Widows in the EU Selling their Kids?

The third world nightmare has made its way to the EU. 

The Widow Who Went for It.

I'm not mad at you Mrs. Thang.  LOL! No sense in sitting home alone.

The Widow With the Forever Raw Wounds

The blessing of time (with maybe some bereavement counseling & medication) is that the raw pain of losing our husbands lessens.  Sure, we don't forget them, but we eventually think of them in states of calmness and happiness.  We eventually reach a point where we accept their deaths as maybe good for them in terms of ending unreasonable suffering.  This is not betrayal of our loved ones.  This is healing that they would want for us.  It is necessary for us to be able to parent our children and provide healthy memories of their lost fathers.  Children need to process the deaths of their fathers with the understanding that their fathers loved them, their fathers did not willingly leave them, and that their fathers want them to live healthy & productive lives to ensure that the family continues. According to what I saw on the OWN Channel, our widowed sister, Jill Price, has a special memory.  She is gifted and cursed with a mind that keeps ALL memories fresh (both the happy and the sad).  No distance for her and her pain of loss. I don't know how she does it. 

Wisconsin Stigma Bill

Wisconsin GOP's grothman wants to pass a bill requiring consideration that single-mother households be deemed "abusive and neglectful."  This will penalize widowed, single mothers who have already suffered enough.

Contact him and let him hear about it!

Madison Office Room 10 South State Capitol P.O. Box 7882 Madison, WI 53707-7882	Voting Address 151 University Drive 312 N West Bend, WI 53095
Telephone (608) 266-7513 Or (800) 662-1227	District Telephone (262) 338-8061
Fax (608) 282-3560
Email Sen.Grothman@legis.wisconsin.gov

The heart does go on; you can love your lost husband & next husband just the same

Pat Tilman's poor widow lost her husband as he battled to protect her and our country. A hero is one who sacrifices themselves to help others.  It is horrible that Pat's death was  due to friendly fire.  His love and determination to protect his family and his country in our time of need shows how he was such a wonderful man.  It is good that she has since found an additional love.  As widows, we know that love is simply something that grows every time you share.  Loving new people does not diminish the love that we have for them who came before.  Instead, it indeed adds to our ability and capacity to love. 

Open Letter to Widowed Congresswoman Sandy Adams RE More Magazine 2012 Interview

Hello,

I very much enjoyed reading your survivor story in More Magazine's March 2012 edition.  I loved how you told your second husband to get permission from his mom prior to accepting his hand.  I was saddened to read that you lost such a dear soon after; but fortunately, your current husband sounds like a gem too. 

The only issue that bothered me was your seeming resistance to universal health care.  In the article, you note that health insurance was an issue for you and your daughter.  America provides some form of  health care for the elderly and the poor.  It's only reasonable that people who work full time (even though it may be through a combination of jobs) should also be covered.  I wonder how many times, while you worked & struggled to get your education,  while it was just you and your daughter, did you fail to take her or yourself to the doctor because you could not afford it? I believe that if everyone (including employers) puts money into a big pot,everyone can get at least basic health care. Those who can afford it, can put in extra for extra services.  If third world countries can do it, why not the greatest country on earth?

Hero Died From Wrong Hand

Here is an awful story of how an hero ATF-military man tried to stop a robbery and was killed by "friendly fire" while his wife and child waited in the car!  How awful!  Can you imagine how wives of other potential heroes will try to stop their husbands for fear of the same thing happening? How many robbery victims will lose their lives because of events like this?

What a jerk

We go through the hell of losing our husbands.  We sign up for social security, welfare, medicaid, or whatever.  According to santorum and ron paul, we are dragging the country down and we should be cut off.  Really?  Sure it would be great if our husbands had left us with million dollar insurance policies, but what if they were just regular dads: artists, soldiers, laborers? They worked and paid into the system, in part, for the care of their families.  Can these fools seriously try to assert that widowed, single mothers are dead beat drains to America?

So horrible that he quit on her

A widow can save her children when there father is taken, but it's so much harder, maybe even impossible, to save them when he just decides to quit and  "leave."

God bless her! So many come to take advantage of us. We must fight

I know first hand how horrible it is to be scared and alone with a baby.  Let the evil attackers rot in hell!

Widow protects "the farm"

Here is a touching photo of a widow, standing alone, trying to keep the government from turning her home into a freeway. It's so sad. Despite her brave efforts, they took and quickly demolished her home. Eminent domain is an insult to all that is American and it should be a crime.  .

Being vulnerable to help others be strong

The widow of Lou Rawls exposes her vulnerability so that others can take heart and remain strong.

Widow stands up

In this article, a war widow speaks up to donald rumsfeld about the unnecessary loss of her husband. She lost him due to PTSD induced suicide.  He suffered eight tours through the middle eastern wars and they wanted to send him back.  For sure that means he was great at what he did, but the burden of trying to save our nation was too great for the tragic hero.  As widows, we know that PTSD is not to be taken lightly.

There is only so much toughness

A understanding article on the difficulties of trying to parent while suffering through your own grief.

Widow related movies from listal.com

Some of these are uplifting, but several of these are serious tear-jerkers.

