I’ve seen my grief therapist almost every week for nine months now. She’s asked me periodically if I’m feeling any anger and my answer has always been no. I’ve felt profound sadness, disbelief, and fear. I’ve felt some frustration and irritation, but nothing I would call anger.

Until this week. Anger arrived on Wednesday. I noticed it creeping up on me the day before when an email chain I was on suddenly seemed outlandishly stupid to me and I sent a pissy response. The anger simmered at a low level, but I could ignore it easily enough. Then on Wednesday, I felt the anger building up in intensity, starting in my stomach, moving up to a pressure in my chest and culminating in a fuming, throbbing headache. I was so angry that I ended my class 15 minutes early because I couldn’t think straight. I don’t think I’ve ever ended a class 15 minutes early in my entire career. That’s how blinding my anger was.

I will post something about the anger in the coming weeks, after I have some distance from it. Today I want to talk about how struggling with the big emotions I’ve been feeling since my husband’s stroke and then a year later, his death, often make me feel unable to participate much in life. I don’t keep up on the news, I don’t clean my house, I nap between meetings—in short, I take a laissez faire attitude toward most everything. The story I tell myself then is that I’m doing nothing, letting life pass me by.

This week, when I started telling myself that, I decided as an experiment to write down the things I have done since my husband died, and gosh, it turns out that I haven’t exactly done nothing:

• I got out of bed and put on big girl clothes, including an actual bra, almost every single day. There have been many days in which I napped for most of the day, but I did it in a complete outfit and on the couch, so even on those days, I can claim that I got out of bed and got dressed.
• I cooked real food at least once a week. There are lots of days when I just have no appetite and no energy to cook, but I have managed to make myself a homemade meal at least once a week and often more than that.
• I took good care of myself. I worked out and journaled nearly every single day. I made doctor and dentist appointments I had put off while being Tom’s caregiver. I got massages. I met with a grief therapist nearly every week. I attended ten widow support group meetings.  
• I walked the dogs every day. Some of the walks were on the short side, just little maintenance walks, but most were good walks, and we often stopped at the bench that commemorates Tom. Sometimes I even played with the dogs on their walks.
• I spent quality time with my daughter, my sister, my nephew, my mother-in-law and her husband, my brother-in-law and his wife, my stepson and his partner, and several good friends.
• I finished and sent out two memoir essays. One has been accepted for publication and I haven’t heard back about the other one. Relatedly, I participated in a weeklong online writing retreat, five weekend DIY writing retreats, and a four-week online writing course; I attended and participated in 12 online writing workshops; and I joined a writing group that meets every three weeks and have participated in three meetings.
• I planned a celebration of Tom’s life that I think captured the essence of who he was and why he is so deeply missed. I also had a bench commemorated to him at the park near our house and scattered some of his ashes in Oregon, one of his favorite places.
• I completed the probate process with/for/on Tom’s will. (I have no idea what preposition to use there, which shows how little I understand legalese.)
• I had and recovered from major surgery.
• I prepared for and won an appeal of my health insurance company’s denial of a $42,000 claim related to Tom’s stroke. When the claim was first denied, I thought the insurance company had just made a mistake, but then my first appeal was also denied and I began to worry. I was certain I would need to hire an attorney, but I handled the second-level appeal myself, which was a ton of work.
• I took four trips by myself and made plans to go to Europe this summer by myself.  
• I bought original artwork at an arts festival. The piece I bought makes me smile every day.
• I attended and participated in Buddhist meetings almost every week.
• I read five books and am almost done with a sixth.
• I watched the entirety of Schitt’s Creek.
• I filed my taxes.
• I remembered birthdays, anniversaries, and other important dates of loved ones.
• I blogged almost every week.

Even at work, where I have significantly underperformed,

• I applied for and was granted a sabbatical for the spring 2023 semester.
• I revised and resubmitted an article that will be published this summer.
• I collaborated with two colleagues on an edited collection of scholarly essays.  
• I attended my first conference since the pandemic began.
• I formed a committee to explore creating an interdisciplinary disabilities studies minor.

This list helps me see that the story I tell myself about being so sapped by grief that I can’t do anything is just not accurate. It is true that I haven’t kept up with the news or cleaned my house. But look at what I have done! I certainly don’t want to imply that a long list indicates a life well-lived, but I do frankly find value in every single item on this list. It actually is, for me, indicative of a life being well-lived, not because of the number of items on it but because every item on it is aligned with my values.

I suspect many of us can be pretty hard on ourselves when we are in the throes of emotional turmoil. I humbly suggest that the next time you feel like you’re doing nothing with your life, you make a list of what you are doing. You might be surprised by what it reveals.