• Home
  • about
    • blog
      • Nothing Is Wasted on the Writer
      • #DinnerwithDragonwagon
      • Deep Feast
      • #WidowhoodWednesday
    • media: interviews / profiles / articles
    • radio / video
    • cookbooks
    • publications list
  • books
    • children’s books
    • novels / fiction
    • poetry
    • reviews of CD’s books
  • Mentoring
    • testimonials
  • contact
  • “Is that your real name?”
    • Subscribe
  • FEARLESS WRITING™ 2023

Crescent Dragonwagon

COMFORT, REFUGE, & TRUTH-TELLING: THE WHAT & WHY OF WIDOWHOOD WEDNESDAY


“This weekly post on widowhood begins an overdue conversation. Half of all people in committed relationships will lose their spouse first; will be left to live solo. Almost everyone will be called on to console someone bereaved.

"This is my attempt to speak the unspeakable, for all of us… to enable others to speak and listen.

“I’ve been widowed twice. I am who I am in part because of loving, knowing, losing and grieving these two very different partners, each of whom left life under very different circumstances.

"What understanding I have of grief (which I perceive as less an emotion than a tsunami-like force of nature) is provisional. And yet – I say this reluctantly – the experiences of widowhood and grieving are not without hope. Over time, even egregious, cruel losses and disorientations can reveal strange gifts.

“Writing of her own widowhood, Joan Didion said, ‘Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.’ It's a journey for which few are ready. We each make our unique path as we walk it, in isolation.

"This isolation is profound. But side-by-side with its truth is this: it is also true that others in ‘the club no one wants to join’ are walking their solitary paths.

"Which means that no matter how it feels, we are not alone. Let us take, and give, comfort in telling our stories, and hearing those of others. If we must bear this, let us also bear witness."

--- Crescent Dragonwagon

TABLE FOR ONE

TABLE FOR ONE

By Crescent Dragonwagon

“For months after Ned’s death I barely ate. (How could I taste, let alone digest, when my sweet partner had suddenly, absolutely vanished from the earth, could never close his eyes again in ecstasy at something so simple as a perfect baked red yam or a plate of pancakes?)”  I wrote most of  Passionate Vegetarian when Ned was alive. It… Read More

Filed Under: #WidowhoodWednesday, Fearless Living Tagged With: eating vegetables, grief, grieving, widowhood, Widowhood Wednesday

GRIEVING, WITH HONOR & TRUTHFULNESS

GRIEVING, WITH HONOR & TRUTHFULNESS

By Crescent Dragonwagon

Grief, in the early stages; grief, after the first layer of shock has worn off: so excruciatingly painful is it, and so discontinuous with the reality we knew before death took the person we most loved in the world, that we do not want to feel it. And, as we struggle against it— for who would willingly accept such pain?… Read More

Filed Under: #WidowhoodWednesday, Fearless Living Tagged With: David Richo, grief, resilience, widowhood, Widowhood Wednesday

“YOU WERE LUCKY TO HAVE HIM”: GENTLER REFLECTIONS

“YOU WERE LUCKY TO HAVE HIM”: GENTLER REFLECTIONS

By Crescent Dragonwagon

I wrote, last Wednesday, about the awfulness of others saying “You were lucky to have him,”  to us, the bereaved, often at a moment shockingly close to the beloved’s death. But the more complicated truth is, not only do others say this to us, we say it to ourselves. My friend, the writer Jane Yolen (who has been widowed for… Read More

Filed Under: #WidowhoodWednesday Tagged With: grief, Jane Yolen, widowhood, Widowhood Wednesday

“YOU WERE LUCKY TO HAVE HIM”: AN UNCOMFORTABLE POST

“YOU WERE LUCKY TO HAVE HIM”: AN UNCOMFORTABLE POST

By Crescent Dragonwagon

There are a lot of things never to say to a widow. This is one of them. “You were lucky to have him.” If someone were run over and lying in the street with their legs crushed, would you say to them, before the ambulance had even arrived, “You were lucky to have walked” ? “You were lucky to have… Read More

Filed Under: #WidowhoodWednesday

FOR SUMITA, 16 MONTHS WIDOWED: THE CLUB NO ONE WANTS TO JOIN

FOR SUMITA, 16 MONTHS WIDOWED: THE CLUB NO ONE WANTS TO JOIN

By Crescent Dragonwagon

1. Welcome. It looks like no one is here nor ever has been. How did you get dropped into desolation thorny rocky pathless dry You are not sure what country you are in nor what language is spoken not that there is anyone with whom to speak alone, slight word for so vast an isolation 2. It was in the… Read More

Filed Under: #WidowhoodWednesday

HOW DO WE DEFINE OURSELVES NOW; OR, WHAT BOX AM I SUPPOSED TO CHECK?

