Grief is a universal experience, yet every journey through loss is unique. In this episode, Andrea Lott Haney shares her extraordinary story of navigating the complexities of double widowhood. Andrea opens up about the profound grief and emotional challenges of losing two spouses, offering a unique perspective on the similarities and differences in grieving multiple losses. She discusses the importance of self-care, community support, and faith in her healing journey, and provides inspiration for others facing adversity. Tune in to hear Andrea’s courageous story and discover how to find hope and meaning in the face of life’s greatest challenges.
I am sharing my experience of loving the same man for 32 years, a mother to two adult children, a retired military officer, a breast cancer survivor, and my connections with others.
Anyone experiencing suicidal thoughts should reach out to a suicide hotline or local emergency number in their country: Psychology Today Suicide Hotlines and Prevention Resources Around the World
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All Grief Is The Same And All Grief Is Different: A Double Widow’s Story With Andrea Lott Haney
Finding Community & Support After Loss: The Widowhood Club
Andrea, welcome to the Widowhood.
Thanks for having me, Tina. I’m very honored to be here.
What do you think when you hear, “Welcome to the Widowhood?” What was the first thing that came to your mind if the ticker tape would have just printed on your forehead?
I say a lot whenever I meet somebody newly widowed that it is the worst club to belong to and we have the best members. We support each other like no other club, the Widowhood Club, in both the specific sense of your group and then also the general sense of just being widows and how, once you’ve been through it, you know things that the general public does not know and you have been places the general public has not been. There’s a solidarity there.
You nailed that. For people who are reading and just to make them jealous, when you say my group, what does that look like to you? What did that look like to you before you became part of that group?
TikTok: A Digital Oasis For Young Widows
I met you on TikTok, but I was not on TikTok prior to Brian’s passing. I specifically got on TikTok because other social media platforms were too emotionally loaded for me. Being widowed twice, my first husband, Gary, who passed in 2010, his passing predated my first iPhone. I did not have a huge social media presence in those days. I was on MySpace and I had just gotten on to Facebook for work, but I didn’t have a ton of digital memories and so forth of him. When I got together with Brian, I really wanted to change that.
I made it a point to document digitally and on social media all these seemingly unimportant moments of our lives because they were important to me. After he passed, I’m so glad that I did that because I know that those memories are so precious, but in the immediate aftermath, I did not want to see them. It was more than just turning off the memory feature on the platform. It would be like my friend would change her profile picture and it would say, “Brian Haney liked this photo or something.” It would come up non-consensually. These other social media platforms were just so emotionally loaded for me.
I went to TikTok because it was a fresh slate for me. That’s where I met you and where I met a lot of the other ladies and men who are part of supporting each other through your organization, Widowhood Real Talk with Tina, and how you use your platform to not only engage with us and to help us when we express our feelings, but also you go live, you include us in your videos. We’ve created this network in the way of a lot of us know each other now. Some of us have even met outside of social media or exchanged phone numbers and talked offline, and we’ve become our own little support group in a way.
That is so huge. Thank you for explaining that. I must admit, before I got on TikTok, I thought everybody was gyrating or somebody was dancing, and that’s all I was going to see. There are subcultures for any topic that you’re interested in. If you’re an author, there’s author TikTok. If you’re a stay-at-home mom, there’s stay-at-home TikTok. There’s actress TikTok. The ability to create a network. The thing you mentioned about going live, that ability, if you’re not ready to talk to people and sit on the outside, watch these conversations, and then decide, “I’m going to say something or I’m going to get engaged,” they did this right.
I’m not a tech person by any means, but I’ve heard it explained that it’s an interest-based algorithm as opposed to a follower-based algorithm. They’re better at knowing what you want to see. If I’m on grief tok or if I’m on widow tok, it connects me to other people like that. The very first video that I made on TikTok was basically introducing myself as somebody who had been widowed twice at a young age and saying, “I knew nobody in my real life.” Over the years of being widowed, I had met hundreds of young widows at that point and I knew nobody who was double a widow. Now I know people who are my age and double widowed.
What does that mean for you in your grief journey to know that and to know them?
The Power Of Community In Grief
In my grief journey the second time, I have done a lot of throwing my fists in the air and saying, “This is so unfair. How could this possibly be happening to me again?” Not only me but my daughter, “How could this happen to Brian?” All of that. “Are we serious right now? How could this be?” On top of that, not having anybody in my real life or even in my digital life, my digital connections at that time, who had experienced this trauma twice, I just felt so isolated and othered, this freak of nature almost. I think that community is just incredibly important in your grief journey. If you can’t find it, you have to make it. You have to create it.
Thank you for saying that because there is such a thought in your mind that no one else can be in pain like this, that no one else has endured this. It’s only me that can’t sleep at night. It’s only me who can’t go down the cookie aisle because he likes cookies or whatever that food would be in the grocery store.
It’s only me that still has all the medication in the house for my sick spouse and they’ve been gone from this world a year or two later. It’s only me that still has their toothbrush right there where they left it. There’s something empowering to know there’s everybody else. Not only is it everybody else, they’re willing to talk. They’re willing to connect, and they’re willing to share the most gritty parts of this and be transparent about it.
Without judgment because I feel like people who haven’t been through it, we widows, as opposed to other types of losses, in my opinion, receive so much judgment.
What does that judgment look like for you?
Navigating Judgments And Clichés In Widowhood
I have been judged for both being too sad and not sad enough at various times. Seeking to find new love is a big one. I’ve done it both ways. Being widowed twice now, I did seek out to be re-partnered after Gary passed away and I did end up getting remarried. I feel like nobody in my personal life judged me for that. It was more that they were worried about me, but people in my online life or people who were more tangentially acquaintances and so forth would judge you for that.
