Lesbian Widows: Invisible Grief by Victoria Whipple

Reviewing a book like the book I picked for today, breaks my heart. Death is such a personal, difficult topic. No one wants to confront their own immortality. Certainly, no one ever wants to contemplate the loss of a life partner and a soul mate. The death of a partner is always difficult, whether a couple is gay or straight. Societies overall inability to recognized a committed lesbian relationship as a valid one makes life even more difficult for the surviving partner or “widow”.

If you’re a lesbian and you’re over 35, you’ve probably seen the DVD, If These Walls Could Talk 2 featuring the separate stories of three generations of women loving women. It’s likely you watched it to see Ellen DeGeneres and maybe Sharon Stone in their sequence. It’s the first of the three stories though that’s really entrancing. In it, Vanessa Redgrave plays a widow who’s life partner of more than 50 years has died. Her obvious, racking grief alone is one thing. The terrible, closed minded attitudes of her deceased partners family are something entirely different. She loses her long time home because of it and there’s nothing she can do about it because the law does not protect her. She has no rights.

The video came out in 2000. Sadly, as we well know in the LGBT community, not much has changed. We have to work hard to protect ourselves and our loved ones when we’re invested in long term, committed relationships. We can work around the “legal” issues now. We still struggle with the emotional lack of support.

In 2006, Dr. Victoria (Vicky) Whipple published the book, Lesbian Widows: Invisible Grief.  Vicky writes from her own, personal experience as she lost her own loving partner to stomach cancer. She also shares the stories of 24 additional lesbian women who experienced the death of their mates. Their stories run the gamut of emotions. Some of the deaths were unexpected (1 after an accident), many were after long illnesses. All of the surviving partners grieved deeply and struggled to overcome their grief in many cases in the face of social indifference. They lacked support and, often faced severe legal and financial hardships.

The book synopsis:

The death of a life partner poses unique challenges for lesbians. Lesbian Widows: Invisible Grief reveals the touching and very personal stories of twenty-five women, including the author, who were widowed at a young age and forced to create a new life without their life partners. The book follows the widows from the time the couple met, to the time when one of the partners died, and beyond, to show how the surviving partner coped with her loss.

Many lesbians feel that the intimacy felt between two women in love goes deeper than what can be experienced by heterosexual partners. Lesbian Widows: Invisible Grief reveals themes common to all these women’s experiences while offering practical advice about coping techniques and resources for support. The widows discuss their efforts to create funerals and memorial services, give their accounts of the overwhelming grief throughout the first two years, and explain the legal and financial discrimination they encountered. The author provides a chapter specifically for caring family and friends, another chapter for professionals working with this sensitive population, and a bibliography of helpful coping resources.

Lesbian Widows: Invisible Grief explores the topics of:

• caregivers/caretaking
• death and dying
• grief journeys
• the similarities and differences between lesbian and married widows
• the lack of support services for lesbian widows
• the legal and financial discrimination against lesbian widows
• the effect of being “in” or “out” on grief recovery
• the issues faced by widows in starting new relationships
• spirituality
• gay marriage

Lesbian Widows: Invisible Grief provides an insightful look into the grieving and recovery process, inspiring hope with the knowledge that others have survived this tragedy.