Helen Bailey Blog Award: Meet our 2024 nominees
June 2024
To mark National Writing Day, we are delighted to reveal the four nominees for our 2024 Helen Bailey Blog Award. Congratulations to all of the talented writers who have been put forward for this year’s award.
WAY set up the award in memory of late WAY member Helen Bailey, who helped so many young widows and widowers through her blog Planet Grief and her book When Bad Things Happen in Good Bikinis.
We will now be asking our members to vote for their favourite blog (see link below) and the winner will be revealed at our AGM in September.
Here’s a little bit about our brilliant nominees and the blogs they have been nominated for:
Claudia: The Widow Diary
“I was widowed in July 2020, not even two months after turning 40. I lost the love of my life to suicide. Everything was fine and we were happy, but then Covid and lockdown happened and somehow it was too much for James… I still miss him and I know I will for the rest of my life but I believe he would like me to live my life to the full and for both of us!
WAY has been fundamental for me. I don’t know if I would be here without the support of the other members who were more advanced in this journey than me, and as well from members who were just starting like me… I got hope and support from them – hope that I could survive the pain I was feeling; and support in the form of messages or interactions in the WAY groups!
Last December I decided to give hope to others by telling my story. It is not easy being widowed to suicide. There is still lot of stigma around suicide - and guilt. I decided to talk about my journey in the hope that could help others in the same journey or others who are struggling so much mentally that may think there is no other way to end the pain…”
Darren: The Happy Widower
“Only those who are capable of silliness can be called truly intelligent,” this quote ascribed to Christopher Isherwood, perfectly describes my feelings about my husband. Based on this quote my husband truly was the most intelligent man I had ever met. Now widowed and 51, I am trying to find my inner silliness.
We met back in 1992, club kids at a rave. Then somehow we made it to our 29th anniversary. He passed in 2022, after a short illness complicated by long-term health issues, leaving me a gay widower aged 49.
But there is light, a fake glimmer which has been helped by blogging about my gay widower experience. I’ve found comfort in travelling solo – Thailand, Vietnam, US, Spain, Gran Canaria with more destinations planned.
I moved away from my hometown, sold our house, quit my job and moved onto a canal boat, seeking solace and an easier life. In some ways I have found it, in others not.
The loneliness still bites, but my life is different now in so many ways. I thought I would be invisible to the world, but slowly I am being seen.”
Jackie: Creative Seasoning
Jackie was widowed in October 2019 at the age of 45. Jackie and Andy met in 2012, married in 2017, loved each other madly, and worked together making wildlife films. Both scuba divers, Andy was an underwater cameraman and filmed the images; Jackie wrote the scripts.
When Andy died suddenly, a heart attack, Jackie’s world collapsed. Grief swallowed her life, her work, her creativity. For a long time, she was unable to share her writing with the world.
In November 2023, she started her blog Creative Seasoning and, as she writes herself back to life, she’s discovering her words can help others in their grief.
“I know Andy would want me to write again, and I know he would understand why it’s taken so long to rebuild my creativity. Loss tore my life down to its foundations and writing is my way of constructing a new life chapter, a new version of myself, word by word. I’m incredibly grateful to be included in the nominations for WAY’s Helen Bailey Blog Award 2024. Thank you so much.”
Sarah: The Next Right Things
Now five years into being widowed, The Next Right Things has been Sarah’s way of chronicling her journey since the first anniversary of her husband Steve’s death, in lockdown. Sarah was widowed in May 2019, just over four months after Steve’s cancer diagnosis, when her children were 10, 8 and 5. Together with her membership of WAY and connecting with other young widows, writing has been a place to process some of the huge emotions that come with grief, both in the early days where everything still felt like it was falling apart and moving through the years as she continues to build a life for living not just surviving.
The title of the blog is inspired by the lyrics from the song in Frozen 2, which was released in the year of Steve’s death. Writing about a next right thing in every post was a way to be intentional about taking small steps forward in a new life she hadn’t asked for as a new version of herself she was still discovering.
“Being nominated for this award is such a privilege,” she said, “because it means that someone has felt less alone and more understood from reading my words. Writing helps me to explore how I’m feeling and understand myself, but knowing that it also benefits others in this club that no one wants to join (but everyone appreciates exists once they find themselves here) is an amazing thing.”
Previous winners and nominations
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