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Ask a Widow: No One Is Ready
How do you know that you’re ready to date after loss? It’s one of the most common questions I get. In fact, just the other day, I got this (edited) email from a widow who had recently become interested in someone new. It had been about 18 months after the death of her husband. It left her with some conflicting feelings: I mean, I really like the guy, but my emotions can go overboard – I grieve, I like him as a friend, I want him as a boyfriend, I just want him as a friend, etc. This is tiring me out and I don’t know how to manage. Maybe…
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A Countdown Calendar for Grief?
Sometimes, I just can’t believe what I find on Google. The other day, I was trying to look up something for a blog post, and so I googled, “widowhood.” My eyes scanned over the first few hits, and one really stood out to me. The title of the article was, “First year of widowhood most harmful to mental health, according to a sample of over 70,000 middle aged women.” It’s an awkward title. But it made me think. And what I thought was, well no shit. I mean, of course the first year of widowhood is the most harmful to mental health, at least compared to the years that follow.…
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That’s What You Look For
I bet I think about dating more than most married women. Let me clarify – I don’t think about how I want to be dating someone else! But I do think about what it’s like for other people who are dating. Especially widows. Unlike many of my married friends, I have a number of single friends (yes, many of my single friends are widows). Plus, I have this blog where people write me about their experiences dating. And wow – I hear a lot of crazy stories. Dating is a topic that I haven’t forgotten about since I married Chris. This is a radical change from the first time I…
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Shawn’s Birthday, Year 5
He would be 45 today. Wow, that seems so old. Maybe it’s because he only made it just over the hump, to his 40th birthday, and then so quickly left this earth. Shawn and I talked a lot about what it would mean to be forty (40!) and how it was this whole new step in our lives. And yet, he fell ill just a few months later, and died so quickly that we never really had the chance to think through what our forties would be like. I had to figure that out on my own. The first year without Shawn, I wrote two blog posts about his birthday.…
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Things That Remain: Accomplishment (Part 3 of 4)
In this four-part series, I discuss the things that remain for me (and for some of my readers) in the years after widowhood. I sobbed the first time I tried to change the wiper fluid in my car. I didn’t know how to do it. I mean, I had just turned 39 years old for chrissakes, an age at which you should know how to do such a thing. I’d been widowed for about two months and had pulled into a gas station to get gas and clean the dirty windshield. Here’s what happened, from the blog post, “Who’s Saving Our Basement?“ I got out to clean my windshield and…
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I Don’t Want Anyone to Know, But I Also Want Them to Be Happy for Me
The title of this blog post comes from a public comment I got from a young widow who was starting to date again. She wrote me about finding someone new after losing her husband in her 20s. She told me that being with someone new felt “complicated and weird” and that she really wasn’t sure whether she’d be with this new guy for a long time or not because there were so many difficult emotional issues she was still working through. Still, she was really excited about her new boyfriend. And she wasn’t telling anyone. At the end of the note, she wrote this: “I don’t want anyone to know,…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
