Soul Widows ~ A Creative Healing Community for Young Widows

My husband died 21 months ago. since then I have been searching for someone to sit and talk with. I have been searching for a place where I feel like I belong. Grief is such a heavy burden and there is a need inside you to talk about what has happened. There is a need to talk about the person who died. You need someone to listen and be there for you. It is about counseling but it is also about belonging and feeling a sense of companionship with someone who has been there, or is there, right along beside you.

I cannot afford to pay for counseling. It is also difficult to find someone with whom you can connect. You will be telling stories that are personal. You will be revealing secrets and without so many words, you dearly want to see that someone sitting across from you understands. When you grieve you feel disconnected from a world that seems to largely want you to hurry up and “get better,” yet how can you that quickly? Someone who meant the world to you died and you will never be the same. Only someone who is intimate with grief can nod in understanding.

There are a many places to go for help; several organizations that offer retreats and weekend camps for widows and widowers to meet and talk. One such weekend I attended was in an enormous, luxurious hotel. Over 200 women were there, yet I never felt more alone. Yes, there were tears off to the side in clutches of women away from the enthusiasm of that weekend. I am sure there were women who felt just as out of place as I did, but I could not find them. I was told I did not try hard enough to join the festivities. When I did reach out to others I was kindly told that the group was sealed. They had their clutch of widows and were comfortable together. I would be an interloper. I was also told I carried with me pure raw emotion and was not representative of what that weekend was about. It was a gathering of widows and widowers who wanted to celebrate the strength they have found to rise above their sorrow.

There were informative sessions about writing techniques and how to deal with children who are grieving. There were sessions to meet the grief celebrities who had gotten book deals and who are very present on the media scene. It was supposed to be about getting up and getting on with our lives in a positive and joyful way.

I had been allowed to present the Memory Quilts I make for others but I was then informed that they distracted from the positive force of that weekend. I left that event feeling like a failure, feeling more alone than ever. Just because you are a widow, it does not mean another widow will understand you. Like anything else, it is uniquely personal.

I had gone hoping to find other widows who would sit and share with me. I had wanted to sit in a small group and talk about my husband. I wanted to talk about everlasting pain and sorrow. I had hoped to find other widows to share ideas with about how to find peace after the death of the one person I had hoped I would die before. I had never wanted to be on this Earth without him and yet that is what has happened to me. I wanted to find a group of women for whom laughter was spontaneous but not superficial. I wanted soulful.

I did not find it there, but I did find it with Soul Widows. A young widow, Elizabeth Woods, created this organization. Her husband, a Special Forces soldier serving in Afghanistan, was killed by enemy fire. Because of her loss she searched for a way to be heard. She searched for other women who had lost their husbands so that she could give, and in return, receive solace and support from them. She could not find such a group in her area so she used her strength to create such a group. Out of her pain and sorrow, her loss and search for hope, comes Soul Widows.

Elizabeth calls is a “sacred place.”  In her words:

You are here, my dear sisters, out of a place of pain. What you have suffered has felt humanly impossible, yet you are reading these words now...you are still living, feeling, receiving, and breathing. Here, you are held with an open heart that wants to reach out to your very spirit. You do not go this path alone. We are here with an intense commonality - the loss of our dear husbands, our soul mates, and our lives as we once knew them.

Soul Widows offers Spiritual Retreats at a beautiful old inn, Marilyn’s Melrose Inn in Tryon, NC. 

Here in this beautiful little town tucked close to the mountains, widows can gather to network through group interaction, group therapy, art sessions, rituals, and journal writing to experience the nurturing that can only come from soulful interaction.  There are healers there, counselors who have been, and are on, their own grief journey.  They are years ahead and yet, how long does it take to get over a loss?  There is no timeline.  And if you have lost, then you know you do not get over it.  These counselors have come full circle though as they return to their own pain and share what they felt, how they got through each day, and support those who are terribly new to this world of loss.

It is not a church group.  No specific doctrine is pushed.  It is not a large party with booze and grief celebrities lined up for photo opportunities.  It is a loosely organized three days of sharing, listening, being listened to, validating, and love.  A great many tears are shed but through tears comes relief.  Tears are sacred in this group and they know they must be shed.  Incredible, handsome, wonderfully flawed men were lost and they deserve our tears.  Three days of women bonding into a tribe of tight-knit sisters who are there for each other that weekend, and beyond.

Yes, beyond.  I attended the November Spiritual Retreat and am still in almost constant contact with these women.  There is a special, close page on Facebook where a Soul Widow can be invited to join to stay in touch with her sisters.

I admit I was terrified at first.  I had a jaded view of widows’ retreats after my previous failure, but from the moment I walked into the inn, Elizabeth calmed my fears.  She greeted everyone with heartfelt warmth and an awareness of the burdens we carried.  And looking into her eyes, the pain she carries each moment of every day linked us all to her.

There was no waiting around.  There is no forcing yourself into a group of strangers.  It is a small group that comes so that the experience is personal and intimate.  We picked our rooms and each set off through the halls of the inn to find our lovely special place to drop off our things. 

