I am on my own every evening and weekend. We all work together in my business and over the last few weeks whilst I have felt a bit shut down following recent events they don’t seem to care and it’s as if they fail to recognise that I have suffered a second loss or acknowledge that i am struggling. I feel like our relationships are breaking down and they are sticking together and leaving me feeling left out and alone. I feel that I need counselling just to deal with the way that they are making me feel. Everyone that I speak to regarding this just wants to tear them apart for thinking it’s acceptable to not recognise that life is harder for me as I’m on my own and to think its ok to leave me to get on in life alone, which their dad would never have wanted. I just need help to make myself have the strength to carry on alone and make a more independent life for myself.

[Karena]

Hi and welcome - bereavement counselling might help - but i think a second loss takes us back too the first -so in a way even though you have lost a different person and are grieving for them it also retriggers losing your partner and some of the possibly un resloved feeling about that creating a lot of confusion.

I have step children and children of my own. Initially my adult step children were very supportive.
Seven years on i dont see them but we never fell out - they dont live anywhere near me and are scattered so they dont see each other much either. I always knew they would go back too their own lives and that was fine too, as they were adults when i met them. They know they can call on me  and i could them if we needed too  -

You are right it is different grieveing for a partner - because generally speaking our children as young adults do create lives of their own, and that what we want them to do thats how it should be -so  we plan our futures with our partners, not to exclude the adult children - they are still very much part of our lives but because they dont need us to be physically present the way they do when they are children. The thing is though i dont see how we can expect them to understand our grif from our perspective  every grief is different -but there isnt a hierarchy either -grief is individual too us and grief for different people is different within ourselves but every grief we suffer is equally valid. it is a state of being and thats what we have in common here - whatever loss it was that brought us here all of us have lost some-one different and have different experiences of being in grief but it creates a situation in which we find those that there are also a lot of emotions that we do have in common.
 
I think part of the problem is what you have said in your own writing - you soldiered on and often soldiering on means ignoring or trying to ignore grief -and you also said you decided to not let your second loss get you down - but again you are going against your natural instincts - grief will get you down and you cant really "not let it" and while you can function - have to function with the practicalitys of continuing to run the business, and of course both of them  would be proud, to see you doing that  but your partner ( not the business one)  would also be happy to see you move forward in other ways too.My feeling is you need to find an outlet for your grief other than your step children - only when you find a way to do that for yourself  can you pass on  any way that might help them to do the same. Obviousely you need to work with them but ideally you need to do so without feelings of conflict and anger -and so be able to take a step back from them outside the work situation  and allow them to do the same.

There is an outlet here and i did find this was a huge help just the act of writing feelings down helps but also discovering through the answers that others have not just grief in common but other things - the everyday chat section for example is to share those little things that you cant when you are at home on your own and it is those little things you miss as much as the big ones - how was you day, what you had for lunch. all the daily stuff that seems so unimportant at the time suddenly takes on new significance but at least you can share it here.If you feel counselling would help go for that too as we are not professionald here, just already grieveing people at different stages of our own journey supporting each other as best we can.
But maybe the first step is to start to think about how you can fill those evenings and weekends better - again that will depend on your personality - what interests you, whether you have social skills or the confidence to join something, or is there something you could take up at home that might lead to that ,  other friends outside the familly you could spend time with. - could volunteering help build the confidence to meet new people.

 I have done online courses but for me actually the key was to look at those things me and my husband did and planned to do and either go back to doing them or done the new ones bu myself because losing him was bad enough, but they were still the things i loved, and the places i wanted to go so rather than punish myself even more by dropping them  i do them,  and in that way i take him forward with me - living life for us both i guess. I cant eat out by myself, i cant walk into a crowded pub by myself - and it took a while to realise it doesnt matter because these arnt things i want to do - but i can travel and do things which take me to a place he wanted to visit or go back to the things we both loved doing and  because it is the goal of doing that thing, rather than meeting random strangers with nothing in common sat in a pub, which gives me the confidence to talk too the other people with those same goals -doing soemthing in memory of him forced me to overcome some of my social fears - so when i said he would be happy to see you move forward i dont mean you have to let him go, but take him with you  because in these things i am doing my husband is still giving me strength, still inspiring me,and still close beside me. 

[Sandra61]

Hi Kimjo,
My loss was different to yours, I lost my mum, who I lived with about a year ago. so I can relate to your feeling of being isolated and alone every evening and weekend. I don't have much family and those I do have live a fair distance away, so I don't see or hear from them much.
As Karena says, I don't think you can rely on family to support you. They have their own lives and their own grief to deal with. Nor can you  do much to help them with that. Everyone has to find their own way through. For myself, I felt I needed to get out of the house and amongst people again to help myself, so I joined a class and took up a new interest and I found that this really helped and continues to be the best way of helping myself cope. It forces you to think about something else for a few hours a week if nothing else and lifts your mood.  It will take a very long time to come to terms with your new situation and only you can really find out how best to make that work for you, but you do have to give yourself the time to do that. I took a little time out from work about six months after my loss, as I found myself at my wits' end around that time and needed the break as the pressures of work on top of the grief were just getting too much to bear. The time away did help, even though I spent most of it in a state of meltdown! Reading back over my diary now, I can see just how bad a state I was in and I shock myself, but despite that, I can also see that it has gradually got better and that that is largely due to the conscious effort I have made to try to help that to happen.
Time may not heal and this lonely road does surprise you. You will find that those you might have expected to be the most supportive may not be in actual fact and that sometimes those from whom you might not have expected any support turn out to be your best sources of support! I did.
Either way, it does slowly get better and Karena is right, it does help to carry the one you have lost forward with you by engaging in interests you might have shared and enjoyed together, to revisit old haunts and new ones or new things you might have always intended to do together. It isn't the same, but it does bring back happy memories that help to obscure the painful ones. In time, you will learn to adapt to this new normal. It sounds like you have a positive attitude, but perhaps you need to take some of the pressure off yourself, accept that the people you might have expected to support you best may not be those who can in reality and find a different source of support instead. You probably need to allow yourself to feel whatever you have been blocking out to support them too and let out your feelings in whatever way helps the most, whether that is writing it down, crying, or just whatever you think might help.
Sadly, loss is fact of life for everyone and always has been. It will never be easy to deal with and you will not get over it, but you can learn to live with it and to make a new life for yourself in your new circumstances, but you will only do this over time, so allow yourself that.
Sending hugs!