Welcome to the Suddenly Single Survival Guide blog and resource website.
My sister Ruth and I began incubating this idea a few years ago. In 2017, we began to work on this project in earnest and you’re now seeing the genesis of what we hope will be a website that will be beneficial for women who find themselves suddenly single due to the loss of their spouse or partner.
To give you a sense of my professional background, I recently retired from a lengthy career in the financial services industry. I worked in the full-service investment arm of a large bank. During that time, my role was to help people – usually couples – manage their investment portfolios which typically consisted of their retirement accounts along with other personal and sometimes corporate investment portfolios. The division of the firm that I worked for focused primarily on high net worth households and our role was to assist them in managing virtually all of their financial needs.
When I retired, I told many of my friends and colleagues that I wanted to spend the next year or so writing and identified the Suddenly Single Survival Guide as one of the projects I was excited to work on. Invariably, the initial reaction I got was a slightly puzzled look followed by the inevitable question, “Why?”.
Usually my answer was a variation of how Ruth and I had a conversation during a family get together a few years back. Ruth had immersed herself into her career as a counsellor and specifically was doing a lot of work in grief counselling. She conveyed how much she enjoyed helping people (usually women) move through that first, often very difficult year of widowhood.
I mentioned that in my line of work, I saw how difficult that first year was for widows too. I’d witnessed widows, even those who’d been left very well off financially, struggle in the weeks and months following their husband’s death. In some cases, their husband had taken on the primary financial management tasks and the thought of now taking on that role seemed daunting. I also saw widows who had been managers of the family finances find the first year without their husband difficult. Every time they opened an account statement, they were reminded that their partner was gone. All the plans they had for the savings they’d accumulated had been for “them”, and that plural objective no longer existed.
I casually commented to Ruth that we should write a book about it, she writing about grief management and I’d write about the financial issues. I don’t think the conversation got more in depth after that and I’m sure we moved on to other topics.
A number of months later, I was working from home when my phone rang and it was Ruth on the line.
“Were you serious about that book?”, she asked.
To be honest, I didn’t really know what she was talking about at first, but then she reminded me that I’d suggested we should write a book for widows together. I wasn’t exactly sure that I had seriously meant that we should write a book, but I told Ruth that I thought the idea was a good one and maybe we should pursue it. So, we did go as far as outlining how we would go about tackling this subject. But, as both she and I were working full time, the project gradually slipped to the back burner.
A few months before I left the firm, I told Ruth that the book idea was still on my mind. Since I was taking at least a year off before embarking on any other work endeavours, perhaps I could jump in the driver’s seat for this idea and see if we couldn’t push it towards actual publishing. We both agreed that it was time to get serious about it, which led to the idea of creating a website and blog as well.
And so, you’re now reading the first of many blogs to come designed to help widows with their grief and their money.
If you’ve landed on this website, chances are you’re probably either widowed yourself or someone you know is. If so, you know how tough that reality is. Our goal is to take that hurt and provide some therapeutic remedies to take the sting out of your pain and make your day-to-day living easier. Peace of mind, well-being, getting grounded again. These are our wishes for you.
Join us on this path. Ruth and I will be posting regularly, with advice to help you along. We also have a page on this site called “Resources“ with a growing collection of tools, links and tips for you to use as well, And soon we will be bringing you an e-book that you can download.
In my next post, I’m going to talk more about why financial issues come to the forefront for widows. Be sure to check in again soon.