Widow related movie listing on Fandago

Biblical Support

Luke 18:1-8    The Stubborn Widow Perseveres Until Justice Is Done; 

The widow's demand:  'Grant me justice against my adversary.'

"For some time [the judge] refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don't fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming!'"

And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"

He is not deaf to the wail of the orphan, nor to the widow when she pours out her complaint; Do not the tears that stream down her cheek cry out against him that causes them to fall? He who serves God willingly is heard; his petition reaches the heavens.   From:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Importunate_Widow

 

Support for Widows in The Old Testament: 

Deuteronomy 10:18 (Show me Deuteronomy 10)

He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing.

Deuteronomy 24:17 (Show me Deuteronomy 24)

“You shall not pervert the justice due to the sojourner or to the fatherless, or take a widow's garment in pledge,

Deuteronomy 27:19 (Show me Deuteronomy 27)

“‘Cursed be anyone who perverts the justice due to the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’

Isaiah 1:17 (Show me Isaiah 1)

learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause.

Isaiah 1:23 (Show me Isaiah 1)

Your princes are rebels and companions of thieves. Everyone loves a bribe and runs after gifts. They do not bring justice to the fatherless, and the widow's cause does not come to them.

Isaiah 10:2 (Show me Isaiah 10)

to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be their spoil, and that they may make the fatherless their prey!

Jeremiah 22:3 (Show me Jeremiah 22)

Thus says the Lord: Do justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place.

From:  http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/search/?words=justice+widow&phrase=&not-words=&scope=Old+Testament&matches=&search-text=all

American widows healing by helping Rawandan widows

This is a sad and yet heartwarming story

The Chart- Supermom myth can make you miserable

One of the good things I've learned in my 40's is that it's not really possible or necessary to do absolutely everything absolutely perfectly.  By allowing yourself to accept that doing your best is good enough (as you have the option to make corrections, if necessary later).  Stop beating yourself up.

The recurring trapped feeling (1 resignment)

It started when my late husband was hospitalized, precancer diagnosis.  We both just knew something was horribly wrong. I noticed that initially confident doctors would begin hedging about what might be wrong and then would hand his case off to another set of doctors.   It happened three times.  By the time they finally told us that he had cancer of "the everything," we'd pretty much figured it out on our own.  I felt panicked and trapped.  I felt like there should have been something that I could do to make the cancer somehow go away.  I read about it, spoke with multiple specialists, consulted herbalists, but there was nothing.  I buckled down and strived to give him perfect support and to show unconditional love.  The trapped feeling diminished.  I felt that everything would be okay if I could just channel sufficient energy.  After the diagnosis had finally been given, along with the prognosis for less than one year of life, my husband and I returned home with the best of the most powerful pain killers.  It was fine for a couple of weeks.  Then his condition took a sudden turn for the worse.  He became unresponsive while I was in the middle of spoon feeding him ice chips.  I knew that he wanted to die at home, but it was too soon.  I panicked and called 911.  The emergency room physician diagnosed dehydration and possible pneumonia.  He said that if we were to do nothing, it would be over in a couple of hours.  I could not simply tell them to do nothing, even though that was what my late husband had told me to do.  Treatment was started.  He improved well enough to be able to take a single walk up and down the hall of the hospital ward.  I told myself that the key to keeping him alive was to keep him in the hospital.  His oncologist was willing to indulge me.  Each day, he thought up some new, completely unneeded test that had to be done in order to justify continued hospital stay.  At one point, my late husband's internist chastized me for taking up a much needed hospital bed without legitimate medical reson. Then my late husband admitted that he was seeing ghosts, dead people.  He said they at first were gray, shadowed human forms.  But now, they were in color.  They were different races and genders.  He said the only way to tell the ghosts from the real people was that when the ghosts moved away, it was at super, inhuman speeds.  I'd read about the "visions" in the hospice book and new they meant approaching death.  One afternoon in the hospital, my late husband told me that a ghost that had spent the morning sitting near the window had come across to the hospital bed and gotten in his face.  My late husband said that he did not recognize the man as friend or relation.  He told me he did not want to die in a hospital full of ghosts.  He insisted that I take him home.  I didn't want him to die, especially not in the house.  When I told him about my fear, he told me that I could wheel him onto the front porch when the time came, but that I had to let him die at home.  By that point, I'd read many things claiming that death was merely a transition of body rather than the end of a soul.  The hospice books were filled with stories of suffering people clinging to life and begging their loved ones to be taken home to die.  I became convinced that the spirit lingers where it leaves the body, or maybe that its point of reentry to this world, for purposes of visitation, is the location from where it left.  I didn't want to risk the stranding of his spirit in a hospital filled with unknown ghosts.  All sorts of people have died there.  I worried that some of them might be hostile.  I decided that if there had to be a transition point, it should be where he wanted it to be.  The decision gave me the strength and courage to bring him home where his spirit could be at peace.  Two of his friends came to the hospital to gather his things and drive them home.  I rode with my late husband in the ambulance.  Before we left the hospital, he thanked the nursing staff for taking such good care of him and kept repeating that he felt like a kid at Christmas.

A coward dies a thousand times before his death.  A brave man dies but once. ~William Shakespeare~

It's too bad, but I think that I am a bit of a coward.