For survivors of suicide loss, there is a fracturing of personal continuity in life. Previously secure coordinates suddenly seem frail.The struggle is to work through these ruptures and weave the broken threads of life into a new and meaningful narrative. The process of scripting an alternative narrative through recuperation can often be arduous and demanding.
— R Raguram, psychiatrist
The Oxford English Dictionary defines a widow as a woman whose husband has died (and who has not remarried). I was not just a widow. I was a widow whose husband had died by suicide.
The Scarlet Letter W for widow dangled like an albatross around my neck. I was determined to wrench it away, to refuse to give up my power to regressive societal norms of womanhood and widowhood. The dictionary may contain the literal or denotative meaning of words. However, any word, in any language, has a host of connotations and associations.
Through my deep engagement with feminism in South Asia,…