Dear Lana,

I am very sorry about what happened to you. It’s a horrible loss, and on top of that, your husband couldn’t deal with it and left. It happens sometimes that marriages fall apart after tragedies like that.

I haven’t been through anything similar, but perhaps a book by David Kessler “Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief” can help. He’s talking about going beyond the usual 5 stages of grief and finding meaning and giving the tragedy a silver lining, I suppose (I haven’t read the book but I suppose one way of finding meaning could be to do volunteering work to perhaps help women and families in a similar situation). I know it’s easier said than done, but there might be something that resonates with you in that approach.

Also, are you seeing a therapist specialized in grief work? Perhaps that would need to come first, and then finding meaning as the next phase of the healing journey.