Confessions of A Mediocre Widow By Catherine Tidd

The title of Catherine Tidd's new book suggests she is a mediocre widow.

 

Don't believe it for one second.

Catherine Tidd is quite the opposite.  Catherine Tidd is in fact a courageous, smart and very funny woman in search of herself and an entirely different life while raising three young children after the death of her beloved husband, Brad, in a tragic motorcycle accident in 2007.

Her book is refreshing and down-to-earth and is full of painful and funny personal insights about what happened to her after the death of her spouse: the hospital, the funeral, her in-laws, the whole crazy upside down aspect of picking yourself up and putting yourself back together.  As a widow myself, I truly understand the tightrope walk of processing grief, raising a child, working a full-time job all the while trying to figure out what the hell is going to happen next in this so-called uncharted territory called a new life. 

 

 

Putting those intensely private and sometimes heartbreaking experiences down on paper for others to consider and understand is a difficult task but not for Catherine Tidd.  She has written an amazing book that I couldn't put down and I would recommend to anyone whether they have lost a spouse or not because she is straightforward yet humorous (my husband is dead and Keith Richards is alive?) about how her new life unfolded in the months and years following her husband's death. 

 

Many times while reading, "Confessions of A Mediocre Widow Or, How I Lost My Husband And My Sanity," I found myself putting the book down and saying out loud, "Yes! That's exactly right Catherine.  Yes! You nailed what it feels like at that particular stage of grief."

 

I have to reveal that I was familiar with Catherine's sense of humor before I read her book.  Her uplifting blog, "Widow Chick," (www.widowchick.blogspot.com) was the first blog about grief that I discovered online.  Right away I loved the name of her blog and read every post, sometimes laughing at the things she vented about and sometimes shaking my head in agreement with her about the emotional push and pull of navigating single parenting, anniversaries, birthdays, and the dating scene.

 

But her new book is chock full of more Catherine and it has given her the time and space to expand on how loss affects you and those who care about you and to really dig deep into a discussion of life on your own as a widow with children, a subject that tends to make most people feel very uncomfortable.

 

Catherine Tidd



Here is how Catherine explains what she wanted to have happen to her in the midst of dealing with her overwhelming grief: "I wanted to  walk into a padded room and throw the grocery list, the bills, the back-to-school forms, the insurance paperwork, just chuck 'em at a wall over and over until the paper was crumpled and soft.  I wanted to scream until my throat was raw.  I wanted to kick at those padded walls until my legs were sore.  I wanted to pull an Office Space and take a baseball bat to every appliance in my house that had the nerve not to work properly.  And sometimes I wanted to take my emotions out on an innocent teddy bear."

Catherine also writes about using retail therapy as a way of coping with the loneliness and isolation following her husband's sudden death.  She would buy tons of stuff, decide to keep one thing and then return the rest the next day.  This didn't make her very popular with the salespeople and her therapy went on for months until she got fixated on a new purchase: a Mazda RX8.  As in a car that doesn't have a back seat, is low to the ground and not child friendly at all.  I loved that she did this even though it was extravagant.

Here in Catherine's words are why the Mazda RX8 was such a necessary, yet temporary, purchase: "For a while, that car was the best therapy I could have had.  It was where I could go and just pretend for a minute that my life was not actually happening.  I could drive around and forget for seconds at a time that I had three kids at home who were in the throes of toddlerhood.  I felt empowered that I had bought that car completely on my own.  I would listen to music I liked, turning it up so loud that it would almost drown out the thoughts in my head.  And the tinted windows would show nothing at a stoplight if I just needed to sit there and cry for a minute."

Even though Catherine spent her 11th wedding anniversary planning her husband's funeral, she found the inner strength to move her life forward and "Confessions of A Mediocre Widow" is a candid book about the reality of becoming a widow and where the exhausting, emotional adjustments took her and her family.

The bottom line, Catherine writes, is the ability to become self-aware and realize that it doesn't matter whether other people understand your journey or not.  You will find the way that is best for you.  It may be a slow process but inner peace can come if you accept what your life is today.  She states a core truth about being a widow when she writes that there comes a point in every widow's journey when she has to make peace with the death of her loved one "and finally accept that, yes, this has happened to her.  Most of the widows who seem to all of a sudden turn a corner have one thing in common: they stopped fighting widowhood and started to work with it."

