When my husband went missing in Vietnam & wasn't found, I went numb. I was having our baby any day, so when my friends asked how I felt I said, "Fat."

All that went through my mind for weeks were brief scenes from B&W WWII movies where women were being told their husbands had died in action.... Brave, resolute women breaking down only in a private moment with their best friend....

And over the next couple of years I slowly figured out where I was, how I felt, by traveling backward from them out there to me. Sometimes we get shut off from our feelings and we have to go a longer way around back to find ourselves.

So maybe by imagining "what one would feel and if it were someone else," that will work for you in the way the B&W movie scenes did for me. You'll have a place to begin, and from there you'll find your way back to your real feelings.

It took me eight years, with help, to begin to heal from Marty's MIA "death," & that's fast as trauma recovery goes. But I'm not over it. Just better.

Better is good.

Roadie