Love is not always easy, but it is always worth the journey. In this powerful episode, Dana Hueston shares her emotional journey of finding love, guided by God’s plan. Dana embraced a period of singlehood, determined to honor her promise to God. When she married John, they were tested by life’s challenges, including infidelity. Dana’s faith and patience were pivotal in their relationship’s growth, as John respected her boundaries, and through counseling and personal struggles, they found healing and a deeper connection. Dana’s story reveals the transformative power of faith, respect, and God’s timing in shaping a love that endures life’s trials.
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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Divinely Led Love: Trusting God’s Plan And Finding Healing With Dana Hueston
Dana, welcome to the widowhood.
Thank you. How are you?
I am well. When you hear widowhood, what comes to mind first for you?
Me.
Do you think you represent when people think of a widow, or what does that mean when you say me if you were to explain that to somebody?
I just say Widowhood is a state of being and a time. Everybody doesn’t get to experience it. I was hoping that I didn’t and I did. I know that in the beginning, the first few years, I referenced myself as a widow. After that, I now just say single because I don’t want pity because I’m a widow.
Widowhood is a state of being and a time. Share on XYou make some really good points there but I want to circle back a little bit, but thank you. I’m going to keep those notes and we’re going to come back to that. I see this space that you’re at, it looks very light and airy. Is this your favorite space in your home?
Of late, yes. The last 5 or 6 months, my daughter had noticed that I had been spending a lot of time on the porch. This is my front porch, and it’s closed in. She made reference to that I could take any space and make it mine. Even the front porch. I was like, “Yeah, daughter.”
I’m a little jealous because the home we lived in before, we had a closed-in back porch where my husband and I raised our children. When I moved to Virginia, I did not have that option but my desire for next year is there’s a part of the house in the back that if everything goes well, I want to make a closed-in porch, patio, all-season room, whatever because that was my favorite room in the house. I would start the day out there. I could watch everything and no bugs because everything was closed in. In the shade, I felt like I was close to nature. I didn’t have to be out there with everything. I am very envious of your favorite spot right now. I like that a lot.
I’m excited for winter to come and the snow to come and see if I’ll be able to sit out here with the heater if it’ll be warm enough for me. It’s insulated a little bit, but I think I need new windows and stuff like that.
It is windows, not screens. It’s windows there.
It’s all windows.
I want to see some TikToks of you out there and seeing what that looks like. I think it’s going to be great. Where are you from originally?
I have to say originally in Toledo, I was born in Oceanside, California because my dad was in the military.
What brand?
Marines, camp Pendleton. My sister and I were born in California. She was actually born on the base and I was born across the street from the ocean in Oceanside, California. My birth certificate says I have ocean-blue eyes and jet-black hair really.
Are there any pictures showing that pretty?
When I was a baby? Real little?
Yeah.
I couldn’t put my hand on any right now, but I do remember an instance when my aunt told me when my mom brought us back to Toledo and she handed her to my aunt, and I opened my eyes in her arm and she almost dropped me because she was not expecting to see blue eyes. A blue-eyed baby. My eyes, I can probably get them bluish if I wear pink, I found out. My eyes changed based on my mood. My husband used to always say he could tell he would just be looking. I said, “What are you looking at?” He said, “I’m looking to see these eyes telling me what’s going on.”
I know, I’m about to say, so what are the colors that they changed and what moods do they relate to?
Hazel is calm. Green is just where I’m just very spicy and then blue, that is not very often that they are blue. It’s a bluey shadish, it’s not a blue. It’s only based on color. I know that it’s like if I were pink or something like that, you’ll see that hue of the blue. I probably never liked it when I was a baby.
That is so neat. Now I’m going to have to start paying attention when I see you, make sure I’m paying attention to the eye color and what’s going on to understand your mood and disposition. Much I found out just in a couple of minutes already.
I found because of that, I talk with my eyes, I talk with facial expressions. I guess over the years because my eyes have always been different to people’s, I just use them as illustrations. I just talked with them.
That makes sense. Do you resonate with water? I mean, being born near the water, but from Toledo, Ohio, If you could pick your favorite place, would it have water next to it?
It was, I was sharing with you earlier that I had just come from swimming today. In swimming, I was teaching my cousin and I was telling her what water does, how it calms you, and the different things that I would do just in lapping, going, and doing laps. I would pray, and I would quote scripture. As far as water, anywhere that there’s water, I feel comfortable. I love to fish. I love fishing. My husband used to say that if I saw even a pond of water, I was ready to fish. It’s just not swimming. This is just sitting in, I cannot. We had a motor home, so we traveled for about fifteen years and we could just pull the motor home up anywhere, a beach, anywhere. When we opened our front door, that’s where we were.
Meeting And Marrying John
How did you meet your husband? Would you share his name with us?
His name is John. I met him because of my best girlfriend. He was her brother.
Did you guys stay friends too? You’re friends?
Yeah, we stayed friends. She was at my wedding and everything. Not so much after he died because she wasn’t ready for me to try to move on.
Hold on. Wait, we want to get into, we don’t want to get too far ahead.
I met him going to visit her. She was a traveling nurse. She was in town. She was over to see her dad. I went over to see her and there were like three sets. She was the younger set because he’s ten years older than me. I never really got to meet him. I knew his name and I knew she had older brothers, but because he was gone and already in the military, he was in the army.
Army. Good job.
I didn’t really know him. I just knew his name. Anyway, I went over to visit her and when it was time to leave, she was walking me outside and her brother and her nephew were standing out front talking. I walked up on the conversation and introduced myself. I’m just looking at him and say, “Hey.” I asked him a couple of questions and he told me he was going to school for nursing. I was, I don’t know, it was being flirtations or something.
I said something about going to lunch or something like that. My best friend immediately was like, “No.” Made a little scene-like thinking like that’s her favorite brother. I find all this out later. That’s her favorite brother. He didn’t want to be in between that and because I had a business at the time called Personal Touch Promotion and I was having an event coming up, his other brother, the baby brother came to me and said, “Can I get tickets?”
I gave him my business card. I find out this later that those two wrestled for him to get the business card. He took the business card, he looked at it. When he got home, he said, “Who does my sister think she is going to tell me who I can date or who I can talk to?” Threw the business card on his chifaro dresser. A couple of weeks later, he came across it and he picked it up and he called me. That’s how it started.
How old were you and John about at that age?
I was 40 and he was 50 because the first date he asked me on was his birthday, his 50th birthday, October 4th. When we went, financially, I didn’t have money or anything, a lot of money and I lived by myself here and just trying to make ends meet, had three kids and I remember thinking, “It’s his birthday.” I made him a birthday card. On the date, he took me up to Detroit to fish bones or something, a famous fish restaurant up in Detroit. I remember taking the car when he wasn’t looking at sitting in front of his water glass and he never looked at it and he just kept looking at me and I kept saying, “Why are you looking at me?” He said, “I’m going to marry you one day.”
Won on his birthday, John was about it. Did he look at the card? When did that happen?
He finally looked at the card when I pointed it out. He thought it was so sweet that I took the time to make something for him. We ended up leaving the card so he had to turn around and go back to the restaurant to go get it.
At 40, What made you willing to date and make yourself available?
I had made a promise to God. 2 or 3 years prior to that, I had made a promise to God and actually wrote it out and put it in my Bible and said what I wanted, a list of what I wanted, and told God that I would not be with a man sexually ever again, anybody until I was married. Those were some of the things that I said to him on that date. It made him like, “Where did that come from?” By then I had a lot of stuff. Tall fences, you had to jump really high to get to me. I was just buying my house and doing stuff and taking care of business and my sons. He knew that story because I told him that on the date just to let him know right off the bat and so because of that, when I found out that I loved him and he asked me to make all those things.
