In this case, the sculpt instructor was a lovely soul I connected with because of her spiritual approach to our sessions. She talked a lot about “setting an intention” to the practice. I’d heard that before, more than once, and always thought, “Yeah, my intention is to work my butt off and get a good sweat.” “Setting an intention” sounded a little woo-woo to me, and I found it difficult to resonate with. But now I found myself interpreting “setting an intention” in a whole new way, something along the lines of “Embrace this new life,” or “Think more about love and less about anger over my loss.” An intention can range from being grateful or feeling peaceful to something more physical, such as focusing on breath or working through an injury. Typically, the teacher asks us to set an intention at the beginning of the class and refer back to it at the end in some capacity. The intention I would set varied from day to day. Sometimes I literally could not embrace the concept, and on other days I felt so connected to it. As I made this rigorous practice more of my regular routine, I warmed up to the intention-setting concept as a spiritual connection to the physical work.
It helped. A lot. So much so that before long I started incorporating Pilates and functional physical fitness into my normal routine. The physical challenge was intense and felt wonderful. The emotional self-connection and release felt even better.
I’d done some meditation before, and I’m sure there will be some eye-rolling out there by some of you who read this and think I’m wandering into fad territory; but the truth is that taking up the daily practice of meditating has changed my life. I’d already done some reading about thought leaders, successful business owners, and fitness gurus extolling the benefits of meditation. When I committed to making a habit of it on my own, I read more about the neuroscientific advantages, and about different teachers and practitioners, and meditating went from being kind of a cool thing to do to being a logical, vital, healing thing to do. Before long, and to this day, the simple act of sitting still for ten minutes every morning has opened my eyes to being mindful of my internal and external worlds.
I wasn’t drawn to the idea of a therapeutic group setting to help me through losing Amy. Something about it felt forced to me. Don’t get me wrong; I am well aware that group therapy has proven extremely rewarding and successful to many people who experience profound loss. I am an introvert by nature, however, and I just felt like my process could come more effectively from individual therapy and from my network of family and friends.
Within the first few weeks of Amy’s death, a dear friend introduced me to Sheryl Sandberg, with whom she had been working on a project. In the course of their conversations, Amy’s article came up, and of course Sheryl had read it. I have to plead ignorance here—I did not know much about Sheryl. Looking back now, that seems crazy. I was vaguely familiar with her story of loss but had to refresh my memory. Soon she sent me an advanced copy of a book she’d written with Adam Grant that was about to be published, a book called Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy. It became a kind of guidebook for me; so many of the stories contained in it resonated deeply. While our versions of loss—sudden vs. slow onset—were very different, I immediately felt a real kismet with her. Seeing my new experiences in print, as part of a shared story, was so comforting. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to her, and since then I have modeled the generous behavior she showed me with others in my life who have faced unbearable loss.
Gradually, as my radar went up again and other people’s stories came into my awareness, I began to dip into the lives of other widowers and those who experienced profound loss as I had. Digesting these incredible stories made me feel like I was developing my own version of a grief group. Snippets of other people’s experiences of loss connected with me deeply. There was also something comforting in not having to engage with someone in intimate conversation but instead being able to process the connection in my own way. It was part of my “work,” and ultimately encouraged me to tell my own story. It turns out that even though everyone experiences loss differently, there’s enormous comfort and hope in learning how other widows and widowers (Isn’t that the oddest word, by the way? It kind of sounds like “one who widows”) got through the inevitable painful darkness, and that they got through it.
Because it is now an ingrained Rosenthal trait, here’s a list of the books I strongly recommend if you’re struggling through this journey yourself:
Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy, by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant
The Widower’s Notebook, by Jonathan Santlofer
The Light of the World, by Elizabeth Alexander
When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi
The Iceberg, by Marion Coutts
Young Widower, by John W. Evans
Living with the End in Mind, by Erin Tierney Kramp and Douglas H. Kramp
In a Dark Wood, by Joseph Luzzi
You Are Not Alone: A Heartfelt Guide for Grief, Healing, and Hope, by Debbie Augenthaler
Gratitude, by Oliver Sacks
The Art of Losing, by Kevin Young
What to Do When I’m Gone: A Mother’s Wisdom to Her Daughter, by Suzy Hopkins and Hallie Bateman
The Five Innovations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us about Living Fully, by Frank Ostaseski
The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying, by Nina Riggs
The Missing Piece, by Shel Silverstein
This Is a Poem That Heals Fish, by Jean-Pierre Siméon
Cry, Heart, but Never Break, by Glenn Ringtved
Michael Rosen’s Sad Book, by Michael Rosen
Of course, reading, helpful as it was, would get me only so far. Learning how others have struggled with grief was powerful and poignant, but it also reminded me that learning was only one piece of this story. The time I was spending on myself was hugely important—I felt my energy returning slowly but surely, I spent less time in bed—and these changes opened up more emotional space for me to begin thinking more concretely about my new life and how I was going to fill that proverbial blank space.
The panic attacks were scary, difficult to overcome in so many ways, but in their aftermath, I began to emerge the better for them. Week by week, I began to feel like I would be able to get through this—something that I hadn’t been sure of just a month earlier.
But the further I crawled out, the more questions began to flood in. The immense sense of loss and sadness that I felt in the wake of Amy’s death was debilitating, but it was also liberating in a way; I felt no pressure, no need to think about any other part of myself than grief. As I stepped tentatively back into the world, suddenly I had questions to answer, decisions to make. Not just about immediate issues like what to have for dinner, what shirt to wear, but big-picture stuff—about not only my present but my future as well.
And in those moments I found myself thinking more and more about that blank space at the end of Amy’s New York Times essay and accepting it as a gift, an unrestricted endowment from her, not just her permission but her blessing to fill it with new chapters of my life.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised when, just as I thought I had the beginnings of my plan figured out, life intervened.
13
Navigating a Maze of Emotions