Widowed And Young Interview
Listen to my podcast with the Widowed And Young (WAY) TAWK. 27 June 2021.
It was great to be asked to be interviewed as part of the WAY Talk aWAY with Kate (TAWK) series to discuss the WAY Facebook Military subgroup I have set up. WAY (Widowed and Young) was the first bereavement charity I linked into after my husband died in 2016. It is a UK charity that offers a peer-to-peer support network for anyone whose partner died when they were under the age of 50 years old, regardless of whether they are married or not, with or without children and whatever their sexual orientation.
My conversation took place the day after Armed Forces Day, which is a day when we are encouraged to show our support for the men and women who make up the Armed Forces community, from currently serving troops to Service families, veterans and cadets. I was interviewed by WAY Ambassador Shalini Bhalla-Lucas about my story and the challenges of being a military widow.
What you will hear about in this podcast:
• How I met Simon – and the famous drainpipe story!
• My experience of Simon’s cancer journey – how I heard the negatives and he focused on the positives and what that meant for me.
• Why living the old life was my darkest patch – why I needed to change aspects of my life in order to better suit my new world as a solo-parent.
• Why military deployments helped me with my grief – how my learnt ability to be a single parent enabled me to survive the early days but how the numbness that came with it delayed my ability to process the grief.
• My identity crisis – why I felt that I had lost so much more than my husband and why I struggled with seeing my links to the military fade away.
• How the family dynamics have changed in our family – how my girls and I have regrouped and taken on new roles.
• What I feel is different for me as a military widow – I set up the Military subgroup of WAY so people with military connections can share their triggers, key dates and complications with things like pensions and life policies as well as the banter that we miss.
• What has shifted recently that has helped me find a purpose – why I feel that five years later I am finally finding my feet and what has helped me to do that.
• The role that charities have played – how charities contributed to saving me from feeling cripplingly lonely.
• Why I set up Rainbow Hunting – how my philosophy was born back in 2014 when Simon was alive and how it has kept me going, and still helps me today.
I know that I was not alone but I felt phenomenally lonely.
This interview can be accessed through the WAY Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/widowedandyoung/. So, grab a cuppa & set aside 50 minutes or listen to it while you are multi-tasking around and about!