Slow down. Hold on.
I got to tell you that because he kept me away from him because of the promise that he knew I would make to God. He said, “You’re not going to have God mad at me.” Just to know the respect that he had for the promise that I had made when I was weak and said, “Okay.” He0 was like, “Uh-uh,” because he was scared. It was true that never happened until our actual wedding day.
Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for wanting to be so transparent.
Thank you.
How many years were you keeping that promise?
It was about three years, 2 to 3 years. I remember that when I wrote it out and I put in my Bible, I lost my Bible in the church. It had been lost for all those years. A lot of people read my story or knew. I had a really huge wedding. This is just half of the wedding.
The wedding party you mean?
That was just the ladies. You cannot hardly get everybody on one and the men are over there and then men have one. We had a big wedding because people were asking me to be at my wedding. At first, I just didn’t click but then when I realized and I got my Bible back and that letter was in there. The first thing I started thinking was, “A lot of people read this. A lot of people knew what I was thinking and what I was asking for.”
Advice For Women Considering Celibacy Or Dating Again
Let’s say you met a woman in her 40s and she said I thought about being celibate until I got married, but I got to do what I got to do. What would you share with her?
I first would probably want to see where her beliefs were at and it had to be within hers. That’s what mine was. Mine was a promise. I’d have to find out where she was at. Once I did that, I would just share a little bit of my story and say why it was so beneficial for waiting that I believe that I got what God had for me. Just the one gesture of him not allowing anything sexually to ever take place with us to honor the promise that I had made was because of him.
When you say beneficial, outside of meeting John, what were some other benefits that you found in being so for that time?
Not getting involved in anything that was not worthy of my time because you could see it. It was just easy to spot. A lot of people when I would say exactly what I said to him would run. The way you carry yourself too. I think I carried myself differently during those, I was very busy, very active. I didn’t have time for anything, a guy really. The guy had to weasel his way into my life and that’s exactly what John did.
I heard you invited John to dinner or lunch. John had an invitation, you didn’t have to weasel too.
I was really just being smart based on he said he didn’t have time to do anything because he was working. He was going to school for nursing. He was working two jobs. He had a regular job, a part-time job, and going. I was like, “You don’t really have time to go date or something like that.” That’s how it was.
What Dating John Was Like
What was dating John like?
Different when I find out all the backstory because he did a lot of things. He jumped through a lot of hoops to date me. A lot of things were going on for him, like financially, his brother on our first date gave him $50 to take me to Detroit to eat. There are different things. When he came and showed up, he had one rose. I thought that was nice and being a gentleman. It didn’t seem like it was rehearsed or anything.
On other dates he would go, he was the only guy of all those years because I told you, I had a business and it was called personal touch promotions. I worked with a lot of events that came into our city plays and deaf comedy jams and different things like that. He was the first one that went with me on all these free tickets I had and showed up, went in the front row seat with m,e and sat where a lot of times when I tried to offer to guys or they would back out, not show.
When he went to the first one with me was me, my son and him, and he took us to eat first before we went to the show. My son told him at the time, he was only about 8 or 9. He was looking at me like, “Mama.” We found out he could cook. I forgot that part, but we found out that he could cook too. I cannot say like I dated, but from the time I met him to a year later when we got married, it was a ten-month courtship kind of with some stuff happened in that I was going to break it off.
Girl, you cannot say that and not tell me the tea. I don’t know why you just mentioned that. I’m like, this is called Widowhood Real Talk with Tina. Now you can give me a slimmed-down version, but you cannot leave us like that.
When I met him, and then let’s say, four months in when I realized that he was serious because I still was being real shallow, keeping him at a distance. I said, “Let’s try to do this. Let’s try to see if we can really date.” I said, “I cannot have nobody coming to my house, beat my door down looking for you. I ain’t got nobody in my life and this and that.” I’m like, “Okay.” He started painting my house. My dad would have to tell you this story, but he’s no longer here. He painted my house with a two-inch wide brush. My dad said he did that so that he could stay around long enough.
Believe your dad because he could have had a roller or sprayer. There are so many other ways to do that.
The Infidelity Story And Confrontation
He was saying he was going on a fishing trip. He lied and said he was going on a fishing trip, but he didn’t realize what he had in me was a detective and intuition and all other kinds of stuff. I listened. I had a guy in my life who told me everything he was doing. His daily stuff. I got to know him. When the lie came in and I figured it out that he was lying and then just you learn mannerisms. I started learning that if he was lying, he would raise his voice and he’d get excited.
When I started learning those things, I told him, I said, “If I did not know the truth, I would have thought that you were really telling me the truth but because I knew you were lying, it was hard for me to distinguish the difference. When I started learning that you get really defensive and you get real crazy and loud but I always paid attention to detail.” I didn’t know I was analytic until somebody had to tell me that, but all of those things played into who I am. With him, I was wife. We didn’t get to that part, but I was wife number four.
Have you been married before?
This was my first marriage.
Okay.
I didn’t know I was going to be wife number four until after he had asked me, and we got engaged and all of that.
Slow down. He said he was going fishing.
This time they had pagers.
Girl, I know.
I knew the phone number on the page. I knew the pin to the pager because it was his birthday. Before I had committed to him, I periodically would listen to the text message or read the text message or listen to him. It was one but it didn’t mean that if it was a woman or something because I didn’t like him like that. He was just a nice guy. That’s what I used to tell people. I like him like that. He’s just a nice guy and he’s painting your house and he’s doing this and he’s coming over. He’s taking the boys and getting their hair cut and he’s cutting your yard.
He’s just a nice guy and you just like him, but you don’t like him like that? I’m like, Yeah, that’s how I felt.” Anyway, when I committed after 4 or 5 months in and said, “Let’s go for this thing and try to see if we can have a relationship.” He was going fishing now mind you prior to that, he had already set this up to go to Kings Island and Cincinnati with this lady. When I made the commitment and said, “Yeah,” he had already made that commitment with her but he didn’t want to tell me. He was going to lie and say he was going fishing.
He forgot I’m a fisher lady, too. He worked it all out like he was really going fishing and putting stuff in the car and everything. When I listened to the text message or the pager thing, she was on there saying, “I had to take Dakota to the vet and to the doctor’s office or something like that. I’ll be ready at such and such.” I was at work. I remember I was pacing down the hallway. My heart was beating all fast and I was going, “What the heck?” Now I know he’s lying. I call my aunt on the phone, and I’m telling her, and I’m crying, and I’m like, “I don’t know what to do.”
I decided I was just going to let him know that I knew. I called him. I called him on the phone, and I said, “What time are you leaving for fishing?” I started questioning him, and he was saying stuff. What did I say? I’m trying to remember how I said it, but I just said, “I don’t want you to have to keep lying because you remember we already had this conversation when I first told you we were going to get together. One thing I was not going to settle for was somebody who was going to lie to me. I don’t even care if you’re lying to me because you don’t want to hurt my feelings. You just hurt my feelings because I’d rather you tell me the truth than lie to me.”
They’re like, “Girl, what? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I said, “That’s all right. I let you know so that when I come home.” He was here, he was pacing and going around stuff like, “I told you I’m going.” I was saying stuff like, “Who are you going with?” He started stuttering and stuff. I was just shooting stuff at him. I said, “Let me tell you something.” I said, “I’ll tell you what? I’ll meet you there.” Now he’s looking at me like, “What the heck is she talking about?” Now I got all the D of what was going, where he was going, and everything because I called her and left a message on her voice message to say who I was.
