Resources for Widows

From my bookshelf:

Alexander, Elizabeth. The Light of the World: A Memoir. New York: Grand Central, 2015. iBook.

Black, Elizabeth Head. Hand in Hand: Walking with the Psalms through Loneliness. Houston: Bright Sky Press, 2014.

Bonanno, George A. The Other Side of Sadness: What the New Science of Bereavement Tells Us About Life After Loss. New York: Basic Books, 2009. iBook.

Brody, Elaine M. Women in the Middle: Their Parent Care Years, 2nd ed., Springer Series on Lifestyles and Issues in Aging. New York: Springer Publishing Company, 2004.

Brooks, David. The Road to Character. New York: Random House, 2015.

Claypool, John R. Tracks of a Fellow Struggler: Living and Growing Through Grief, rev. ed. New Orleans: Insight Press, 1974. iBook.

Cuddy, Amy. Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2015. iBook.

De Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America. Translated by Henry Reeves. East Sussex, U.K.: Vigo Books, 1840. iBook.

Didion, Joan. The Year of Magical Thinking. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006. iBook.

Downes, John and Jordan Elliot Goodman. Finance and Investment Handbook, 9th ed. Hauppauge, New York: Barron’s Educational Series, Inc. 1986.

Duckworth, Angela. Grit: The Power of Passion and Perserverance. New York: Scribner, 2016. iBook.

Dweck, Carol S. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House, 2006. iBook.

Eswaran, Mukesh. Why Gender Matters in Economics. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2014. iBook.

Fleet, Carole Brody with Syd Harriet, Widows Wear Stilettos: A Practical and Emotional Guide for the Young Widow. Far Hills, New Jersey: New Horizon Press, 2009. iBook.

Garland, David E. “Philippians,” The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol. 12, Ephesians–Philemon, ed. Tremper Longman III and David E. Garland. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006.

Ginsburg, Genevieve Davis. Widow to Widow: Thoughtful, Practical Ideas for Rebuilding Your Life, rev. ed. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Da Capo Press, 1995. iBook.

Graham, Katherine. Personal History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.

Guiliano, Mireille. Women, Work and the Art of Savoir Faire: Business Sense and Sensibility. New York: Atria Books, 2009. iBook.

Hirsch, Edward. Gabriel: A Poem. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014.

Kaufman, Sarah L. The Art of Grace: On Moving Well Through Life. New York: W.W. Norton, 2016. iBook.

Kleberg, Sally S. The Stewardship of Wealth: Managing Personal and Financial Assets. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997.

Lewis, C.S., A Grief Observed. New York: HarperCollins, 1961. iBook.

———. Mere Christianity. New York: HarperCollins, 1952. iBook.

———. The Problem of Pain. New York: HarperCollins, 1940. iBook.

———. Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1955. iBook.

Lindbergh, Anne Morrow. Gift From the Sea. New York: Pantheon Books, 1955. iBook.

McRaven, William H. Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life…and Maybe the World. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2017. iBook.

Mischel, Walter. The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control. New York: Little, Brown, 2014. iBook.

Morris, Jonathan. The Way of Serenity: Finding Peace and Happiness in the Serenity Prayer. San Francisco: HarperOne, 2014. iBook.

Newport, Frank. God Is Alive and Well: The Future of Religion in America. New York: Gallup Press, 2012.

Oates, Joyce Carol. A Widow’s Story: A Memoir. New York: HarperCollins, 2011. iBook.

Piper, Watty. The Little Engine That Could. New York: Platt and Munk, 1930.

Rehm, Diane. On My Own. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016. iBook.

Sacks, Oliver. Gratitude. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015. iBook.

Sandberg, Sheryl and Adam Grant. Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2017. iBook.

Smith, Christian and Hilary Davidson. The Paradox of Generosity: Giving We Receive, Grasping We Lose. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2014. iBook.

For the Holidays:

A list of (and links to) blogs and articles by numerous authors on coping with the Holidays here. Twitter is a good resource in itself–#grief #holidays or whatever key words you wish to search. You can narrow the search to the relationship you’ve lost–#child #spouse #parent etc.

A search of Books in Print for spouse grief death yielded only 39 titles in May 2015. Some of these were duplicates—ebook, hardback, paperback—and most appear to have been published by independent publishing companies or organizations. None were among Amazon.com 100 best-sellers in the categories of relationships>love and loss or grief and bereavement>death and grief.

In fact, among Amazon’s Top 20, few authors write specifically for this vast market of widows who must now learn to live alone.

Grief experts agree that widows get too much advice—too many people telling them how to grieve, how long to grieve, when to make decisions, when to move on. What works for one person may not work for another. There is no single right or wrong way to mourn the loss of a spouse. Nevertheless, most books on grief are how-to books written in second-person. Self-help books also tend to deal with only a few aspects of grief: What one needs to know in settling the estate, in managing finances, in dating again, in rearing children alone.

The experts also agree that platitudes about the loved one being with the angels and the like are not helpful, yet most religious devotional books on grief do exactly that. And while they usually concentrate on faith, heaven, and eternity, other books are almost completely devoid of any reference to the spiritual components of grief and healing.

Memoirs of grief by widows are beneficial because they capture the craziness and haziness of those first months. Like grief recovery groups, they normalize the experience of overwhelming grief for the new widow. She learns that she is not alone. She is not losing her mind. Her reaction is normal. However, most memoirs are based on journals kept those first dark, painful months. Few offer hope that life will be good again.

The stories of sudden, unusual, traumatic, and young death are more likely to be published; yet less than one percent of women under 40 are widowed and under two percent of women between 40 and 49.

Most of Amazon’s Top 20 are classics:
Three memoirs deserve special attention and comment:

The Light of the World: A Memoir, by Elizabeth Alexander, was published April 21, 2015, and was #15 on the Amazon list in June. Alexander, a noted poet, was married fifteen years to an artist from Eritrea, in East Africa; and her grief was that of a fifty-year-old woman with two young sons. Her descriptions of him and his culture, of their family life, and their love are lyrical; and her ability to describe her grief resonates. My bed, the bedroom, the house, was suffused with sorrow. Sorrow like vapor, sorrow like smoke, sorrow like quicksand, sorrow like an ocean, sorrow louder and fuller than the church songs, sorrow everywhere with nowhere to go.

Unlike memoirs of grief by two literary authors a generation older than she, Joan Didion and Joyce Carol Oates, Alexander’s book expresses hope for the future and gratitude for what she had and what she still has.

The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion, was published in 2007, three years after her husband died unexpectedly of a massive heart attack. For much of that first year, her only daughter was in a coma, greatly complicating Didion’s grief. Recently the book was #16 among memoirs by authors.

A Widow’s Story: A Memoir, by Joyce Carol Oates, 2011, also dealt with the sudden death of her husband in February 2008. Both Didion and Oates describe the horrors of those first months of widowhood in painful, graphic, elegant language. Both are very dark, devoid of faith and hope. Some reviewers criticized Oates for ending her story in August 2008, before she met Dr. Charles Gross, a professor of neuroscience, whom she married in 2009. It was as if—to tell a more compelling story—she omitted the fact that life does go on and can be happy.

All three memoirs of grief assure new widows that their haziness and craziness is normal, that they are not losing their minds. In fact, that is probably the value of memoir for those widows who do not have friends who can function as role models and mentors. However, these unique, individual experiences—often told without later reflection—fail to offer guidance on how to move from grief to happiness.

Coming soon: A list of helpful websites.