What do you say to your children when their father dies by suicide? How do you get through the days when even taking a shower feels impossible? In this powerful episode, our guest Donna Kendrick opens up about what it really means to navigate widowhood—from surviving the early months of unbearable grief to finding meaning, community, and even love again twelve years later. She shares the raw truth about the what-ifs, how to talk to children about suicide, and why it’s okay to laugh, cry, and even get annoyed by that old gym bag. This conversation is a lifeline for anyone facing profound loss—and a reminder that healing doesn’t mean forgetting.

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.

—

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

How To Navigate Widowhood And All The Extra Responsibilities With Donna Kendrick

My guest Donna is going to share with you details on about how to manage when your spouse has lost his life by his own hand, how to have that conversation with your children and the importance of community and so much more. Let’s get into this conversation now.

Donna, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me, Tina. Much appreciated.

Let me ask you this. When you hear, welcome to the widowhood, what comes to your mind? If someone just read the ticker tape embedded inside your brain, what would that look like?

I’m twelve years out now, so when I hear someone say, welcome to the widowhood. I’ll be like, “I’m rocking that.” I’m alright with it. it’s okay. It’s very different than what it felt like many years ago.

Navigating Early Widowhood

To that person that’s in month one, and they hear someone say, “Twelve years, you’re rocking that,” and they cannot even see how to take a shower regularly. What would you say to them?

I’d say that if you shower every three days, that’s good enough. You are okay slow the roll. There is no timeline on this. I’m not saying that every day I feel like I’m rocking it. Some days, I wake up and feel like I just lost my Greg. It’s just part of the journey. We learned to live with it. We don’t go beyond it. When we’ve can walk alongside the widowhood, we’re in great shape. Take your time. Slow your roll. There is no guidebook and definition. Take care of you, especially in those early months, year one, and year two. Take care of you and two feet on the ground standing up. You did it.

The Enduring Impact Of Loss & Milestones

That sums it up. When you think for you to say twelve years later, if you still can wake up moments and like, “Greg is not here.” It can hit you like that. Are there any particular timelines that make it more impactful than other or benchmarks in your life?

When we lost my Greg, my kids were 8, 11 and 12 and I was 40. They’re full-fledged adults now. We’re hitting those milestones, high school graduations, college graduations, first houses and new jobs. Those are the things I always thought we would partner together. That has been impactful. What’s impactful and what makes me miss him most is my oldest looks just like him. We see him walk down the hall and he has his dad’s gate. Is that the word? He was twelve when he lost his dad. He was two feet shorter.

It’s like almost shocking because he’s the age that I met his dad. As he walks down the hallway, I see a man that looks like my late husband and take me off my feet. I’m like, “That happened.” Those are big ones. Smells do it for me. Dirty gym bags. That’s my husband. I’ll tell you, to all the readers out there, it is A-okay even though you lost someone that you love very much to smell that dirty gym bag. I got immediately annoyed. I don’t mean just take the clothes out so we can wash them. It’s okay. I’m allowed out the feeling of we used to pee me off at that moment in time. That’s a lot. Let yourself do it. You’re not a bad person for doing that.

When you say that, I can relate to that. My son has a lot of clothing items of his dad and he doesn’t live with me but I’ll pick him up sometimes. We’re hanging out and he has on his dad’s sweater. His shoulders looked like his dad or if I see him from behind and wearing something. It’s just like it’s love sucker punch and everything all embodied in one thing.

Coping With “What If” Thoughts & Finding Agency

I’m like, “You just knocked me out of hello doing that.” You said something about the gym bag about if that were great gym bag. You would have said this and that. It made me think about in this journey, a lot of times people spend a deep amount of sorrow in the what ifs. “If I would have had my time back. If I could have done this over.” Have you ever encountered the what if season? If so, what has helped you with that?

