You're Invited: Ground-Breaking Survey Of Widow(Er)S

[MartyT]

Sharing a Facebook post from Soaring Spirits International and Soaring Spirits Loss Foundation:

Soaring Spirits is proud to partner with Dr. Carrie West and Scheiner University on a ground breaking survey of widowed men and women.

We are building a collection of information about grief specifically tailored and updated for all ages of widows and widowers. And we're not just looking for the absence of mental or physical illness, were considering how to help the whole person as they figure out how to forward with their life, work, and relationships and navigate complicated relationships with all of the people in their lives, living and dead. And finally, were shifting the idea of resilience by asking those who have been widowed to help us define what resilience looks like after losing a spouse or partner, rather than imposing others’ ideas from other contexts.

We're developing a tool to assess resilience but we're doing it from the bottom up. A gold standard for this doesn't exist for resilience and there is noting specifically for bereaved spouses.

When we talk about resilience we're talking about how widowed men and women are actually adapting and bouncing back rather than if they have the capacity to do so. Also, rather than using a more generic resilience scale we are creating one combining questions that address what we know and are learning about bereavement and resilience AND what widows and widowers identity as their goal.

Most of the existing research about widows is about deficits: depression, PTSD, complicated grief, physical illness etc. But we're trying to find the strengths, the paths to hope, the effects of hope, who we were before our partner died, how widowhood changed us for better and for worse, changed our quality of life, and our relationships.

Most of the research, other than huge mental health studies, have a small sample size. 25-200 or so, or are through 1 particular organization (e.g. Hospice), or include a limited geographic area. We want to ask widows and widowers about their life experiences who arrived at widowhood from all different paths, who are from diverse backgrounds, and geographical locations.

Our goal is to survey 1000 widowed people rather than 100.

To meet our goal, we will need your help. If you are willing to spend 20-30 minutes of your time taking this survey, you will be a part of our effort to make a difference for the widowed men and women who come after us. Thank you heart emoticon

The survey will take about 20-30 minutes to complete and can be taken in multiple sittings as long as you use the same computer or device each time.

To participate in the survey, click here: Soaring Spirits Survey