Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, an event series for women produced by The Republican newspaper, will present an evening with Aikman on Thursday, April 25, at the Delaney House at 6 p.m. She will tell participants her story about friendships among women and the power those friendships have to raise spirits even from the depths of despair.
HOLYOKE –Becky Aikman lost her husband of 20 years to a rare cancer in 2004.
A reporter for Newsday living in Brooklyn, she was 49 and had no children.
“I had no idea what to do,” she says. “I floundered for a while.”
She didn’t identify with older widows, and she didn’t fit in with her young, married friends. She felt like she had reached a point in her life when she should be following a script, but with her husband’s death at age 65, the script had been grabbed away.
A traditional bereavement group did not fit her needs; telling sad stories and walking in the past wasn’t helping her move forward, she says.
So she asked around and gathered five other widows in their thirties, forties and fifties, and together they reinvented themselves.
“I know a lot of people suddenly have to reinvent themselves in the middle of their lives, but I never expected to be one,” Aikman said.
The six widows became friends and together healed into new, joyful lives.
Aikman wrote a book about their experiences together, “Saturday Night Widows: The Adventures of Six Friends Remaking Their Lives,” released in January.
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, an event series for women produced by The Republican newspaper, will present an evening with Aikman on Thursday, April 25, at the Delaney House at 6 p.m. She will tell participants her story about friendships among women and the power those friendships have to raise spirits even from the depths of despair.
“I had to find a way of being happy while being alone,” Aikman said. “I felt so out of place in my own life, and I wanted to know other people like me,” she said.
Eventually she remarried.
The women in the group came from a variety of backgrounds—an attorney, a homemaker, a business owner, a book editor and a woman working in advertising and philanthropy. They faced myriad issues related to jobs and children; and their personalities varied from driven and serious to chatty and fun.
“The only thing we had in common was not the sort of thing that makes for a good time”—widowhood, Aikman said.
Nonetheless, they were all going through a transformation and decided to make it an adventure. “Our story became not a sad story but an adventure,” Aikman said.
Every Saturday night, the women traveled, cooked and reengaged with the world together. In the process, they reinvented themselves, changing their homes, their careers and their relationships with families, friends and children. Most of them searched for love again, and some of them found it.
They talked about the future, if they needed to be married to feel their future was secure, how they would forge ahead.
Their group was not a bereavement group but a group based on looking forward and having adventures. They had fun and helped one another.
Aikman said many people believe that “the proper way to grieve is to remain focused on sadness.” But at a certain point—which is different for everyone—“you have to get out and do new things and have fun…and not feel guilty about it.”
“Life is short,” Aikman said. “We have the right to be happy.”
A graduate of the School of Journalism at Columbia University, Aikman was a writer and editor for Businessweek. She lives in New York City.
Tickets for her presentation at the Holyoke event are $46 and include dinner and can be purchased at girlsjust.eventbrite.com or by calling 413-735-1645; individual tickets can be purchased, and tables of 10 are available.
The Odyssey Bookshop of South Hadley will be selling copies of "Saturday Night Widows" at the event.