Do not play. Come on, girl.
Anyway, he went on to go and I just told him, “I’ll see you there.” I remember my aunt was like, “We’ll just ride down there.” I remember it was a conference that weekend at church and I was like, “Marsha, let’s just go to the conference. I like him. I really like him and everything.” I started trying to be to rationalize it. This is probably something he had already had planned before. Just trying to give him the benefit of the doubt and everything. He went on and he went, and of course, I get to hear the story later when he gets back.
It was so funny because when he got there, they were at Kings Island. He said when they got there, the girl kept saying, even the next day, “When are we going to the thing?” He was like, “We’re going to go.” He says when he gets there, they’re walking in and she’s trying to hold his hand and he won’t let her hold his hand. He said at some point he saw somebody at a distance that looked like me, and he took off running. When she caught up with him, she was like, “What is going on?” He was so nervous that whole trip because he really thought I was coming.
He thought at some point he was going to see me. For me, after he came back and we sat here and talked and I told him how I knew when I came from work. No, that’s not what happened. When they got back and she said they went into the house, he hit the answering machine. He dropped the luggage and when he hit the answering machine, I was talking. I was on the answering machine saying, “I know who you’re with. I knew where you went.”
I don’t remember everything that I said. All he did was just walked out the house, he said. He knew he was busted. For us to be able to sit and talk about it and share, we really got through it and I said “You’re going to have to learn that you don’t have to lie to me. I don’t care if you feel like you’re protecting me with it. Don’t protect me.”
That is important and there are people dating and they have some non-negotiables and I’m hearing your non-negotiable is not being truthful. You gave him an opportunity, and I love that you gave him a chance because nobody is perfect.
I did.
John made that mess up. You guys talked about it and going forward, did he hold up to being truthful and honest?
One time a year into our marriage and again my intuition and him lying and he said he was going fishing. I guess he forgot about the first fishing lie he told me. This time he really loaded the car up put everything in there, ended up throwing a little water and to make it wet, to seem like it he really he had really went fishing and everything. When he comes back, it’s a whole long story. I cannot even tell you all that, but when he came back, he called me when he was leaving there and he was like, “I caught this and that and I’m getting ready to take it to the place where we will go to get the fish cleaned and stuff.”
When I came home and I was being suspicious about something, the first thing I did was run downstairs and looked in the dirty clothes hamper to check the clothes. The clothes that were in the dirty clothes hamper because by now he had come home, I was at work or something. When he came home and laid down because he workedthe third shift. He needed to go to sleep. He could go to work.
I’m going through the house looking. I go through the garb, go through the dirty clothes, and there’s some white jeans. There’s no way in hell that he would have wore jeans to go fishing. I go look in the deep freeze for the fish that he just got clean. There was no fresh fish. All the fish in there was rock-hard. Where was the new fish that you just bought? I go out to the car. I go out to the car cause he hadn’t unloaded it.
Look in there and everything looked like he had really been fishing. I’m getting confused. God said, “Open that bag up.” I open this bag up where there are the rags and different things in that are at. Before he went on the trip, I had washed up all of the the towels and stuff for him because when he would catch a fish, he was always scared to take the hook out of the mouth without putting a towel around it because he had gotten cut before.
That is scary.
It would have left clean towels. The towels were clean that were in that bag but you’ve been fishing all day and overnight. It just wasn’t adding up. I had just run upstairs from the basement and he came downstairs and he almost ran into me. I stopped him and I took his hand and I put his hand on my heart. I said, “You see how fast my heart is beating?” He said, “What’s the matter?” I said, “What I’m about to say to you, I don’t want to say.”
He really didn’t know what I was going to say. “What’s going on? I said, “You lied.” I said, “No, you didn’t go fishing.” He was like, “What do you mean? He backed away from me. “What you mean I didn’t go fishing?” I said, “You didn’t go fishing.” I had told him prior to that, “If I ask you a question, pretty much I already know the answer. I’m just going to see if you’re going to lie to me.” Remember, all of the evidence I already had, I already knew what I was going to start throwing at him.
Lord have mercy. When I got through with him, he was out of breath. When I just tell him, I started hitting him with stuff with this one right, and then I went to this, and then I went out to the car, and now he looking at me. Now he knows. He makes his way back upstairs, and he sits down. He starts to tell me another lie. “What was this girl at work?” I knew he was lying. That’s not your MO, you’re lying. He told me her name.
I said, “When you go to work tonight, I’ll be there with you.” “No, you cannot.” I said, “I’m going to go for a confronter.” He was like, “No.” He was scared to go to sleep at some point, I think. I remember I came and tapped him in the morning. I said, “Time for round two because I had prayed all night.” That’s what it was. I prayed all night to ask God to show me who it was. God told me to go look in his car. I went and looked in his car and in the ashtray was a cigarette with lipstick on it. I knew the brand of cigarettes because the week prior to that I had been in that person’s presence and knew the cigarettes.
Close to home.
I go back upstairs for round two and I tap him and this time I take him some coffee and the whole time I kept saying, “Dana, you do not want to hurt him. You do not want to that.” I kept saying that. I was talking to myself and he jumped up and he looked at me and he was like what you getting ready to do? I said, “Just give me some coffee so you can get ready for round two.” “I told you.” I said, “No.” I said, “God and I had a conversation. He took me directly to the source.”
He knew, don’t mess with me and God, all the way back from my promise to God. He always knew that I always, my kid’s voice father told me a long time ago, if I wanted something from my husband, talk to God about it. If I wanted to answer, talk to God about it. Don’t go to him, talk to God about it. If you spend time with God, if God knows your voice, and God’s voice, he will speak to you.
Anyway, round two came, he came on downstairs and he sat down and I told him what I knew. He told me, yes, I was correct .That happened to be a Sunday morning. How they became friends was now this is crazy. He was a Sunday school teacher and she was a Sunday school teacher. The director over the Sunday school came to me when we had first got married and asked me if was I okay with her being his assistant working with her.
He knew that she was single and she knew her reputation. She was warning me at the beginning, but I didn’t know she was warning me. I ended up going to church that morning. I told him I was going to confront her and I went to church. I walked up to the classroom and I knocked on the door and she came to the door all grinning and smiling and saying, “Hi.” I looked at her and I said, “I know that you were with John.” I told him where they were at.
You go to confront her at church. I have a question. Why do women want to confront the woman versus leaving it with their husband or their man because it’s about their relationship and what they choose to do?
I chose to confront her in a way that was not confrontational, but just to let her know that I knew because she was too close for comfort in situations in my life and his life. I knew what it looked like to go after the woman and I had already dealt with my husband. By going to her and letting her know. What was ironic about it is that when I went to her and told her and she said, “Good.” She was grateful that I knew and she thought that he had told her. For her, she was thinking like, “That means he wants to be with me since he has told her about me.”
All I did was she said something about us getting together and I says, “I’m done with it. I’m going to leave it at the altar.” I walked away. I said, “Don’t call my house, lose my number, a few other things.” I walked away. I went to the altar. I was messed up at the altar. A couple of things had happened earlier because I had went to see the TD Jakes. When this was happening, I was at the TD Jakes conference. I’m there looking at all of these women wailing and having issues. I’m thinking, “I’m wonderful. I’m married for a year.
