Supporting young widows with moving into the next stage of their life
The majority of marriages happen with the expectation that you'll hopefully grow old together, but some women are widowed at a young age. This can leave you both with feelings of loss for your spouse and also the plans and dreams that you had for your life together. There may also be young children who have lost their father figure and their plans and dreams for what they were going to do with daddy. Its important to grieve and not shut down (and trap in) your sorrow but this doesn't need to stop you from having a mindset of wanting joy in this next stage of life. You don't have to do this alone as there are people out there who will be happy to give you company and give you advice.
Websites Offering Support:
Widowed Young Support – Care for the Family
Widowed in Need
is a small charity created by a group of widowed people with the aim of supporting widows and widowers in financial distress.
WAY – Widowed and Young
is a national UK charity offering a peer-to-peer support network for young widowed men and women aged 50 and under.
Turn2us
includes information, if you are recently bereaved, on how to find out if there are benefits, grants or other financial support available to you. In most cases, the help from bereavement benefits assumes you lost your partner within the last 12 months.
Jolly Dollies
is a social network for widows.
Good Grief Trust
exists to help all those suffering grief in the UK. They aim to find the bereaved, acknowledge their grief and provide reassurance, a virtual hand of friendship and ongoing support. There is a map feature to help you find local support groups and charities as well as a wealth of advice.
They also include a Well-Being page, where you will find healing stories and tips on books and poetry, aimed to support you, and help you find alternative ways of coping with your grief. When you go through a life altering event, remembering to look after your self-care and well-being can fall to the wayside. It is through creating the space to nurture & soothe yourself that the courage and resilience that resides within us can flourish and grow.
At a Loss
helps you find appropriate and local bereavement support via their signposting website.
Books on this subject:
Widow To Widow: Thoughtful, Practical Ideas For Rebuilding Your Life
In this remarkably useful guide, widow, author, and therapist Genevieve Davis Ginsburg offers fellow widows-as well as their family and friends-sage advice for coping with the loss of a husband. From learning to travel and eat alone to creating new routines to surviving the holidays and anniversaries that reopen emotional wounds, Widow to Widow walks readers through the challenges of widowhood and encourages them on their path to building a new life.
What Doesn’t Kill Us: A guide to overcoming adversity and moving forward
Research has shown than anywhere from 30 to 90 per cent of people confronted by tragedy, horror and adversity emerge as wiser, more mature and more fulfilled people, sometimes despite great sadness. Relationships become stronger. Perspectives on life change. Inner strengths are found.
For the past twenty years, Stephen Joseph has worked with survivors of trauma and sufferers of posttraumatic stress. In this groundbreaking book, he boldly challenges the notion that trauma and its aftermath devastate and destroy the lives. His studies have shown that a wide range of traumatic events – from illness, separation, assault and bereavement to accidents, natural disasters and terrorism – can act as catalysts for positive change, strengthening relationships, changing one’s perspective and revealing inner strengths.
In What Doesn’t Kill Us, Stephen Joseph shares the six steps we can all use to manage our emotions and navigate adversity to find new meaning, purpose and direction in our lives.
Mars and Venus: Starting Over
Everybody wants a love that will last forever. . . but for many reasons relationships end. Each year millions of people are widowed, break up with their long-term partner or get divorced. The healing period after such a loss can be difficult, but getting over the grief, anger and pain can be much easier with expert help. In this book, relationship expert and dynamo John Gray offers comfort and empowering advice on how to overcome loss and gain the confidence to meet new people and engage in new relationships. There is hope. For the millions of newly single people in the UK, Mars and Venus Single Again is like a lifeguard at the dating pool.
It’s Ok That You’re Not Ok: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn’t Understand
In 2009, on a beautiful sunny day, Megan Devine witnessed the accidental drowning of her beloved partner Matt. “All my professional experience as a therapist felt meaningless,” she writes. “Grief literature is loaded with well-intended advice that can actually worsen and extend someone’s pain. We just don’t know how to handle loss in our culture.” Megan has dedicated herself to helping people find a new way to deal with loss that honors our experience without trying to “solve” grief.
With It’s OK That You’re Not OK, Megan reveals a path for navigating grief and loss not by trying to escape it, but by learning to live inside of it with more grace and strength. Through stories, research, life tips, and mindfulness-based practices, she offers a unique guide through an experience we all must face. Here she debunks the culturally prescribed goal of returning to a normal, “happy” life, replacing it with the skills and tools to help us experience and witness the pain of loss in ourselves and others–so we may meet our grief knowing it to be a natural step in the greater journey of love.
If There’s Anything I Can Do…: How to Help Someone Who Has Been Bereaved
Based on dozens of interviews with people who have lost their partner, this book tells what helped them and what upset them. For everyone who is close to someone who has lost a partner, this book advises on how to give the best possible support. It includes tips and guidance on what to say and what to do, what not to say and do, to help your friend cope a little better with their grief.
Death… And How To Survive It: A unique, practical and uplifting guide to coming to terms with the loss of your partner
Kate Boydell was widowed at the age of 33. She felt that her life had lost its purpose and she wanted it to end. But she got through it – and so can everyone. In this down-to-earth, practical, insightful and often humorous guide, Kate draws on her own experience of bereavement to offer frank advice on coping with every aspect of the grieving process.
Including:
– coping with the initial shock
– telling your children
– organising the funeral
– shopping and cooking
– getting back into dating
Videos on this subject:
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