“Maybe you didn’t love your husband that much or you surely could not love your husband as much as I love mine because I would never be re-partnered after that thing.” Now that I’m not seeking to be re-partnered, I feel like there is a judgment that I get from people who are worried about me and also people more tangentially in lives that are like, “You’re still young, you’re attractive. Don’t be so stuck in your grief. You can find love again.” I hate when I hear that word stuck in your grief. It’s very triggering for me because that is something almost always used derisively from somebody who has not experienced a profound loss.
To say that someone is stuck in their grief is meant as, “You’re not coping with it as well as I think you should be. You are not at the part in your grief journey that I think you should be.” It’s now been a little over two years since I lost Brian. The fact that I’m not choosing to go out there and seek to be re-partnered must mean that I am not far enough along in my grief journey because otherwise, “I’m young, I’m attractive, I could find somebody.”
“I’m young, I’m attractive.”
I am, but that’s not important. It’s not that I don’t know that I’m a catch. I get it. I’m a catch. It’s that I’m not interested. It’s that it is something that is deprioritized for me right now. Even if I am stuck in my grief, I think that’s a judgment word. Since we’re talking about judgment, that’s a judgment word to me. Even if I am, it’s been about fifteen years since I was widowed for the first time. Over the years, people have gotten better about the clichés they say. Now they say nice clichés.
One of the nice cliches is, “It’s okay to be not okay.” They mean it’s okay to be not okay at the funeral. They don’t mean it’s okay to be not okay after two years. They don’t mean it’s okay to be not okay after ten years. They’ll say the nice cliché. “Grief has no timeline.” They don’t mean past the one-year mark, I promise you.
Grief has no timeline. Share on XLet me be clear, because you and I have talked, and shared videos at 2:00 in the morning. “It’s your turn to respond.” You’re not talking hyperbole. You’re talking about things people have said to you. You are talking about people who have literally stepped away in the depth of your pain and said, “You’re still doing this and I can’t be.” You are talking about real heart, life, abandonment, and people not showing up.
I’ve lost people I believed would always be by my side. I’ve lost family members and my very best friends. Losing your spouse is this level of pain and trauma that you can’t describe to someone who has never been through it. On top of that, if you are truly counting on and believing in somebody being there beside you through it, they just choose not to show up for you anymore. I don’t mean like, “I have a personal boundary or I need to take a break.”
Check out.
It’s like I’m too messy for them all of a sudden. That adds another layer of pain to something that is already the most pain I could imagine.
Thank you for sharing that because one of the reasons I have this conversation, there are people who read this that are trying to show up for a family member or a friend. It’s uncharted territory. What is something small ine of those people could have done to stay the long game? If they just constantly did just this one thing, because like you just said, “I had no concept of how to show up for somebody that lost their spouse until I lost mine.” For the person who’s reading and trying to think, “This is heavy. I’m going home to my husband at the end of the day and I’m happy, and then I come to hang out with you, and then I was sad, but we were friends.” What is one thing I could do consistently if that’s all I could muster to do to show up?
The Importance Of Asking Questions And Showing Support
I think if you want, I could list a million things here.
Go ahead.
First, I think asking questions, caring about the answer, and listening to the answer are important. Even if that’s like, “I don’t have time to spend half an hour on a phone call with you,” but just texting me. I would 100% every time rather somebody say the wrong thing and be meaning well than just abandon me. Since you asked, what would I say to somebody who wants to show up and wants to say the right thing? I don’t like, “How are you? How are you, really?” I don’t like that.
If you do that, then at least I do know you care. Thank you for that. I would rather have somebody say something wrong and be caring than not say anything at all. What kind of questions I would like instead are things like, “Who is the asshole of the day?” I would love to tell you about what Comcast did to me because that account was in his name and not mine. I would love to tell you that and nobody else will listen. Nobody cares.
Another question that is really vital, especially in the early stages of widowhood and grieving, is, “What did you eat today? How did you sleep last night?” Advanced level, “What kept you up last night?” Something like that. Really asking questions and caring about the answer. Getting into these, if it’s too big for you, okay, tone it in, make it smaller, ask a specific question. I love questions about my spouses or memories about them, too. Even if it’s only just, “This song came on the radio, and it made me think of the time when Brian made that playlist for us at the party. I just wanted to let you know that I thought of him.”
That is huge. I think people are scared of saying his name to me or telling me that they miss him also or what memories or thoughts they have of him. That is such a huge thing. Even if he just crosses your mind like our local diner, you remember how he always used to get the club sandwich. Just saying something as small as that to me is so meaningful. Another thing is reaching out on holidays and big days. If you know his birthday or his death anniversary, it doesn’t have to be this big, solemn thing. It can just be like thinking of you. I think those are more bite-sized things. I don’t expect anybody to do all of those things. I think everybody can do one.
That’s why I asked you, “What was that one thing?” I’ll say this. Andrea says, “I do not give out advice. I give out hot widow tips,” which I think is synonymous with advice. Thank you for sharing that. I want to circle back to those. One, the need to say our person’s name. It’s like something that’s stuck in your throat and you want to say it out loud, but you don’t want other people to make it weird. The need to go, “They lived. We had this relationship. They existed. This is not all made up in my mind. We did all of these things.”
When people just want to never say their name again, and they’re the name you think about all the time, it’s hard to reconcile that. The only thing I would add to that is if the person you’re supporting tells you not to mention their name, follow their lead, but 90% of the people I talk to want other people to say their name and give a space that you could talk about Brian or Gary. You could talk about the stories without them going or picking up their phone or looking and doing. Our spouses passed. We don’t have anybody to talk to. We’re home alone. It’s a big house, even if it’s a condo or a studio. It’s quiet. We miss the adult connection.
