Newly Widowed
Resources for the Newly Widowed
Newly Widowed Packet
REQUEST A NEWLY WIDOWED PACKET
In an effort to provide those who are recently widowed with easy to access to the Soaring Spirits community, and reliable resources and support within the first six months of widowhood, we’ve created our Newly Widowed Packets.
These packets contain Soaring Spirits program information, a copy of our newly widowed checklist, and a collection of personal messages from one widowed person to another. Newly Widowed Packets are provided free of charge to any widowed person through the generosity of a fellow widow/widower or one of the many groups/organizations that support Soaring Spirits’ programs. Each packet contains a dedication written by the packet donor.
If you’d like to request a packet for yourself, click here and provide your contact details. We will get a packet out to you within one week of your request. We are so sorry you need us, but so, so glad you found us. Keep your eye on your mailbox, a widowed community will be arriving with your daily mail soon.
If you’d like to request a packet for a widowed person in your life, please fill in the contact form with YOUR contact information. We will be happy to send the packet to you so that you can deliver it to the person for whom you’ve requested the packet. In order to honor the privacy of widowed men and women who have not requested our support, newly widowed packets are never sent out unsolicited. The protection of privacy is a vital part of our programs, and we very much appreciate your cooperation. We also appreciate your desire to share the Soaring Spirits community with someone you love. Thank you for giving them the gift of hope.
Newly Widowed Checklist
Soaring Spirits has created a general checklist for the newly widowed. Included on this list are a few things that we wished someone would have told us as we waded through the paperwork that is necessary when someone dies. This list is not an all-inclusive road map, is not intended to be used as legal advice, and should not be considered a substitute for a meeting with a duly-licensed estate attorney, but it will provide you with some tips that may make things easier in the weeks and months ahead.
We provide this checklist free of charge to both widowed people, and to the people who love them, as a downloadable pdf.
Honoring our organizations’ joint purpose of helping as many widowed people as possible, we welcome other organizations to share our checklist with their communities. We respectfully request that any use of this checklist acknowledges authorship of this list, and that all contact information included on the document remains intact.
Building Your Support Network
DOWNLOAD THE SUPPORT NETWORK FORM
In the early days following the death of a spouse or partner, the marshaling and organizing of support can be overwhelming. Meant to be posted in a place that’s easy to access (perhaps the refrigerator?), this document was created to assist you in determining which types of support you may need in the days ahead and to provide a space to record the contact information of anyone willing to assist with a specific task or provide a particular service.
We hope that having an easy reference for addressing future challenges will provide you with a respite from the stress that often accompanies the need to find someone to help you at a time when asking for help can be daunting.
Newly Widowed Blog Posts
Soaring Spirits has an amazing team of widowed bloggers that write for our Widow’s Voice blog. Over the years men and women from all walks of life have shared their widowed experience with our community through thousands of posts, written in first-person, with the goal of expressing personal thoughts and feelings that are both unique to the author, and yet universal as well.
We’ve made accessing the blogs written by newly widowed people, or created with newly widowed people in mind, easy by tagging those posts as Newly Widowed. You will also find a variety of other tags designed to help you sort through our blog archive and discover that you are not alone. We highly recommend spending some time reading the words of other widowed people…you may find that they’ve been able to give voice to the thoughts swirling in your head, and in your heart.