Widowoman - A Journey Into Widowhood

This week I had lunch with a friend of mine who has dealt with being a widow twice in her life. Although she is not someone who dwells in the negative, she also does not sugar coat anything and has no problem being really straight about what’s happened or what she is dealing with. One of the things she said at lunch reminded me of another aspect of this experience of being a widow that I have just become accustomed to. In response to something I said about only being seen as a widow, she said, “They probably don’t even see you at all. When my husband died I became invisible to a lot of people.” That is part of the journey that I have not paid much attention to. I am pretty good at making my presence known when I need to but when I looked at my life for the past 7 years, I realized she is right. For a lot of people I am invisible. When I talk with other women who are divorced or single by choice they admit they have a similar experience. The world is designed for couples and n...

One of the ongoing challenges for a widow who is also a mother (or mother figure) to adult children who lost their father is how to support them in dealing with their loss while grieving their own loss. I was lucky I realized this early on. I saw that my kids loved and supported me and were dealing with their own issues. They were also really concerned for me and how things would be for me and our experience was not free of their expectations about how I should be dealing with things. I am so very grateful that we have the kind of relationship that allows us to talk to each other about anything and to deal with things up front. Without that I can’t imagine that we would have traveled this path as smoothly as we have. And yet, there were moments. I hope that every widow and every child that reads this sees the importance of this piece of the puzzle. There was a time that I got my kids on the phone and told them to stop talking to each other about what I should be doing and to ...

If my brothers read this they will be able to fill in the blank in this statement without even thinking: “Opinions are like _________, everybody’s got one.” It was one of my Dad’s favorite sayings to remind us that opinions are a dime a dozen. For the most part they are worth listening to but that does not mean that you have to adopt them as your own. As a widow I have discovered that there is a whole world of opinion out there about how I should be, how I should act, what I should need, and how I should now live my life. Almost none of it is accurate for me but that does not stop people from expressing their opinions and expecting me to agree with them. For the most part I am okay with that. I know that, as my Dad said there is no shortage of opinions in the world and everyone thinks theirs is the right one and the one that others should adopt as their own. However, I will say that there is one aspect of this world of widowhood and the swirl of opinion that surrounds us that...