Our story
Born from love, and from loss
In 2025, our founder Ethel MacPepple-Jaja lost her partner suddenly, to a stroke. There was no warning and no time to prepare, one ordinary day became the day everything changed.
What followed was the kind of grief no one can prepare you for: the silence where a voice used to be, the decisions and the paperwork, the long days and the longer nights. However much love surrounds you, grief can be a lonely place.
Ethel found herself longing to sit with women who truly understood, women who knew what it was to lose a husband or partner, and who shared the culture, the customs and the ways of remembering that her late partner would have understood without a word of explanation.
So she went looking. And she found that, for widows of African and Caribbean heritage here in the UK, that place simply didn't exist.
If I need this, surely I am not the only one.
Somewhere, Ethel knew, there were other women carrying the same weight and longing for the same understanding. African Caribbean Widows UK was born from that quiet, certain thought.
It is a community where you don't have to explain yourself, where your grief and your heritage are both welcome, where the people we have lost are remembered with love, and where no one has to walk this road alone.
A note from Ethel
Dear sister,
If you have found your way here, I am so sorry for your loss. I know how heavy this road can be, because I am walking it too.
When I lost my partner in 2025, it happened without warning. In the months that followed, I longed for someone who would simply understand, not only the loss, but the culture we shared and the ways we remember the ones we love. I couldn't find that place, so I have tried, with love, to build it.
You don't have to be strong here, and you don't have to explain. Come as you are, share as much or as little as you wish, and know that you are welcome.