Many WAY members have been helped by volunteers from CRUSE since their bereavement but in the past our two organisations have not worked that closely together.
While CRUSE has undoubtedly been an enormous help to a lot of our members, not all experiences have been entirely positive. CRUSE is very keen for our help in explaining the issues that surround losing a partner young, so that they are in a better position to support young widows.
Paul Hutt and I went to their 50th anniversary conference in Warwick last week to give a workshop to around 50 CRUSE volunteers, to tell them about what it is really to lose your partner young.
We talked about our own experiences and then had a wide-ranging discussion about the issues young widowed people face, and the sorts of things others can do to help.
The volunteers – a few of whom had lost their own partner young – found it extremely helpful and all pledged to go back to their own areas and tell their colleagues about what they’d learned.
They took stacks of leaflets and also promised to recommend WAY to anyone they meet who was widowed under 50.
I hope we will be able to do more work with CRUSE – both helping their befrienders better understand the issues we face and as a way of complementing the service each organisation provides.
