American Widow Project Offers a Place to Grieve and Heal

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:00:00 GMT

In honor of this particularly meaningful Veteran's Day, several news outlets have called attention to a very important resource for military widows. The American Widow Project was created by 21-year-old Taryn Davis (pictured), whose husband Michael was killed in Iraq last year.

In the months after her husband's death, Taryn discovered a woeful dearth of resources for dealing with her pain and connecting with other military widows. All that she received from the military upon learning that Michael had been killed were a few small black boxes with Michael's personal belongings and an informative binder. Taryn described the sense of increased isolation and despair she felt as she opened these boxes. "What's foremost in your head is the clothes, because you cannot wait to smell him," she said, "and you open [the black boxes] and it smells like Tide. Everything is sanitized, everything is wiped down." The binder was equally inadequate in helping Taryn deal with this tragedy, offering information on how to arrange a funeral and little else.

So Taryn decided to reach out to other men and women in her position. She made a documentary and created an impressive Web site in which widows and widowers can share their stories and find advice on how to navigate the difficult time ahead, including articles like "Things I Learned to Laugh About Along the Way," "So You're Ready to Date," and moving personal stories of what widows have done with their husband's remaining personal belongings.

I highly recommend this site not only to military families, but to anyone dealing with grief.

Photo: American Widow Project

Roald Dahl's Widow Recalls His Childlike Sensibility

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 22:30:00 GMT

Felicity Dahl, the widow of the beloved children’s book author Roald Dahl, rarely gives interviews. 18 years after Dahl’s death, she finds it difficult to speak about her husband without crying. But in an interview with the Sunday Guardian, she spoke candidly about her husband's writing and personal life in order to publicize the inaugural Roald Dahl Funny Prize, which will be awarded to a humorous children’s book author on Thursday.

Felicity (pictured), won now runs the Roald Dahl Foundation, attributes Dahl’s popularity among kids not just to his humor, but to the fact that he treated children as his “equals,” never talking down to them or forgetting his own childlike wonder. He would drink pink milk for breakfast and constantly look for ways to surprise strangers with “treats,” such as buying all the nurses on his hospital floor new clothes in the last months of his life.

Dahl’s life was punctuated by tragedy. His sister and father died of unrelated illnesses within a month of each other when he was young, and his own daughter contracted a fatal illness many years later. But Felicity said he kept positive in large part by keeping his child’s mind alive and well. “He was always looking to help people and just make their day a little more interesting,” Felicity said, “because most people's days were very dull.”

Felicity is certain that Dahl would have been sorely disheartened by the advent of Game Boys and Nintendo Wiis that occupy so much of young people's free time these days. “I think [computer] games are absolutely appalling,” she said. “A child is never left on their own with nothing, so that they have to create their world.”

On the upside, one million of Dahl’s books continue to be sold each year.

Photo: Antonio Olmes/The Guardian

Why Roald Dahl Matters

Strollerderby : widow

American Widow Project Offers a Place to Grieve and Heal

Roald Dahl's Widow Recalls His Childlike Sensibility