We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Debbie Weiss a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Debbie , thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
I get my resilience from my father. My mother died when I was ten, so I was raised by my dad. He was a research scientist who changed his entire life to become a single parent at a time when men weren’t usually involved in child-rearing. He was remarkable, learning to cook and run a household, and even listening to hours of my teenage angst.
If I was ever a burden to him or he wished things were different, he never let on. He even took meditation classes to learn how to deal with his new reality. Despite losing my mom, I had a great childhood filled with homemade chicken soup, museum visits, and “go look it up in the dictionary.”
But nothing prepared me for the death of my husband George from cancer in 2013 at age 53. I’d known George since I was seven, he was my high school sweetheart and partner of 32 years. Both introverts, we were each other’s best, but unfortunately, almost only, friends.
My first thought: this can’t be happening again. I had such a tiny family yet once again I was losing the person I loved the most.
For the first time in my life, I was alone. If I wasn’t careful, I could go days without talking to another person. I had to either change or else become reconciled to a very lonely life.
Initially, I thought I’d die from the widowhood effect, where the surviving spouse dies relatively soon after losing their partner, especially if they were their caregiver as I was. I felt very old despite being only 49.
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When I felt hopeless after my loss, my dad was my role model. He’d found a way to go on, and even flourish, after my mom died. I vowed that I would too. My dad had lots of advice. Do venture out and make friends, don’t make any drastic changes, and yes, life will get better over time. He encouraged me to reach out to people and to create a new life, even eventually to start dating.
Over time ― though far more than I expected ―life became good again. I filled the emptiness with weekend hikes, yoga retreats, writing classes, and later a graduate degree in creative writing. But mainly life got better because I learned to love people.
Eleven years after my loss, I have a new home with a second love. Two years ago, my first book was published. But originally, just leaving the house was a challenge. I learned how to move forward after being widowed from my dad. He showed me how to change when the world shifts, adapting to new circumstances instead of staying mired in the past.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I’m the author of the award-winning memoir, <i>Available As Is: A Midlife Widow’s Search for Love,</i> about creating a new life, including dating and finding a voice, after losing my husband of 32 years. Among other awards, the book won the gold medal in the Aging, Death & Dying category in the 2024 Independent Book Publisher (the “IPPY”) awards.
More importantly, I’ve heard from widowed people who found the book to be helpful, some even said it made them feel less alone. Despite the topic, it’s actually funny, including both bad date stories and observations on loss.
I’m a former lawyer who retired early. I started writing in 2013 after losing my husband. For 32 years, we had eaten dinner together almost every night, then curled up in bed to wake up beside each other each morning. I still wonder, where does all that love go? Is it transmuted into protective energy or is it just gone?
I needed to know I still existed after a year of being his caregiver, watching him disintegrate, feeling that I was failing him. He was in denial so he thought he was going to recover even as his body abandoned him.
Over time, writing became a kind of second career. I went back to school and earned an MFA in creative writing at age 56. In different publications, I’ve written about caregiver guilt, living alone for the first time at age fifty, surviving the holidays as a widow, exploring sexuality as a widow, and escaping an emotionally abusive relationship. I’ve heard that sharing our foibles helps to cleanse our shame, and it has helped me with feelings of guilt.
In 2018, I had an essay about dating after loss published in The New York Times’ “Modern Love” column. I also started teaching an essay writing class and discovered that I love to teach. Among other classes, I’ve taught a craft-oriented, six-week memoir writing class as well as a story-telling class for non-writers combined with yoga. For my sixtieth birthday last year, I became a 200-hour certified yoga instructor.
When I started writing, I wanted to offer empathy to those of us who found ourselves alone at middle age, especially through widowhood. I understand the depths to which loneliness can send us, and that that sharing our stories can help us to feel less alienated after a loss.
I recently took over as the president of my local literary society, a small nonprofit, which scares me a little since I’ve never done anything like this before. Writing tends to be pretty solitary. I continue to write and offer advice about life after widowhood and finding love later in life.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
The three qualities that helped me the most on my journey are tenacity, self-esteem and the yogic principle of <i>aparigraha</i>. Tenacity was the most important when I was a new widow dealing with my late husband’s estate. So many women of my generation were raised to be pleasant and conciliatory, but we weren’t taught to stand up for ourselves.
I had to go into full lawyer mode, being persistent and refusing to take no as an answer from banks and others who didn’t want to help. I got things in order by following up, escalating when necessary, and never giving up. The liaison who worked with me to collect my husband’s benefits from his employer said that if he died young, he’d want his wife to talk to me!
Self-esteem became important when I was trying to make new connections after my loss. I was so used to being half of a couple. Being a retired, middle-aged widow didn’t seem to have much currency, and starting to date again felt like being back in high school except that the guys were much worse. I had to believe in myself and refuse to settle for things I didn’t want.
Aparigraha is a yogic teaching meaning non-attachment or non-greed. To me, it means focusing on the process rather than being attached to the end result. After my loss, I reached out to new people and tried different activities and groups. Sometimes, it felt like I was moving forward, but other times nothing seemed to work. I had to focus on the effort, rewarding myself for showing up even if I didn’t like the result.
These three principles were especially helpful to me as a writer. As a new author, I had to be tenacious in finding a publisher for my book and not giving up. And I had to have enough self-esteem to handle the rejections without internalizing them. Finally, I had to embrace the process without being tied to a particular outcome, appreciating the journey itself.
Do you think it’s better to go all in on our strengths or to try to be more well-rounded by investing effort on improving areas you aren’t as strong in?
Following our passions is so important in how we frame our lives. So I don’t think the issue is capitalizing on our strengths or improving our weaknesses, but rather focusing on the things that are meaningful to us.
If you’re inspired by what you’re doing, you’ll be motivated to improve, be it polishing an existing skill or remedying a lack of knowledge. I don’t think moving forward comes from considering our abilities in a vacuum, but from doing something that inspires us to do our best.
When I started writing, I had no idea how to structure a full length memoir. I just knew I wanted to write about what it really felt to be widowed. Also, I wanted the book to be entertaining while also dealing with larger themes of free will. Not knowing how to do that, I went back to school and worked with a terrific editor. But I became a stronger writer because I cared so deeply about this project, not because I wanted to fix my weaknesses.
To promote the book, I went on a lot of podcasts. I’d previously been nervous talking to new people, but I wasn’t anymore because this was a topic I really cared about. I improved because I was inspired, not because I wanted to be a better speaker in general.
Recently, I became the president of our local literary society. This is all new to me and I have to learn a new skill set. But being a part of creating a local writing community is really important to me, so I’m determined to improve, reading books on running a small nonprofit and meeting with more experienced leaders. Our weaknesses can become our strengths because we care.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://debbieweissauthor.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/debbie_weiss_author/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/debbie.hansen.9
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deborah-weiss-writer/
Image Credits
Photo by Randal
