I Was Unexpectedly Widowed At 36. I Expected To Grieve, But I Never Expected This.

Yahoo

07-07-2025

During the pandemic, my husband Brent bought a used Jon boat to escape the confinement of lockdowns — to find a sense of peace in nature.
On July 10, 2020, two hours after he took it out for a test drive, the police showed up at my door. Brent was missing. Two days later, EquuSearch found his body. He had drowned. He left behind two young sons, ages 11 and 3.
I was 36 — and suddenly, a widow.
In the days after his death, I moved through the world in a daze. The grief was crushing, but it wasn't just that. I began to feel lost and unmoored in a way that surprised and frustrated me. I expected the sorrow. What I didn't expect was the disorientation, the sense that I no longer recognized the world, or myself in it.
After all, I had strong friendships, a deeply fulfilling role as a newly appointed assistant professor of social work at the University of Houston-Downtown, and a clear sense of purpose as a researcher. I couldn't understand it — how I could be so surrounded, so rooted in meaning, and still feel like I was disappearing.
Later, as I pivoted my research to study young widowhood more deeply, I started to hear the same thing from others: 'I'm lost. I don't know who I am anymore.'
From research participants and grief scholars, I've come to understand this as the loss of self-familiarity. We aren't sealed-off individuals, we're co-created through our relationships. So when someone central to you dies, it's not just grief. It's the slow, disorienting unraveling of who you were in their presence.
I felt that unraveling most clearly in the smallest moments, like the first time I sat down for dinner without him.
Brent used to set a drink beside me every night at dinner. I never had to ask. It was just there — part of the rhythm we had created. Three days after he died, my family urged me to eat. I hadn't touched food in days. I was too terrified, too grief-stricken. I sat down in my usual spot at our breakfast table. My body moved the way it always did: I reached out for the drink that should be there.
But there was no drink.
Instantly, I realized no one would be thinking of me in that quiet, everyday way anymore. I felt less important. Unseen.
That small act — him pouring me a drink — had been a reflection of care, of attention, of mattering. I hadn't even known how much it meant until it was gone. The missing glass of water became the clearest symbol of what I had lost — not just Brent, but the quiet feeling of being cherished.
That's when I understood something I hadn't fully realized before: So much of my self-worth had been quietly held in his ordinary acts of care.
In that moment, everything I thought I knew about who I was began to unravel. I didn't have the language for it then. I just knew something inside me had shifted. I became unrecognizable to myself.
Some books give language to grief's sorrow. Fewer speak to the quiet horror of becoming unfamiliar to yourself.
Strangely, I began to recognize pieces of this experience not in grief literature, but in psychological horror films. In one movie, 'The Substance' (2024), a discarded fitness icon takes a black-market serum that splits her into two bodies: her younger self and her deteriorating original form. The younger version starts stealing time, accelerating the original woman's decay.
One morning, she wakes to find just one finger aged beyond recognition. Over a short period of time, she watches in helpless terror as her body becomes something monstrous.
That jolt of horror — of watching yourself change and not being able to stop it — felt eerily familiar.
Because what grief did to me and to other mourners wasn't just emotional. It was embodied. It was cognitive. It was identity-shattering.
My body felt different too. My chest felt tight, like an elephant was sitting on it. My joints ached. I was exhausted all the time.
I had always loved movement. But after Brent died, it became something else entirely. Certain songs in workout classes would bring me to tears. Physical effort unearthed buried emotion. I'd cry while stretching. During the pandemic, I was grateful for the masks because they gave me privacy to fall apart without having to explain.
It wasn't that I couldn't move my body, it was that I couldn't bear what movement was unearthing. My body had become a mirror of what I was trying so hard to survive.
I started forgetting things. Losing things. The worst was my keys. I lost them constantly. I'd be late, panicked, digging through bags, retracing my steps. Eventually, I had to get my truck rekeyed.
After that, my twin sister Brenda showed up with a pack of Bluetooth trackers. She handed them to me like a care package. 'For the hard days,' she said.
She wasn't just talking about the keys. She was acknowledging how grief had hijacked my mind. How I couldn't hold onto anything — not objects, not time, not even a coherent sense of myself.
People call it 'grief brain.' And it's real. Your brain is doing invisible labor, trying to reconcile reality, review memories, scan for threat. That takes energy. What's left for daily tasks is minimal.
When you begin to lose yourself, you realize you are made of multiple parts. Some are intact — even strengthened — and others are still collapsing. People would see me at work and assume I was fine. My research on young widowhood even began to thrive. I focused intensely. I was productive. In my annual review, I received a comment that my research 'exceeded expectations.'
Meanwhile, I was writing things like this in private:
'I dread nights, fearful of the nightmares. I dread the mornings, with their terrible reminder of reality. I dread the days, knowing the desperate yearning for Brent always gives way to horror at how he died.'
I was in survival mode — just trying to stay alive.
Both were true. At the very same time.
Grief doesn't always look like tears. Sometimes it looks like achievement. Like showing up, smiling, getting it done — while falling apart in private.
I became a question mark to myself — unanswered, undefined. There was no map. Just blank space where the familiar used to be.
And the hardest part? Most people don't see it. You seem 'fine.' You're functioning. So they assume the worst is over.
And here is what becoming unfamiliar with yourself does: It makes it incredibly hard to rebuild and heal. People ask you what you need and you have no clue. You don't like what you used to. What used to bring you joy no longer does. And so, you lose trust in yourself. You become alienated from yourself and from others.
If you've felt this — if you're feeling it now — I want you to know: You're not crazy.
Writing this is my way of saying that you are not alone. It is possible to rebuild, but let's not pretend this is simple. It is complex, layered, and you have to start from scratch in places you thought were solid.
Five years later, I'm still finding my way through it. I've begun to catch glimpses of myself again — laughing with my son, feeling grounded in my work, sitting at a table with friends and feeling almost normal. I've also discovered brand new things. I like to dance now. I've fallen in love again. I even earned tenure.
It's not a clean return. It's slow. Layered. And still, somehow, holy.
I didn't just lose Brent. I lost the version of myself that existed with him. And I've had to grieve her, too — while slowly, unevenly, becoming someone new.
Dr. Liza Barros-Lane is a social work professor, researcher and founder of The Young Widowhood Project. Widowed at 36, she combines personal experience with research to better understand what it means to lose a partner too soon. Find her on Instagram and Facebook at @the_widowed_researcher.
Do you have a compelling personal story you'd like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we're looking for here and send us a pitch at [e-mail].