My husband is at home. I’m not worried about him.” All that and some other things happened while I was there because I set up the trip, everything was on my credit card. Money got all messed up. One of the other ladies stepped in that I know to tell me that she would help me because I was just distraught. I was trying to get in touch with my husband to tell him what was going on. That’s how I ended up knowing something wasn’t right. That’s what led me to, once I got home, to figure out something wasn’t right.
At the altar crying, she thought I was having issues about what had happened at TD Jakes. Nobody really knew what I was going through as far as the woman, they just thought it had something to do with the trip, which was a good thing. The look of it was a good thing but your question was, why did I choose to go to her because I chose to go to let her know I knew. Not to say he lied to you or anything else. Just because they both were teachers and the thing my pastor sat them down from the ministry and talked to them.
When he talked to John and I, when they brought us in for counseling, and the first thing he asked John was, “Do you want to stay married to her?” He asked me, “Did I want to stay married or did I want to work on it?” Of course, my answer was yes and like I told my pastor, I waited for 40 years to get married. I knew from watching other marriages that things could happen in a marriage. I knew that I would be the one who would be ready to forgive if that happened to me.
I believed that God needed to do that for him in order for us to have our twenty-year marriage. God had to show him, he had to show him through me, even though he’d been married three other times and they weren’t long marriages. Married 5 years, 1 year and 1 year, and then 11 years later he met me. When we got married, I told him, “I will be your last.” I said, “There’s nobody like Dana. God may prep you for me, me, and me for you.”
Accountability And Faith During Struggles
Dana, thank you. Thank you so much. I want to pivot a little bit before I wanted to go in a different direction. People, as you said, we get married. You had an expectation of the reality there would be challenges. People sometimes say, “I say it for better or for worse, but not that works.” What made you want? Let me back up a little bit. For someone who doesn’t know what is being sat down means and what is a Sunday school teacher? I don’t want to make an assumption that everyone who has read on this conversation has the same faith or belief or understands what those terms mean. As you said earlier, when we’re talking to people, make sure we’re on the same page. What is a Sunday school teacher and what is being sat down?
Sunday school teacher was Sunday morning for Sunday school, they taught a junior’s class, him and her together. They had about 5, 10, and 15 junior high students, boys, and girls in their class. They were both the Sunday school teacher of that class. Being sat down meant that position was taken away from them for six months or something like that. My husband never went back. He never went back to the teaching but she did but he didn’t.
Thank you. If I understand correctly, when people are doing something that doesn’t represent the body of Christ and they’re in a leadership role, they’re generally sat down to give them an opportunity to deal with their humanity. Deal with their relationship with god. Address the things that were done not looking for people to be perfect but to at least be honest and be striving towards this place where I am following Christ. Oftentimes, I’ll hear people say, “I cannot believe God let that happen to me. I was a good Christian. I’m doing this stuff that I need to do. I don’t want God to talk to me anymore.” Did you go through that with John? If so, if not, why?
I just said, “Why not, and why not me?” I never asked God why because I thought of it as why not me? I looked at it as God used me as a vessel to show other women, because see at the time, I didn’t know until maybe like, let’s say a month or so after this, one of the deacons’ wife said to me, “Dana, there were four other couples going through the same thing that you went through at the same time.”
She just wanted to acknowledge to me that it just didn’t happen to me, not with that same person, but I’m just saying four other couples were going through infidelity with their spouse, at the same time that I was going through it. Some of them didn’t make the same decision that I made where I made the decision to stay with my husband and move forward to make it work better. Like I told you earlier, I felt like what happened made him a better person.
Made him truly. See my pastor and I had a very good relationship. I skipped that whole part where that night I called him and told him what happened. I called him and he said, “Hold on, let me call you back.” He called me back and he had me go through everything, telling the whole work. Before we got married, I went to my pastor and told him I thought that there was an issue with her. My pastor told me, “Why would John go for a hamburger when he got steak at home?” That’s what he told me. A year later, when I called him at 12:00 at night, all I said was, “Pastor, he ate the hamburger.”
You didn’t even go say something about hamburgers.
My pastor, he said, “Dana, are you okay?” I said, “Yes.” He says, “Where is he at?” I said, “He went to work.” He said, “Give me a little bit and I’ll call you back.” He called me back within 30 minutes and he had me just telling the whole story my version of the whole story. He said, “I’m going to call John and I’m going to talk to him. Are you okay with that?” I said, “I’m fine. You can tell him I told you I’m fine.”
I remember when John came to me and told me, he said, “John started crying because here’s pastor calling him saying whatever he said.” He said he felt like, I cannot remember the words that he told me of how he felt, but that’s why I say that situation changed who he was because he was really a good guy in the church. He was a really good guy in Christ. He believed in God and he felt like he was being taunted or like he didn’t have no control over what happened.
Even though he did have control that he didn’t and that he was stupid or whatever. Just to know that his own pastor could come to him and talk to him. It scared him at the same time but it made it better. I could say that maybe a year or so later, my pastor took him off the door. He was an usher. He said he was ushering, took him off the door, and put him into deaconship. When he died, he was a deacon when he died, like ten years later whatever it was. We were married 20 years.
I hear redemption. I hear there is something about when you have fallen short and you receive forgiveness and you have a true repentive heart and you make a turnaround. When sometimes people say, “I said I was sorry.” When I hear the word repentive, I hear someone that’s making a turn to not do that again. We may have had bad patterns growing up, we may have had bad examples, we may have thought that’s what you’re supposed to treat somebody and do different things, but we get that opportunity to change. It sounds as if John took that opportunity to make a change and be a better person, to be a better man, to be a better husband, to be a better follower of Christ.
He was. I was even able to tell her that thank you and because of that, he was a better person because of that situation, for whatever it was, whatever happened, however, it came together. They also worked together too. I forgot to tell you that. They worked at the same place, not together, but at the same place. There are a lot of things temptations that happened for him. He thought it was being a good guy helping her. The whole time she was manipulating him and he didn’t realize it. No way I could tell you the whole story.
When we put ourselves in spaces for things to happen no one is innocent in those particular acts, we have to be accountable. It sounds as if he broke a pattern that he had been existing in for quite a while in life. Now, I’m sure when you thought about getting married, did you think that would be something you would deal with infidelity?
I said that at the beginning. I said that when I knew that when I got married at 40, there would be the possibility of that happening in my relationship. For one, because it was my first marriage, and for two, I was his fourth wife. That meant that he was a common denominator in all of those marriages. That meant something had to happen. Now, I don’t care how good I am, how cute I am, how cute my figure is. What I would tell him is, “The P doesn’t have a shape so don’t come to me with what she’s saying.”
This is not TikTok. We can use real words.
“The pussy doesn’t have a shape.” That’s what I told him. When he started telling me, “You see, she’s a big woman.” I said, “What does that mean? What are you trying to tell me?” I wasn’t saying, “She looks like this and I look like this and why did you choose this and why did you choose that?” I was trying to tell him that down there, it’s all the same. It is for me.
Dana’s Advice To Her Younger Self Before Marriage
When you stop and look back in life that you’ve experienced and if you had an opportunity to talk to Dana, that would night before your wedding to John, what would you tell her? What would I tell Dana?
I will tell her I was proud of her, that she waited, and that I got what I believed that God gave me. The man, he never said he was going to be perfect. Never said that I was going to be perfect. Never said that the situation was going to be perfect. It was always what as a child but you know how we say we want to get married and have children and I already had my children. I already had my home. I just didn’t have a husband. My children were out of wedlock. I would have told her on her wedding, naive day that I kept my promise to God and he gave me what I asked.