I just really want to hone in on what you said about reading the room. This is why I say I don’t give advice. If you notice, my hot grief tips are very tongue-in-cheek.
They’re good.
Order the venti and not the grande. It’s very tongue-in-cheek. Also, yes, people will experience grief in different ways. I agree with you that 90% of the people who experience profound loss that I know do want that person to be brought up or those days to be brought up. Some don’t. Taking your lead from that person, I think that’s where active listening comes in. If you care, I want to know how best to show up for you. “Would it be appropriate for me to text you every day? I don’t require a response. I don’t want to bug you, though. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
I think most people will tell you, or, “I don’t want to bring up Brian if it’s still too raw for you, but I do want to tell you that I’m thinking of him. Is that something that you would like to hear or not?” I think people will be honest about that and really care about the answer because everyone is different and every experience of grief is different. Even though I have done it two times, my experience is different. Past me would not be doing what now me is doing and vice versa. I am different both times. How could it not be different for you, Tina, or for anybody else who has lost their spouse or another loss?
The Ever-Changing Landscape Of Grief
People, it’s very difficult to understand. What do you mean you’re a different person? You look the same. You have the same job. Maybe you have some new eyeglasses, but what do you mean you’re a different person? I don’t understand that because two years have passed, it’s time to move on and we’re living. Andrea’s back. Let’s go do the things that we used to do.
What’s funny about that is I did not look the same or have the same job. I very much completely changed who I was both times. The first time, when Gary passed away, I lost my job the day I lost him. I worked for our family business and it was because he was an attorney and I was a paralegal and he was a solo practice. I can’t practice law. The office and the job completely went away. I changed my hair, and I lost a person’s worth of weight because of the widow diet. That’s a whole nother situation.
Deeper than those things, who I am fundamentally changed. I lost my religion. I changed my religion. The trauma of how Gary died completely changed my brain chemistry in that he had a sudden cardiac arrest. I was right there and I had to pull him off the couch and felt his head hit our hardwood floor and perform CPR until the ambulance got there and did not get him back. That traumatic event gave me PTSD, in addition to grief.
That trauma just forever changed my brain chemistry and the way I think my reactions to things are just not the same anymore. On top of it, the profound grief really does change who you are because as we were talking about losing the people in our lives, my friend group, my core people, like completely changed. I lost people who were his friends. I lost all of his family members, who I thought were my family members.
The profound grief really does change who you are. Share on XThat happened in both times being without. I lost almost all of their family members who I thought of as my family members for all those years. The second time around, I didn’t really lose friends the way I did the first time because my friend group got really curated after that. The first time, I certainly did lost my friend group. All my interests changed. The things that I enjoy doing, I no longer enjoy the same way I did before. Gary and I used to enjoy outdoor activities. We would frequently go camping or rollerblading and jogging or outside biking and that kind of thing. I do none of those things. The most outdoorsy I am is drinking on a patio these days.
I’ll take a beer to a beach. None of those things. It was a little bit harder with Brian because we met when we were children. We were very close growing up from the time we were eleven years old. It was hard for me to go back to me that was before him. When Gary and I met, we were both adults. Being a widow, it’s hard to imagine that you are without your person. There at least was a me before Gary, like that me did exist. I was a fully formed adult before I had him.
With Brian, I have almost no memories and no interests outside of him. We had all the same interests coming up. We knew all the same people. We had all the same friends. We enjoyed all the same TV shows and music. We lived in the same hometown. We went to all the same restaurants. Everything was the same. That’s been even harder to navigate what interests do I have without him.
I’ve done a lot of trying new things, like trying to pick up new hobbies. I started taking golf lessons. My daughter was a golfer, but she was the only one in the family who ever played. Neither of us ever played. I thought maybe I’ll try that. Everything about me on the molecular level has been changed by the experience of losing my spouse and then losing another spouse. Yes, my job, my looks, my personality, my religion, my friend group, the people, all of my interests, everything I am. You could also say that my relationship with Gary and my relationship with Brian were so very different as to even the flavor of it was so very different.
How so?
Gary and I had a very passionate in all regards relationship. Not just physically passionate, although there was that, but also mercurial. We would fight quickly but also make up quickly. We both had just really strong big feelings about everything all the time. With Brian, it was so much more laid back. It was so much more a companionable relationship where we really functioned most of the time more so as family members and best friends. Yes, we had a full marriage, but the focus wasn’t quite so much on these huge, passionate highs. It was more of an even-keeled, level-headed relationship, if that makes sense.
It does. Thank you for laying out how you’re different because people don’t see that when they see us. One, they see what they want to see, “She looks happy, everything is fine, and I don’t have to do anything over there, and she’s good.” They don’t realize how much interest and the things that you enjoy doing don’t sit the same when our person is no longer here.
They don’t understand the inability to desire to almost want nothing else, to just exist and the struggle. For all of you that are on TikTok, sorry for you, but maybe you should get on there. There’s a TikTok that you had, and I’m not going to do a good job explaining this. In the conversation you were speaking about, you’re okay that you won’t have joy, I think it is.
The other way around, I know what you’re talking about.
Take us to where I’m trying to get us to. What was that conversation about? What is the missed norm that people just were not getting?
Finding Happiness And Joy After Loss
I said, “I’m never going to be happy again.” That caused a big lot of controversy. “You’ll be happy.” No, I do have moments of joy. I’m talking to you, Tina. This is nice for me, and it is pleasant. I’m enjoying my time with you. I enjoy my time with my friends and family and I can even laugh. People ask, “When do you feel better?” I’m like, “I felt a little bit better. I had a laugh. I laughed at his funeral.” We laugh at funerals. We can have that coexisting, but when I say I won’t be happy again, I mean the happy with the capital H, like that overarching thing that we are taught as a society that we are in the pursuit of happiness. We are seeking happiness all of the time.
