Ruth Rigby - Widow Wisdom: How Grief Made Room For Happiness

All sorrows can be borne if you put them in a story
or tell a story about them.

Isac Dinesen

One small year
It's been an eternity
It's taken all of me to get here

Shawn Colvin

from song One Small Year

READERS RESPONSE:

• This is a go-to book for older widows.

• I had the same chills reading it a second time.

• The author writes about things I havent read before. It blew me away!

• I loved the song lyrics. They shifted the mood in a refreshing and fun way.

• This is a book that comes from the heart of a woman who knows of what she speaks!

• The author struggled with her identity as an older widow, and emerged with grace, confidence, and purpose. Let her experience with grief bring you to a point where you can feel those things, too.

• Im not a big reader, but this book was so interesting. It read like a novel.

• I love this book. The insights of the journey to find your self will inspire women to know how to move forward. Just wish I had a book like this to help me when I first became a widow.

• The pages to write down thoughts are priceless. The kite artwork is great, and I love the poems and music lyrics that soothed my memories.

• This book gave me peace of mind. It helped me understand being a new widow, and that over time I was going to be OK.

• The author supports other widows by sharing how she coped and made positive changes after losing her own husband.

AUTHOR'S INVITATION TO READ:

• It's okay to cry. Grief is a room that dwells within us. Sometimes we go there.

• I already knew what grief was. I was living it. I wanted to know how to get out of it!

• I wanted a book with laser focus on How did you live? What did you do? How long did it take? I wanted a story around those questions.

• How does grief make room for happiness? Widow Wisdom answers that question.

• This book is for every other older widow who, like me, wants to live beyond grief and seeks to know how.

• Think of your widow identity as only the time between the death of your husband and the time you intentionally declare it is time to act.

• What you will work for is the gradual transition from your widow identity to a life that is not defined by loss. That is what this book is about.

• I had not accepted my own day by day lifestyle deatha wife to widow life. I knew how to be wife; I did not know how to be widowalone.

• Initially, what I needed was another widow to emotionally dwell with mea wise womana woman who understood deeply because she had lived my experience. I never had that. This book imparts the wisdom I sought.

Charleston, SC
www.PalmettoPublishing.com

WIDOW WISDOM
Copyright 2021 by Ruth E. Rigby

All rights reserved

No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form by any meanselectronic,
mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherexcept for brief
quotations in printed reviews, without prior permission of the author.

Paperback: 978-1-63837-164-9
Hardcover: 978-1-63837-165-6
eBook: 978-1-63837-166-3

Copyright Permission

Talking to Grief poem by Denise Levertov, from POEMS 1972
1982 copyright 1978 by Denise Levertov. Reprinted by permission of
New Directions Publishing Corp.

U.S. and its territories rights only.

Public Domain

The Chambered Nautilus by Oliver Wendell Holmes
The Journey short story by Edith Wharton
The Open Boat short story by Stephen Crane
Hope is the thing with Feathers by Emily Dickinson
The Bustle in a House by Emily Dickinson

Fair Use
Limited portions of various works

FOR MY AUNT LOENA

a widow at forty-five

I did not know then what I know now.

Through it all, you ended up making us laugh
and showing us a good time.

We still tell your stories.

FOR NEWLY WIDOWED WOMEN

whose husband shockingly died during the
COVID-19 pandemic of 2020

maybe for Jessica, Mary, Denise, Katy, Brenda,
Elizabeth, Martha, Rose, and all the unnamed X

Your loss symbolizes a world's grief.

The Chambered Nautilus
(from stanza three)

Still, as the spiral grew

He left the past year's dwelling for the new,

Stole with soft step its shining archway through,

Built up its idle door,

Stretched in his last found home,

And knew the old no more.

by Oliver Wendell Holmes

SEARCHING FOR
WISDOM

The average age to become a widow is fifty-nine, so I consider myself fortunate to have made it longer than thatbut not by much. I was sixty-two when I was widowed. Even the word widow sounds so gloomy with its whispered W and its painful Oh ending. It's the right sounding word to parallel the emptiness, loss, and pain an older woman faces after her husband dies. It is a word that embodies hurt.

I know what grief is. I lived it. You know what grief is, too, even though you may not understand it. Either you are living with it clouding endless days and nights, or recovering from it sucking away joy and peace.

What I did not know was how to live my newly widowed life. No other widowed woman shared her shattered life experiences with me. (I only knew two.) Even my own mother could not offer a wisdom I had expected. It was just too personal. This book imparts the wisdom I sought.

Books offered to me by my grief counselor, although sincere, were too devotional and prayerful. They did not delve into the pith of my grief. I sought other books, but I was not ready for a technical analysis of grief, or psychological journaling workbook, or advice to navigate funeral and finances. Some books I browsed were just too long for my short, jittery attention span. Maybe save for later. Many books, heavy on grief, served as self-cathartic healing, which was fine for the writer, but placed little emphasis on the reader's need to step beyond grief. I wanted a book with laser focus on How did you live? What did you do? How long did it take? I wanted a story around those questions.

I found only one book of interest, one written by a prestigious writer, so I knew her telling would be precise and crafted. I started with Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, her mournful memoir about the one year following her husband's deadly heart attack as she routinely served dinner in their Manhattan apartment. Ordinary. I winnowed out the other tragedy of Didion's one year, the critical hospitalization of her only child, a daughter. It was overwhelming for me to read that part, too, newly widowed, while at the same time, navigating and advocating in a medical world, taking charge of her daughter's fight to live. How heartbreaking! Didion's experience was a lesson in how a woman braved a passage that most women will face, and few men will ever have to experience.

But, I needed Didion's story to continue past her one year, although I knew why she ended. It's finished. I already knew what grief was. I was living it. I wanted to know how to get out of it! I took the bits of wisdom I couldher stories from the past and her brave onward march through crisisto understand a newly widowed life, but my unanswered question stuck with me. How does grief make room for happiness? Widow Wisdom answers that question.