Widow to Widow: How the Bereaved Help One Another

Following the death of a spouse or partner, the strength, support, and friendship found among one's peers can be crucial to the meaning making and transformative processes of grief. This book shares the experiences of widows who have found comfort and continuity in mutual-help and community support programs. In the second edition of her pioneering text, Phyllis Silverman brings the success of the original widow-to-widow program into the 21st century, preparing a new generation of community leaders, clergy, counselors, hospice staff, social workers, and the widowed themselves to organize and implement mutual-help programs.Widow to Widowcombines practical information and sensitive insight, with moving firsthand accounts of widows and widowers threaded throughout the text. The mutual-help approach offers a fundamental paradigm shift from the treatment of grief to a focus on growth and development through an intimate sharing of wisdom, tears, laughter, and experience. Through a deeper understanding ofwidowhood and how the bereaved can help one another, this book can empower you to help others, and perhaps yourself, to move through the grieving process with the support of your peers.

Phyllis R. Silverman is Scholar-in-Residence at the Women's Studies Research Center at Brandeis University and Associate Professor in Social Welfare, Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School.