That is not something that is attainable for me. The way my brain chemistry has been changed, the way that I carry the weight of the losses with me all of the time, that type of happiness is not an option for me anymore. Pursuing it the way people do, like reading self-help books or trying to change our mindset and saying, “You can be happy.” To me, that makes me more frustrated. That makes me deeper in my grief because it’s just a constant reminder of how much I’ve lost. Whereas, if I try to live in this moment and understand that I don’t have to be happy or digestible to you, the general public, I don’t have that for my life to have value and purpose.
My life can have value and purpose without that Happiness. I think it’s an important thing for me to say, “Yes, I do enjoy things.” I do still have moments of joy. I’m not depressed. I get up every day. I work. I’m not depressed. I’m grieving. Those are different. They have overlap, but they’re different. In the Venn diagram, there’s some room in the middle, but it’s not that I can’t ever see the good in things. It’s that my life has been really bad. Really bad things have happened to me.
To push that away and say, “You’ll be happy again,” that’s diminishing the fact that bad things can change us forever. People are chronically ill or disabled. To say, “Never give up hope. You can still have a miracle,” it’s not meeting them where they are. I have a chronic illness that has no cure. I’m not giving up hope that I might have a good day today, but where I am today and where I am now, and given our current level of technology, this will never be cured. This will always be with me. I think we need to sit in that discomfort with people that there are permanent things that can happen to us that all the prayers and all the well wishes in the world are never going to take away.
Thank you because we often talk about toxic positivity. The two things that you said, to sit with someone and take those clues from them, Brian and Gary are not coming back. That is a reality. You’re not in denial about that. I would dare say everybody’s had part of their grief journey and has had deep depression in it. I don’t think you can navigate when you’ve had this deep loss. You don’t skirt into that area. It’s okay that they’re not here. This isn’t like my ice cream fell off my ice cream cone and I’m just going to get another double scoop of butter pecan. Life is shook. Life is down to the bare level.
Everything about it. A partner loss is different than other kinds of losses and how it impacts you every single day. Every single molecule, my financial life, the housework, the cars, the pets, the parenting, the clothes you buy, the food you eat, every single thing is touched by your partner. It’s missing that person. It’s been robbed. The Earth has been robbed of that person. My life has been changed forever, also.
It has because they leave and we still have these remnants of this two-person financial setup responsibility because they’ve left. No one says, “I’m going to take out the trash everyday or I’m going to pay the bills or we didn’t have life insurance and I’m going to make sure all your bills are paid.” People can barely hear we’re sad, let alone the work of being ditched by them and what that looks like and being left with all the responsibilities.
Life Insurance And The Financial Realities of Widowhood
I think what you said about life insurance, that’s been a hot button for me because my online presence has gained some traction. It’s not good. People find out that I’m double widowed.
Double money bags over here.
Right, something like that. I did have life insurance with Gary, but I did not have it with Brian.
Let me just say this. Get life insurance.
If you can.
If you are going out to eat once a week, you can get some life insurance.
I would beg to differ with that.
I don’t know. If it happens once a week, that means an average of once a week, unless you have some terminal illness or something’s going on. I’ll give that caveat. You are just healthy and doing fine. I don’t care if you’re in your 60s. If you’re going out to eat once a week, that means you at least spending $15 to $25 to go out to eat once a week times 4.
That’s enough even for a high-cost life insurance policy on average. There’s always no absolute. If you’re going out to eat every week and you’re not thinking about life insurance, I’ll reel that in and say, “I challenge you to consider having life insurance.” Do not sleep on it. Whether your spouse has passed or you have children, it is such an important thing.
Having been through it before, I knew how important it was. I’ve done it both ways, so let me tell you which way was better. Having money is better than not having money, 100%. Here’s the thing, though, I knew. Brian and I were very aware of how important life insurance was. Let me tell you, with his weight and his health condition, which was diabetes, but it turns out it was pancreatic cancer. Good on them, I guess, for a term life insurance policy, it would have cost more than my mortgage.
I’m giving all these things in the mail with the credit union. “You can get this and this.” I’m getting different mail. It’s like, “You don’t have to. You can get this.”
I got all that mail, too, Tina. Call them, ask for it. Tell them if you have any health condition, if you are overweight, if you have ever smoked, anything of that nature, I promise you, it’s not that easy. Life insurance is incredibly important. If you are younger than 30, go ahead and do try to get as much life insurance as you can afford. I 100% would agree with that, but I just know that it is often not an option when we get older.
My late husband, it was like we got married, we got life insurance, and we did that. That’s fair. I will definitely take it. The older we get, the more complicated.
Gary had it through his employer, which was the federal government. That was great, but Brian didn’t have that option. We knew how important it was. We tried and he did have life insurance when he was young, and they can’t cancel you for having a health condition, but basically, at the renewal term, and when he did the blood work, they found out that’s how we found out he had diabetes. They canceled him. To get new life insurance, it would have cost over $1,200 a month. Let’s put it that way. We’re not talking about a small amount of money. If we had an extra $1,200 a month, we could have just put that in a savings account.
I don’t need life insurance if I have an extra $1,200 a month. A lot of people don’t have that. The second thing I want to say about life insurance is people assume that it’s a windfall. I will tell you, it was a large amount of money in Gary’s case. That amount of money to me now would be life-changing. It was then. It allowed me to stay at home with my daughter, to stay in the same house. I lost my job and his job. It was a large amount of money.
