Recovering from the sudden fatal collapse of my husband in the third week of January 1995 meant that I had to deal with loss. Looking back I know the shock was akin to the springing of a trapdoor: my world fell away. The sad and empty feelings of loss are shared to a degree by all of us who are in recovery from anything, be it the death of a loved one, quitting nicotine and/or stopping drinking (or living with someone who just has), and whatever else people choose to do to cause themselves harm and others enough discomfort built from frustration to say, “I’m outta here!”

For years I thought the common bottom-line feeling for folks new to recovery was a lack of self-worth. Now, it seems to me, the feelings of loss underlie all other feelings.

Someone’s physical presence is gone. The closeness of humdrum rituals shared become painful solitary exercises. Or, there’s no cigarette with a cup of coffee.....or after making love. There are no Bloody Marys at impromptu tailgate parties. Or, you eat a plate of food and don’t deliberately throw it up. Your toddler spills milk all over the kitchen floor you just washed and now that you’ve learned anger management (old term: self-control), you simply mop up the milk, smile at your little one and laugh, “We’re not going to cry over spilt milk, are we?”

Losses guarantee changes, for better or worse. When at first we long to fill the emptiness with what was there, it’s guaranteed the loss deepens. And if we deliberately recruit a substitute make-do, we could be borrowing added grief.

Lumping the loss from giving up smoking and drinking with the loss of a loved one through a quarrel, divorce or death may seem flippant to some. But to varying degrees these events create a ground zero within us that initially only the resumption of tobacco or alcohol or the return of the one who left can possibly neutralize. That’s where recovery begins...

That’s where I was.

Within a week of losing my husband, I knew I’d be returning to New England to be near my family. That would be my first step towards filling the emptiness. Finding a house and making an offer took three days. How’d I do that so quickly and here it is 1 ½ years later and cartons still need to be unpacked?

From talking with a grief recovery expert, we concluded that I remained in varying degrees of shock for a full year. Half of that time I belonged to a support group for the widowed where I made dear friends, one in particular--a middle-aged man trapped in an 85-year-old body whom everyone loved. He was mourning his wife, I my husband, and the walking and shopping and dining were preliminary healing times. Alas, on the first of February, without warning, his heart stopped.

At about the same time, I emerged from the shock of my husband’s heart stopping . That a full year had gone by seemed impossible. My memories were as sharp and clear as if the year had not happened. I cried more, and more often, than I had the previous year. Vivid dreams of my husband, always around daybreak, seemed more like sweet, personal visits. Several times I awakened and burst into sobs because whether I’d experienced a vision or a dream, the result was the same: he was not there in the flesh to welcome a new day with me.

I was working my way through recovery.

The correctness of my decision to move close to my children and their children was reinforced repeatedly. Cookouts became a regular event with friends, family and extended families. One afternoon the head count was 34.

By the end of the summer, because my time was divided between Challenges and family, I was chided more than once about not having a life. (Moi?!)

Was I nearing the time when I would be ready to expand my socializing to include more than my family, to actually develop a social life apart from my family? It wasn’t that I had stopped missing and loving my husband, rather the original sharp feelings of loss had softened. I was torn between letting go and wanting to hang on to all that I could of such a good, loving marriage. I knew that until I closed a door on what we shared, no other doors could be opened. So I thought: Okay, I’ll do it, but for now it’s a screen door.

I looked within and saw self-reliance, emotional strength, heightened spiritual awareness. (Never mind what I saw when I looked in the mirror! Health spa, where are you?)

For months after my husband passed away, my identity stemmed from being a widow, even to the point of feeling like there was a big red W on my forehead. Not any more. I’ve regained my integrated self. This tells me that with the exception of that temporary screen door, the hard work of my grief recovery is done.

And isn’t this what all of us in recovery are striving for--to one day be able to declare, “I am no longer feeling at a loss like a victim. I am recovered.”