Fond Memories Of John
Beautiful. What are some of your favorite memories about being married to John?
Just knowing he was here, just knowing he was somewhere in the house, that his man cave and I’d be doing me traveling. In our motor home, we had a lot of things we did together. I fished. He taught me to fish. The first time he took me fishing, I was hooked. He thought outside the box. He thought my thoughts. He would do this stuff before I even said it. We were in tune with each other. Those are things that and the bar is set so high for the next person to come into my life, somebody told me, “At least you had one.” I believe I could have another.
What were the fences that John jumped over to get close to you?
My beauty, my outer appearance, because his thing was I was so beautiful and whatever, what I see in him. Once I would tell him stories about, “What does my beauty get me? Why did I have to sit back for three because everything I chose was wrong? Beauty had nothing to do with it. I’m smart.” The things like when I say he jumped through hoops to get to me, earlier I said he painted my house. He was cutting my grass. He was taking my boys, doing man things with my boys. He was jumping through anything he needed to do just to get in space with me so I could have the comfort of knowing I had somebody who was dependable and reliable for me.
I told you I had built fences so high like I kept telling everybody, he’s a nice guy but I just don’t like him like that even though he was doing all these things. He did many things. Things that some things I probably would never know unless his brother or somebody told me. I heard a lot of backstories because of all the things that were going on. “Why do you keep going back over there?” I made homemade rolls and he made homemade rolls and I went away. He sent me to California to see my mom. When I came back, he had a special dinner made for us.
When I walked in the kitchen and I lifted up these tiles, the tile, there were these rolls were rising and I remember turning around, put my hand on my hip, and saying, “What woman you had in here in my kitchen?” He was like, What are you talking about?” I said, “Who did these rolls?” He was like, “I did.” See, and I didn’t know. I was like, “What do you mean you did?” “Dana, my mother gave me all the tools that a woman had because my dad was drunk and he didn’t give me no tools, but fishing.” as we talk. When he would make his rolls and as the months went by, he made rolls, I made rolls. Finally, I said, let’s put our recipes together, pick the best of yours, best of mine. My mother named them J&D Heavenly Rolls. For the rest of the years, we made and sold homemade rolls.
You sold them?
Yeah. They sent them across the country everywhere. Gifted them. There were many people. We have stories. The labeling, my brother was going to do the labeling for it, and it was going to be clouds. The clouds were going to have little stories on them from the people who would eat our rolls and the different things that they would do because some people would hoard them.
Some people would take them and hide them and stuff like that. We used to hear so many different stories about our rolls. To this day, people have said stuff to me, “I got the last rolls that John made.” Stuff like that. She just told me that maybe a few weeks ago, lady, I do her hair. She was like, “That’s what I remember.” He was so tired, he was in there, he did work, and because the roll process is like a ten-hour day to make from start to finish.
John’s Passing
Dana, you talked about her having John’s last rolls. I would like you to share how John left his world, however, you’re comfortable with sharing that.
He left as a hero for me. He was a hero. He was sickly most of our marriage, but looking at him, if you didn’t know that, outside look at him other than knowing when he was in the hospital, different things like that. When we got married and then after that year, the infidelity happened. When we got back together, I got pregnant and at 11 weeks, I miscarried. He was 51. I was 41. I was excited because this was going to be my first child that was not out of wedlock. I was married. I was doing all the right things that I was supposed to be doing.
That’s what I was most excited about. Anyway, I lost the baby at eleven weeks. This is how we got the motorhome. He said he was going to buy the motor home. That was going to take 18 years to pay for the motor home, which it would do for us to raise a baby so that the motor home was going to be our baby. I used to sell new used cars, trucks, and vans. I’m the one that always, every 2 years, 3 years, I get a new car. When we went to go buy the motor home, he had the guy talk to me. He just put his hat on, sat back like this, and said, “Talk to her.”
I negotiated, we got the motor home and he put in that insurance built in, so he must have known he was getting sick, built into that insurance. An insurance if you get sick where they pay the note. He put that in there. That made the payment like probably a couple hundred dollars more a month. He worked it out with his credit union because they told him to go get whatever he wanted to get and he made two payments a month on it and will automatically just come out the check. For five years, this was going on and then he got sick and he had to start on dialysis.
For 2.5 years, he was on dialysis. After 2.5 years, he received a kidney and he had that kidney for nine years. At nine years, I didn’t know this at first, but the kidney was only slated for eight years. When he got it, they didn’t tell me that or if they told me, I don’t remember that part. Anyway, at nine years, he had to go back on dialysis. At this point, he’s 69 years old.
I knew in July of 69, when he had to go back on dialysis that is going to be very hard on him because it was nine years later. He was a lot older. I know the stuff that happens when you’re doing dialysis. Prior to that, he had had like aneurysm on the aorta. Just everything he had gone through, that’s why I call him my hero because for every sickness, and illness he went in for other people were not leaving the hospital and had died. The friends of people that we knew, but he was coming out. When he got back on dialysis, that was in July.
July of what year thing?
2018.
Thank you.
When September, October came was before Thanksgiving. He was having a lot of pain in his foot and ended up the circulation because he was diabetic. We ended up finding out that they wanted to do an amputation of two of the toes. When they did the amputation of the two toes in the hospital, everything he’s thinking, everything’s all good. The doctor’s saying they think that they might have to do even more, like go up even higher, like the foot or whatever.
Before we went to the hospital for that surgery, I remember we were in the kitchen and he said, “Dana, I’m tired of going to the hospital.” I just really, “Honey.” I walked up and I kissed him. I said, “You’re the strongest man I’m going to know. You could do everything. You are going to be all right. You’re going to be okay.” That’s just how he made me feel from all of this other stuff that had been happening.
I really believe that he just is going to be okay. That was in December. He went into the hospital for that and he didn’t come out. He died on January 10th but prior to that, he coded six times before I let him go. On the first code, remember I told you he was going to nursing school when I met him and he dropped out? He was doing that because all of his sisters were nurses. They told me when the first time he coded to let him go, “Dana, we’re telling you because we know what’s going on.”
I’m saying, “God’s going to fix this. I’m going to get another doctor.” I kept having excuse after excuse after excuse and then I had never read his will thing that he had wrote. I didn’t get to read this to after he died. When my sister-in-law read it and gave it to me, he had wrote in the script, “Dana, let me go.” He had wrote that in whatever that will things you do.
B and R, whatever.
I had never read that. Probably maybe if I had read that, he wouldn’t have had those other 4 or 5 days. I went into the room and I was all excited. When I walked into the room, he saw me and he turned his head for me. I remember looking at it and go, “Honey, it’s going to be okay.” I said, “We got a new doctor and this and that and they’re going to do this.” I saw a tear come down his eye and I knew then that he was telling me he was tired and then he coded later that day. I got with the doctors and signed the paperwork and made arrangements at a certain time that day, like 6 or 7 hours later that we could pull a plug and I would notify all the family and everybody that wanted to be there that could be there. I have an app called Marco Polo.
I have that.
I can right now go back and look at all of that. I can look at the funeral, everything. I have all of that still on my Marco Polo in the cloud. The actual last time that he coded was on there. I had the phone and you could see me twirling around in a chair screaming and hollering. There was the most beautiful thing when he left us though, because the room was filled with all the people, I’d say it was about 20, 25 of us in the room. My daughter sang a rap song. My son did a poem. My sister sang. His daughter, she was in Denver, so we had her on the phone and she got to talk to him.
