Articles & essays especially for widowed parents. Personal essays, book reviews, author interviews, and the always-popular Ask an Expert column where you can get all your questions about widowed parenting answered.
Editorial Team
Jenny Lisk, Editor-in-Chief • Jocelyn Carbonara, Lead Editor • Peya Robbins, Editorial Assistant
Coming Soon!
If You Could Say One Thing to Widowed Parents, What Would it Be? (Part 1)
I hear so often from widowed parents that they feel lost and alone.
They don’t know anyone else who is widowed with kids or teens in their neighborhood or their kids’ school communities.
They’re not sure how to do this new job of widowed parenting.
They’re not sure who can even help.
When I started the Widowed Parent Podcast, my number one goal was to learn what I needed to know about parenting grieving children – and to share what I was learning so my listeners could learn, too.
Longtime listeners will know that I always ask some variation of this question at the end of the show:
“If you could say one thing to widowed parents, what would it be?”
I’ve gone back through the first 100 episodes of the Widowed Parent Podcast and pulled clips from eleven of my guests who answered this question.
Surgery Day = Self-Care Day
This week I had thumb surgery.
In a large metro area full of hospitals somehow it had to be done at Swedish Issaquah, where my late husband, Dennis, had a zillion radiation treatments for his brain cancer.
It’s a hospital I’ve only been to once or twice, except for taking him for those appointments – so it was impossible to walk in without flashing right back to that time.
But I digress.
My thumb has been terribly painful for the last six months. I was managing, sort of – but when I looked at the situation in terms of needing a functioning hand for the next 50 years, I said yes to surgery.
Widowed by Sunrise: My Transition from Stay-at-Home Mom to Working Widowed Mom
Little did I know that my husband had just eaten his last family dinner with us.
That a few short hours later I would wake to him having a heart attack in our bed.
That I would be frantically pounding on his chest, administering CPR, until the paramedics arrived, while our three children – ages 15, 5, and 17 months – slept peacefully in their own beds.
I thought my husband, Josh, was in good health. We lived a great life. It wasn’t overly lavish, but we traveled often and had just purchased our dream home ten months earlier.
The Book I Desperately Wanted to Find When I Became a Widowed Parent
When my husband Dennis died, and I didn’t know what I didn’t know about being a widowed parent, one of my first stops in the hunt for information was Amazon.
I mean, who hasn’t headed over there to type in a few words about whatever problem they need to solve or whichever information they need to learn, in hopes that just the right book will appear?
Eight years ago, I couldn’t find that book.
But now there’s a terrific book that covers exactly the sort of stuff I was looking for back then. I was thrilled when someone at Penguin Random House reached out to see if I would like to speak with Drs. Elena Lister and Michael Schwartzman about their book Giving Hope: Conversations with Children About Illness, Death, and Loss.
‘You Are Not Alone,’ Part 1: Attend Camp Widow
Everyone’s concerned about loneliness these days.
The US Surgeon General is talking about it.
My friend Allison Gilbert is writing a book with Dr. Ruth about it.
It seems that, as a society, we are collectively feeling more alone than ever.
Widowed parents won’t be surprised to hear this. I frequently hear from listeners of the Widowed Parent Podcast that they don’t know anyone else in their neighborhood, school community, or personal circle who is widowed and is now raising their kids or teens alone.
If this sounds like you, you should know: There are a lot of us. It’s why I pulled the voices of 48 widowed moms and dads into my latest book, “Widowed Parents Unite: 52 Tips to Get Through the First Year, from One Widowed Parent to Another.” I wanted you to hear directly from fellow widowed parents, and to know that you aren’t alone.
But: It’s one thing to begin feeling a little less alone, and another thing entirely to move toward actually being a little less alone.
For that, I’ve got some tips – beginning today with this: Attend Camp Widow.
I’m Afraid My Kids Will Never Be Happy
“I’m afraid my kids will never be happy.”
As the parent of a child whose father died when she was five, I’d say this is a common fear among parents raising children who have experienced death losses.
When a child’s parent dies, many things change for a family. This might include things like income, daily routines, and day-to-day support — plus the future you had imagined for your children. Suddenly so many things look and feel different, and it’s easy to hyperfocus on the fear that now that the worst has happened, your kids won’t have the happy and fulfilled childhood you want for them.
This isn’t an irrational fear.
My Kids Were George’s and Charlotte’s Ages When Their Dad Got Cancer. Here’s What I Learned About Parenting.
On an ordinary Friday evening when my son was 10 and my daughter was eight, I returned home to see my husband, Dennis, sitting on the couch with a funny look on his face. It was the kind of look that says, “something’s wrong.”
A few short weeks later, he was diagnosed with brain cancer.
As Catherine, Princess of Wales, disclosed to the world last week that she’s been diagnosed with cancer and is undergoing treatment, she mentioned that she and Prince William have taken time to “explain everything to George, Charlotte, and Louis in a way that’s appropriate for them, and to reassure them that I’m going to be ok.”
As a parent who had to explain to her kids that their dad had cancer, I feel for her. It’s a terrible task, and one that I doubt anyone is equipped for. I certainly wasn’t.
