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Emma Pearson

About Emma Pearson

My life is a whirling mix of swishy strands, dark and glowing brightly, rough and silky smooth – all attempting to be seen, felt and integrated at once. Here are some of my themes.

I am British and now recently also French (because of Brexit), and I have lived in France for the past 21 years. I am 55 and sometimes feel to be an “older widow”, and yet I feel so young. I lost my best male friend Don to bowel cancer in September 2015, my brother Edward to glioblastoma in January 2016, my husband Mike to pancreatic cancer in April 2017, and my sweet youngest child, Julia, to grief-related suicide, in July 2019. And I met a new love (let’s call him Medjool, after my favourite kind of date), off one single meeting on a dating website. Our relationship has exploded into blossom as of June 2019.

I am widowed and I am in a new relationship. I have lost a best friend, a sweet brother, a beloved husband and a precious child, and I still have both parents who are alive and well. I live my days with my grief wrapped in love and my love wrapped in grief. I no longer even try to make sense of anything. I just hope to keep on loving and living for as long as I can, while grieving the losses of loves that are no longer breathing by my side.

I suspect my writing here will be a complex mish-mash of love and sorrow. I also write on http://www.widowingemptynests.com/.

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Endings, endings, endings everywhere

Posted on: July 11, 2023 | Posted by: Emma Pearson

Main image by Ben Wicks on Unsplash One of my favourite “change” models (and I know quite a few) is that of Bill Bridges – and crucially, it’s called “Transitions”. I love this man’s work for so many reasons – not least because I trained for my first marathon, back in 1997, with his daughter […]

Categories: Child Loss, Widowed, Widowed Milestones, Widowed Emotions, Widowed Community, Widowed by Illness, Multiple Losses

Four Years – p  l  e  a  s  e   let him be right

Posted on: July 4, 2023 | Posted by: Emma Pearson

Photo my own Most of my death and dying, and grief and loss reading, has been in English. While my French is “fluent for a Brit”, it’s nowhere close to perfect, and by golly does grief take a cognitive toll. I don’t often willingly pick up a book in French – much less an “academic” […]

Categories: Child Loss, Widowed, Widowed Milestones, Multiple Losses

The trickiness of “How Are You?”

Posted on: June 27, 2023 | Posted by: Emma Pearson

Image by Markus Spiske on Unsplash Yesterday, a fellow widbud, a woman I have never met but who someone connected with me, and who lost her husband just before Christmas 2022 after a very short illness, wrote the note below. I responded to her with both sharing some of my recent writing on this very […]

Categories: Child Loss, Widowed, Widowed Effect on Family/Friends, Widowed and Healing, Widowed and New Love, Widowed Emotions, Widowed by Illness, Multiple Losses

Time After Time After Time After Time

Posted on: June 20, 2023 | Posted by: Emma Pearson

Photos my own This is – and will continue to be – a weekend full of experiments. A lot of my life is still versions of experimentation, if not in the ways it was immediately post-loss(es) when even just venturing out of the front door and heading to the shops felt like an experiment. This […]

Categories: Child Loss, Widowed, Widowed Parenting, Widowed Effect on Family/Friends, Widowed Memories, Widowed and New Love, Widowed Emotions, Widowed by Illness, Multiple Losses

Press “send” for instant panic

Posted on: June 13, 2023 | Posted by: Emma Pearson

Main image by Melanie Wasser on Unsplash Last Sunday, after I had arrived in Milos in the early morning but still too late to join the other intrepid swimmers for all day open-water swimming, I just pootled around. It was a blissfully leisurely day. I enjoyed a second breakfast, unpacked my belongings, had two short […]

Categories: Child Loss, Widowed, Widowed Effect on Family/Friends, Widowed Emotions, Widowed by Illness, Multiple Losses

Παρακαλώ και ευχαριστώ

Posted on: June 6, 2023 | Posted by: Emma Pearson

Main image by Sergio Garcia on Unsplash Back in the very early 1980s – or perhaps it was even the very late 1970s – I am not entirely sure… my mum started to learn Greek. I don’t know why she started, (nor why she eventually stopped), but she engaged a private teacher who showed up […]

Categories: Child Loss, Widowed, Widowed Memories, Widowed Holidays, Widowed Emotions, Widowed by Illness, Multiple Losses

“The relationship I always wanted….”

Posted on: May 30, 2023 | Posted by: Emma Pearson

Photo of my parents in 1961 in Córdoba, Spain – from their archives Medjool and I have just had a lovely 10 day “working break”, based mostly at my parents’ house in Céret in the Pyrénées Orientales, just inside France on the Franco-Spanish border. Now into their 80s, I try to get down to spend […]

Categories: Child Loss, Widowed, Widowed Effect on Family/Friends, Widowed and Healing, Widowed and New Love, Widowed Emotions, Widowed by Illness, Multiple Losses

I wish I could better imagine…

Posted on: May 23, 2023 | Posted by: Emma Pearson

Photos my own – taken at Christmas 2022, on runs with my dad Sometimes I stop short in my tracks and realise with desperate sadness that I can no longer imagine what my life would be like with Mike were he still alive. In the last years since he died, I have lived through what […]

Categories: Child Loss, Widowed, Widowed Parenting, Widowed Memories, Widowed and Healing, Widowed and New Love, Widowed Holidays, Widowed Emotions, Widowed by Illness, Multiple Losses

What do Mother’s Day, Handy Men, T-shirts and Jazz have in common?

Posted on: May 16, 2023 | Posted by: Emma Pearson

Photo my own   You might well ask. Well, one answer, and the only one I have right now, is that these words, or words related to them, are on sticky notes, forming a dense, colourful and messy pile, worthy of investing in 3M. I am trying to reduce my use of sticky notes, but […]

Categories: Child Loss, Widowed, Widowed Parenting, Widowed Memories, Widowed and New Love, Widowed Emotions, Widowed by Illness, Multiple Losses

The School Bus That Thumps Me In The Gut

Posted on: May 9, 2023 | Posted by: Emma Pearson

Music, yes – of course music does it. Lyrics or no lyrics – same same. Places too. And faces – duh. All of those are triggers – triggers for a fast tumble down a Grief-soaked spiral. But the evening school bus? School buses, in fact, for there were two a day – one for kids […]

Categories: Child Loss, Widowed, Widowed Emotions, Widowed by Illness, Multiple Losses

Credits

Posted on: May 2, 2023 | Posted by: Emma Pearson

Photo my own screenshot  A long, long time ago, back in the last millennium, in the time when there were dinosaurs, and during the 7 month period between 1997 and 1998 where I had a brilliantly exciting expat assignment in Minneapolis, I met a lovely woman called Betsy. She was first a colleague then became […]

Categories: Child Loss, Widowed, Widowed and Healing, Widowed and New Love, Widowed Emotions, Widowed by Illness, Multiple Losses

Just because I “know” doesn’t mean I “remember”

Posted on: April 25, 2023 | Posted by: Emma Pearson

Image of Ground Zero Memorial by Oleg Illarionov on Unsplash It’s a tricky thing, supporting others who have experienced great loss. Even when you yourself have experienced great loss. Even when you have experienced the “same” great loss, dammit. It’s a tricky thing because of so many tricky things. Tricky things like the natural human […]

Categories: Child Loss, Newly Widowed, Widowed, Widowed Effect on Family/Friends, Widowed Memories, Widowed by Illness, Multiple Losses

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