Oh. I'm a Widow: Working Through Life After a Death

Relocation by choice. Retirement by accident. Widowed by surprise. Oh. I’m a Widow chronicles my journey after the year in which these life-changing events occurred. At sixty-seven, my husband died soon after we’d moved to the Washington D.C. area for my career-capping job. On the day he died I had no family or friends nearby and no professional engagement. The book recounts the steps I took, the help I found, and the emotional and practical struggles I encountered as I built a new, full life. It presents essays written over years, some published in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Grieving, Loss and Healing, in Contagious Optimism and in its sequel, 10 Habits of Truly Optimistic People, and in print and online journals.

Unlike most books on widowhood, this is more about living than grieving.Written in a conversational voice, the book offers practical, empathetic support to widows. After losing someone close, Oh. I’m a Widow aims to help readers recover, rebuild, and realize a full new life.

What Other Readers Think

Barbara Kazdan’s book Oh. I’m a Widow pulled me in and held me rapt as I watched the confident retiree’s life unravel upon losing her husband of forty-two years. Though her three grown children rally to support her, she’s stunned as she stares into an empty future.

Sprinkled with research studies, humor, and quotes from literary and philosophical greats, such chapters as ‘Get Up, Get Dressed, Now What?,’ ‘Kissing a Lot of Frogs;’ and ‘Paddling Upstream and Down’ guide us along her rocky path.

As Barbara stumbles to move forward, her honesty about what’s gone right—and wrong—in her marriage and her life, make her story real and relatable. [Her] attempts at finding community, support groups, a purpose, and a new partner will resonate with divorcees, empty nesters, aging singles, all of us who have been thrust into worlds we’re not prepared to enter.

Marian Mathews Clark, author of These Doors and Sixty Something and Flying Solo

About the Author

After a career as a nonprofit leader expanding opportunities for underserved youth and adults, Barbara turned her passion and pen to creative writing. Her English Literature degree from the University of Michigan served her well, first to advance social change, next to creating narrative nonfiction.

Widowed after forty years of marriage to David, her college sweetheart, Barbara has been navigating widowhood guided by her innate optimism and zest for life. After years of writing workshops, honing her craft in her memoir group, and authoring countless essays, Barbara is delighted to publish her first book, Oh. I’m a Widow. A chronicle of her journey, the book offers encouragement, support and guidance to the bereaved.

Mother of three, grandmother of five, Barbara is grateful for her close-knit family and rewarding professional experiences. A native of Chicago and longtime resident of Silver Spring, Maryland, friends and colleagues know her as a woman with a huge heart and hungry intellect. Find Barbara nestled in a Craftsman cottage in the shadow of downtown Los Angeles, living next door to her son and his family. Sample her work at achievingchangetogether.com/published-works