However, it was only two years of his salary. That sounds like a large amount of money on paper, but when your entire life has changed, it’s not a windfall. I didn’t have to pay for his funeral because he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery and that’s free, but I did have to pay for his cremation. I had to pay for the wake that we had after the funeral. I did have to pay for travel expenses for us, me and his immediate family, to go to Arlington, Virginia from Indianapolis. Those aren’t small expenses.
On top of that, there are often his expenses that I have to continue to pay. I got rid of his car as soon as I could, but I still had to keep making the payments until I did, things like that. It’s good to have, and it certainly is a privilege. I had time to catch my breath. I had time to take care of my daughter, to do everything necessary for us to keep her in her same school, to keep her in her same house, and to keep our pets and not have these secondary losses on top of it. That was really important and really good, but it didn’t make me rich.
It’s not like you’re sitting there and you don’t have to spend it, and you can live and exist. It’s hard getting a life insurance check.
That was true of me, too. I felt like if I had gotten that money when he was alive, think of the vacations we could have taken. That would have been so nice to have when he was here.
Finding Comfort In Faith And Religion
His death is on the other side of that. I want to ask a tough question. Hopefully, you’ll go down this road with me. What is it about our faith and religion that is just so jacked up when our person passed? I want the real answer. No buttercup.
I can only speak for me and my experience of that.
This means no injury or tips. This is just her.
This is just me. For me, I was very much raised as a Christian. I was a Bible Bowler back in the day, meaning I did the quiz game that is the Bible. If you Google it, it’s still a program to this day. You would memorize big parts of the Bible, travel all over the country, and compete with other youngsters for Bible college scholarships.
There was bowling involved. I’m like, “Hold on.”
It’s like Quiz Bowl. Bible Bowl. I was very much a believer and I still consider myself a Christian, by the way. What has changed is I really believed that God was in control and me having faith would change outcomes here on Earth. I no longer believe that. I think that if there is a God, our faith and our belief lead us to our actions. It can be a comfort to us. We are the ones who can change what is here. If there is a God, then our belief in him or our belief, whatever those religious beliefs are, speaking for myself in Christianity, but whatever that faith is, I can draw on that for my own comfort.
I can draw on, me as a Christian, the teachings of Christ to help others and to find a purpose in my life. It’s up to me to do the actions. I assure you that nobody was more prayed over than Gary Lott and Brian Haney in the history of people praying over people. Why did Lazarus get risen from the dead and neither of my husbands? Why? Nobody has ever prayed over anybody and it’s almost an insult to say God is good when your person lives and my person dies because that’s arbitrary. If that is God’s will, then I don’t want to know him.
I don’t want to know that God, because if it is God’s will to put so much suffering into the world and to arbitrarily pick this person’s life and this person dies, or this person dies peacefully in an old age and this person suffers, that’s not a God I feel is worth worshiping. That is not a person I want to know. Instead, what I feel is that we live in the Christian tradition that this is a fallen world. We have been separated from the perfect humanity and creation of God. As such, the natural world is where we live and what we experience. It’s not supernatural. By definition, supernatural means outside of the natural world. That’s unknowable with our five senses.
If we know it, it’s somewhere outside of these five senses. It’s not observable. It’s not the scientific method. It’s outside of the natural. Therefore, it has nothing to do with what happens in our natural world. Cancer happens because it’s a science, because it’s part of the natural world. Fallen, separated creation or heart attacks, or car accidents. They happen because physics exists, and chemistry exists. It’s not God pointing down at your loved one and nudging that bumper towards another bumper and saying, “They’re getting a car accident.” In my faith, in my theology, in my belief system.
Thank you for explaining that.
My religion has changed in that it’s more focused on others and the actions that it can take in the world. That’s what faith is for.
What would be an example of there? How would that show up, what you just explained?
I’m a Quaker, which means I am a conscientious objector, but I also practice pacifism in my life and my communications, which means that I don’t answer harmful words with harmful words back. At least I strive not to, and I’m a sinner like everyone else. I strive not to answer harmful words with harmful words back. I strive for peacefulness in my communications. I feel like my life on Earth has value and purpose and how I want to put my Christian faith and as I see it into action is by helping others. Gary spent his whole life in service to others. He was a public servant his entire life. He’s not here anymore. Now what? Brian Haney was the single most generous person I have ever met in my life.
Generous with his time, his money, and his kindness, the single most generous person I’ve ever met in my life. Now the world’s not here because of the world, he, my world, is not here. Brian is not here anymore. How do I take what is good about them, what I love about them, and what good they brought into the world, and how do I take that forward? I work for a nonprofit, even though I could maybe make more money. We’ve already talked about financial problems that are real in widowhood, but I can make more money if I don’t. I work for a nonprofit because their purpose is important to me. In fact, we even are doing programming on facing grief. Quick shout-out. We decided on a virtual.
We talked about that. We share.
They’re free. Our next free and it’ll be virtual for the whole country. Everybody can do it. Tina, we would love for you to be a panel guest as part of the conversation afterward.
If you just do that on me.
I’ll send it to you. I know, I mean to make that separate, but we just decided that.
I guess the answer is yes.
It’s called Facing Grief. We are a theater company that is educational. We wrote this play, this interactive play that we performed with professional actors. We wrote these scenes with not just my experience but the experience of other grieving people and with subject matter experts in mental health and clergy members of different faiths. To talk about how does society reacts to grief and how we can start these conversations. We have these conversations. There’s the opportunity for you to live virtually but live to speak directly to the actors and they will answer in character.
It’s a safe environment to practice these grief conversations so that you can better support the grieving person in your life. It’s a real-life practice scenario, but it’s safe. You’re not going to harm anybody. Our actors are trained in this process. There are a number of other social issues that we deal with, like anti-racism and anti-bullying and things like that, that we travel the country and virtual presentations about. As a writer, facilitator and manager of those programs, that helps give me service to others and meaning and purpose to my life. I view that as an expression of my faith as well.
