• Family of DC widow blog writer Marjorie Brimley watches movie from pool
    Family & Friends

    The Clark Family, Part 2

    I was a bit nervous the week before my family’s 4th of July reunion. If I’m being honest, I got so nervous at one point that I had a hard time sleeping. It’s not a new feeling for me. Much of early widowhood (at least a year and a half!) was filled with sleepless nights, and just after I felt like I was really settling into life as a young widow, the pandemic hit. But this recent sleeplessness was not because of the pandemic – everyone in my family who could be vaccinated had been, and we took all the precautions we could for the little ones. Rather, my sleeplessness…

  • DC widow blog writer Marjorie Brimley in her garden
    New Perspectives

    Successes (Part 2 of 2)

    My life as a young widow has included a lot of failure, especially in (though not limited to!) the first year. There were so many things I did wrong, so many choices I regretted and so many ways in which I made my already difficult circumstances worse. And yet, my years of widowhood have not all been about failure. In fact – even that first year – I’ve had some successes. So, here they are! Ways I’ve succeeded as a widow: Logistics: One of the very first failures I experienced was my broken washing machine, which happened less than a week after Shawn died. It was just the start of…

  • DC widow blog writer Marjorie Brimley with kids
    Things That Suck

    Failures (Part 1 of 2)

    Today’s blog post is about failure and all the ways that I’ve failed in widowhood and wow, it’s been a humbling one to write! As I began to write this post, I thought, “I bet the internet has something to say about widow failures” and boy I was right. Seems that there’s a lot our there about how we can fail. But, really, I didn’t need to read anything online. I’ve already lived plenty of failure over the past three-and-a-half years. Yes, if you’ve just started reading my blog, you may read some of my stories about my kids’ positive life experiences or my new partner Chris and think, “she…

  • Cemetery of DC widow blog writer Marjorie Brimley
    New Perspectives

    What Happens to My Body When I Die?

    It was dinnertime on Father’s Day this year when Claire looked at me and said, “wait, we didn’t go to the cemetery today!” She didn’t look upset, just surprised. Didn’t we always go to the cemetery on Father’s Day? In fact, we haven’t always done that. The very first Father’s Day I celebrated without Shawn, we went to the toy store and the local diner and the pool. I wanted to make sure it felt like a fun day for the kids, and for me. While we went in 2019 and 2020, this year we all wanted to celebrate Chris, and though we spent time remembering Shawn, we didn’t go…

  • Bread made by DC widow writer Marjorie Brimley
    Holidays

    Shawn’s Birthday, Year 4

    I bake at least four loaves of bread every week. I know, it may seem excessive, but I’ve got three kids! Still, that’s not really the reason I bake so much bread. Mostly, I do it because I love it. I haven’t always baked bread like I do now. I learned how to do it in my 20s, but it was a “special event” sort of thing, something I did maybe once or twice a year. I didn’t have any special equipment or techniques (I used Jim Lahey’s no-knead recipe) and mostly, I just bought our bread at the grocery store. Shawn used to love it when I made homemade…

  • Wheat and sunshine for International Widows Day blog post by DC writer Marjorie Brimley
    Holidays

    International Widows Day

    A decade. That’s how long the United Nations has recognized International Widows Day – just ten years. Despite the fact that widows have faced high levels of discrimination, poverty and violence for literally thousands of years, it wasn’t until 2011 that the UN officially had an “International Widows Day.” Listen, I’m really glad that we finally have a day to raise awareness about widows around the world, but….it’s about time! Of course, being a widow in many parts of the world is not just about grief. Unfortunately in many cases, it’s also about the loss of basic stability and human rights. When I start to read about widows across the…