What can a widow be?

For 28 days after her husband’s death, poet Molly Peacock woke up and cried. It was, in her words, a “full moon cycle" of tears.

Then, on the 29th day, the tears subsided. The feelings that followed surprised her, they were of a wider spectrum than she expected — she likened it to a “widow’s crayon box”.

In the documentary What Can a Widow Be?, Molly takes us with her on her journey as a widow. She discovered the cliché of the widow — the perpetual mourner — does not tell the full story. Being a widow, she discovered, is full of emotions she never saw coming, from hysterical yelling to moments of joy sitting in bed alone in the morning. 

As she grieved, she also wrote a collection of poems called, The Widow’s Crayon Box that she read excerpts from in the documentary. 

Produced by Alisa Siegel and edited by Liz Hoath / originally aired on The Current.

The Widow’s Crayon Box by Molly Peacock. Copyright (c) 2024 by Molly Peacock. With permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

Storylines is part of the CBC Audio Doc Unit