My 5 Favorite Posts on The Mighty Widow for 2016

Last week, I shared the five most popular posts on the blog, as decided by reader views. Today, I’d like to share the posts that meant the most to me personally.

These entries, by and large, had more to do with helping me work through my grief than providing shareable content for readers. These are the ones that gave me an outlet for feelings and thoughts I didn’t think I could express elsewhere.

Starting from the beginning of the year, here are my five favorite posts from 2016:

Copyright Jeroen van Abeelen (via Flickr)

3 Things That Brought Me Out of Darkness

I love this post because it puts out in the world that, “yes, I’m going to be alright.” It was written out of the realization that I no longer wake up counting the days until I get to die too. That I no longer consider whether I should miss the curve while driving. Grief takes you to a very dark place, and this post was my declaration that I had finally crawled out of that pit and back into the light.

Donald Trump

My Fellow Republicans, You are Being Played

Trump fans, here me out! This is NOT one of my favorite posts because it is anti-Trump. It IS one of my favorite posts because it is about politics. My major was in political science, and I spent 13 years working in the state government. Since Tom died, I haven’t really had anyone with whom to discuss the state of affairs. This post gave me an opportunity to tap back into a part of my life that I’ve been missing.

Life as a widow is less beautiful

An Incomplete List of Things You Lose When You Become a Widow

Many of the posts here come about from the thoughts that jumble about in my head on a daily basis. I need to write them down, or they never seem go away. This is one example. I also love this post because the photos were all taken by Dad years before I was born.

Losing the life you want

When You Can’t Have the Life You Want

I wrote this article as a pep talk to myself after my Mom came home yet again with a car full of purchases from our local thrift shop. Stuff we neither needed nor I wanted. Her weekly shopping trips are one small part of what I see as a bigger problem – that I will never be the captain of my own ship. I feel like I’ve spent my entire life accommodating other people’s wants and needs. Before breaking out the balloons for a pity party for myself, I wrote this post to provide some perspective and encouragement instead.

Do People Really Want to Help?

People Say They Want to Help. They Won’t.

This is another post I wrote to put into words something that had been bothering me for a long, long time: those people who say they are happy to help but then never do. However, writing this post helped me work through where those people may be coming from. The lack of their help still frustrates me, but it doesn’t consume me as it did in the past.

Those are my five favorite posts from last year. What do you think?

(feature photo credit)

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