He lived about 35 minutes after they actually pulled the plug. People just got to come up and kiss him and say whatever. It was beautiful. It was just beautiful. His funeral they had he had an official, what they call an official funeral because he was a deacon of the church because he was in the army and everything, they came and did the salutes and all of that. The flag and put it over the thing. It was beautiful. It was on the worst winter day of the season and it was snow-deep and a lot of people still turned out but it was beautiful.
It was just just really wonderful home going and it lied to a lot of people because my husband was a recovering alcoholic for 30. I think he had just got his coin for 37 years and so he had sponsored over 100 people into AA because when he was supposed to get the kidney, about 40-something people came to the hospital to try to give him a kidney. They wanted to know who John Hueston was. All those people were trying to come and that didn’t match him to give him a kidney.
He ended up getting the kidney from somewhere, a young person in Detroit, that he made this part of his story with AA. He was in his forties. He was drunk and fell down the steps and that’s how he died. He used to tell people that he was a perfect match because the guy was a drunk. Some way he worked that in his stories when he would go do some of his stories for those nine years that he had that kidney.
That’s good.
It really gave him back his life, those nine years. We did a lot of traveling. The last two years before when he had an aneurysm and all this other stuff going on, I told him, let’s let the motor home go. I would just take him on cruises or we go on train rides. We would do whatever, and fly wherever we needed to go because I knew that wasn’t going to be. I did a lot of the driving on the motor home. That wasn’t that, it’s just I needed my partner with me. I needed a healthy partner with me traveling. We would do it the easy way. That’s what we did.
It sounds beautiful.
It was good.
In 2019, so it is now 9 years, 7, 8?
2019, this is 2024, so 2025, it’ll be 6.
- Going right now it’s been five years. Next year it’ll be six.
Like four months. It’ll be six years.
Reflecting On Widowhood
Mark, my husband passed in 2017. That was seven years, so two years, so the five years of that. When we first started this conversation, I asked you, when you heard the word widowhood, you thought of yourself. How would you describe what being a widow is compared to what you thought it was? You said it’s something that people often have to experience. You were hoping you didn’t have to. What is your experience of being a widow?
My hope was that I didn’t have to experience it because he was ten years older than me and then five years into the marriage he started getting sick.
What is your experience of being a widow?
My experience of being a widow is the good part of it was he set me up so that I didn’t have to worry. I didn’t have to worry financially that things were set in the place because I’m just a low-key person so I don’t need a lot. My concerns were to make sure the house, was paid, and that paid. everything else I could do. That part was the good part of being a widow, that I was set up but the other part was just being not having my mate something. Nothing to replace that. Some people try to hear up and replace that person maybe, just because, but I couldn’t do that. I’m not going to settle. I think I won’t settle. No matter what’s been put into my life, I won’t settle.
Not talking about dating, your experience of being a widow, what is it like life without John? What is that experience of maybe the difficulty part? What is your experience and been your widow journey? I’ll say for me, that first day waking up and thinking Mark was no longer in this world. The idea that the man I had spent 32 years of my life with was gone and trying to grasp life without him.
Me trying to understand how not to always say Tina and Mark because I have said that for over 32 years. Driving and getting ready to do something and wanting to tell Mark exactly what it was and he was not going to pick up that phone. Me trying to exist in this world without him. When I think of things that people say, “It’s been a year, aren’t you okay now?” The first year, I was in some type of mental fog that I didn’t even know what I was floating through.
That second year was like, we got to do this again? My experience of being a widow, that experience if somebody may not know it, it may help them to understand a friend who is a widow and understand what they’re dealing with and what that may look like for them. Everybody’s journey may look different. Your experience of being a widow that may help someone else who may be similar to you or have a friend that they’re trying to help.
I think that’s hard for me to answer because in as far as helping somebody I can share experiences but for me, I was prepared. In my mind, in my heart, I was prepared for John to die because of the sicknesses that we had. He overcame and overcame. I was prepared to look over at the bed and know that he was not there. I actually moved over onto his side of the bed when he died. That’s how I was able to relieve that empty space. I moved over into his position and that’s where I sleep still today in his position because he always slept closest to the door to protect the room.
I only had little things that would mess me up one were three main things. My husband was so sick and had retirement on disability, I was the worker, so I was out working a lot. I didn’t go to the grocery store. I didn’t wash my clothes. I didn’t change the sheets. I didn’t put gas in the car. Those were my triggers. The first trigger I had was I got out of the shower and went to put my towel up on the door and my towel was the only door. My towel was the only towel on the door. I had a meltdown.
My girlfriends came to me and said after I shared what was going on with that, “Dana, put some other towels up on the door.” I’m like, “What difference is that?” I wanted to define what they had said, but when I did it, it did help. Grocery store, I’d go in the grocery store and because I really wasn’t familiar with where everything was at because he did all that and he’d bring it home and then I put it away so that I knew what all he had gotten off of our list, I would put it away. In the store, I would break down and just leave the store. My son and I have a car transportation business. He does grocery stuff.
I would just send him my list for him to go to the grocery store for me. The other thing was gas in the car. I ran out of gas about probably 3 or 4 times the first 6 months until my brother-in-law would call me every week and say, “Dana, go put some gas in the car.” I never even looked at my gas tank. Never because my husband washed my car and put the gas in the tank. I couldn’t tell you how much gas cost. I couldn’t tell you how much milk cost. I could tell you none of that stuff. I thought I was prepared for everything, but I was not because there were a lot of little triggers. It was just everyday simple stuff.
Thank you. Those are things that before my husband passed, I never thought about things like that. I mean, for me, the mail, like I don’t like opening mail. There’s a pal sitting right here. I’m telling myself I’m going to deal with today. Those things just catch us off guard. Also, I think it’s very important to know people who are reading that are not widows and maybe widows that have children, prepare for the inevitable.
Don’t talk about it if something happens. Have a tough conversation about when something happens because it’s important to have plans. It’s important like John wrote on the sheet of paper, Dana let me go. That’s part of end-of-life plans because that eliminates you from having guilt, from having to feel like maybe I didn’t understand what he wanted, even though you’d already made the decision.
When you saw that, I’m sure it must have given you some type of peace or some type of resolve knowing that you fulfilled his wishes, there was nothing else, just that last little piece so there wouldn’t be any head chatter. Oftentimes, people need to have those conversations so they know and they’re aware of what their loved one wants. I think that’s important to do.
I think at that point, I was sorry that I hadn’t read it earlier, that I put him through stuff that he didn’t need to go through at the end, but sometimes a person’s death is not about the person dying, it’s about the person that they leave behind. They have to be ready and prepared for the death. Like I said, thought I was prepared myself but I really hadn’t. Now I’m missing to this day, like, it’s going to be 60 years. I still talk to him. I still thank him. I still ask him questions. I still feel his spirit.
Sometimes, a person's death is not about the person dying. It's about the person that they leave behind. Share on XThat is beautiful.
I still hear him fuss at me. I’ll go do whatever it was that he’s fussing at me at the time that I know he would be fussing at me about. I just go do it like, “Okay.” We didn’t fight. We didn’t fight about like maybe like bills and stuff like, “You cannot rob Peter to pay Paul. I say, “You take the checkbook. You do it and then you tell me who you robbing to pay.” He hurried up and gave me that checkbook back.
How did you find yourself on TikTok?