Then it is back down the stairs to meet for lunch to get to know each other informally while breaking bread, a form of communion for widows.  Noon on Friday and we are already forming bonds that will last long after the last car door closes on Sunday evening.

After lunch we adjourn to an alcove for our first group therapy session.  For this weekend there were six of us.  Six women whose lives had been torn apart by the sudden deaths of our husbands and one small but dynamic healer who has known great pain in her own life sit in an alcove beside a fire in comfortable chairs. 

We have created an altar on the bar behind us that faces the fireplace, which to me seemed right.  It is not above the fire.  It faces it.  Light and warmth, two of the things our husbands gave us while they lived.  Now that they have died, light and warmth is what we give to their memory.

The pain inside each of us is unbearable, and yet, all it took was that first session to feel that maybe, with the support, the comfort, the kindred spirits surrounding us, maybe we will survive this.  It was somber.  It was hysterical.  It was everything women can be all at once.  We sobbed for ourselves and for each other.  We laughed and held hands and almost fell out of our chairs at the stories we each related.  There was no censure.  There was nothing we could not say.  The alcove became our sanctuary.

We had our afternoon session and then dinner out on Friday night.  Afterwards we got into our pajamas and congregated on someone’s bed until sleep claimed us.

Saturday was a repeat with art therapy thrown in.  Sunday brought us more of what, by then, we craved.  Bonding.  Talking.  Listening.  Supporting.  Learning how to accept.  Learning that grief and tears are ours to hold close.  Our pain is not something to hurry and get through.  It is not something to hide from the world.  It is something that we will always have.  We lost our husbands.  We will always miss them.  We will laugh again.  We may love again.  But we will not be forced to be quiet if we are hurting.

It is not about healing.  It is about enduring and believing in ourselves.  It is about finding a balance between accepting our grief and finding joy again.  We need to live through our pain and make it a part of ourselves to survive it.  No one can hide from this kind of sorrow.  It knows where you live.  It will find you.  You must face it and work with it however it presents itself to you.  Souls Widows allows you to do that.

Elizabeth Woods, the founder and organizer of Soul Widows has a powerful heart. 

She is strong and her love for her husband is inviolate.  She has a maelstrom of emotions inside her and yet she brings to Soul Widows the nurturing and protective side of herself.  This is her way of saving herself and saving other widows who are lost out there.  Elizabeth has tried to gain recognition for her organization and been rejected.  I am writing this as a testament to her and her work, to the Spiritual Retreats she organizes and to the healers that assist her.  Elizabeth is a widow and a mother.  She apologizes to no one for her actions.  To me, she is a beating heart emerging from the gilded cage of her pain and grief and yet, she will always sit close to that cage for it reminds her of why she is working this hard, why she is putting herself out there for other widows.  She wants them to find the place she had been looking for.  I hope every widow who reads this follows the link below to Elizabeth’s Soul Widows webpage to investigate what she offers.  She was what I had been looking for.

The grief counselor that Elizabeth has for Soul Widows is small in stature and that is where it ends. 

She carries inside her a powerful spirit and a light that shines through the deepest darkness.  She is not afraid to come into the pain where you sit weeping.  She finds you and holds your hands and lets her voice enter your damaged soul.  She is a fiery fairy who fights for your right to cry.  She protects you while you are down.  She leads the way out of your sorrow.   She is fairy-like with her hair and unusual eyes, her feathers and beads on her clothes.  She has been called an angel for her work but I do not think angels can interfere as this woman does.  She cares and interferes and invades the darkness to find you.  She is a fairy.  I wish for someone like her in everyone’s life.

If you are grieving and looking for something you have not found yet, I hope that my words reach you.  Soul Widows is small, and though I believe it will grow, it will always stay small.  The Spiritual Retreats will stay small groups of women so that a personal connection is made for each woman who attends.  Elizabeth Woods and the grief counselors who assist her will continue on the path they have chosen because they do this out of love and compassion and their own needs to soothe and be soothed, to reach out to help and be helped.

Grief is not a journey one should go on alone.  We each need to find another who has been there, or is there along the road we find ourselves on after the death of a husband.    We need to find someone to cling to for a time, and in turn, realize our own inner strength; that we can hold on to someone who needs us as an anchor.  No one should fall so hard that someone does not hear them.  Soul Widows turns an ear to that darkness.  There are women there who hear and will come to you.  You can be a part of something, a clan, a tribe, a sisterhood of soulful women who can be there for you so that you never feel alone.

Soul Widows was exactly what I needed for my grieving process.  I still need them.  I reach out to them often, each for the individual gift these strong women who mourn bring.  I am still in darkness but I see the light of acceptance of my grief and a joining of friends who are gathered around a bright, warm fire.  There will still be stress and worry, sorrow and misery, but I am no longer out here alone.  I have my tribe.

Thank you to Elizabeth Woods and all who join Soul Widows.  And thank you to the tribe of women who accepted me, even saw something in me worth saving.

Peace to all who read.  Peace and light to all who grieve.