A Widow and a Questionable Autoethnographer

Abstract

There are two aims in writing this paper. Firstly, I reflect on several incidents that highlighted for me what it meant to be a widow in the eyes of others. The intention is to bring to light how becoming a widow reinforces how people define you relative to a man, more poignant because that man is absent. Providing personal insights sifted through theory is a form of feminist autoethnography that functions here as an intervention into more common views of widowhood. The second aim is to consider my experience of having the original version of this paper rejected by a journal. The reviewers’ comments made me understand that my execution of feminist autoethnography was seen as problematic. This experience has spurned me to explore the need for methodological risk-taking, particularly when the topic being discussed, in this case widowhood, requires personal resilience to bring out of the shadows. Discussing issues that are “heartfelt” can contribute to debates about the construction of knowledge because they invite consideration of what is taken to be rational and what is taken to be emotional.