After Kenny died I fell into a deep pit of grief and despair, understandably. I was hurting so bad and trying to handle all the emotions I was experiencing was nightmarish. I’d never felt anything that horrible in my life and there were more days I wanted to check myself out of that hellish existence than I wanted to stay here. I did not want to go to a therapist, either one or one or group therapy. I also would never take any pharmaceuticals to numb the pain. I’m not looking down on anyone who chooses any of these things, I just know they were not right for me. There were (and probably still are) lots of people who disagreed with the above decisions. But, this is one of those times where we’ll have to agree to disagree. I had to do what I felt was right for me and that’s exactly what I did. Working through my grief journey on my own terms and in my own timeline was one thing I could control after Kenny’s death. Truthfully, it was probably the ONLY thing I had control of at the time.
My terms for working through the grief and despair were going inward to heal myself with writing. Writing was how I’d always worked through things since I was in grade school. I could write what I couldn’t say out loud. I published all of that writing on my other website https://lisasaxton.com with the first post being published on October 18, 2021, just nine days after Kenny’s death. Over the next three years, I published around 51 blog posts, each one about my journey through the grief process of losing Kenny. In the beginning I wrote heavily. I’d go to Panera and sit for hours in the back corner where no one could see the tears streaming down my face as I typed the words out on my computer. I was constantly having to wipe the tears off my keyboard. The words just bled right out of me every time I wrote. Writing has always been a tremendous catharsis for me and remains so to this day.
Almost three months after I started publishing my grief journey blog posts, a friend of mine asked me if I’d like to write a chapter for her next collaborative book. She had been reading my blog posts and thought I’d be a good fit. A collaborative book is where numerous writers work together to create a single book. Each of our chapters had a common theme. The book was titled The Ancestors Within: Recognize And Embrace The Gifts Of Your Origins. My chapter was called “The Cathartic Process of Writing: Healing The Metaphysical Root Cause of Pain” and it’s about how writing can help you heal. The book quickly became a bestseller in the genre it was published in. Becoming a published author had been a lifelong dream of mine and I’d like to think Kenny was working behind the scenes from the edge of his cloud up there in Heaven to make that happen.
Throughout the publishing process the publisher told each one of us authors that we had a course or workshop that could be developed in relation to our chapter in the book. I wracked my brain for months trying to think of what mine was but it just would not come to me. I would later learn that I was suffering from what they call Widow Brain which is a type of brain fog widows sometimes suffer from. Some of the characteristics of Widow Brain are forgetfulness, difficulty concentrating, difficulty in learning new things, and even remembering how to do things you already know how to do. I called it the “cherry on top of grief”, which was sarcasm at its most extreme. A few weeks before the book was published I had an energy clearing from an energy worker and the Widow Brain started to clear away from inside my head. Right after that divine inspiration literally shot down into the top of my head in the shower one morning and the idea for ART-WRITE-HEAL Workshops was born. I went to Panera that day and sat for five or six hours and wrote the entire workshop, bought the domain, created the website, and made all the media graphics for it. Finally, I had the tiniest glimmer of light in the tunnel of darkness I’d been trying to make my way through the last almost eight months.
I’m posting all of my previously published blog posts about my journey through grief on the ART-WRITE-HEAL website. I’ll include the original published date under the image at the beginning of each post. There’ll be more new posts to come after the older posts are posted.
I was thrown straight into Hell when Kenny died, but I eventually found the strength to crawl my way out. I know how horrible it is inside there and I wanted to help those still suffering in there so I went back in to help pull them out. Between my writing and the workshops I’ve created I hope those still suffering from grief will be able to find the strength inside themselves to survive their own storm.