The what if season was huge in year one. My husband had taken his life. I always thought like, “What if I didn’t spend that extra half hour at lunch with the kids? I could have been there. What if I would have told his employer that I worried about him and they would have taken his gun.” You live in that. Probably a good year three, I was like, “I got to stop because nothing’s going to happen out of it.” We are now. We are the moment we live in.

There was a quote in year three I heard and it belongs to someone. I’m using it. It’s not mine, but it was, “You can’t change what God does. You can’t change what Mother Nature does. You can’t change what other people do. You can only change what you do.” Every morning when I wake up, I can’t keep asking what ifs. I have zero control of that. I can say, “What am I going to do now?” That has helped me carry four words. We’re done with the what ifs. What am I going to do now? That’s been helpful.

I do say that I went down the road when I got married of like what do I want this second marriage to look like different from the first? I did a real big inventory, which is a little different than what ifs. A big inventory of what worked in marriage number one but might not have worked to marriage number two. How is the marriage number three different? We don’t have young kids anymore. Our careers are set. Things like that are different. What do I want this marriage to be? If I had a magic wand with marriage number one, what would I’ve done differently and how can I incorporate that in a marriage number two?

You have said a lot there and I’m trying to make sure I capture. A little shout out to your current husband. Let’s talk about this wall behind you.

It’s beautiful, isn’t it? This is the wall in my office and I’m a minimalist. I can barely decorate. I look at the beautiful background you have and I’m like, “How did she even know how to put those things there?”

My sister.

You’ve got one in your life, too.

She lives next door. That’s what that is.

Thank goodness. They’re matched up with us for a reason. That wall would have been white and black because there’s no judgment. No one can judge me if I don’t put anything up there. Not right or wrong. I just didn’t do anything. He’s like just, “Stay out of your office for two days. When you come back, it’ll be beautiful,” and it is. I wish I could turn the camera around. There’s a contemporary little seating area in the hall. When clients or friends come in, they’re like, “This place is awesome. Well done.” I didn’t do a thing. I love it, too. There’s like little statues like gold. That feeds and dazzles of little elephants all over the rooms.

He listened because my late husband and I lived in Rome for years, in Italy. All of the shopkeepers always have a statue of an elephant with the trunk facing the door to welcoming wealth. Throughout the entire office, there’s five rooms. He put a little elephant and always faced it towards the front door. We always have good fortune and good wealth. I was like, “You listen to me. I say a lot. I talk a lot.”

Communicating The Circumstances Of Death

I had to give him a shout out. I want to circle back to some of the things that you just shared, which were all very powerful. Being the widow of a spouse that took their life, what are the things that people need to know that people are not telling them being in that situation that you’ve learned?

Some people skate around the topic. They don’t know what to say. No one knows what to say. The topic of suicide can be covered religiously and mental illness. Some people think it’s selfish and some people don’t. Many people just avoid it and act like that’s not how it happened. What I can say is, if you have a safe enough relationship with that person, It’s okay to say, “I know a lot of people probably don’t ask you. Do you want to talk about it?”

Right there. I can very easily say, “I don’t want to talk about it.’ I could easily say, “I had these questions. Would you mind listening?” Fantastic. By avoiding, you don’t give that opportunity to share. Let that person know it’s in the room. It’s the elephant in the room. That is a beautiful little statue bringing in wealth. It’s the big fat elephant in the room and you just feel like the strange person. Love up on them.

Thank you for sharing that because you know more than myself that there are so many people that feel like they’re grief is invalidated or somebody feeling like the person on the outside telling you that person was selfish or condemnation and other different things. To me, what matters is the person that’s in front of me. They are the person that I needed to support.

They are the person that needs to know that their grief matters and it shouldn’t act like this didn’t happen because that impacts your grief in a different way than other people. I know everyone’s grief is unique but someone’s spouse that has died by suicide create some additional complications. How is that conversation to be had with children? Any recommendations on how to share that news with the child? I know it’s depending on the age, but ways to navigate that.

