Last year I wrote a piece for the Telegraph in response to Sheryl Sandberg’s Facebook post about life after her husband’s sudden death. Sandberg emailed me personally afterwards.

“I thought what you wrote was the most uplifting thing I have seen,” she wrote. “Thank you so, so much.”

After I’d picked my chin up off the floor, I decided to reply. We exchanged a couple of further messages, and during our brief exchange, she wasn’t one of the most famous and successful women on the planet – she was just a regular young widow who had lost the love of her life in tragic circumstances like me.

Which is perhaps why I feel compelled to respond to the latest revelation in Sandberg’s grief journey – the fact that, ten months on, she is reportedly dating again. Wonderful news, right?

The self-appointed Armchair Arbitrators of Good Grieving (or AArrGG! as they are henceforth known) don’t approve. “Too soon!” was the declaration of one. “The love of her life? I don’t think so!” sniffed another. The dot-eyed denouncements reached a startling new low, with some AArrGGs going all Miss Marple and suggesting she’d bumped her husband off.

Ten months may not sound like long, especially if you’re a judgemental bully with no experience of devastating loss. When you’ve lost the love of your life, the days, months and years ahead without the prospect of your soulmate yawn forth like a terrifying chasm. Getting through ten minutes can be difficult enough, never mind ten months.

New relationships after widowhood are charged and complex things. Those who enter into them should not have to adhere to any timeline for grieving, especially ones laid out by anonymous keyboard commentators who have nothing better to do.

One of Sandberg’s friends said:

“Everyone is happy for her, because she deserves to be happy.”

Close the casebook, Miss Marple. That’s all there is to it.

Last weekend, I was honoured to be invited to speak at the AGM of WAY Widowed and Young – a wonderful charity that supports anyone under the age of 50 who has lost a spouse or partner.*

(Here I am below, attempting to look intellectual.)

*more fun than it sounds. No, really.

Reading from LAY at WAY

It’s not the first time I’ve done a public reading from the book, but arguably, if I was going to be slain by a crowd, it was this one: 100 widdas and widdawers, all of whom had been through their own personal versions of spouse-loss hell, all of whom were in the unique (and entirely unenviable position) of having a real insight into the issues raised in my book. The passage I read was about disposal of ashes, coffin choices and thrifty funeral directors named Dennis. I worried that they might not see the funny side.

(Fortunately, they did. In fact, for a bunch of bereaveds, we spent an indecent amount of time belly-laughing.)

Coffins, ashes and Dennis’ economic advice aside, the central message of my talk at the AGM was about the act of writing itself. I had been asked to consider how writing helped me after losing Mark.

Thoughts turned from my beloved husband to my beloved computer keyboard – the keyboard into which I had pounded grief, rage, loneliness  -the keyboard who, like every good friend, had responded by listening and offering me space and a conduit for reflection.

I concluded how I felt about writing and grief with the following:

Writing helped me to examine my grief, to express it in a way that I couldn’t manage with the spoken word.

Writing allowed friends and family to see how I was doing, without them having to bring out the platitudes.

Writing the blog turned into writing the book, which turned into a sort of therapy all of its own.

Writing saved me in ways that guides to grieving never could. I highly recommend it.

Fellow WAY member and BACP-registered counsellor Nicki Walker and I are now running Writing Grief, an expressive writing course for those dealing with loss. It is fully-funded through the generous support of Tyneside Mind and the Linden Family Trust. Visit us here for further information.