Coach Dawne: What Happened to Makeover Mondays?

So, here I am, eight months since my last email to you

In the intervening months, our remodel is complete. The house is beautiful, and joyful, and everyone who walks in remarks on how bright and happy it is.

My last post about the remodel was Week 8 of Makeover Mondays, “How to Cope with the Dust and Delirium of Remodeling.”

It was published on December 17, 2018, which turned out to be the day my husband took his own life.

I’ve recently published a piece on Medium about the fog of that day; you can read it here. As you can imagine, while I grimly proceeded with the remodel (the contractors and workers were beyond amazing, and a major factor in my ability to just put one foot in front of the other), these past few months have been exceedingly difficult, and every new touch in our home, every exclamation of joy from visitors, is bittersweet.

As to Coach Dawne?

I’m feeling ambivalent about next steps. As a friend advised me, right now my life won’t even be day by day; it’s moment by moment. That’s certainly true.

While I think that sharing my experiences over the past few months, and into the future, might be helpful to others, it was certainly not what I expected to be writing about. So I’m not sure what direction I’ll take this in, or if I will continue it at all.

Our Marriage

Recently, I ran across a document that Gene and I had prepared for a fellow writer working on her second book. The topic is marriage, and we shared our feelings and thoughts with her in October of 2018. We participated, thinking that we were an example of a “successful” marriage.

Although all our responses are very hard for me to read now, the hardest of all is Gene’s response to her question, “How did you know your spouse was the person you wanted to marry? And how did they know you were the one they wanted to marry?”

Here’s Gene’s response: “Dawne was cool: witty and very nice. She was just so easy to be with and very reliable. All that and gorgeous too! When we had (even heated) disagreements we would argue on a rational level. Also, her kids were cool and we got along well. I thought I was set for life (so far I’ve been right)!”

I, too, thought I was set for life

But life, of course, has a way of showing us, in ways both great and terrible, that the future is not promised, and that every day truly is a gift. It’s so important to remember that, particularly when you’re going through those terrible times.

I’d like to video our home, and share the results of the remodel; someday, I may be up to doing so, but today is not that day. However, I did want to share this piece for those of you who were wondering how things turned out.

Ironically, the last post on Coach Dawne is “How to Feel Worthy Even When You Feel Worthless”, an excellent read by guest poster Halle at Upbeat Motherhood. It’s an optimistic piece that I find myself rereading again and again.

I urge you to do so as well, and to remember that the future is not promised. So go forth and be kind to everyone you meet. ⧉