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Sh*t People Said That Just Wasn’t True*
*at least not for me People say all sorts of crazy things to new widows. Some of it is platitudes (I’m thinking of you in this terrible time”), some of it is comforting (“remember that hilarious story your husband used to tell?”), and some of it is tough-love truth (“yes, your husband is gone, so let’s make sure your health insurance covers the kids”). I think it’s really hard to know what to say – I know I have screwed up when talking to new widows, even though I am a widow myself! So I try not to judge when people say things that are mildly insensitive or off-key. For…
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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…
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The Glamorous Cabal of Widows
We’d been singing Christmas carols for an hour, and I’d just been shot down by this cute guy across the room who I had hit on. He had a girlfriend, I reported back to my friends. “Boo!” they said, clinking glasses with me, before someone said, “but I think we should go meet the performer!” We were sitting in a furniture store at the beginning of December, in that long-ago time of 2019 when people regularly gathered indoors, and we ran over to catch the performer to say hello. He was dressed in a long white fur coat with rhinestones and a white feather hat to match. “Hi ladies!” he…
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To Read on Memorial Day
Every year around this time, there’s a pause to remember those we’ve lost in service to our country. I’m never quite sure what to do about this day, as I feel such a connection to any widow, but I also know that military widows have other layers to their loss that I don’t know. Today’s post are two short articles that have stuck with me. Both pieces are about widows who lost their husbands while they were serving in the US military. Shari Tolbert was a young mother and military spouse whose life was upended when her husband, Lt. Cmdr. Otis Vincent Tolbert was killed at the Pentagon on 9/11.…
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A Happy Ending
One of my favorite authors (who I profiled for the Post a few years ago) is Nora McInerny, a young widow who is a writer and a podcaster. She wrote a book that came out a few years ago called “No Happy Endings” which, as you can imagine, was about how there is always going to be grief that remains after losing someone, even if we find a new love. (It’s about a lot of other things, too, so check out this link if you’d like to read what I wrote.) In any case, lately I’ve been thinking about the idea that grief never really goes away. I think it’s…
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We Are Everywhere
I went to try on wedding dresses the other day and the craziest thing happened. I mean, let’s be clear, I kinda thought, “maybe trying on wedding dresses will be the subject of a blog post” because there was bound to be something that came up as a young widow, wasn’t there? But mostly, I was just excited that I could go with my dear friends Becky and Michelle – the same friends who’d been there when my kids were babies and planned Shawn’s funeral and helped me through the terrible early years of widowhood and actively encouraged me to date and shrieked with joy the night Chris and I…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
