Amara* was crushed when her husband died from COVID-19 in April. She was left to support her two children as well as their grandmother alone. As if the grief and being the home’s sole source of income weren’t enough, she also had to contend with enormous medical bills from her husband’s hospitalization.
In many parts of Ukraine, like other cultures around the world, women who have been widowed rely on family members to care for them. Sadly, that family support system is not always in place. Some widows have no family at all, and others have relatives who live too far away or are unable to take care of them.
Rosa married young and with hopes of building a vivacious family. In her community high in the mountains of Peru, a good home and many children were considered signs of divine blessing or the spirits looking upon you benevolently, depending on who you asked.
For Talia*, a woman from a small village in northern Egypt, loneliness had become a way of life.
Earlier this year, Talia lost her husband to COVID-19. He was healthy and young, so his death was unexpected. Life for a widow in the rural villages of Egypt is difficult under any circumstances, but the fact that Talia’s husband died of COVID-19 made it exponentially worse.