Depending on the age. It’s hard. I do say to get some professional guidance if you need it and if you yourself are having a hard time digesting it. I suffered with depression for years that we did not make public. It was secret. It was us. It was behind closed doors. We navigated as a couple. The kids thought maybe of times that he traveled a lot with work and he was traveling with work. He was curled up in the ball in our master bedroom.

It was a game of smoke and mirrors. When he passed, my kids didn’t have the life experience to know that dad was depressed. We never talked about it. They couldn’t even relate to it. I had to be very careful and slowly it wasn’t just a suicide. It was his struggle, his lifetime struggle. How bad the last two years were that needed to be unpacked.

I want to tell you thank you for being willing to have this conversation. I know you make your voice known that people don’t have to feel like they are alone. I know we can share our story and sometimes, it can just rattle off of our tongues like we’re talking about the last sports game and other times, it costs us to share these stories. This comes at a price.

I want to say thank you for being willing to give that price so somebody else knows that they’re not alone in this widowhood that we are alongside of you. I know we met during the winter solstice. That was a community event. Can you share some things that you remember about your participation in that event? Why was it so important to you?

I love hearing from all the different widows in the room from what vantage point we were all at life and how did we lose our spouse. Where we divorced before we lost them? What a dynamic there. I was like, “How do you wrap your head around that one?” Talk about the what ifs and things like that. As well as the chat that was going on with the attendees of the group. That was my favorite part so that they could engage. The attendees were linking us all together in a very beautiful way of the experience of widowhood.

Either we came from all different backgrounds. I thought that was wonderful. I love the inspiration that the panel gave. We know you’re in the muck of it. It’s okay being the muck. This is how we journeyed out and this is what worked for us. We’re not saying it could work for you. We’re not giving you all the counseling in the world. It wasn’t it. It was purely relationship and that’s what you’re show does.

Other people that have been in this space, how did it work for you? I thank you for doing this and for being there because they’re so different than counseling, peer groups and support groups. There’s a need for all of that but to be here and to say like, “That’s how that worked for that person. Maybe that would work for me.” To hear from all those different vantage points is very good. I’m just going to touch back a little bit on how to talk to the younger people about suicide. I got a little caught up and they’re going with the voice. May I?

I was just trying to scooch you out of there and scooch you back.

Gentle you are. I think a lot of it has to be honesty because there’s a way to say it but you don’t want your kids hearing it from someone else. You don’t want your kids hearing it from the back of the bus from another kid. Suicide can be a sensational gossipy topic. Sorry, it is. People on the block are going to talk about it. When you’re eight-year-old walks on the bus, they might hear a different version that you didn’t tell them.

There are adults out there who don’t play nice and they get their version of what they think about suicide to our children without us being able to protect them. If they know that they can get honest information from us, age specific and detail specific but that the doors open as they age to ask more questions. That’s the goal. Never lie.

That is important because the rumor mill can get in front of you and your child can be devastated in a way that if they’re prepared, it’s still going to be hurtful to hear the chatter. If you’ve been the first voice or them, that changes the dynamics of everything.

I appreciate you let me round back up on that one.

The Role & Nature Of Community In Grief

I want to just circle back to something else you said, the value of community. The idea that people often become isolated in this journey because they feel like I’ve said my story over and over again. Nobody wants to hear me but there’s something about this journey that requires us to repeat it over and over or feeling like the people in my circle don’t know how to walk beside me. I don’t want to talk to strangers. I don’t want to do this, so I’ll just be alone.

If you met me in the grocery store and bumped into each other. I was sharing that my husband took his life and I haven’t associated with anybody. My family and friends don’t know what to do. I’ve seen a couple of grief support groups but I feel like that’s trauma bonding and I don’t want to do that. What would you share with me?

If you maybe don’t want to go into that group setting, a lot of his is, one, be listening ear. If they’re talking to you in the grocery store, they want to talk to someone. Maybe it’s that one-on-one. I’m always a huge advocate of listen first. A wise man once said nothing. I have so much that I’m so talented. I can’t wait to hear myself talk but you have to be so quiet. My husband says that. I stole that line from him. It’s true. He’s a gem.

