As a friend of a widow, people often come to me seeking advice about how to help their recently widowed friends. Normally, I find myself rattling off a million ideas but hadn’t really formulated a standard answer. As I have meditated and prayed for answers on how to assist others in their journey of supporting a widow, my answer has become very clear. The answer is simple. It is to take a step back from the emotion of the situation and discuss with your spouse/significant other and/or children how you as a family would like the support for the widow to look like. I will tell you my story first and then how I arrived at my answer.
When I received the call 4+ years ago that my best friend Michelle’s husband died, I jumped into overdrive. Unfortunately, I have seen two extremes of support. First, people either jump into high gear like me or, they feel so overwhelmed by grief, they don’t do anything. I believe most people immediately put themselves into the widow’s shoes and move forward with actions balancing between what they think they would want done for themselves if they were widowed, and what they think should be done. I too started doing the balancing act along with hearing Michelle saying over and over, “I don’t want people to forget about me,” and “I can’t believe I am doing this alone.” From the first night after her husband died, a few friends and I spent the night at her house for multiple months because she didn’t want to sleep alone and she had young children. We all spent many days at her house assisting her to just breathe. Understandably, it took a long time before she was ready to take back the cooking, cleaning, child rearing, etc from those of us who had stepped in. This is her story. What I didn’t stop to think about was, “What did my story look like during my role of supporter?”
When I received the call 4+ years ago that my best friend Michelle’s husband died, I jumped into overdrive. Unfortunately, I have seen two extremes of support. First, people either jump into high gear like me or, they feel so overwhelmed by grief, they don’t do anything. I believe most people immediately put themselves into the widow’s shoes and move forward with actions balancing between what they think they would want done for themselves if they were widowed, and what they think should be done. I too started doing the balancing act along with hearing Michelle saying over and over, “I don’t want people to forget about me,” and “I can’t believe I am doing this alone.” From the first night after her husband died, a few friends and I spent the night at her house for multiple months because she didn’t want to sleep alone and she had young children. We all spent many days at her house assisting her to just breathe. Understandably, it took a long time before she was ready to take back the cooking, cleaning, child rearing, etc from those of us who had stepped in. This is her story. What I didn’t stop to think about was, “What did my story look like during my role of supporter?”
Here is my story: I have an amazing husband and young children. I am so lucky that my husband didn’t leave me for abandoning him during Michelle’s time of grief. If asked, my husband says, “Our life became hers. When my wife wasn’t physically at her house, either Michelle or someone not knowing what to do for Michelle was calling my wife.” My husband married me for my drive and compassion, so my behavior was a bit expected. When the time came, I know it took a lot of courage for him to say, “I need you. I need you to be here when you are here. Chances are, there is a tomorrow and these phone calls from her and others can be answered tomorrow. Please let our time together be about us and our family, not about her and her grief.” What an amazing man I married. WOW.
I began to separate the times with Michelle and my family but because my Michelle had become so dependent on me, I wasn’t sure how to get my own life back when I had been at her house almost every weekday for 6 months. I started to crumble especially because “spectators” were happy to give me their opinions regarding the support everyone was giving Michelle and if it was enabling her not allowing her to move forward or, if we weren’t doing enough for her. I went to a therapist that discussed boundaries and the immediate need for some in my relationship with Michelle. Of course the therapist also had to go through how to overcome the guilt of wanting my own life back and the fact that I still had my husband and she didn’t. The therapist said that I needed to put myself first because I wasn’t giving anyone including myself the energy everyone needed. I realized that I was carrying around so many feelings of anger thinking everyone wanted 110% of me without regard to what it was costing me personally. What I quickly learned is that I WAS CREATING THE SITUATION…. no one was forcing me to behave the way I had been behaving by putting myself last, my family second and my widowed friend and her situation first.
Long story short, I am still happily married and Michelle is still my best friend. After pondering the events of the first 6 months after Michelle’s husband’s death, I now know what the first piece of advice I will give anyone supporting a widow from this day forward. My answer is to immediately sit down with their family and determine what supporting their widowed friend is going to look like for their family. Every hour you support a friend, whether they are widowed, divorced or other, is an hour away from your family. Together, you need to create a plan of how serving the widow and their family this should look. A few of the suggestions that came from the therapist are:
1) Discuss with your spouse/significant other what level of communication they would feel comfortable for you to be receiving/giving during their time with you.
2) Communicate to the widow that you are not available if/when she calls during family times so that she does not feel abandoned. Explain that there are only so many hours in a day and the people you love deserve for you to give each of them individually, the one on one time they ought to have.
I received a call from a man asking my opinion on how his family could support his best friend’s wife after the best friend had just passed away. I asked him what had been going through his mind regarding what they could do to help. He stated that there were repairs that needed to be done around her home, yard work to be done, etc and that he was planning on getting to work on those things. I asked him how his wife was going to feel 3 months down the road when he is doing more repair work on his friend’s widow’s home than on his own, how he thought his wife would feel. He sat quiet for a few minutes and then said, “I hadn’t thought through that far, I was just thinking about her immediate needs and how I could help.” Listening to him being ready to jump into his call to action, is when I got the answer to my first piece of advice to anyone supporting a widow, which is, create a plan as a family. I never stopped to think how my support was affecting others around me, especially my family.
I am not a therapist, I am not a coach, and I am just a person who always strives to learn from my past. My answer to anyone asking for advice from this day forward is that their first step must be having a family meeting regarding how they best feel they can support the widow and move forward accordingly. When life is out of balance, there isn’t anything that is getting the full attention it deserves. I realize that people do either too much or too little because often time, they did not discuss it with their family first.
I am not a therapist, I am not a coach, and I am just a person who always strives to learn from my past. My answer to anyone asking for advice from this day forward is that their first step must be having a family meeting regarding how they best feel they can support the widow and move forward accordingly. When life is out of balance, there isn’t anything that is getting the full attention it deserves. I realize that people do either too much or too little because often time, they did not discuss it with their family first.
~ Problems arise in that one has to find a balance between what people need from you and what you need for yourself. ~ Author Unknown
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