Reading posts at the YWBB

I still read the widow board sometimes. Thankfully the time I spend there is less and less. I just don’t have the time really and frankly, when I do read it either depresses or infuriates me.

Two things of late that I have noticed there that are eating at me for some reason. The first is the tendency of older board members to condone mean-spirited behavior from some of the members while scolding new members for objecting when they are the victims of this behavior. The prevailing attitude of the powers that are at the YWBB has always been that grief is the great “get out of jail free-card” and that a widowed person in particular can say or do just about any awful thing the want because it is part of the “grief work” and “leaning into the pain” as opposed, I guess, to dealing with reality and behaving like a normal person in spite of the fact that life has dealt you some painfully bad cards. In my opinion, based on what I have read, people who let themselves by driven by their grief are the people who never seem to regain a solid footing in the world.

There is one person in particular who uses the board’s private message system to send what amounts to hate mail to other, usually newer, members of the board. It is Internet bullying of the adult variety and it is tolerated and even condoned at the YWBB. Rob got a message from this person that implied hateful things about him and his late wife. He posted it along with his feelings that the PM’s (private messages) should not be a forum for expressing disapproval or offering advice to people who were nothing more than strangers to you. He was sounded chastised by the older members who felt that PM’s should also stay private even if the message was a harassing one. It is this kind of things that allows abusers to get away with victimizing people, but many at the YWBB are so blind to anyone’s needs but their own - they can’t see that. This person is harassing another woman right now who is bravely taking it public and is, naturally, being made the villain for doing so. Isn’t that always the case? Victims being re-victimized when they speak out? I feel badly for her, but not badly enough to register to defend her. I am not interested in being that kind of good samaritan anymore. It does sadden me a little to see people I know and like supporting the harasser though. I don’t think she deserves it. Sometimes I get the feeling that she may not even be who she claims to be and that much of what she writes is creative rather than factual.

The second thing that bothers me is an anonymous poster who claims to be recently remarried and her new husband, a widower, has cheated on her already. I don’t know why this bothers me so much. Perhaps because there were many marriages in and around the time Rob and I married and I knew some of the people’s stories and it saddens me to think that any of these couples could be experiencing such trouble already. Partly too because I wonder if anyone wonders if that is me posting. Rob wondered that too when he pointed the post out to me. It doesn’t matter what anyone at the YWBB thinks. But for a handful, they are strangers. It is just a sad post though Rob doesn’t have the same impression. He thinks there is something fishy about it. I guess it doesn’t matter and it is another sign that I need to curtail even the little bit of surfing I do there. If I am not posting, which I can’t as I am not registered, there is no reason to read.