Healing broken hearts
By Frances Whiting
They met, fell in love and thought they would spend the rest of their lives together … until tragedy struck. A support group for young widows gives hope.
Presently, there are more than 20,000 young widows in Australia under the age of 40, and Rebecca Adams is one of them. Adams, now 40, was 33 when she lost her husband Dan just six weeks after their 2013 wedding.
In 2015, Adams, along with two other Brisbane women, Carren Stapleton and Lauren Leslie Carr, founded First Light, a not-for-profit organisation that links young widows across Australia, providing face-to-face and online support. On May 15 and 16, the organisation is hosting Australia’s first Camp Widow (which originated and is based in the United States) at Brisbane’s Stamford Plaza hotel.
Telling their story to Qweekend are five young widows who are attending the camp, and who hope, as widower Alex Bettes says, “someone who needs to, hears it.”
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