I’m a Widowed Mom: Here Are My 3 Tips for COVID-19 Widows
The author’s late husband, Dennis, with their kids in 2010. Photo by Jenny Lisk.
If you’ve been widowed by COVID-19, and are now raising your kids and teens as an “only parent,” welcome to the club.
The club nobody wants to join.
This club sucks. If you’re a member, it means your partner died. Your kids now have a dead dad or a dead mom — along with an estimated 120,000 of their peers, according to a new study published in the medical journal Pediatrics in October.
You may be feeling very alone right now, wondering how you’re going to raise your kids by yourself and what you need to know as a newly widowed parent. Maybe you’re wondering who can even help with answers to some of these questions.
I don’t know what it’s like to lose a spouse during a global pandemic, but I do know what it’s like to lose one far too soon. My husband Dennis died of brain cancer five years ago at the age of 44. Our kids were 9 and 11 when they lost their dad.
I wanted to know: How would losing their dad at such young ages not totally destroy them? How do I do this thing called widowed parenting?
Editor’s note: This article was originally published at ParentMap.
