E322 - Debbie Weiss - Available As Is - widowhood, dating at midlife | Living The Next Chapter: Inspiring Conversations with Bestselling Authors and Writing Experts podcast

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Episode description

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Episode description

Episode 322 - Debbie Weiss - Available As Is - widowhood, dating at midlife

I turned to writing after George, my partner of 32 years, died of cancer in April 2013, and I found myself living alone for the first time at age 50.

I needed to know I still existed after a year of being his caregiver, watching him disintegrate, feeling deep in my bones that somehow I was failing him. He was in denial so he thought he was going to recover even as his body abandoned him.

I couldn’t fix his illness, not could I jolt him into reality, nor get him to agree to palliative care, nor to involve his parents who were going to lose their only child. I thought I was crawling out of my skin. Through grief therapy, I found out I had post-traumatic stress disorder.

Over the next few years, I sort of got better, in dribs and drabs, but the loneliness enveloped me. For 32 years, George and I had eaten dinner together almost every night, then curled up in bed to wake up beside each other each morning. I still wonder, where does all that love go? Is it transmuted into protective energy or is it just gone?

I was a practicing attorney for over ten years which lends my writing an acrid tone of bitterness and irony. In an effort to work on that, I also earned an MFA in creative nonfiction from Saint Mary’s College of California in May of 2020.

My essays have been published in The New York Times’ “Modern Love” column, HuffPost, Woman’s Day, Good Housekeeping, Elle Decor, and Reader’s Digest, among other publications. My award-winning blog, debbieweissauthor.com dispenses empathy and advice on grief and dating after loss.

Book: Available As Is - After losing her husband, George—her one and only since high school prom—to cancer, fifty-year-old Debbie Weiss found herself opening a new chapter of life that she didn’t know how to start.

Initially, she binge-watched Netflix and drank Manhattans. Then she became a dating monster—starting with J-Date and then moving on to multiple other sites. Soon, Debbie was averaging two dates a day; in the blink of an eye, she’d gone from respectable widow to the girl you’d do in your Trans Am but wouldn’t take to the prom. At one point, she was actually dating four guys at once, including a politician who refused to let Debbie meet his family because they’d met online. But as she juggled these many men, she began to feel that midlife dating was less an earnest romantic endeavor and more a battle of the sexes . . . and the line in the sand was how much women were willing to tolerate.

Fed up, Debbie went offline. Only then, without the distraction of dating to keep her busy, did she finally, truly grieve her loss—and as she did, she also realized that she needed to forgive herself, both for George’s death and for losing her identity in their marriage. Equal parts poignant and punchy, Available As Is is a darkly humorous account of seeking love—but finding yourself