My husband Duane and I are at our timeshare in Sedona, AZ.  It's absolutely gorgeous out -- one of those crisp winter days with bright blue skies, golden sunlight, and the sound of Oak Creek outside the timeshare windows!

This is the last day of our mini-vacation and suddenly Duane isn't feeling well.   I pack the car and we begin the trip home. 

About 90 minutes from Tucson, suddenly and unexpectedly I hear the snore that signals Duane's last breath!  This was not just sudden and unexpected, it was unanticipated and totally catastrophic! 

We're in the middle of an extremely desolate section of the interstate.

What to do?

Thank goodness for a cell phone!  But wait! ...  911 can't hear me and I can't hear them!

Who knew that this particular stretch of freeway would have cell phone dead zones and that it would take so long for help to arrive.

I remember sitting in the emergency room of the closest hospital saying over and over again to some friends:

Just the day before we had been planning a new life for ourselves!

• new location

• new jobs - maybe even self-employment

• new adventures!
  

Everything we had planned was yanked from my arms!

The uppermost thoughts in my mind for days were:

Duane left no life insurance, no will, no estate, and minimal financial support. 

Additionally just 5 months before his death we had bought a new house; one month before he died, I was suddenly jobless and we had agreed that I would take time to study for and pass a national certification exam before returning to the workforce. 

Of course I read about the grieving process, what to expect and so on but the reality is that there are preconceived ideas of how grief should be handled; set time-frames, if you will, for progressing from one stage of grief to the next. 

Unfortunately I didn't follow the "traditional" or "prescribed" grieving process well at all.   But then who does?  Grief is such an individual process.  So why, you might ask, is there a specific "process"? 

The question then became, what processes and strategies are there for people like me who have our own special individual needs during our crucial life-altering events?

Structures tend to not only be rigid but limiting and I'm a rebel at heart, so I resolved to find techniques that would not only help me, but also support others in finding their unique way. 

As so often happens with life-altering events such as this, my process led to some "ah-ha" moments!

Loss and the subsequent changes don't occur only when a loved one dies.  Loss covers so much more -- job or career change, downsizing, retirement, divorce, injury, illness, and loss of self.