Dear Michelle

What you are feeling is perfectly understandable and normal. But I, and everyone around you, can tell you that every day and it wont make it any easier for you. I can send you hundreds of quotes about grief and pain and even though you’ll see yourself and your suffering in many of them. Sometimes it might give a little comfort but the pain will return. In the end no one but you can make it go away.

What I hope that I can do is to make you understand your anger and through that understanding forgive yourself for feeling the anger and hate. Because until you stop blaming yourself you want be able to forgive your husband and the pain will continue.

You are in pain now, first your husband has an affair this causes a lot of doubt and consequently pain. Before you had the chance to handle this he took his life, and left you for good. I can only imagine the pain you feel now. But you need to understand that the pain is the cause of your anger and hate, that is the way we respond to pain when we can’t make it go away.

I think a good part of your pain now is self inflicted. It’s caused by the the guilt you feel for being angry at him, but how can you be anything else. It’s OK, for now. But you have to break the evil circle your in at some point. I think the best way foir you to do that is by starting to allow yourself to be angry. I will encourage you to find somewhere where others can’t hear you and yell at him, yell at God at his mistress and anyone else you feel like. you are entitled to do so with no feeling of self-blame. After a couple of days I want you to start thanking him each time you yell at him.

The problem here, as I see it is that you still love him. You rightfully hate what he did but he was your hero and the love of your life. So to start balancing things you have to be fair and love him for the good things. He is gone, what is done is done and can’t be changed. He can’t make it up to you. But there were happy times. I think it’s fair to assume there were maybe 14 good years and one bad. So while you are entitled to be angry you should not forget the good times after all it was a 14 to 1 ration. You have to forgive him, nor for his sake, but for your own.

So just to make absolutely sure you understand my point. You could be yelling things like: You god d… cheating coward how could you do this to me. I hate you… But I love you for the times you held my hand when we walked on the beach. I love you for the way you made feel when you said I love you…

It doesn’t have to be black or white it is very much possible to both love and hate at the same time, one does not exclude the other. By acknowledging the good things and allowing yourself to express your pain I believe you’ll find your balance again.

We rarely remember anything but a feeling. If you go out for a night on the town with friends and have fun. Then a week later you’ll have forgotten most of what was said and done, and a year later you’ll only remember the feeling. It was a fun night. If you at a later point get angry and break of contact with one of the friends there’s a risk that when you think of the fun nigth you have you’ll now think abut the “idiot” ex-friend and when you “save” the memory gain it has been tainted and the good feeling disappears. But once it was a good memory allowing later events to change that is a choice. By forcing yourself to remember the good things and feelings aswel I believe you can preserve the memory of love and eventually you’ll let go of the pain and forgive him and then be able to move on.

Remember feelings are good, let them out and most important remember that there are no rules for grief. Healing takes what ever time it takes. You are done when you’re done…

Thought and love for you in this difficult time

/Kennith