Emily's Story - A Bridge Over a Chasm

I've lost my husband.

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I can barely bring myself to say or write those words — as if each time I do, the reality of it sinks into a deeper, rawer layer of heartache. I still can't describe the past six months in any other way. The words desert me when I try. But my heart knows: his absence has left a void so deep, it feels as though the entire world has changed.

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My self-protection, oddly, is to reassure others that I'm fine. I carry on with a facade of strength — an autopilot that I'm both grateful for and exasperated by. Grateful, because I don't know where I'd be without it. Exasperated, because on the outside I look “normal,” but inside I feel nothing. Or numb. Or like a clouded shell of who I used to be.

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One evening, in the quiet that now fills my home, the gap between how I was functioning and how I was feeling became too wide — a chasm. It was tearing me apart. That was the moment I knew I needed help. I needed a bridge between those two parts of me.

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But the thought of reaching out felt overwhelming. Even the ordinary business of leaving the house seemed strangely difficult. How could the outside world still be so… normal? People going about their lives, shopping, chatting, making plans, while mine had changed beyond recognition. It made me doubt my own reality.

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As the day of my initial meeting approached, I felt both apprehensive and relieved. I wasn't sure what I would say, or whether I would find the words at all. But sitting with my therapist, something softened. The warmth and understanding I met in that moment brought me back to myself — or at least, to some long-buried part of me.

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Maybe a defence lifted.

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Maybe something ancient in me remembered how to honour what I'd lost.

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And once I began, the words came.

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All the feelings that had been buried found their way to the surface. I talked, and talked, and talked…