
After losing my husband to cancer in 2020, I embarked on what felt like an impossible journey—finding purpose in my shattered world. In this final episode, I reflect on the path I've traveled from wife to caregiver to widow to now embracing my whole new life. The grief journey has been anything but linear. I've fallen countless times but somehow found the strength to rise again. Through raw journal entries, therapy sessions, and painful "firsts," I've documented the rollercoaster of widowhoo...
May 31, 2025
21 min

Can your heart truly find love again after experiencing the shattering pain of losing a spouse? Dale and Annie's story proves it's not only possible—it can happen when you least expect it. When Annie posted on Facebook asking for help spreading mulch before her daughter's wedding, she never imagined it would lead to finding love again. Dale, also a widow who had lost his wife to cancer, showed up with his wheelbarrow and shovel. Day after day, he returned to help with projects around her pro...
May 24, 2025
13 min

Memory works in mysterious ways after profound loss. Four years after my husband John died from cancer, I've made a startling discovery about grief that nobody warned me about – sometimes I can't remember whether events in my life happened before or after he passed away. This realization initially crushed me with guilt. How could something so fundamental become blurry? What does it mean when I have to consciously focus – to be "in the zone" – to place memories correctly on my life's timeline...
May 17, 2025
8 min

Grief arrives in many forms, and its timing is never what we expect. After losing my husband to cancer in 2020, I discovered that my grieving process had actually begun a year earlier with his diagnosis—a slow unraveling as I watched him slip away while trying to savor every remaining moment. The contrast with my sister-in-law Annie's experience couldn't be more stark: she lost her husband suddenly to a heart attack, performing CPR in their bedroom at 2:30 AM after they had casually said good...
May 10, 2025
15 min

Grief rewrites our entire life story, dividing it into clear chapters—before loss, during caregiving, after death, and the future we must now reimagine. In this deeply moving conversation, I sit with my friend Teri as we explore these four distinct parts of our widowhood journey after losing our husbands to colon cancer. We begin by reflecting on our previous lives—relationships marked by profound ease and partnership. Teri shares her 30-year love story with Rob, while I recall how my husban...
May 3, 2025
26 min

Can you feel genuinely happy after devastating loss? When my husband died in 2020, I couldn't imagine ever experiencing true happiness again. Now, five years later, I've found myself in a surprising place – genuinely happy and yet wrestling with unexpected guilt about that happiness. "I thought genuine happiness was just a dream," reflecting on my darkest days. "Can I feel happy again? Can I feel joy? Can I be content in my life?" The answer, as I've discovered, is yes – though not without co...
Apr 26, 2025
15 min

Four of us share the raw truth about what helped—and hurt—our first year of grief. My sister-in-law Annie, Annie's husband Dale, and my boyfriend John join me for an intimate conversation about navigating widowhood together. We reveal the profound impact of simple statements like "you do you" and "it's okay not to be okay" that gave us permission to grieve authentically. We recount how friends who simply showed up—bringing food, scheduling visits, sharing memories, or just walking together—c...
Apr 19, 2025
18 min

When the future you planned suddenly vanishes, how do you move forward? After losing my husband to cancer in 2020, I faced the incredibly difficult journey of transforming our "we were going to" dreams into a new life of "I get to" opportunities. This deeply personal episode takes you through the evolution of our marriage conversations—from the light, daily check-ins of our 20s to the profound end-of-life discussions where my husband encouraged me to find purpose without him. I share how our...
Apr 12, 2025
9 min

Grief transforms over time, especially in how we relate to photographs and memories of those we've lost. Four years after losing my husband John to cancer, I've discovered that reminiscing about our life together has evolved from unbearably painful to genuinely joyful. During that first year, I couldn't look beyond the heartbreaking final months of John's illness. Every photograph felt like a knife to the heart, yet I compulsively revisited those painful memories. When well-meaning friends a...
Apr 5, 2025
15 min

Four years after grief changed everything, I'm returning for my final season to share the culmination of my healing journey. What does it truly mean to accept a new chapter after devastating loss? This episode takes you through my transformation from a grieving widow to someone who's genuinely, authentically happy again. By sharing raw journal entries spanning from June 2020 to April 2024, I reveal the gradual but profound shift from despair to hope, from merely surviving to genuinely ...
Mar 29, 2025
18 min
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