2019 has been a year to focus on reaching more people with our blog and increasing our effectiveness in assisting others. One of the questions we keep hearing is what age makes you a “young” widow. We, ourselves, struggled with answering this question. Teresa was 43 when she became a widow and Jeni was 40. In our searches for resources, we found little to help us in our widow journeys. Most of what we found was for widows much older than we were at the time.
Thus, Torn In Half was created. At the time, Young widow seemed an appropriate definition for us to use.
Because of our struggle to define a young widow and the realization that our website was reaching more than the young widow, we have decided to change our line from “young” widow to “early” widow.
So, how do we define “early” widow? For us, the “early” widow is anyone who has lost their spouse without much warning. For example, Teresa lost her husband due to a terrible and unexpected motorcycle accident. Jeni lost her husband due to a sudden and massive heart attack without any known health warnings.
We intend and hope that our site will also assist those who lose their spouse with some warning (such as a known illness that lingers or other such as terminal illness, prolonged grief of Alzheimers, ), our plan is to continue to speak from the perspective of the widow who loses her spouse without warning. Thus, we will use the term “early” widow.
Our experience in writing this blog has also taught us that our resources have helped not only widows but also widowers. We are pleased at this and hope that it will continue to help both men and women in grief.
What to expect from us in the future for Torn in Half? Our intention is to continue writing about grief, widowhood and the process of grief. We will post more blogs and resources on grief, stories about the grief journey, including yours, if you would be willing. We are working on a useful, practical mini-workbook for the first months of grief, a longer workbook and potentially companion book. We would really appreciate your input on future topics, please let us know what you would like to see included in these books and our blogs. Please share your ideas with us here.
Peace & blessings,
Jeni & Teresa