After he died, there are some earlier TikToks on there where I actually share and hope other people see that it got me through nights really. It got me through, I think my grandkids or something, I don’t remember who introduced me to it, but I got on there and I like Panama. I like to do karaoke. My karaoke on TikTok was pantomime other women’s voices. I would find a lot of startup women on there that nobody knew of and I would take their song. I would pantomime that song and give them more exposure.
My son told me one day, “Mom, you need to get out the bed with those TikToks.” That’s a whole different TikTok because in my beginning TikToks, I would be lying down or in my room in bed doing these TikTok. I was like, “Thank you.” It would be 3:00 in the morning. I would put a whole top on, some earrings, and some lipstick and then I’d do the TikTok. That went on for about 4r or 5 months.
I just moved off into other areas of TikTok where now I do trainings, I do teachings, I do motivational speaking, I do a lot of things. In my comfort zone, it took up a lot of time for me to edit and do things. It kept me busy. I have people who would say, “I’m waiting on your next TikTok.” I’m an older ladies and stuff. My kids, auntie, and stuff I said, “You really enjoy it?” She was like, “Yes, I’ll be waiting for your next one.” People, I wasn’t doing something that was negative but I was doing something where people were like, “How is she doing that? I couldn’t do that.”
That is amazing. There are so many people I have found on social media that have been part of their saving grace in a very difficult part of their lives. I think it’s important to find community and find out what works for us because it’s so easy to stay in bed. It’s so easy to never get out. We do need something to draw us back into our own life, to experience it and to live it and doing something. I bet you are not the only person that got up fully dressed to do a TikTok and needed to do that at all. I can definitely relate to that. You have mentioned a couple of times, I’m sorry, go ahead.
I said many times I did that after that. Once my son told me, because I would talk to my sons about all kinds of things. Just like if I were doing, “Is this okay? This is not embarrassing you.” I wanted to make sure that they would be okay seeing their mother. I didn’t want people coming to them in negative tones of their mother. That’s why you see them when they come around me, they respect the fact like, “Are you a TikTok mama? Are you alive? Are you this or that?” They bought me something that could help me with what I’m doing.
Why Love Can Be An Option At Any Age
That is important. You’ve mentioned or alluded a couple of times to the idea that you could have your love of life again, you could date. What have you learned over the last years and being with John and being the age that you are now that will make dating look different for you than what it did before?
Make it look different. It made it look different in itself than just in time. Nothing that I did because back then it was so different and now it’s like with the social media and all of that other stuff. Even back then, people talk about back then, let’s say 20 years ago or 25 or 30 years ago, there still was a form of apps and dating, but it was different, a low key. MySpace and some other things people talk about.
For me, I’m going to stick with what I know. What I know is that God’s going to send me who he has for me. I just need to know that’s who he is because if I try to do an app, maybe it’ll be at a grocery store. Like the guy I just met a month ago, I met him play. Something I love to do playing pickleball. My prayer is to have somebody who enjoys doing a lot of stuff because I do a lot of stuff and I don’t want to intimidate anybody. This gentleman that stepped to me is a short guy. He’s like my height. I’m thinking, “He’s coming at me?”
For him to even come at me. I was like, “I will give you a chance.” You won’t find many guys who are just going to step on you. Now I’m just in a different space right now, trying to figure out like, “Are you going to be okay with this?” My one girlfriend asked me, “Are you going to be okay dating a guy that’s short?” I’m like, “I think I can. I have to know once if we start dating right now, we’re just in the texting phase.” He’s like twelve years younger than me. I’m going, “Okay.”
It’s weird, it’s hard but I’m just going back to what I know, like I said before and just write out my prayer, write out my wants. Everything that I had and that I owned, I had a map. I wrote it out and said what I wanted. In this house, I had a legal pad. I wrote down twenty things, what I wanted, how I had to have it when I bought my car. Everything I’ve done in my life was a plan. I believe that what God has for me next is in the plan. I just need to make sure that I know it when it happens. I don’t want to discard anybody, whether you’re short, medium, or tall.
Did you hear that guys? Just in case, just saying. She does not discriminate.
I just want their heart. I just want somebody who’s going to be honest with me. That’s what I want. It’s not about looks.
Authenticity. Being authentic.
Authentic, none of that matters because it’s a person’s heart. I just don’t want to miss them. That’s all.
You just got so like, “I do not want to miss it.” I could see you just breaking it up with that concept of that.
There’s a flashlight hanging in my car because my girlfriend says that if I fall in love or like somebody, I will be using the flashlight to find them in the daytime. When she found out about this guy who stepped up to me, she came over and gave me this flashlight to calm me down so that I don’t get excited about whatever. I was like, “Am I that bad?” I was like, “Am I really that bad?” They’d be like, “Yeah, Dana.”
There are some people that would feel like love is no longer an option. Some people would feel like, “I’m 60-something. I just need to knit something and just hang out with my girlfriends and I’ll be okay.” Why is that not your perspective?
They have to change their perspective. What I heard you say is some people are saying that they’re not going to date anymore. First, they’ve got to decide, don’t lie to themselves because some people are lying to themselves when they say that. They just saying that to cover up but if you really look deep within your heart of what you want, you’ve got to speak it into existence. You can not be negative about it. You can not. What comes out of our mouth is so powerful. Our words are so powerful. Speak it into your existence and it will happen. Don’t ask, don’t pray for patience because God shows you all kinds of ways to show you that you have patience.
I don’t even pray for that. I already know I have patience. I just speak for knowledge and to show me and to speak through me because I have slowed down when I speak because I’m right off the cuff. I just say stuff. I’ve learned I don’t want to intimidate a man. My sister said de-escalate? De-something-a-guy? We were somewhere she said, “That right there. That’s what you just did right there.” I was like, “That’s what you call it?” You never know your people around you who are watching you, who are observing you, who are paying attention.
When you thought about having this conversation with me, was there something you thought we would cover that maybe we didn’t go into at all?
I came in with no expectations because you came into one of my lives is how we met. I felt like if you saw something in me, even if it was just a word of being a widow was enough for me. I always believed that God used me as a vessel. In any aspect, because I told you I was on a dating show. It’s been two years now and two years later, nothing has still changed from that. That was worldwide and was like and I still didn’t meet anybody.
This is not a dating show.
This is what I’m saying but I was on a date show, which was not this is a podcast, but something different where people a lot of people could see me. I just believe there are special people for everybody. Some people say my person, a certain. I don’t know about a person, a certain person. I believe that I could love anybody. I truly believe that any man, because it’s based on how he treats me.
There is a special person for everyone. Share on XI can see that. How do you do? How are you as far as loving Dana?
Good. I’m very good. I’m active, I’m busy. I calm myself. I do a lot of things like this. I’m loving, always trying to love me. I’m introducing myself into doing things like dating me, going out on a date with just me where I don’t have to have a person because my thing used to be, I could never go nobody with. I didn’t like being the third person with my coupled friends and stuff like that. I had to look at those things differently.
Balancing New Marriage And Helping Others
I have asked you a lot of questions. Any questions you have of me?
Yes, only one. I know that you’re married and that you found love again. How do you maneuver that little space with us and a new loving marriage of hope for us to get that and still be able to reach back and help somebody where I’m at?
That’s a good question. Thank you for that. I’ll start with why I do what I do. My current husband had a cousin who passed and he had a wife so she is a widow and I reached out to her. It was his birthday and she posted Happy Birthday to him and I texted her and I said, “I saw it’s his birthday, do you want to talk?” I know what it felt like on my husband’s first birthday. I will never tell another widow I know how you feel because how you feel is unique to you, being a unique individual and your spouse. I can definitely relate.