Along the way I’ve learned a great deal about parenting kids during a family health crisis. Should you find yourself in this situation, here are three things you should know.
3 Steps to Tame the To-Dos of Widowhood
Life is full of to-dos, even at the best of times. Dealing with all the additional details when you’re newly widowed can drive a parent to despair, because there are just so many things coming at you at a time when you feel like you have little to no control.
In the aftermath of Tracy’s death, I had to find a way to reduce the sense of being overwhelmed and to make progress on the things I needed to do to take care of my kids, myself, and all the legal, financial, medical, and household matters.
Anyone who’s done project management may recognize this as a variation of the Scrum approach to software development, with elements of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done.”
Here are my three steps to taming the to-dos of widowhood.
Sometimes the First Year of Widowhood Truly Is the Hardest
They coined him “The Eternal James Dean” that day.
My handsome, McSteamy husband had died suddenly, leaving us all in shock. Seeing his enlarged portrait in a black frame on an easel at the funeral as we typically do in Japan, it fell from one of his buddies’ lips: “It’s not fair — he’ll be forever remembered this way, at thirty-seven, while we all go on aging.”
I was the one who selected that photo — the meltiest smile from our recent getaway to Bali. His friend was right; Koichi would remain etched in our memories that way.
Returning home from the funeral, all I could think about was my face in the same black frame. My body was alive, but on the inside, I had died with him.
Butterflies and Death Anniversaries
In the months before the first anniversary of my husband’s death, my son and I raised butterflies. They started as tiny caterpillars, smaller than the size of a child’s fingernail. We planted milkweed, brought fresh leaves into the caterpillar house every day, cleaned out the poop. (Fun fact: Did you know caterpillar poop is called frass? You can impress your friends with this on your next nature hike).
Caterpillars poop. A LOT! Eric Carle did not write about this in his hungry caterpillar book. Or how butterflies live very short lives, and then die. Bad children’s book author.
Why do we not talk about these things?
Top 5 Episodes of the Widowed Parent Podcast in 2023
As 2023 comes to a close, I’m remembering this time seven years ago when I had a headache straight through the holiday period — starting at Thanksgiving and ending the day after January 8, the one-year anniversary of my husband Dennis’s death from brain cancer.
If you’re somewhere in that first year, please know this: it does get better.
And: You’re not alone.
I started the Widowed Parent Podcast back in 2018 to guide the journey of solo parenting after loss.
The first several years featured so many amazing guests. And now, I’m thrilled to share the Top 5 Most-Listened-To episodes of 2023.
How the Evolution of Kids Grief Impacts Us As Parents
Parenting is hard.
Widowed solo parenting to grieving kids? Impossible!
Most of us signed up to co-parent with our partner and had dreams of what our family would look like. When our partner died, our ideas of what this looked like died as well. We became the “everything” parent, with every responsibility landing on our shoulders.
Whether you have one child or multiple, each child’s grief experience will be unique. Each will grieve on their own schedule, but somehow, they all seem to do this at bedtime when our energy and patience are at a low!
Laurel Braitman’s “What Looks Like Bravery”: An Intimate Portrait of the Impact of Early Parent Loss Over the Decades
I can’t think of a better way to kick off Children’s Grief Awareness Month than to share my recent discussion with Laurel Braitman, author of the new memoir “What Looks Like Bravery: An Epic Journey Through Loss to Love.” Laurel’s dad died when she was 17 after being diagnosed with an aggressive metastatic cancer when she was very young.
Longtime listeners of the Widowed Parent Podcast will recall that I’ve often mentioned what a privilege it is to speak with grown-up grieving kids and to hear firsthand their experiences and reflections after losing a parent at a young age. Discussions with Hope Edelman, Claire Bidwell Smith, Jon Lefrandt, and so many others come to mind.
What Laurel gives us in her memoir is an incredibly intimate portrait of her life. She lets us inside, and she allows us to see how grief has affected one now-grown-up grieving child over the decades.
Laurel’s book and my discussion with her are full of beautiful insights – and I really can’t say enough good things about her book. I don’t usually cry when reading books, but wow, I had a little trouble seeing the words on the last few pages through the tears that were welling up.
Following are a few highlights from my interview with Laurel Braitman, lightly edited and condensed for clarity and space. You can listen to the full discussion on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Widowed and Parenting? You Are Not Alone
Adapted from “Widowed Parents Unite: 52 Tips to Get Through the First Year, from One Widowed Parent to Another,” by Jenny Lisk, published October 24, 2023, by Bluhen Books. Excerpt reprinted with permission from Bluhen Books. All rights reserved.
If you’d spotted us — four women in our 40s, laughing, chatting, and drinking wine — you’d be forgiven for assuming we were merely busy parents, stressed-out professionals, or middle-aged girlfriends enjoying a quick getaway from the demands of everyday life.
We were, in fact, all of those things.
We were also widows.
A Message from Jenny Lisk, Founder of the Widowed Parent Institute
I never expected to be a widowed parent.
I bet you didn’t either.
Do you ever wish you had a handbook showing you what to expect in this thing called ‘only parenting’ or ‘solo parenting’?
Access to experts, people who have great ideas, people who can tell you what you need to know, and what to look out for?
Well, so did I.