Thank you Catherine Tidd for sharing your heartfelt story in this beauty of a book, "Confessions of A Mediocre Widow."  You made me feel as though we were friends in this widow journey and I know your new book will help many others (widows or not)  understand that you have to put yourself out there and live life with as much love as you can find.

 

"Confessions of A Mediocre Widow" will be available in retail stores on Tuesday, January 7, 2014.  Copies can be ordered on Amazon.com at this link:

http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Mediocre-Widow-Husband-Sanity/dp/1402285221/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1387507432&sr=8-1&keywords=confessions+of+a+mediocre+widow

 

or at Barnes & Noble at this link:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/confessions-of-a-mediocre-widow-catherine-tidd/1114864435?ean=9781402285226

An Emotional Box

As I continue to slowly reorganize my freshly painted bedroom, it is amazing the things you find stored under your bed.

 

Last week I wrote about my long put-off decision to finally paint and reorganize my bedroom following my husband's death.  Now, as I pick and choose what I am bringing back into that room, I am dealing with some of the things that I pushed aside and choose not to think about.

 

In this instance, it is an old Estee Lauder box that once held cosmetics and perfume.  I loved the different colored berries pictured on the outside of the box and so I kept it and filled it with special things that I wanted to keep together in one place.

 

 

 

 

When my son was born, I put all the cards that people mailed to us in that box and then I continued to fill the box with birthday and holiday cards that he received as a child and various art projects that he did when he was in pre-school.

 

OMG, it is so precious!  When I opened the box, I just sat there and stared at it for a long time.

 

It's quite the emotional box; full of hopes, dreams, expectations, love and all the sweetness that I felt with the birth of my son and his early years as a toddler.  I went on a trip when I opened that box, a trip where I met myself and my husband some twenty-odd years ago.  We weren't young parents but we were a lot younger then and we had a new little baby boy and we were full of love, love, love and oblivious to the idea that it could ever, ever change.

 

I brought the box to my son, my "baby" who is now in his twenties, and showed him what I had found.  I took the cards out, one by one, opening them up and reading the kind messages and telling him about the friends and family that had sent these amazing cards when he was born and the other cards that came to him on Halloween, Valentine's Day and other birthdays.  He was fascinated that I had saved all these things and I was too.

 

In a way, I wished I hadn't saved all these sentimental momentos.  They were from another time, a time when there was three of us.  It's only been my son and I after my husband's death and sometimes it feels as though it's always been that way.  Or at least my mind tricks me into thinking that sometimes. 

 

But the cards are proof of a different family and different people.

 

I don't mean that in a bad way or even a sad way.  It was just different.

 

Finding the box led me and my son to talking and reminiscing about the people who sent the cherished cards and telling stories about them.  As we laughed and I answered his questions, I remembered things that I hadn't thought about in years and at the same time I felt the responsibility of being the only parent.  Since his father is no longer alive, I really wanted to remember everything I could to let him know what that time was like when he was an infant and toddler.

 

There are a lot of times as a single parent that you have to be both mother and father.  Discipline and financial decisions immediately come to mind as examples.  That isn't always a great role to fill and those are the times when you wish you had someone else to share the responsibility with.

But this time I was happy to talk to him for hours about the immense happiness that his birth brought to us, his mother and his father, and continues to bring to me. 

 

Calgon, Take Me Away

The world around us can be dynamic and sometimes intense.

If channeled in a positive direction, being around people who are intense and dynamic or situations that are dynamic and intense can be a good thing; even a great thing.  It can be the fuel that gets the creative juices started and sometimes can bring about breakthroughs or solutions in otherwise stuck situations.

But if you are already feeling overloaded or overwhelmed by being the single parent (either widowed or divorced) who works full-time, takes care of the house, the children and the finances, then maybe for your own sake it's time to take a temporary break from the strong emotions and go far away from the madding crowd.

You can probably feel that you are getting close to blowing a gasket as in "if one more person comes to me with a problem, I think I will loose it." 

That "I've had enough" feeling reminds me of a popular commercial for bath salts that ran on television many, many years ago.  The commercial would show the average stressful day in a woman's life and then you would hear the tag line of "Calgon, take me away."  Next you would see a bath tub full of bubbles, inviting the viewer to run to the store and buy a box of Calgon for inner peace.

I think there's something to this drugstore remedy because the thing that you might really like to do to relax is either too expensive, illegal or maybe both.  It's important for single parents to make themselves a priority and take care of themselves just as well as they take care of others.  I think I can definitely spring for a box of Calgon and turn off the phone and the computer.

CVS, you better be open late tonight!