Life after widowhood: one woman's memoir

Author Betty Auchard reinvented her life after her husband died; now she helps others do the same

By Diane Dennis

Lifestyles Northwest, Nov 30, 2006, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

Diane Dennis is an author, certified trainer and life coach. Reach her by e-mail at dianeden@centurytel.net. For dates and times of her workshops, seminars and coaching, visit her Web site at www.lifetransitionguide.com.

Forty-nine years is a long time for anything. Especially marriage. Especially today. When her husband, Denny, died after those many years of marriage, Betty Auchard had a lot of catching up to do.

Married at 19, she went straight from her parents’ home to her husband’s bed. Paying bills, using the ATM, putting gasoline in the car and paying taxes were all foreign tasks that she would have to learn to muddle through on her own.

To keep herself sane, and to remember the multitudes of details, she made notes on snippets, scraps and junk, then stuffed them in odd places. Three years later, when she finally got around to clean her house, she was surprised to find the notes she had mostly forgotten she’d written. Some of the hurried scratchings offered a peek into the turmoil she experienced since her loss.

She then graduated to real notebook paper and began writing in earnest. The result is a touching, funny and painfully honest memoir called “Dancing In My Nightgown: The Rhythms of Widowhood.”

Auchard’s way of coping with the death of her husband was to talk. As she puts it, she’s a talker. When there wasn’t anyone around to lend and ear, she talked to paper. Her mission now is to help others through the long process of reinventing themselves after the loss of a spouse, and some of her advice, while sage, is to the point: “Get out. Walk.”

Besides speaking for women’s groups, Auchard, who lives in the San Francisco Bay area, can be heard on NPR and other radio programs as a guest speaker. Her book has won the Independent Publisher’s Award. All of this surprises her more than anyone else.

“I don’t have a master plan except to stay fit emotionally, physically and spiritually – that alone is a big job,” Auchard says with a laugh.

She wryly jokes that she is too old to make plans. Her husband, who was a therapist, brought order to their lives. He used to teach theories of learning. “My learning is to experience,” Auchard says.

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