Dr Safeeya Mo­hammed

Guardian.wemagazine@gmail.com

When a part­ner dies, the world changes in every way pos­si­ble for the loved one that re­mains to pick up the pieces.

A re­cent re­port shared that; wid­ows are con­sid­ered “the for­got­ten de­mo­graph­ic”. The in­ci­dence of de­pres­sion ris­es af­ter a woman is wid­owed, by about 40%.

One com­mu­ni­ty group, Wid­ows Sup­port TT, the first of its kind in Trinidad and To­ba­go is de­ter­mined to change this sta­tus quo, by pro­vid­ing a safe haven where wid­ows can ex­press them­selves open­ly about their grief jour­ney and be sup­port­ed by a sis­ter­hood of wid­ows who are un­der­stand­ing, non-judge­men­tal, thought­ful and com­pas­sion­ate.

When 34-year-old So­raya Nanan lost her hus­band in 2009, she knew no one else in this sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion. There were no sup­port sys­tems in place un­der­stand­ing a wid­ow’s plights and unique chal­lenges faced. Im­me­di­ate­ly she was now the sole bread­win­ner and had to car­ry on a law prac­tice on her own, while nur­tur­ing her one-year-old. She felt lost and de­bil­i­tat­ed. How­ev­er, she turned this ad­ver­si­ty in­to an op­por­tu­ni­ty, filled that gap and formed a com­mu­ni­ty group for wid­ows with the dis­tinc­tive goals of cre­at­ing a sup­port sys­tem, a bank of per­sons that can give coun­sel and pro­grams that would en­rich the lives of wid­ows. Through her grief and ex­pe­ri­ences, she birthed Wid­ows Sup­port TT(WSTT).

Walk­ing on a bro­ken bridge

Ann-Marie Has­sanali shared, “For me wid­ow­hood felt like walk­ing on a bro­ken bridge, I was hear­ing the cracks and at the same time try­ing to nav­i­gate a way for­ward, how do I do this? where do I be­gin? Every­day be­came more and more daunt­ing. Many days I could feel my knees wob­bling. With tears day in day out, pray al­ways saved the day, be­seech­ing the Almighty to help me get across this bridge and to one day and find that rain­bow. I reached on to So­raya on Face­book and kind­ly asked to be­come a mem­ber. An im­me­di­ate sis­ter­hood de­vel­oped and whilst I didn’t know it all or have the im­me­di­ate an­swers I knew to­geth­er we’d help oth­ers thrive de­spite the grief. We firm­ly be­lieved “there was a pur­pose be­hind our pain.”

Cre­at­ing pro­grams of hope

WSTT took on var­ied ini­tia­tives of Hope. “Dur­ing lock­down we took on lap top dis­tri­b­u­tion, cloth­ing, book and toy dri­ves. We en­coun­tered homes with chil­dren that missed a whole year of on­line school. The re­al­i­ty was chil­dren were not able to ac­cess class­rooms be­cause of the ab­sence of de­vices in their house­hold. It be­came dif­fi­cult for the wid­owed par­ent to share one de­vice. They val­ued the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pro­cure ad­di­tion­al de­vices for their chil­dren. These ful­fill­ing ini­tia­tives pro­pelled us even fur­ther.”

“Grief was like a huge mag­net keep­ing us down mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to take fur­ther step for­ward, but to­geth­er we felt we could over­come the im­pos­si­ble.”

“In com­mem­o­ra­tion of In­ter­na­tion­al Wid­ows Day 2023, we de­vel­oped a much-need­ed ini­tia­tive for Wid­ows and a free Le­gal Aid Clin­ic was launched on June 17th.

“Af­ter the lock down, mem­bers great­est chal­lenge was han­dling their le­gal af­fairs. Many of us were ei­ther in­tim­i­dat­ed by a lawyer and un­sure off by the thought of an­oth­er bill on the ta­ble or the haunt­ing ques­tion why didn’t he put things in place. The clin­ic was ex­tend­ed to the gen­er­al pub­lic af­ter re­ceiv­ing over­whelm­ing re­quest from in­di­vid­u­als of all walks of life, and we choose not to ex­clude any­one.”

“All at­tend­ing were giv­en a free le­gal con­sul­ta­tion and they left con­fi­dent with the knowl­edge in hand and a keen sense of di­rec­tion where to go from there. We hope the Le­gal Clin­ic will run through­out the coun­try for the next year mak­ing it ac­ces­si­ble to every­one.

Ad­vice to oth­er Wid­ows

Some women lose their iden­ti­ty and self-con­fi­dence when wid­owed, tem­porar­i­ly or even per­ma­nent­ly. “There no road map on how to cope, but we en­cour­age you to reach out to our com­mu­ni­ty sup­port, try a new hob­by, jour­nal, ex­er­cise, draw, paint, trav­el, in­dulge in self-care. Rec­og­nize that we didn’t ask to be here, but it is okay to not be okay and reach out for sup­port. Be­ing with­out your part­ner is no easy road, but every day you wake up stronger with­out know­ing it.

Sup­port and Self-care

“It is easy to be­come self-ab­sorbed in your own grief but if you have adult chil­dren they too will be feel­ing the loss of their fa­ther and need to be able to ex­press this with­out wor­ry­ing that it will up­set you. Like­wise grand­chil­dren need to be com­fort­ed and to talk freely about their grand­fa­ther. Al­low them to com­fort you too – “even if it brings tears to all of you. There is heal­ing in sup­port­ing one an­oth­er.”

“It is im­por­tant to recog­nise that, grief is an un­man­age­able emo­tion and the form it takes is unique to every woman whose hus­band or part­ner has died.”

One can con­tact:

Face­book | IG @ Wid­ows Sup­port TT

Email : wid­owTT@gmail.com

About In­ter­na­tion­al Wid­ows Day

The Unit­ed Na­tions ob­served June 23 as In­ter­na­tion­al Wid­ows Day (res­o­lu­tion A/RES/65/189) to draw at­ten­tion to the voic­es and ex­pe­ri­ences of wid­ows and to gal­va­nize the unique sup­port that they need.

For many women around the world, the dev­as­tat­ing loss of a part­ner is mag­ni­fied by a long-term fight for their ba­sic rights and dig­ni­ty. De­spite the fact that there are more than 258 mil­lion wid­ows around the world, wid­ows have his­tor­i­cal­ly been left un­seen, un­sup­port­ed, and un­mea­sured in our so­ci­eties.

It is rec­om­mend­ed by UN, that pro­grammes and poli­cies for end­ing pover­ty al­le­vi­a­tion, in­creas­ing ed­u­ca­tion and oth­er sup­port to wid­ows of all ages al­so need to be un­der­tak­en. These pil­lars are in the con­text of ac­tion plans to ac­cel­er­ate achieve­ment of the Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals.

In the con­text of post COVID-19, wid­ows must not be left out of our work to “build back bet­ter”. The UN call to ac­tion shares, “Let us en­sure that our re­cov­ery pri­or­i­tizes their unique needs and sup­ports so­ci­eties to be more in­clu­sive, re­silient and equal for all.”