My Year of Widowish: Celebrating One Year of Having My Memoir in the World
Widowish has struck a chord with so many people, and I am grateful for every single one of them
February marked one year that my memoir, Widowish, has been out in the world — and what a tremendous year it has been! I have been interviewed on countless podcasts, appeared on TV shows, and Widowish even made some of the Best Books lists of 2021.
Most importantly, Widowish has struck a chord with so many people: over 6,000 of them have written 4- and 5-star reviews on Amazon and I am grateful for every single one of them — even the bad ones which make me laugh! And I will never forget when one of my favorite pop culture icons, Bravo TV’s Andy Cohen, read a New York Times essay of mine on his SiriusXM radio show. Talk about your Mazel of the Day!
The reason I wrote Widowish is because I became a widow, unexpectedly, over 8 years ago. It has been in the making for much of my widowhood, even if I didn’t know it at the time. What I did know was that writing about my grief, my loss, becoming what I call an “only parent,” the weight and pressure of having to do every everything, missing my husband to the point where it felt like every bone in my body was broken (not to mention my heart), writing about life without Joel, and then falling in love again. Putting all of these things on paper was the beginning of my healing.
I am thrilled to have my book in the world. It has been an honor to share my story on such a grand scale, and there aren’t adequate words to describe how good it feels that my experience has helped so many other people with their grief. But I would trade all of it — every word, every sentence, every acknowledgment — if it meant that my husband could still be here on this earth, healthy and alive, with our daughter and me.
If this were even possible, life would be so different that it’s actually hard to imagine. It would also be complicated because (spoiler alert if you haven’t yet read my memoir) I have a boyfriend now. In fact, he’s the same boyfriend I’ve had since my husband died. Marcos and I have been together for seven years. We are in love, we are committed to each other, and we are a couple. It’s been so long since Joel’s loss became permanent that in the game of sliding doors, it’s hard to remember what other doors I could have chosen.
There is a dream that is fairly common amongst the bereaved whether you’ve lost a spouse or a parent or a friend. It goes like this: You are living your life as it is now. You may be in a new house or have a new job, you may even have a child you didn’t before, maybe a new relationship. But in the dream, the person whose loss you have grieved and cried over and thought you may never recover from shows up alive. And in the dream, there is joy, elation and then, confusion. “Wait,” you start to say, “where have you been?” Before your person answers, anxiety rolls in as you try to make sense of what is happening and you say things like, “I gave away all of your clothes.” And then you can’t help but ask your person, “Are you staying?”
When I’ve had this dream, I question how am I supposed to go on with Joel who has been gone for so many years, especially because I have a relationship and a life with Marcos now.
Usually, Joel doesn’t speak in this dream, and I feel so many things at once that when I wake up, my heart is beating out of my chest, my mind racing. I am angry that he died, guilty that things are so different in his absence, and bereft that life has moved forward without him.
How do you make sense of a dream like this when it’s impossible to make sense of the loss in the first place? This is grief. This is widowhood. This is what writing Widowish has helped me to process.
As I reflect on this year of Widowish, I know that Joel would have been my biggest cheerleader. Knowing him, he likely would have responded to every single review with a personal note — even to the ones who gave it a less than stellar rating. Marcos, by the way, doesn’t seem to mind that Joel is ever-present in my life, and therefore his, too. It’s one of the reasons I love him.
Some other things happened this year, too, of course, but the predominant thing has been Widowish. It’s a love story, one that continues to be written. I’m not sure I’ll ever stop.
Melissa Gould’s memoir, Widowish, is an Amazon best-seller, an Amazon Editors’ Pick, a Goodreads Top Book of 2021, and has been named one of BookAuthority’s 100 Best Grief Books of All Time. Her essays have been published in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Hollywood Reporter, Buzzfeed, and more. Information about her writing workshops for healing & connection can be found on her website. Widowish is available wherever books are sold. Find Melissa at www.widowish.com and on Instagram at @MelissaGould_Author.
