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Self-help for the widowers
In June 2020, after just 3 months of marriage, my first wife gruesomely passed away at 25 in a car accident caused by a road infrastructure negligence in Arches National Park, Utah. I was 26 at the time, and nothing could have prepared me to witness somebody die this way, let alone my wife.
Back then, in addition to dealing with acute PTSD, I felt completely lost, couldn’t deal with the grief for months until my PTSD was more manageable, and didn’t know what to think. Sometimes I wanted to cry but couldn’t cry. At other times, I burst out of nowhere and tried to hide it, and on occasion, I wanted to laugh and felt guilty about it. I believe that we can never fully recover from losing our significant other. To this day, I sometimes feel fine and optimistic about everything for a few uninterrupted weeks or months and start to believe that I’ve recovered. But out of nowhere, a trigger can appear, or a few in a row, and here I am, feeling the pain of the loss or the trauma again.
Since the first few months, I have been actively seeking counsel, books, videos, and movies to find answers. I’ve tried to find meaning, gauge whether I have been too sad or not sad enough, whether it was normal to want to date so soon, and whether it was disrespectful to my wife and her family or not. I’ve also questioned whether it’s okay to talk about it with friends, coworkers, family, and how to…
