Writer on loss and rebelling against the conventions of grieving
There is, of course, a common language of grief, a universal phraseology of loss.
It makes things easier, when we don’t have the words, to fall back on the cliches, the pat phrases, the “Sorry for your loss” and the “Time, it just takes time.”
But Julie Galante, widowed at 42, has had enough of the common phrase book of mourning and has sounded a clarion call for more open discussion about death and grieving.
She began writing to describe her feelings after losing husband Scott, 43, following his gruelling battle with leukaemia, in April 2017.
And, in Bad Widow, a piece published in a new anthology of rebellious writing, she insists that she has enough of being a “good widow” and will now henceforth be a Widow Handling Things Badly.
She said: “I had written a series of essays about life after my husband’s death, and Bad Widow really came together from pieces of them.”
Julie, who is originally from America, and now lives in Edinburgh, said: “I pulled out the central theme of not wanting to do what people were telling me to do – that rebellious thread. It wasn’t apparent to me at first, but then I realised it was something I had been exploring in my writing.
“People want to think you’re OK and want to see signs of you being OK, but everyone has their own idea of what that looks like.
“When you lose someone there isn’t so much pressure to act a certain way, but a pressure to assure people that you’re fine somehow. You don’t want them to worry about you.
“And to me that was all about people’s expectations, and how quickly you are supposed to be over your grief or back to normal life.
“We don’t know how to talk about death. Often very wellmeaning people will end up saying completely the wrong thing, and it’s totally unintentional.” The humour, sadness and raw emotion of her writing won Julie a place in anthology book, Rebel, which was published to celebrate Book Week Scotland 2018, and distributed free to libraries and community groups around the country.
Bad Widow sits alongside stories from various authors, and Julie admits being chosen for the publication was the encouragement she needed to pursue a new career.
She said: “I’ve always enjoyed writing but it took on a new urgency after my husband died. “Having Bad Widow published was part of the momentum that took me towards studying for my current master’s degree. It’s really nice to have your story out there and have people connect with it. I sobbed