If you wander through Parrish third in the early morning hours, you will see Benedicta Delima either gently clearing away the remnants of a weekend gathering or adding her final touches to the famously spotless third-floor spaces. She moves through these quiet halls with radiant energy and a distinctive smile, her EVS uniform both signaling her function and concealing her story.
Uniforms, an identifying style of clothing worn by members of the same organization, function, or rank, blend seamlessly into our lives. Often too distracted or eagle-eyed in search of purpose, one may fail to see the woman behind the uniform: Benedicta. Her uniform, always constant and unvarying, is but a footnote in the history of her journey and an opportune starting point to tell her story.
“They see me as a light to their darkness,” she said, her words carrying the quiet strength of someone whose enduring suffering has transformed into a beacon of hope for surviving spouses in Ghana. Benedicta Delima, a single mother of sixteen-year-old Sonnie, is herself a widow. She and Sonnie left Ghana to escape the horrific violence faced by Ghanaian women following the deaths of their husbands. Despite her modest means, she splits her monthly salary between providing for her family and supporting dozens of widows in Ghana through her grassroots, self-run nonprofit.
As she walked me through her life in Ghana, she recounted insufferable violence and unimaginable trauma, dating back to even before her husband’s unexpected passing from cancer. “Greed,” she begins, the source of her pain and the lifeblood of her country’s extended family system. As an outsider, unacquainted with her late husband’s family, she found herself overpowered by toxic family ties driven by the pursuit of self-interest at all costs. During her marriage, Benedicta described feeling punished at every turn for her mere existence in this unwelcoming system. After her husband’s passing, the psychological punishment soon turned into terrorizing pursuits, with many family members rejecting her legal right to her late husband’s property, as was prescribed in his will.
As she gazed at the enormous autumn tree outside, in its soft mix of gold and crimson, Benedicta described the widow’s place in this vast, unyielding system. In her experience, a widow is like a fallen leaf, severed from its originating branches, lying helplessly on the ground, subject to being stepped on and to the sickening desire to exploit its fragility. In describing this leaf, she spoke of physical violence, attempts to deny her access to her husband’s inheritance, and numerous accounts of sexual assault by priests she was fortunate enough to have evaded.
“When I speak to you now, there are thousands of Ghanaian women whose [lives] are on fire … drawing in their misery, false accusations, and poverty. The extended family system is punching them hard!”
In the absence of legal protections for women experiencing harassment by their deceased husbands’ families, Benedicta and Sonnie’s Tears and Pains, a nonprofit she started in 2023, works to provide meaningful support to surviving Ghanaian spouses.
With few resources, she and a small group of Ghanaian volunteers have helped register around 400 widows and their children since the organization’s inception, connecting them directly with a network of peers and various support systems. This past month alone, the same Benedicta you may run into on Parrish third helped 30 surviving spouses and nine of their children receive much-needed healthcare at local hospitals. All Benedita wants is to illuminate their lives with a shimmer of hope, especially when they are the least protected and least visible.
Having already met with the Ghanaian first lady and discussed possible legal remedies to put an end to the exploitation of surviving spouses, Benedicta’s work has been paying off despite her funding source being limited to her modest Swarthmore paycheck.
When asked how she feels about the successes of her one-year-old mission, she responds, “From what my experience has been, and how my life has turned around while those after me [were defeated] … When I look at my son, I feel fulfilled. I don’t have to wake up, scared that someone from my late husband’s family will come knocking at my door. I feel humbled … That alone gives me peace!”
Benedicta’s resilience, bravery, and compassion transcend words. Her journey, summed up in a self-published autobiography, Widow and Son, reveals a story of triumph — a life defined by compassion, despite hardship, and dedication to others, despite the constraints. As she recounts her past, she only ever tears up at the mention of her late mother, her father, and her son, whom she feared would have been harmed — or worse, killed — had he not been fortunate enough to be a U.S. citizen. Even then, she lets her tears trace a quiet path through her cheeks, never stopping to interrupt their path nor allowing them to interrupt her story.
