The Elements: A Widowhood

What does it mean to become a widow at 35?

In her mid-thirties Kat Lister lost her husband to brain cancer. After five years of being a wife and one of being a carer, in love and in and out of hospitals, she became a widow.

In the year following his death Kat seeks refuge in stories of grief and widowhood, but struggles to find a language that can make sense of her experience and the physicality of bereavement. Instead, she turns to the elements – fire, water, earth, air – on her quest to come to terms with her grief, to inhabit her body again, and to find out who she is now.

The Elements is a story of love, pain, hope and, ultimately, transformation.

This reading and discussion was chaired by Colette Scarbrough-Jelfs, Membership Services Manager at Widowed and Young who provide peer-to-peer support to young widowed people, as they adjust to life after the death of their partner.