Vision
3 years later, I've learned that grief doesn’t vanish, but it does change over time. It becomes a part of your life. I've had to learn how to build my life around it.
On my journey towards healing, I joined a mentoring group that required us to create yearly Vision Maps with a yearly focus word. I recently received my third Vision Map. I compared it to previous years and I became reflectively aware that I have grown. That growth is reflected in each years focus word.
Year 1: Healing
I won’t lie, the first year I actually backed out of the group. It was more of a desperate prayer than a plan. "Healing" felt so absolute, so monumental. How do you heal a broken heart? And maybe I didn’t want to heal. Maybe I wanted to sit in my pain.
My initial idea of healing was getting back to "normal." But there was no "normal" to get back to.
My definition of healing had to shift. It became about small victories. It was the first day I made a full meal just for myself. The first night I slept alone. It was about allowing myself to feel the grief without letting it consume me. It was learning that healing didn't mean forgetting, but integrating. It’s the process of mending, not erasing the pieces. And now, I look at that word and I see the progress. The scar is there, and it’s tender, but it’s no longer an open wound.
Year 2: Quiet Storm
When I chose this word, I was probably thinking of my internal state. I was the widow, calm and functional on the outside for my family, my business, my life, while raging within. It was my private struggle that I navigated in the silence of my own thoughts.
But over the last three years, its meaning has evolved beautifully. It’s no longer about the chaos I kept hidden. It’s about the strength I’ve discovered within the silence. I am quieter now. The loss has made me introspective. I've found a different kind of power in the still, small voice inside me. I am a entrepreneur, running my own business, Just Keep Going, named for a mantra that became my lifeline.
The "Quiet Storm" is now my internal reservoir of resilience. It’s the determined, unwavering part of me that, when everything else falls silent, whispers, "Just keep going." It is a force, a storm that is centered, focused, and purposeful. It is the strength to build, to dream, and to thrive, even when the storm is pouring down.
Year 3: Peace & Patience
If healing was the journey and the Quiet Storm was the power, this last phrase is the destination I am finally beginning to reach. "Peace & Patience" went on my board as the raw edges of my grief have begun to soften.
I had no patience in the beginning. I wanted to be okay now. I wanted the pain to stop now. I wanted to have answers for "what next" now. I had to learn painfully, that grief has its own timetable, and growth can't be rushed. "Patience" was the hardest lesson. It was learning to sit with my own uncomfortableness. It was extending grace to myself when I stumbled, when I had a sudden grief day out of nowhere. It was trusting that, with time and care, the sun would shine again.
And "Peace"? Peace isn’t the absence of the missing DT, but the presence of acceptance. It’s a quiet sense that "this is okay." It’s looking around my home and feeling solitude. It’s planning for the future without a sense of guilt. It's the moment I can think about our love with a smile before the tears come. Finding "Peace & Patience" is my greatest achievement. It is the stillness after the storm, the reward for the long, hard work of growth. It is the deep, life-affirming realization that while my old life ended, my new one, however unexpected and difficult to build, can be a place of beauty, resilience, and even joy.
Three years forward, I am a very different Tameka. I am scarred, and I will always miss DT. But I am also a woman who has healed, who possesses the strength of a quiet storm, and who has finally found peace, built on a foundation of hard-won patience. And my vision boards? They are not a reminders of loss; they are maps to a future that I am learning to navigate through.
