What follows is the first paragraph of the article I wrote for Next Avenue on women who were widowed and traveled solo after they lost their spouse. What you may or may not know about me is that I was a young widow. Lost my husband, Jeff, when he was 37 and I was 34. He passed away from a very quick and intense bout of cancer. Our children were 6, 4 and 2 at the time. Not easy, but I knew that Jeff would not want me to stop living.

We took a few trips — Disney a few times, the Vermont Teddy Bear Company, Ben and Jerry’s and others, but never did as much as we really wanted to. We enjoyed what we did though. Traveling has always been important to me and I’m doing more now than I did then (life circumstances and money, ya know), but if you have the urge to travel even if you lost your spouse try to do it. Read the article to get inspired by some amazing women who have been in those shoes.

Next Avenue

Here’s the intro:

Debbie Hitt always wanted to see the world, but her husband Charlie wasn’t much of a traveler. Hitt didn’t let that stop her. She took a few solo trips during their 36-year marriage — to Cancun for a long weekend with her friends, and to China and Thailand to visit her son and his wife. A widowed woman on a trip looking out to the ocean from a cave. It was financially prohibitive to travel more,” said the 65-year-old Ohio resident. “I was trying to raise kids and so forth.” “Think about what could go wrong and how you would handle it. It takes the stress out.” Hitt ached for more travel opportunities, but the unthinkable happened and Charlie passed away from cancer in 2017. Grief took a toll, but then Hitt thought to herself, “okay, now it’s time.'” The world was waiting, and she wanted to see it.

Click here to read the rest of the Next Avenue article.