If you haven’t seen it yet and are planning to, stop reading right now. And get your freaking ticket ASAP, this movie is AWESOME. I loved being able to see it with three generations of the wonder women in my family.  It’s about dang time we get to see such a strong female lead, and DC sure threw down the gauntlet for Marvel.  But that’s not what this post is about.

While I left the theater wanting to a get a sword and fight bad guys and stuff, I was also reeling.

I couldn’t find a single image of the scene that kicked my ass. Interesting. Guess grief really is that hard to look at.

Dan was a soldier.  A regular American bad ass defender of freedom, protector of others, and fighter of dangerous people. AATW!  So when Steve made his heroic choice, it wasn’t really a decision. It was his only option. To have taken any other action would have meant betraying who he was at his core. I was a military wife for a lot of years, so that scene didn’t really hurt me as much as sadden me. It is a movie, after all.

It was Diana’s reaction that brought me to my knees.  Her grief was palpable, painful, raw, and perfectly captured by both the director and the actor. And it mirrored the intensity of my own grief.  I’ve come a long way in the last year, but that scene stole the air from my lungs. Literally.  I felt my pulse shoot up and the hyperventilating start and knew a PTSD anxiety attack was not far behind.  Bearing witness to her grief ripped open the healing scars on my heart. Had I been prepared that it was coming, it may not have been quite as overwhelming.  Or it may have been just as bad. Who knows. Honestly, just thinking about that scene weeks later still raises my blood pressure. I was so thankful for the powerful ass-kicking fight scene that followed because it was the distraction I needed to regain control of my lungs.

What few W’s want to acknowledge is that her grief, our grief, is a catalyst for the transformation into someone stronger.  Someone MORE despite the loss. Someone who can value both the best and worst in others. Someone who doesn’t give up. Someone who will mourn for their rest of their life, but who keeps living in spite of it. While I don’t have lightning shooting out of my hands (too bad, I can think of a few occasions where that would be handy), I will battle my grief until the end.

So yeah, I’m not saying I’m Wonder Woman, but WW also stands for Wandering Widow, and you’ve never seen us in the same room.

XOXO,

The Wandering Widow