I love grief support groups. Before my husband died, I had only had one experience with support groups, but it was an outstanding one. In 1998, after I was sexually assaulted, I joined a support group for sexual assault victims. The two therapists who facilitated the group were amazing and I kept in touch with several of the other participants for years afterward. So when my husband died, I knew I would find a support group helpful.

I wrote nearly two years ago about how much value I was finding in grief support groups then, and I continue to find tremendous comfort in them. I’ve been happy to find a wide variety of grief support groups, with different degrees of focus, structure, and purpose. As my needs as a grieving person have shifted, I’ve gravitated toward different types of support groups.

Immediately after my husband’s death, I joined one specifically for people who had lost a partner. That group met once a week via Zoom and was an open group, meaning people could join or leave whenever they wanted. Some people came for just one meeting, others showed up sporadically, and a few were there reliably every week. I was there every week for about three months and then attended sporadically for another three months.

When I first joined, I was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that my husband was dead and it was affirming to hear from others who were also having trouble with that. Learning what others who were further along in their grief journey helped me imagine what I might experience in the future.

That particular group was unstructured, so participants could raise any topic for discussion. Often someone would immediately suggest a topic or offer a situation they were struggling with, such as feeling out of place at social events that seemed designed for couples, for discussion. People who had experienced the situation or similar ones could share how they had dealt with it. We would discuss that topic or situation until it organically segued into something else.

I also joined a loosely organized group of widowed people in Denver who meet in person for activities twice a month. I’ve participated sporadically in this group, in part because the activities are often scheduled at times that don’t work for me or they are in places that are difficult for me to get to without being able to drive. Most meetings for this group are food-oriented, such as meeting at a bar for happy hour or going to a food hall for a meal.

There are no facilitated conversations but being a group of widows allows a sense of familiarity with the unspoken challenges of life situations non-widowed people might not recognize. For example, when I mentioned at an event that my daughter had moved out on her own, the other widowed people understood that an empty nest for a person who had lost their partner was not the long-awaited “freedom” a married person might experience.

Most recently, I participated in a Zoom support group for bereaved people in general. There were folks who had lost children, friends, partners, and pets. The group met four weeks and was a closed group, meaning everyone was expected to participate in every meeting.

Unlike other groups I’ve participated in, this group had a curriculum, workbook, and much more structured meetings. The curriculum and workbook gave the group more of an educational and informational bent than the other groups I’ve been a part of, which I appreciated. I think when I was first widowed, my priority was finding encouragement and being in environments that normalized grief. Two years in, I was less consumed with adjusting to widowhood and more interested in integrating my loss into the very rich and fulfilling life I’m cultivating.

I continue to sporadically participate in the Facebook widow groups that I’ve mentioned before. I like that these groups are available 24/7 and that I can disengage for weeks or months at a time, but then if I feel the need to get a fellow widow’s perspective on something random at midnight, I can do that. These groups have no facilitators but because they are on Facebook, it’s easy to block or snooze anyone I don’t want to hear from.  

For me, being in community with other people who are grieving is comforting but also gives me practical ideas for coping. I regularly gain insight about grief and myself through these groups. For example, in one meeting, I heard about someone who wrote a letter to their dead loved one every year on that person’s birthday. The loved one had died several years ago, so there was a collection of chronological letters that allowed the survivor to see how they had grown as a person in that time and how their relationship with their dead loved one had continued even thought that person had died. Although I will not adopt this specific practice, it gave me some ideas for thinking about similar ways I could continue to nurture my relationship with my dead husband.

Most importantly, support groups of all sorts are a judgment free zone. No one in a support group will tell you you’re doing grief wrong or taking too long to “get over” your grief. No one will avoid eye contact with you because they’re afraid your grief is contagious. No one will pretend your grief doesn’t exist.