Eat Like a Widow

In 2020, thirty years into my life as a poet and 26 years into my marriage, my husband died. In the wake of that abrupt change, I couldn’t write. It turned out it was only poems I couldn’t write. When my identity shifted from wife to widow, my writing shifted too. Everything I had to say needed more room than usual on the page. Writing down all the words I had to say, in the absence of the skills I’d honed and experience I’d acquired, one verse at a time over decades, was as alien as the new hole in my life. Everything was new...

When identity shifts, without a person’s permission, what happens? I learned that shedding one identity doesn’t make one invisible. It can morph into a new identity. And not all change is unexpected. Until poems return to me, I am writing a memoir in prose. A memoir about identity and shedding; assuming a new identity as a result of shedding... I’m transcribing my way through a story I am still living, using tools that are new to me. I’m not yet certain how to define or describe it, though I will say this: being stripped of an identity differs from shedding one. This is what I’m exploring in my work right now.

I am raising funds to finish a book-length memoir. Your support will help me to soften the impact of a seven week hiatus from my day job, to write in the desert, at Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency (www.jthar.com) in 2025 and editorial fees in 2026. Thanks for your support, dear friends!