Is it available for people to register now to participate?
Yeah, the registration isn’t live yet, but if the website I sent you is my Work Facing Grease page, it’ll be live there.
Any idea when it becomes live? You said the event is May 7th, 2025, and the registration starts.
Registration will start. You caught me. It’ll be streaming to the public on our YouTube channels and we can stream out. Maybe we’ll even try to stream it on TikTok. We use a streaming platform.
I have our Restream and you can do that, too. When I asked to have this conversation, how did you see it going in your mind?
First of all, I knew I would enjoy it because I just really find you to be so insightful about grief. You’re a widow yourself, but I find that you are a person who does not center your own experience as the only way of experiencing it. I really appreciate that. I knew I would enjoy that conversation, and I knew that it would be valuable to me. I was a little worried. I was a little nervous about what questions you would ask me because I’m not an expert. I’m not an expert in grief. I’m only an expert in my grief.
The Grief Paradox: Why All Grief Is The Same, Yet Different
We’re here to talk about your experience. Thank you. I want to circle back to something you just said. You’ve mentioned this a couple of times. I know it’s part of who you are. Nobody is an expert in this whole jam. No one should be trying to make somebody else grieve the way they grieve. That is super complicated in a situation, you and your daughter are both grieving the same person. The relationship is unique. Their relationship is different. You, as individuals, are different. I think that’s where grievers in the community wind up with the worst problems, trying to dictate how someone else navigates their grief.
In fact, to that point, one of the things I love about you and your community, Tina, is you call it Widowhood Real Talk with Tina. You’re not saying, Widowhood Expertise with Tina. I am so wary of anyone who calls themselves a grief coach or a grief expert or a grief master. I understand what you mean. It’s like, “I’m coaching you. I’m not coaching your griefness. I’m coaching.” I understand what you mean, but like even my bereavement counselor, I sometimes felt like I was pushing back on these textbook ideas of what you’re supposed to look like and sound like and feel like in grief. I almost felt like I was educating her sometimes.
I can relate to that because I felt like my therapist did fantastic, but I was getting to the point where I felt like we were looping the same things that I had to do. This situation would come up, and she told me to do this. I was like, “It’s going to be cyclical. I’m going to have this triggering moment, then I’m going to need to do this and then respond this way because this is going to happen. I told her, “I think I need to go about myself.” I’ll never forget the look on her face. She said, “Are you self-disconnecting?”
I was like, “I didn’t know it was a word, but you’ve been good to me. My husband died. I can’t tether to somebody else. Someone else can’t be my life source. I need to figure out how to do that with the information you’ve given me.” That was hard, I think, for her to accept. I was like, if I don’t figure this out, let me clear. Having a mental health professional therapist is a life thing for me. In regards to that trauma and what that looked like, I needed to find my own footing. If not, I felt like I would never get forward in life and living. I can relate to that. What is your saying?
All grief is the same and all grief is different.
What does that mean?
All grief is the same. The first part of that is that to me, grief is a universal human experience. We will all experience profound grief and loss at some point if we live long enough. If you do not experience profound grief and loss at some point in your life, then either A, you haven’t had close relationships and I feel bad for you, or B, you’ve died too young and then you’re somebody else’s profound grief and loss.
This is a universal human experience. We will all experience that pain. I truly believe that that loss is the worst part of life. It is the worst thing. The fact that we have to say goodbye to our loved ones, that our world is finite is the worst part of the world. It’s the worst thing in the world. I think that all grief is the same in that regard, and all grief is different. Who they were to you and who they were in themselves is going to impact how you experience that loss. As you say, my daughter and I both lost these same people and our experiences of it are so vastly different.
I lost my husband, a person as a widow lost my husband two times, but they were two different people and my life circumstances were in two different places and things were different. Widowhood is the same, yet it is different. Having life insurance versus not having life insurance, that’s different. It’s a different experience of it. Being close in proximity and geography to my friends and family versus not being close in proximity.
The Widowhood Fire: Embracing Sexuality And Self-Discovery
We didn’t even talk about that. How you relocated and then like near nobody.
I’m a thousand miles from anybody who would bring me a bowl of soup. It is different. It’s also different having a minor child at home versus having a grown child. Those, it’s different. Unfortunately, to catch everybody up who doesn’t follow me, we moved for my husband’s job. Basically, I lost my job also. We moved for my husband’s job and relocated a thousand across the country in May of 2022. He found out about the cancer in August of 2022 and was dead by October of 2022. Without his income, I have one of those 2.5% mortgage interest rates. I can’t move financially without any more.
We didn’t have life insurance. It’s a very different feeling having all or most of my support coming remotely and realizing that having gone through it once before and knowing I would need support, I’m different now. I knew I would have to do things. I immediately started volunteering for things. I immediately started showing up for events. I immediately got myself out there and started trying to get that support because I’m different now, and I knew I would need that. I didn’t know how much I would need it, but because I’d been through it before, I did know. I started trying.
What is something that nobody knows about it?
Nobody knows about me or maybe only dead people know?
Fair enough. What is something that us living people don’t know and only the dead people know? I’ll take whatever I can get.
I’m so mouthy. I don’t have a lot of secrets. The ones I do have are not exactly PG-rated.
This is not PG. This is adult. This is the real deal. Come on.
After Gary died, I knew I wanted to be re-partnered eventually, but I didn’t need to be partnered right away. I did a lot of sleeping around.
Withow hoe. You’re widow fire.
I was a widow hoe. Yeah, I was.
