So, my husband died nine years ago.
We’d been together 23 years. We were very well matched. We were happy. And we were digging out of the mid-marriage struggles of raising children and paying off debt. There was a bright shining light at the end of the tunnel: the kids were all teenagers and the bills would all be paid off in a few years. Basically, we were looking head-on into freedom fifty-five!!
He was 49, left for work one morning the week before Christmas, and an hour later, I was a widow.
I’ve learned a ton about grief since then.
Helping my five kids through their grief was an education. Dad was a very popular, respected, and well-known guy. The kind of man they name the school’s football field after.
Before he passed, as I was looking at the prospect of an empty nest and ancient credentials that weren’t worth the paper they were printed on anymore, I embarked on the trek of the entrepreneur. I developed and launched a website where I was publishing other writers’ romantic short stories, and I found my purpose!! I’d just got the ball rolling, seeing growth month after month, building relationships with writers and readers, looking forward with plans and goals, when the love of my life was taken from me.
No surprise, I suppose, that when love is instantly fermented into grief, romance really takes a back seat. I couldn’t even look at the website, and it sat abandoned for years. Now I was grieving the loss of my purpose on top of everything else.
I did make a half-hearted attempt to jump start the publication again, figuring five years was more than enough time to indulge in my pity-party. But it fizzled out fast and I fell into a very real dark pit of despair.
Again, the site sat neglected, taunting me.
My personal recovery, though still an eternity from being finished, finally took a turn toward the land of the living when I published my novel in 2019. A Road To Joy turned out to be more therapy than storytelling. I published it simply because I thought the process of grief that I describe in the book might help someone else get through a day or two of theirs. It turned into something of which I am incredibly proud, not so much for the accomplishment of having written a book so much as the strength I had to discover to write it. I think it’s pretty good.
But what’s more is that it signalled a change in me. A change that said, now. Now it’s time to move on. It’s okay to grieve and move forward. It’s okay to still miss him with every fibre of your being while wishing for love anew, whether it’s yours or not. I needed to create a new life for myself.
It took a while, about a half year, but the minute I revisited Romantic Shorts, I’d found my way back to my purpose. And so I repaired, renovated, updated, and improved the site. I made a few changes. And I was beyond excited to be on track for what came next. I set some goals and metrics for the site, hired people, and gave it my best shot.
And one year.
One of my daughters was watching me paint a mural once. At some point I was poking away at it when she looked at it skeptically and simply said, “You know Mom, 95% of painting is knowing when to stop.”
This is not a lesson I’ve ever learned. Quitting is not in my skill set. But as my year drew to a close, I had no choice but to admit that Romantic Shorts had failed to meet any of the targets I had set, and need to achieve, to make it a viable business. For whatever reason, I finally, after almost twelve years and countless hints from the universe, if one chooses to see it that way, this is not what I’m supposed to be doing.
I got myself back on track after lockdowns – getting my fitness goals back on track, getting my house in order, rediscovering my creative self – and gifted myself the winter to simply write. To explore my mind and heart and just write. And yes, I do know how lucky I am to be able to do that.
But what to write. As I saw my efforts leaning toward making this happen through autumn, I started to imagine a plan for where my mind was going to go next.
I am a Master Manifester. I have some seriously incredible goals. And it’s looking like there is a sitcom television show in my future. After rolling ideas through my head like a freight train convention on crack, an outline has taken root and I am on fire! The fact that I have absolutely NO idea what I’m doing has done nothing to slow me down. I’ll worry about that when it becomes a problem.
In the meantime, my Second Act is looking spectacular!
Alex.
(EDIT: as a side note, my married name is Brown. I started Romantic Shorts as Alexandra Brown, and intended to see it through as Mrs. Brown, for me, and in memory of Paul. But my Second Act, my new vision, my absolute purpose, my goals, and my accomplishments are on my shoulders, and mine alone. I have something to prove to myself. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I wrote A Road To Joy under the pseudonym Alexandra Stacey. Still my name, but a new version of it. Just like me. Hoping that clears up any of the confusion…)
Alexandra Stacey 