A prop. A shoutout for the grief warriors Nora and Moe and all they have done for the widowed community and grief at large and me. They've created the Hot Young Widows Club. They give my grief meaning. Moe and Nora deserve every ounce of praise we can heap on them. Go here @noraborealis and prop on Twitter or IG. Moe? Damn my stalking abilities suck I can't find her Twitter or IG. And there is #hywc Hot Young Widows Club.
December 2008 Donna, my wife, was diagnosed with Stage IV Cancer. That was the moment I began my grief journey. Donna died August 2011 that was the moment my grief work began in earnest. I attacked my grief with writing, reading, posting, and sharing. I wrote a memoir Donna, A Photo Memoir of Love and Loss.
One of my first readings on grief was C.S. Lewis's essay A Grief Observed. I was overwhelmed by Lewis’s capturing exactly what I was feeling in the the darkness that consumed me. This essay became a lamp shining onto the path which I realized was my grief journey. It also became the entry point for my examination of grief, death, love, and loss. Lewis set the baseline for me for my grief. Maybe grief in general. Bookends of My Grief Reading List
Early that year I joined Widowed Village a community of widows and widowers. I found some solace and peace there where I could share my grief and loss. I also found that being in a community of widowed I learned more about my loss and what it meant to me. I began to understand how profound my loss was but also that all loss is painful. There was support there for me and I could support others. I realized my grief journey and work held meaning.
For the next few years writing, podcasting, sharing, talking, and being on this journey I learned that my grief was a wound. An open wound. The more I engaged with that wound I discovered that it's a place where light and knowledge entered me. Where the pain of loss I felt and lived with can become something more. Memories that hurt. Memories of what was and what isn't any longer become active and dance with other memories to create a new compendium of understanding about Donna, me, love, and us. Discreet stand alone moments meld with others and offer a better me to the world. I do not deny the pain is there but through that pain with that pain I am less broken but more me. More of who Donna loved into being. The wound of grief was the finger I traced across the braille of memories that was Donna.
April 2019 In my news feed I got this link "The messy, complicated truth about grief" it was the TED Talk by Nora McInerny. Well you can't disagree with the fact grief is messy. So I watched. McInerny is an excellent, smart, on point, and funny speaker and teller of grief truths. I could unleash my inner self and take a read on that TED Talk. As Donna would say "Who the fuck made you the little critic." Word.
McInerny referenced a site she and her friend Moe Richardson started. It is called Hot Young Widows Club. Richardson and McInerny started this. I read they were sitting around a kitchen table sorting out their grief journey.
I clicked over to the HYWC site and took a read. Well written, smart, and totally fits into my grief compendium. I went to see about the club. Could dudes join. Here is a link What We are About will answer any questions you may have. And men could join.Policies
I thought maybe I should join but I had some serious ass doubts about being read, since I am a broken old man and this club might just be filled with rando's who have no use for my grief journey. Nope no rando's because you had to pay $25 to register, a Certificate of Death was required, and their Policies are brilliant.
I applied. I was accepted. I will not look back. This was perhaps the best shitty club I ever joined. Let me deconstruct why I have that opinion. ( I have been in other support groups and they all were supportive and helpful so this is not my first rodeo.) Read the story here.
My Song of Love.
Nora and Moe created a space a place where grief and loss and pain can thrive. Grief can have a life beyond the crushing sense of loss where it pulls relentless at you and breaks your every moment. Nora and Moe have taken grief out of the darkness and allowed it to be shared in a way that I and others have learned to live with it. Have learned to become one with my grief in a way that makes it valued even in the moments of hurt.
The graph below is from Google NGram Book Viewer. It's where you can enter a word or words and track over centuries on how those words or phrases have occurred in a corpus of books. The graph below of the word grief since 1999 to 2018. Clearly grief is on the accent in books and in our community. This is especially apparent since 2014. All of you flex for this trend. Most of all Nora and Moe flex for what you've give the grief community and me.
Obviously I can barely find the words. The right words. The words that prop you both enough to show you all that you've done and continue to do. For me. For all of us. Maybe this works. I am forever here to support you both.
Nora Thank you
Moe Thank you
Hot Young Widows Club Thank you
PS: I was blessed to meet Nora at a talk she was giving. Let me just say, she is a brilliant speaker who crushes a presentation better than Tim Cook, she is so kind and generous, way tall, and her ink is fierce. What more could you ask for in a woman you admire, cherish, and want to follow.