11.19.2009

Widows' Index

One of my many Big Ideas is a site that puts all the widow bloggers’ content together through an index.

It started after I left support group and started reading the huge variety of blogs produced by widows and widowers, especially the young ones. Despite our diversity, we share many of the same experiences so there tend to be common topics:
-- When they removed their wedding ring.
-- Their feelings at having to check “widowed” on a form, or God forbid, “divorced.”
-- When they sent their spouse’s belongings to the Goodwill (on my blog, this very casual post that is among my most visited).
-- And of course, the ever-popular, impossible-to-beat, post about First sex after death.

And then Michele Neff Hernandez told me about her project of interviewing many widows, asking the same set of questions, some of which were similar. See, that’s how I can tell she’s a genius. (Too.)

An index that connects our entries by the topics widowed people are looking for would generate traffic and share the commonalities more easily. For those of us writing blogs, it would be a great way to continue the conversations we all have informally, non-linearly, without interrupting our own narratives.

And it feeds into my other hypothesis: that young bereaved people are an underserved group, socially, economically, with certain needs that could be identified and dealt with. But that’s a Big Idea for another day.

I’ve started a list of the topics that might be included in a “widow index” of blogs – a “W-Index,” if you’ll forgive me. (No one ever does.)

I won’t bore folks with the logistics or technical details. The project could be self-building or we could each index other blogs as we wish.

This is probably too many topics, but what do you think?
Advice
Anger
Anniversaries
Anti-depressants
Art
Being single
Birthdays
Blogs and bloggers
Career and job
Church
Communities
Dating stories
Dating, online
Death
Depression
Divorce
Faith
Finances
Friends and friendships
Grief counseling
Grief, anticipatory
Grief, competiveness
Grief, complicated
Grieving Kids: age 0 to 3
Grieving Kids: age 4 to 5
Grieving Kids: Grown children
Grieving Kids: high schoolers
Grieving Kids: K-5 gr
Grieving Kids: middle schoolers
Grieving Kids: over 18
Home
Loneliness
Losses during bereavement
Loss of a child
Loss of a parent
Love
Marital status on forms
Meals
Mental Health other than depression
Milestones
Movies
Moving house
Music
Neighbors and neighborhoods
Other culture
Parents, yours
Parents-in-law
Peers
Practical advice
Religion
Remarriage
Sadness
School, your children
School, yourself
Sex
Siblings
Siblings-in-law
Skin hunger
Step parenting
Stuff, spouse’s
Support groups
Survivor guilt
Therapy
Time management
Triggers to grief
Wedding ring
Writing
Year 1
Year 2
Year 3
Year 4
Year 5
Year 6+

* * * Comments * * *

8 comments:

peter said...

if you need a consult on how to build this I am happy to help.

Alicia said...

Very cool idea. I'd love to see how it pans out!

Ann said...

You need a section for "myths". There is a ton of misinformation out there about "stages" and "grief work" which are basically crap and are perpetuated as much by widowed people as any other.

Perhaps what you need to do is start a separate blog and post a new topic every day for people to add posts to via Mr. Linky. Kind of like those blog carnivals or whatever they are. It would be a way to collect links to specific posts though.

I had a request from a widow recently asking if I would just take all my widow/grief related posts and make an e-book out of them. My husband laughed and said, "Sure, like you don't have anything else to do." What you are proposing is a big undertaking. Good luck.

Kim said...

I thinks it's an amazing idea and I'd be very interested in participatinG !

Supa Dupa Fresh said...

Hi Annie, Yeah, I was thinking something like that would be easy. Will talk to Peter, too.

Thanks for your support! I loved doing the Widows' Testimonials on Health Care, but of course the timing wasn't so great.

X

Supa

Supa Dupa Fresh said...

Oops! Comments from Star and Suzann are two posts below, on the post "Kid Theology, Part 1" (because I'm a sloppy coder).

Chillin' with Lemonade said...

Great idea. Finding this community was probably the most helpful and comforting thing for me in the beginning and even now, as I lay reading the blogs through my Blackberry, avoiding sleep.

Widow in the Middle said...

You should get paid for all the good stuff you are doing! Thank you for your creativity, effort and time.

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