Belonging To Yourself When The Role Is Gone
Belonging means more than just loving. It means including.
There was a woman who had spent years woven into the fabric of her family’s life — especially during the holidays. In the kitchen at Thanksgiving with the grandkids, roasting the turkey, making cookies, soaking in their stories of school and camp. She was embedded in their lives in the way that feels permanent, until it doesn’t.
Because she had lost her husband five years earlier, those celebrations were essential to her sense of belonging. And as the children and grandchildren slowly created their own ways of celebrating — ways that didn’t include her — she felt pushed aside. She was no longer included.
But her story stopped there.
And I kept thinking: what if it hadn’t?
What if she had written: And that’s when I asked myself — what am I going to do now? Could she create her own story? Build her own experiences, her own traditions, as she becomes someone new?
Could I?
I am writing this as a widow. Lee passed away in March. And the question — what am I going to do now — has never felt more immediate, or more mine.
The Exit No One Talks About
Role Exit Theory, developed by sociologist Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh, describes what happens when people leave a life-defining role — spouse, professional, parent, caregiver. The transition maps directly onto what I have lived.
Ebaugh identified four stages:
Doubt — feeling dissatisfaction or lack of fulfillment in your current role. It took me a long time to say this out loud, but I was unfulfilled and lonely as a caregiver. As devoted as I was, the role didn’t support me or lift me up. That’s hard to say, but true.
Alternatives — searching for new options, evaluating them, realizing that life outside the role is possible. I began, gradually, to try new things. Joining. Engaging. Learning. Forging new friendships. Re-establishing old friendships. Tentative at first, then with more intention.
Turning Points — specific moments or decisions that trigger the actual exit.
One of those turning points came in the summer of 2023, when we came home from what I didn’t yet know would be our last trip together. Not because I failed, but because Lee was telling me something about where he was going, and part of loving him was learning to hear him even when he didn’t have the words for it anymore. I wrote about that night in A Letter to Myself — The Suitcase by the Door.
When visiting Lee was no longer possible, I understood — not all at once, but in the quiet way understanding arrives — that it was time to move forward. Even in baby steps. Especially in baby steps.
Creation of New Identity — building a new identity that often incorporates the past role, rather than erasing it. I honor Lee every day. A lingering look at a photograph. A memory triggered by something small — a song, a smell, a particular quality of afternoon light. The Celebration of Life we’ll hold in a few weeks will help me, and our community of friends, honor him and say goodbye. The roles I lived with Lee — wife, friend, caregiver, partner in everything — help shape who I am becoming. They are not behind me. They are part of me.
I transitioned from wife to caregiver to widow. The fourth stage — creating a new identity — is the one I am living inside right now. Not as a destination, but as a daily practice. Some days it feels like progress. Some days it feels like starting over.
Include Yourself in Your Own Life
Belonging to self is a deep, internal, active commitment. Self-acceptance. Autonomy. Self-love. Being your own best advocate — not waiting for someone else to include you, but choosing to include yourself.
When Lee declined to the point where he no longer knew me and moved to assisted living, I essentially became a widow before I was one. Not married, not single — suspended somewhere in between. Many of you know this feeling. The word for it still doesn’t exist. Now that Lee is gone, the word is widow. And I am still figuring out what to do with it.
I tried several things to feel normal again.
I tried to recreate my past life, just without my husband. The evening news and a glass of wine. New recipes. Sunday mornings on the porch with the paper. These were easily replicated. Without my partner, they felt like going through the motions of a life that no longer quite fit.
I tried to insert myself into the lives of friends who had shown such support during the caregiving years. Dinners out. Invitations. Suggestions of a movie. In many cases I ran into a brick wall — we’ll take a rain check — and after several of those, I understood: the support had a natural limit. They were embedded in their own lives. That doesn’t make them bad friends. It makes them human. There’s no playbook for this, on either side.
I wrote recently about a friend who knew, in her way, what I was going through — and how even the most well-meaning words can miss the mark. Sometimes sharing our own experiences, instead of simply listening to the person speaking, diminishes the weight of what they have to say. I explored this in She Knew.
I tried to reconnect with friends from my distant past — colleagues, coworkers, people from college and my younger years. We laughed about old times. But there was a strain once we moved past the reminiscences. We had become different people, living different lives, and the distance between them was hard to bridge.
Nothing worked. And it was hurtful. I felt rejected, isolated, and very alone.
But over time — not coincidentally, as I started writing and researching my grief — I arrived at four things I now know to be true.
I can’t go back. I can treasure the memories of shared routines and rituals, but without my partner, I was performing a version of my old life rather than living a new one. There is a difference, and eventually you feel it.
Not every friend who supported me through caregiving is going to include me in their life going forward. As well-intentioned and sincere as people are, not everyone is able — or willing — to open their lives to make room. The support ended with thoughts and prayers. They were doing their best to provide love and support, in a way that was comfortable for them.
I give myself permission to evolve. To learn. To create a whole new life — a new universe — without needing outside acceptance first. I am allowed to pursue interests, activities, and dreams without waiting for someone else to validate them. Part of building that new universe was deciding what to bring with me — and what to let go. I wrote about that process in The Non-Negotiables.
And a fourth thing, newer and still being learned: grief after caregiving is not the same as grief after sudden loss. I had already said goodbye in so many ways before Lee died. What I am navigating now is not only the loss of him — but the loss of the role, the routine, the identity that caregiving gave me, even as it took so much away. That grief has its own shape. And it deserves its own name.
Belonging to self means trusting your gut, prioritizing your needs, and above all, honoring your worth — regardless of external validation. Brené Brown calls this the wilderness — that uncertain, often lonely place we inhabit when we stop performing for others and start living from the inside out. It takes courage to stay there. But once you are comfortable in a secure, authentic identity, you can stand alone without fear of loneliness or isolation. You stop needing the wilderness to end. You learn to belong there.
In fact, I believe — I really believe — that the world will want to join you.
This life is a journey. Filled with incredible sorrow and total joy. We live somewhere in between most of the time.
And that somewhere in between? That is where we get to decide who we are becoming.
I am a widow now. I am a writer. I am a Realtor. I am a woman learning, slowly and with great intention, to include herself in her own life. I am building a life that I actually enjoy every single day.
Where are you in your own role exit? I'd love to hear what stage feels most true to where you are right now — and what has helped you move through it.