After The Last Embrace

It wasn’t only him who left. It was our story. Our routine. Our way of being in the world.

The day he died, I didn’t just lose my partner. I lost my confidant. My mirror. My refuge. I lost the voice that whispered “everything will be okay” when I couldn’t believe it. I lost the gaze that made me feel life was still worth it.

People talk about widowhood as if it were a stage, as if grief had an expiration date, as if time healed everything. But it doesn’t. Time doesn’t heal — it rearranges. It teaches you how to breathe through pain, how to walk with absence, how to live with a void that never fills.

There are days I feel him close — days I think I hear his footsteps, days I catch myself speaking softly to him, as if he could still answer. And then there are days when the silence is so loud it breaks me — when the bed feels bigger, when life feels foreign, when I ask myself how to keep going without him.

Widowhood isn’t only sadness. It’s disorientation. It’s fear. It’s anger. It’s guilt. Guilt for moving on. Guilt for laughing. Guilt for feeling something for someone else. Guilt for being alive when he’s not. And no one tells you that. No one prepares you. No one truly stays through it all.

I loved him. I still do. Not like before, not with the same intensity, but I love him in every memory, in every gesture I learned from him, in every part of me shaped by his presence. And though he’s gone, he’s still part of my story. Part of my skin. Part of my soul.

Widowhood is learning to live with a ghost that doesn’t scare you — but hurts. It’s learning to speak of him without breaking, to look at photos without crying, to love life again, even though he’s no longer in it.

And that takes time. And that takes tears. And that takes strength — strength you didn’t know you had, strength built day by day, strength invisible but sustaining.

I write this for you — for everyone who has lost the love of their life, for everyone who wakes with a shattered heart, for everyone who keeps going without knowing how. Because your pain matters. Because your story deserves to be told. Because your love doesn’t vanish with death.

🌿 Another Perspective: How to See Widowhood

Widowhood is not the end of love — it’s its transformation. Love doesn’t die with the body. It stays in the memories, in the gestures, in the words that still echo. It stays in you.

You’re not betraying their memory by moving forward. To love again, to laugh, to live — isn’t forgetting. It’s honoring. It’s showing that what you shared made you stronger.

More alive. More you.

Your grief doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s. Cry when you need to. Speak of them when you want to. Keep them in silence if that’s what feels right. There is no right way — only your way.

And though it hurts today, that pain is proof that you loved deeply, that you were loved, that you lived something rare and real.

🤍 From Me to You

If you’re reading this with a broken heart, if you’ve lost the love of your life, if you’re wondering how to go on — I want you to know, I’m with you.

I’ve felt that emptiness too. I’ve slept in a bed that felt colder. I’ve cried for someone who could no longer answer.

And here I am, writing for you — so you don’t have to pretend. So you know your pain has a place. That your story matters. That your love still lives.

You’re not alone. You’re not broken. You’re grieving.

And here, your grief is held.

I embrace you from here,

— Luz 🤍