This is part two of a recent teaching by Teresa Beshwate, The Sudden Widow Coach. The first post was, “Permission To Live.” If you need to, read it quickly, and then come back.

When you grant yourself permission to live, it doesn’t diminish the love you had for your previous life with your spouse.

In the widowed world there is a lot of talk about finding a “Chapter 2.” It refers to our next love, and we all like to tell each other that we’ll be able to love the next person just as much as the first without forgetting our first love. Our heart has the infinate capacity to expand.

What if you view YOUR life as having a second chapter? It doesn’t take away the love from your first chapter. It expands it.”

Julie Martella, Lessons From the Widows

What if we applied that Chapter 2 thinking to our LIFE? We are the chapter 2. We are living it out every day! And yet, because we are filled with grief and sorrow and suffering, we create a chapter two that is grey and sad; an alone, tiny version of our former selves.

Would your spouse want you to live the life you are living today?

What would they want? If you found a letter today, perhaps tucked away in a bedside table drawer, what would it say? Would it say please be miserable and sad for the rest of your life as a tribute to me? As my dear widowed friend Catherine put it,

I think he’s want me to have a life made better by having been loved by him. My life was changed and made beautiful by having known him, and that would be his legacy.”

Catherine P.

Dear ones, hear me loud and clear. Let this new life that you didn’t want become your greatest love story yet to be written. Live a big, messy, beautiful life as a legacy of the love you had with your spouse. That is the ultimate permission to live.

I want you to have a life made BETTER because you love me.

Your spouse

That would be an incredible legacy. The greatest love story yet to be told would be you living out the legacy of your spouses love every single day! If their love made such a difference in your life, then let that love shine through in the chapter 2 that is YOU!

Wishing you so much love today,

Julie

If learning to live the greatest love story yet to be told intrigues you send me a note. My program, Grounded, offers you tools to learn how to tend to your mind, mend your heart, and get to work organizing the