Thank you for mentioning that because people feel like, how could you want to cost you a life? You’re a human being. We are not burning ourselves at the stake anymore or sitting here like, “You need batteries, you need somebody, you need something, especially when you’ve been used to having passion.”
For me, it was more like I had been monogamous my entire adult life, and I wanted to sow some wild oats. I have a pass now. I can be a party girl and have fun. I had a child at home, but my mom and dad lived close. Grandma and Grandpa liked having her over on weekends. It was the thing that I’m really glad I did it. It’s one of those things that people from the outside would judge you if they knew.
I don’t think anybody that’s a widow would.
Nobody that’s a widow.
Nobody that’s a widow, because going back to something you said, how changed you are after your husband passed. I would dare say if I would have heard then I wouldn’t live like, “Really? Now I’m like, girl.” Like, “When Mark died, am I going to be sneaking around? How am I going to keep on the low?” Girl, was dusty and dry. There was nothing going on. I was like, “This is the most boring as well experience.” There wasn’t anybody really where I lived anyway. It was going to be like some. I was just like, “I thought I was going to be going two states away, trying to do something like the fire was going to be burnt.” I’m so low-key jealous.
That’s another way in which I say, all grief is the same and all grief is different because now where I am at now in my life. If I never have sex again, that’s fine.
Isn’t that crazy?
It’s just that that’s not a priority for me. That’s just not something that I care about. At the time, I was sowing all of the wild oats back in those days, but I got it out of my system. People say what I hate about it, and sometimes I do, this is part of my hot grief tips. I hate when people want to advise widows to be like, “You can’t. You have to feel the feelings. You have to be in it.” Not every minute of every day, I don’t.
Not at all. Every day, do you even want to talk about it? Do you want dark humor jokes? It’s like, they’re dead. I know there are more than a widow. I am that, but there are other things about me that I want to talk about, too.
Also, I have to work. I can’t always be sad.
Girl, you can’t fall apart all the time.
I have to be a parent. I’m now a grandparent. I’m like, “I can’t be like weepy sad granny all the time.” Whatever it is that makes you feel better, even if it’s not the most healthy coping mechanism, I’m in therapy, I go to support groups I yap my head off. I can also have relations with a bunch of 24 or 25-year-old bros if I wanted to like that’s okay. I can also down the bottle of wine by myself in my own home if that’s what I want to. One time like that every day, but like if that’s what I want to do, I’m safe. My child is taken care of, and I pay my bills. No dollars, no opinion. You’re not finding my lifestyle you don’t get to say.
Now, finance, there’s these three F’s here. If you’re not doing any of that, and if you’re not even really like my friend like, “What are we talking about?” I have enjoyed this conversation.
Thank you.
Anything you want to ask me? She has one.
Twice Widowed: On Remarriage And Loss
I have a question for you. As somebody who is widowed and repartnered, how does it make you feel to talk to somebody about, like me, who has been through it twice? Does that trigger feelings of anxiety or how does that make you feel?
My dad’s mother was married five times and five times a week. I have a cousin.
You have experience.
I was like, I don’t know if I got that long game. I have a cousin that’s been widowed twice. When I talk to you, I never thought of that, but I would think she was willing to love again and make herself available, and I was too. I thought about when I got married to Fred, he’s older than me. The potential is high that I would be widowed twice, but I would not have missed this opportunity. I would not, if someone told me, for sure I was going to be widowed twice, I would probably think, I’m so glad that I met him.
This relationship with Fred is something I did not have with Mark. I would have been the loss. I would have lost. For him to have been in a good relationship because he had been in ones that were not healthy and sustaining, I believe I was a gift to him too. There’s nothing about talking to you that’s like, I know they die. It was just for me being married and Mark died. If Fred sleeps in too late, I’m like, you will.
That’s how I was.
He goes hunting. He’s like, “Do you want me to call you?” One thing, if you don’t know, the widow’s dark humor is strong. One of my sisters, she knows about this thing. If he’s gone too long or he hasn’t called in, so he’ll go hunting. She’ll come and she goes. How many times has Fred died already? I was like, “Only like 23. Last time, it was 50.” In my head, that happens because Mark died. Nothing about talking to you triggers me or does anything like that.
I was that way with Brian, also. In fact, I knew it was pancreatic cancer before anyone. Everybody thought I was crazy. I said, “Yes. In fact, I am crazy. That’s fine. I’m not wrong.” Everybody thought it was like you with the hunting that I was making my head. I knew it was worse than what everybody thought. I can be crazy and correct. I can be both things, I promise.
The other thing is that there’s a lot to learn from you. I think that there’s a lot for people to learn. The happiness and the joy conversation, the way you articulate that in the posts and people trying to comfort you and different stuff, it’s like, I don’t think it’s hard for them to realize the reality of the depth of this thing. I’m looking forward to you just sharing what are your high widow tips and information because this is heavy work. This is crawling through high lava. I dare say, if anything, I would want to lean in.
When Mark passed, I leaned into every widow that I knew. I called them and I wanted to understand like, “How do you do this? If I’ll live, Fred, I’ll probably grow, okay? Now what are we doing?” I told my younger sister, “If Fred leaves this world, don’t think, ‘She’s got the handbook.’” No, this is going to be double the worse. I don’t know what you thought you were doing. Expect two times worse before. Do not expect this is going to be like, “She’s been here before.” No.
That’s right because all grief is the same and all grief is different. If somebody had told me for sure you were going to be widowed again and would have told me the outcome, I would have never gone on a second date with Brian. I’m glad they didn’t tell me. I would not have chosen to do that.
It’s hard. I didn’t even contemplate how I could have been with Mark for 32 years and be disconnected to another person. That’s just unfathomable. That can’t happen. There will be some lesser version of a relationship or this is like an arranged marriage. We hang out and it’s fine together. It’s a whole nother thing.
