Here's the Wind - Up! (the pitch comes later)

Valerie Willman

http://www.valeriewillman.com

http://valeriewillman.blogspot.com

http://insaneparentsunite.blogspot.com

Grief Shadows: Young, Pregnant and Widowed

Nine years ago, three state troopers came to my living room at five in the morning and told me my husband had died in a car accident. He'd fallen asleep driving.

We had a 22-month-old daughter and I'd just told him four hours earlier that I was pregnant with our second child. And now I was a widow.

When I was acutely grieving, I looked everywhere for a book that would help me. Amazon.com, the library, my local bookstores. Nothing was there. In all my searching there were two books that eased my pain a bit. One was "I'm Grieving As Fast As I Can" filled with case studies and interviews of other young widows and widowers. The other was a book of letters one woman wrote her husband for one year after he died. This one, in particular, was the only book that held my hand and showed me what direction to face. I felt a little less isolated when I read it, like I'd met a fellow traveler.

Grief Shadows: Young, Pregnant and Widowed is the book I needed then.

Linked essays chronicle the tough decisions I now had to make alone and the isolation I felt after the death of my husband.

They address things like: who to give his clothes to, not being able to throw away his toothbrush, telling my daughter that her daddy was never coming home, picking out his casket, trying to decide whether or not to view his body and moving cross-country and discovering art as a healing tool. And how to start dating again.

Grief Shadows moves beyond the days and months after my husband died, and travels to more abstract -- yet still relevant issues, like dealing with guilt and grief in a blended family.

Grief Shadows is not just a monument or a legacy of memories, it's a chance to reach out and connect to other grieving souls. To let them know that they aren't alone and that the intense pain does yield and that grief -- soon enough -- becomes something of an accessory that can be worn with quiet grace -- even while it doesn't fully leave you.

I see this book in a number of places in the bookstore. Memoir, Self-Help, Parenting, or Healing and Grief Recovery.