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A month after Sara Brady's husband died, she ran into a friend at the store. The couples were part of a group that would get together every few weeks. Sara described her friend as saying, "'We need to get the gang back together.' She said it three or four times." At that point, Sara was experiencing anxiety about breaking the news in the middle of the store, but felt she had no choice: "I said, 'I guess I need to share with you, Brady passed away a couple of weeks ago.' And she looked at me and said, 'I know, I just didn't know what to say to you.'"
"I love her, but...that was probably the tipping point [when] I thought, why am I the one that has to make everybody else feel better? Why do I have to figure this out? I can't find any guide that tells me what to expect."
For Sara, that interaction became a catalyst that led to the launch this month of the website New Chapters, a collection of firsthand accounts of surviving spouses.
"I know I have to find a funeral home. I know I have to bury him and all that stuff. [But] the experiences that I had—that I did not know that I would have—after his passing kind of started to pile up and stuck with me because they weren't what I expected or things that I had not thought about."
"I didn't find any kind of website or pamphlet or anything that I could relate to...nothing that resonated with me. So I talked to somebody else whose husband had passed away, and that was really helpful. [So] I thought, well, I'll create a place with just stories."
"When I started talking to other people who had lost a spouse, I realized that that's where I was comfortable. I was sort of organically returning to my early career days as a journalist, asking questions, learning, getting a bigger scope of understanding of what grief is, how it goes, and how it moves forward."
The Stories
The New Chapters stories are varied: Some tell of long illnesses, others of traumatic events; some are happy-go-lucky love stories and others describe challenges. Sara shares her own love story and her grief when Brady died. "All the stories were different and all had one same component, and that was that everybody was resilient."
"This is my world: losing my husband. You feel like every day you're supposed to...you got to keep going and you feel like you have to move mountains and you really don't. You can just move a little pebble. And I want this website to be a little light in someone's life, that [there was] some takeaway that was helpful."
The many stories that Sara has compiled for New Chapters allow readers experiencing grief to learn from those further along a similar journey. One takeaway that Sara points to as being helpful to others is from Jess O'Neill, who lost his fiancé, Beshara Shiferawe, in 2016.
As shared in their story on New Chapters: When Beshara unexpectedly died from pneumonia, Jess was left with not just sorrow but also so many questions—the most difficult being why the man he loved so deeply was taken after just four short years together.
Jess could not bring himself to make any decisions about Beshara’s belongings. Relocating was emotional.
His therapist offered insight and a suggestion, “Why don’t you take the things that mean the most to you and create a Big Box of Beshara.”
Sara points to the Big Box of Beshara as one of those tangible lessons that has helped readers of her website.
The Path to Healing
After Brady passed, Sara felt like she didn't have a purpose anymore. "This project, these conversations, and telling other people's stories gives me great purpose."
She's spoken with a therapist friend about the difference between healing and adjusting. "Healing is defined as being able to accept that you have grief, live with that grief. It's OK to have triggers and cry at the drop of a hat, but you have to be able to self-regulate and return to functionality. I'm not sure I'm healed, but this process—and this project—is definitely leading me on a healing path."
From her interviews, Sara has learned the power of allowing those who are grief-stricken to simply talk about the person they've lost. "I know how good they feel being given the opportunity to tell me about their love, their experience, how their relationships concluded in a heartbreaking way...because I know how I feel about talking about Brady, which, if I were given the chance, I would talk about him 24/7."
New Chapters provides a page of resources on grief, complete with a book list and a music playlist that some may find helpful. Sara invites others who would like to share their story to contact her.
"I know that it is helping people. So I really now have a reason to get up in the morning and to do something that has some meaning for others who have either walked in these tragic shoes before me or who are coming behind me."