I can definitely remember my own experience, but I cannot say I know how you feel. I spoke with her and she said, “I’ll text you tomorrow.” I said, “Do you want to talk now?” I believe she called me before I felt like I had hit send. We were on the phone late into the night. I tapped out about 8:00 or 9:00. Anything after 10:00 PM, I’m not sure what you’re getting out of my mouth. When we got off the phone, when we were talking, I remember being able to give that gift of being able to share how you feel, to know that you’re in a safe space.
You don’t have to explain the widow’s perspective and somebody gets it. Somebody understood it. When I hung up from speaking with her, I could hear God saying, “What are you going to do about the next person?” I was like, “Ain’t nobody calling my phone this late at night. I’m going to bed.” Over time, God evolved that Widowhood Real Talk with Tina this 501c3 is what he was talking about this non-profit supports people who are grieving. To create a safe space, have mental health events. Provide content on six social media platforms.
This show is produced every week. To do those things was something God placed in my heart to do. When I explained that to Fred, he said, “Okay.” He said, “You sound like you have a calling or something that you need to do.” His only thing was how could he help me? When I started a YouTube channel, you have to get like 100, and he was texting his friends like, “She needs 100 people on her YouTube.” Now he will tell me, we have Wednesday night as our date night and I’m putting down social media, putting down everything.
We’re doing, if we’re going to go out to eat, we’re going to watch TV, but I need to turn everything off. He will tell me when I’m up too late in doing stuff, he’s like, “You’re going to be tired. You need to pull back from all of that.” I actually have a podcast that I recorded with Fred and another gentleman talking about dating a mare and a widow. He doesn’t like a lot of being in front of the camera. He’s like I’ll do a video with his voice or with his back. He does not want to be part of any of that but he supports this. He is a very confident man. He is not jealous of my dead husband.
He’s a widow?
No.
He’s not a widow.
No. I did a podcast with my husband and another gentleman talking about dating and marrying a widow because him and somebody else both married a woman who was a widow. I am a widow, married Fred, my children’s godfather married a woman who was a widow. Both of them, I had a conversation with them talking about the experience of dating and marrying a widow. It was important, I’m also a person of intentionality.
I had my non-negotiable. I needed to look at what was going to fit me. I’m a retired army officer. There were a lot of men that were intimidated. When I was dating, I was like, “Say less because I’m good.” It was okay with me. Fred is easy to love. He is easy to want him to be the head of our household. He is easy to be in charge and follow him and do things. If anything, it’s him telling me to take care of myself and to slow down a little bit because I can start doing too much but it’s not been much of a dance to have to manage that.
I’ve had my network of people, my family, my friends, they have been on this course with me and have never left. Seven years later, I have remarried. If I call one of them talking about Mark, they will never tell me, “You’re saying too much, aren’t you over that?” They support me. When I talk to so many widows and widowers and people tell them that six months or a year out, my heart breaks for their pain, for their loneliness. If God has embodied me, encouraged me, and equipped me to create this widowhood immunity that is going to bring people hope and encouragement, I take that charge.
God does not call the equipped, he equips the called. That’s what he did with you.
He did. I know this podcast will air later in December, but I encourage people who read this episode to go to our website, WidowhoodReatTalkWithTina.org, and look at the events that we have for the year. December 6th, we’re about to have a Winter Shenanigans Party here in Norfolk. It’s a three-day event. People are coming in town Friday night on December 6th, and then we have activities, on Denver 7th, and then partial activities, on December 8th. We have events because the community is important. I was just out in California visiting my daughter and was able to connect with three other widows that I’ve met on TikTok.
I obviously advise you to be careful. We met in public places. You don’t want to think you’re meeting somebody and put yourself in harm’s way. Make sure somebody knows where you’re at but community is so helpful. I think that’s what has drawn people to TikTok. It’s just not you post something and walk away. With TikTok, you’re getting that personal engagement. You’re getting to know a person for who they are. I know that it is God carrying me and equipping me through this process, and I’m just submitting to His will and doing.
As far as that question I asked the same. How long after your husband died, did you meet him and marry?
Mark passed in 2017 and Fred and I got married on February 19, 2022. We dated for three years before we got married.
When did you find him or know that you were comfortable, you were okay, you weren’t worried that it was too soon or nothing like that?
My late husband had a lot of cardiac issues in his family. He was certain that he was not going to leave this world and make it to 60. We talked a lot about what my life would look like in his absence. There was a lot of conversation about I want you to date. I want you to get married. I want you to be happy. Whenever I chose that, I didn’t have to feel like, in my head, he died. I am single. Whatever that looks like from then on, I fulfilled my marriage. I was a faithful wife, not what I signed up for. Who?
Who dares you to judge or make assessments of me when I decide to do something with somebody else? There are people entirely married stepping out on their spouses. Miss me with that as far as that would go. I never had anybody come to me and say what that would look like. For me, what was the triggering point to think that I wanted to start dating? It had been about it was their first Christmas and I was staying with a friend and she had been single her entire life. I was hanging out with her and spending the night at her place.
I put a glass down on her coffee table and then she started rubbing it down and doing something. I was like, “How long before you don’t know how to have space with somebody else because you’re used to everything being your way.” That thought came to my mind. I remember being in her bedroom and I went to BlackPeopleMeet.com and I pulled up the website. I said, “It’s time to make a dating profile.” In my mind, if I stay single too long, maybe I would just be set in my ways it wouldn’t be open to sharing space with somebody else. I mean, that led to much of nothing, but it did just allow me to start talking to people because I’d only been with my husband for 32 years.
The idea of dating, somebody holding my hand, let alone straight up kissing somebody was just bizarre. That was a good way for me to just judge myself and start that concept. I had dated this one gentleman, he lived in Virginia. While I was in Pennsylvania, I was preparing to move to Virginia. It didn’t work out, but it let me know that I was in a good place mentally. I have done a lot of work on myself with my mental health, my mental wellness, my fortitude, who I am, and my faith. When I did meet Fred, it was the right time.
There were no regrets. I mean, was it like to hold somebody’s hand and to kiss somebody? He was so kind. He waited when I was ready to kiss him. He was not rushing me. Very clear about the do’s and the nots and that like you were with John up front. It was like, “Yeah.” Also, I had a good marriage. I told myself, “Tina, I don’t want you being thirsty and being desperate out here and wind up with something worse than what you had before.” If being married to Mark was going to be the last relationship, I was prepared to accept that. I was going to be okay with that but if I did know I had the capacity to love again. If it presented itself, I was going to take it.
I just want you to tell Fred I love his name. That was my dad’s name. My dad now, Fred. Every time you say, Fred, I just smile because my dad’s been gone 14 years. Too many days go by that I don’t talk or reference him either.
Nice. I’m being honest to me, Fred’s middle name is Mark, my late husband’s first name. I was like, “I consider that as a sign.” Like playing okay, move forward with this. Thank you for those questions. Thank you for agreeing to have this conversation. I will let you close out this discussion, with whatever you’d like to say to the community that is watching and reading.
Be ready. Be ready for your person and like Tina said, got to be happy with ourself first before we bring anybody else into it. I just thank Tina for the opportunity to even ask me the questions. Like I said, I didn’t come wondering or worrying. I just believed that God was using me as a vessel and giving me the opportunity to be seen. Like my son always tells me, “Mama, God sees you.”
Be ready to be ready for your person. Share on XDana, thank you for being here. Widowhood, I’ll see you next week. Bye.