I think that is the most important thing I would tell people who might judge from the outside, widows who are re-partnered, is that I never believed I could love that strongly again. Did I ever love that same way again? No, I didn’t, but I loved just as strongly, if not more so, the second time. I would have never believed it. I knew I wanted to be re-partnered because I didn’t want to be alone in my life.
I thought this is a way for me to not be alone until I really caught the feelings and I really built this life with this person. I really had all of the joy and pain and ups and downs and to see Brian being a stepdad to my daughter and like how amazing a step-parent can be in your child’s life, like how that can be the best thing that ever happened to them, too. How wonderful that is. I just think that the fact that you can’t imagine it now does not mean it does not exist.
If you can’t imagine it now, don’t try, stop working on trying to imagine it now. Have empathy instead for those of us who have lived it. It’s not important that you can imagine this made-up fantasy in your head of what it should look like or what it might feel like someday in the future. What’s important is how you are showing up and the empathy that you have for the people who have lived it and do know it because you can’t imagine it until you live it. You can’t.
You see these TikToks where Mary Peeper is talking about, “What would you do if your spouse passed away?” I would never. I almost want to go. I can’t wait until it happens. I can see your response like, “Can you pull me up on the Rolodex?” When you’re really in that trash, because I dare you it’s going to be different than what you think, no matter what you thought it was, it’s just the experience. It’s not about repartner. It’s about your level of despair, your level of trying to understand how did the sun came up. I haven’t brushed my teeth in two weeks and I’m just checking my armpits and they want me to come back to work in three days.
It is. Even now, boy, my house words are never say never. That, like it’s a Game of Thrones thing, is my house because we live here in Florida after having bought and built our dream home, our aging place forever home where we are never moving again. Here we are in Florida. The house words are never say never here.
Even now, even though I am not prioritizing being re-partnered and I don’t want to date, like I said, I could care less if I ever have sex again, all of that is to say I might fall in love again. The fact that it’s not a priority for me now, and I can’t imagine it happening or whatever, but a lot of things have happened to me that I can’t imagine. Here we are.
From Grief To Gratitude: Finding Hope And Healing After Loss
Thank you so much for this conversation. I want to allow you to close this out and share whatever you would like.
I want to thank you sincerely from the bottom of my heart for having me. I hope that this reaches the people who need to read it and that it helps others because that is how I move forward in my life. How I put one foot in front of the other these days is to know that something I might have experienced or that I might say might help somebody else. I know you’re helping a lot of people. I am honored that you have shared your platform with me so that I can hopefully help others, too.
I want one more time to link to our Facing Grief program for my nonprofit and also to say that I am raising money for pancreatic cancer research in Brian’s name in a movement/fundraiser that is called Tip Big for Brian and that we can make somebody’s day while also spreading the word about pancreatic cancer and raising awareness and hopefully raising some funds too.
Explain about that program. I’m sorry. Thank you for mentioning that. You mentioned it, but I want them to understand it.
Tip Big for Brian is raising money for the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. We raised over $5,000 with our first fundraiser and now we’re working on the second one. What you can do is if you search #TipBigForBrian, you’ll find stories of people who might go out to eat or tip their housekeepers or their hairstylist or their Amazon drivers or whatever and leave them a little extra gift. I have little QR codes that link to the fundraiser. If that’s a gift that you’ve received, you might post on social media saying, “Thanks for the #TipBigForBrian,” and help create this movement and community that remembers him.
If you scan the QR code and you go to that fundraising website, it’ll tell a little bit more about Brian’s story. It’ll give you some facts about pancreatic cancer and give you the opportunity to donate to the nonprofit Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. It not only provides research into new detection and treatment for pancreatic cancer, it also directly helps families affected by pancreatic cancer. Every family that is diagnosed or newly diagnosed with pancreatic cancer gets assigned a social worker to help get them into clinical trials.
This is all free. They get information packets directly. It really helped Brian and me when he was diagnosed. The third thing they do is advocacy. They lobby members of Congress to increase federal funding and so forth for pancreatic cancer research. Pancreatic cancer is considered a less survivable cancer. Of all the major cancers, it has the lowest five-year survival rate. The only way to change that is to throw money at that problem. We are trying to do that in Brian’s name.
Thank you so much, Andrea. Thank you for being here and thank you for sharing your journey. For anyone who is reading, I am sorry for the person that you have lost that has drawn you to this conversation, but I’m glad you’re here and welcome.
Important Links
- Andrea Haney on Facebook
- Andrea Haney on Instagram
- Sapphire Theatre
- Tip Big for Brian
- Fight Pancreatic Cancer
- Pancreatic Cancer Action Network
- Performing Arts With Purpose
- Facing Grief
About Andrea Lott Haney
Andrea Lott Haney is a writer, facilitator, and public speaker who resides in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. An Indianapolis native, Lott Haney met and married Gary R. Lott in 2000 and became a widow in 2010 when he died of a sudden cardiac event. Choosing to find love again with her childhood best friend Brian Haney in 2012, she once again became a widow at the age of 48 when he passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2022. Lott Haney uses her experience with widowhood and grief to educate others through her social media platform @MyTwiceWidowedLife. As a theatre professional with her company The Sapphire Theatre Company, Lott Haney travels throughout the country presenting applied theatrical programming on a variety of social topics including grief and loss. In the original interactive play Facing Grief she co-wrote with a variety of clinical professionals and members of clergy, audience members interact with professional actors to create conversations on how best to support grieving people. Lott Haney enjoys travel, restaurants, and time with her adult daughter, son-in-law, and brand new grandchild in her free time.
