Photo by Mustafa Akkoyun
A wonderful new book on my bookshelf is A Widow’s Cry, a great book by Jamie Pulos-Fry that explores a widow’s resiliency and her continued role within society.
Regardless of the length of the relationship, losing a partner is a very traumatic and life-changing moment in anyone’s life. This is especially so for many women across the world who live in already oppressive and misogynistic societies. In such a situation where your fundamental rights and dignity are merely theoretical and unheard of in law, becoming a widow can be a terrible situation, which can often lead one to become unseen, unsupported, and acknowledged in many societies worldwide.
Yet, a widow’s resiliency in spite of these hardships is something to be amazed at and be astonished at; a great read to put on your bookshelf would be A Widow’s Cry by Jamie Pulos-Fry.
The Challenges of Being a Widow
There are several things that face a widow. While working out their intense feelings of grief and loss, they will also be faced with the uncertainties of financial difficulties, social ostracization, and, depending on where they live, outdated and dangerous regional traditions that may go into effect because of their marital status.
In several places around the world, the idea that a widow has inherent rights to her spouse’s properties is unheard of and even scoffed at. This is tied to her status as a woman, which almost always results in her claims to land and home being taken away, either given to male relatives or her male children, and her access to areas, like the bank and government buildings, being denied. In some cases, these widows’ right to raise their children may even be revoked, and, in the most serious situations, the children themselves become separated from their mothers.
You see, in certain areas over the globe, the rights of women, when compared to that of men, are severely limited and restricted. These already diminished rights become more so when a woman becomes widowed. This can include, but not are limited to, losing her right to travel alone without a chaperone, her right to ask for loans, her right to communicate with men, her right to dress in certain ways, her right to eat specific foods, etc.
This is a very terrible and horrific situation to be in, affecting not only the lives of the widow but the people under her care, especially her children.
And this is without speaking on the social and psychological pressures that widows find themselves in. While a widow’s resiliency does not easily break, it is still an exhausting experience to be subjected to old prejudices, obsolete ideas of gender, stereotypes, and many consequential traditions to contend with.
Some traditions can be extremely detrimental for widows to continue engaging with the community and interacting with the broader society. They will be regarded as more prone to diseases, forced to undergo cleansing rituals, plucked out of their roles in society, and marked physically to overtly signal that they are widowed women.
There are even cultures that, depending on the age of the woman, will have the widow be “given” to a new male partner, who is more often a sibling or a relative, without the need to ask for her permission or her thoughts on the matter.
Despite these dreadful and horrendous conditions, time and time again, we see a widow’s resiliency everywhere. Widowed women are now standing up and fighting for their rights.
A Widow’s Resiliency
Widows are some of the most robust and resilient women I’ve ever met. These women have experienced unimaginable loss–an incident that is unbearably painful and something that only we can truly understand in the future. Yet, despite this heavy weight on their minds, they still manage to pick up the pieces and carry on with their lives.
This is a widow’s resiliency, quiet but enduring like the mountain looming over the horizon. I’ve had the privilege of getting to know a few widows, and I am constantly in awe of their strength.
The greatest thing that strikes me the most about a widow’s resiliency is their profound ability to adapt to great changes in their life. Losing a spouse is something that I can’t imagine at this point in my life, but I suspect it would feel like your world is turned upside down and inside out. It is overwhelming; it is definitely daunting, but all the widows that I’ve known have always taken in stride as if they weren’t lifting the weight of the whole world on their shoulders.
Because this is the truth that everyone should know about widows: despite the cards they’ve been dealt with, they just continue to experience life as best they can.
Trina’s Travel 