Daryl Wood's Blog

Three years ago I wrote a blog called Choose Your Hard. Recently my ‘soul’ daughter Joy reminded me of this message as it came to her, as it does for all of us when needed, again. I thought back to what ‘hard’ I was choosing three years ago and re-reading that blog this morning puts a different slant on what I’m choosing today. Tomorrow will be 23 weeks since my Doug passed away. For weeks and weeks I had to choose to follow him and be free of this excruciating emotional pain or choose to live and see what happened next.

Today’s hard choices look like:

• Staying quiet to give myself solitude to process my experience feels hard because the loneliness can be suffocating. Being around other people who want to ‘chat’ about lives that seem so alien to me right now feels hard.
• Not asking for help to move heavy things and do jobs my beloved Doug would have handled feels hard because we were so independent. Asking for help feels hard because it means letting people do it ‘their’ way and telling me what I ‘should’ do.
• Eating a healthy, balanced diet feels hard because it takes more focus to plan and prepare meals. Eating whatever is within reach or easiest feels hard because my body craves good nutrition.
• Saying no to special events like my friend’s daughter’s wedding feels hard because we were so looking forward to being with them on their day. Saying yes feels even more hard because May 7th will be my first wedding anniversary to Doug (we had a looooong engagement) and being at the wedding with couples celebrating will be a stark reminder of my loss.
• Saying no to well meaning people who say things that upset me feels hard because I know they don’t know what they are doing that is so hurtful. Saying yes to these well meaning people feels hard because I know I will end up sobbing for hours because I’m so darn sensitive right now.
• Getting up every day to my new reality feels hard because it isn’t temporary. Staying in bed to cry feels hard because I know how much Doug wanted to live and I still have that opportunity.

So, I am choosing my hard every day and sometimes every hour and minute. Sometimes it’s an obvious yes or no. Sometimes I choose and have regrets. Sometimes I hold off choosing for as long as I can.

We all make hard choices. Being conscious about it can make us more aware of what work we still need to do and more importantly, how strong we are in the face of hard choices.