HOW DO WE DEFINE OURSELVES NOW; OR, WHAT BOX AM I SUPPOSED TO CHECK?

By Crescent Dragonwagon

Though we spent our first anniversary in Paris, we’d honeymooned in the Ozarks, in Ponca, Arkansas, not far from where we lived. When we drove home after our days in that rustic, rubble-wall hotel on the Buffalo River, we stopped in Berryville.  For some reason I can’t recall, he needed to pick something up at a hardware store. He went… Read More

Filed Under: #WidowhoodWednesday Tagged With: grief, grieving, identity, love, widowhood

IT FEELS LIKE INSANITY. BUT IS IT?

IT FEELS LIKE INSANITY. BUT IS IT?

By Crescent Dragonwagon

I call it, “the club no one wants to join.” I look back, seventeen years as I write this since I joined, absolutely against my will… so much against my will that when the local paper, reporting on Ned’s death, referred to me as his widow a few days after his death (a bicycle accident), I actually phoned the editor…. Read More

Filed Under: #WidowhoodWednesday Tagged With: Crescent dragonwagon, grief, Ned Shank, widowhood

HOW I MET HIM, LOVED HIM, LOST HIM: BLUEGRASS, APPLE CRISP, & FEARLESSNESS IN THE FACE OF MYSTERY

HOW I MET HIM, LOVED HIM, LOST HIM: BLUEGRASS, APPLE CRISP, & FEARLESSNESS IN THE FACE OF MYSTERY

By Crescent Dragonwagon

I blame, or credit, Carol Gaddy. She heard me reading poetry between sets of a bluegrass band at a now-defunct nightclub in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. If you are silly enough to attempt such a reading, you will find your poetry greatly improved by the endeavor. The feedback is like no other:  if one single phrase isn’t smacking your audience upside… Read More

Filed Under: #WidowhoodWednesday, Fearless Writing, Nothing Is Wasted on the Writer

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3

Read Aloud with Crescent and Mark

NOT A LITTLE MONKEY, by Charlotte Zolotow, illustrted by Michelle Chessaree

"So, the little girl climbed into the big waste-basket and waited." ' Oh no,' said her mother, ' we don't want to throw you away.'"There are many ways to express love and the need for attention. Here, a busy mother and her just-a-bit naughty little girl tease each other affectionately — the little girl making her point without even uttering a word.That's today's story time — read aloud by the author's daughter at Crescent Dragonwagon's Writing, Cooking, & Workshops, with Mark Graff's "text support" and discussion."Just right for two-to-fours, the humor of this true-to-life story of a mischievous little girl who blocks her mother's attempts to clean house will elicit giggles from the lollipop set." Kirkus Reviews

Posted by Crescent Dragonwagon's Writing, Cooking, & Workshops on Thursday, June 4, 2020

Read Aloud with Crescent

Read Aloud with Crescent

The Washington Post on Crescent’s Lentil Soup Recipe

The Washington Post on Crescent’s Lentil Soup Recipe

Greek Lentil Soup with Spinach and Lemon, photograph by Tom McCorkle, Washington Post

Bean By Bean Cookbooks

#DeepFeast Recipes

More Posts from this Category

Dinner with Dragonwagon

More Posts from this Category

 for children:

A NAPPA Gold Winner
NAPPA


"... like a warm luminescent blanket at bedtime... softly lulling." -- New York Times


"(With) weary animals, Dragonwagon offers an “alphabet of ways to sleep,” smoothly working in some alliteration..."
- Publishers Weekly (starred review)


Available at:

Crescent Dragonwagon page style=

read aloud with Crescent Dragonwagon

Until Just Moistened

Until Just Moistened

Available for Purchase

Copyright © 2023 · Darling theme by Restored 316