I got just come out with the most stuff like. Sometimes, you do have to be quiet and instead of fixing it for somebody. There’s no fixing grief. You have to lean in. An example of what we were doing in that group winter solstice is worked for me. I have another best friend who’s a widow. This worked for her. The person doesn’t feel like it. It’s like, “I’m telling you to do this.” They don’t want to be navigated. They just want to be listened to and hold space for them.

The other thing that was very helpful for me was called inner work, spirituality. Whether it’s God, Buddha, or anybody. I don’t care but it’s that next level, the source beyond us. I found a different level outside of organized religion for my own spirituality which helped me as a person. I was able to go back into the organized religion I grew up in. Where that said, the community existed for myself but it was almost like a little shell of myself.

I didn’t have anything to give to that community until I found who I was with spiritual side. I couldn’t step back in. Whatever might resonate with you, I don’t care if it’s meditation or a book or a walk on the beach. Whatever it is that you can connect with, there’s two braids. The one I’m talking to you through and the one that the back of my head talking to me. That one. That’s what you want to talk to. Figure that out. Get a good relationship with that at the back of your head. Everything will open up. It will all feel better.

I cannot agree with you more because the passing of a loved one, a spouse has a way of impacting every aspect of life that you’ve used as a foundation. Most importantly, it will impact someone’s fate, what they believe in, and what they feel like their purpose in life is. Where you able to identify that for yourself or did someone point that out to you that need to pivot?

I found it for myself. My husband and I were of different faiths. Similar and both Christian. He was Catholic. We’re just going to say what it was. Very similar. I agree to raise the kids Catholic because my husband’s faith was very strong. Irish Catholic every week. No meat on Fridays like he was. That’s what he did and he loved it. I was fine with that. I was educated in the Catholic community so it was all not too foreign from me.

I tried to live by that after he passed but it wasn’t genuine to me. Some of the incidents that happened because he died by suicide became very hard to stay in our very small community of the Catholic phase. There’s some judgments and some things said to the kids. That just happened to be situational. Not for the whole religion, I will tell you that but because this is the situation I lived in, I had a back out. I backed myself out and my kids out.

I say we were just quiet for two years. During that time, I missed spirituality. I missed the time in church. That was just always meditation time. I missed that. I missed getting up and committing each week to that two-hours space. What I do, I found it in that quiet time in my own through meditation and through reading. Through reading about different religions and different spirituality. Finally, we were able to step back in with the family to where we wanted to be.

That said, I had to step away to step back in. Nothing was right. Nothing was wrong. The situation I was in didn’t work. That was okay. Through the years, I’ve become more and more. We’re spiritual more, law of abundance and law of attraction. That type of stuff. At day job, we don’t talk about that a lot. Not at all. People who might be listening me be like, “She’s mute.” It’s the law of abundance and law of attraction. People are like, “She’s got affirmation cards on her desk.” Yes, she does but I’ll tell my kids about it honestly now like about this helps me. It helps me a business and my personal life. It helps me be a better person of Christianity in faith. You get there. As long as you get there.

Reforming Identity & Relationships After Loss

Thank you for sharing that because it has a way of dissecting your life and needing to reform that in the version that fits with what you are dealing within life now. I often hear people say that the person that they’ve become after their spouse has, may not even fit in the same marriage that they had before because of things that have changed. What would you say to that?

I don’t know if I still be married. If this person now was in that old relationship with my husband Greg, and it was a good one. I don’t think there was room for the both of us in there. I don’t. I believe I carry some of what he had on this Earth to give. I’ll just be carrying both now but I don’t think we would have fit and that’s honest. I have the second husband now. He wouldn’t like that.

He is but I feel like I’m a better person from being married to Mark, what I’ve learned that young girl and who have become in life. In twelve years, you talked about year one and two. For me, year one is more of a memory game. I remember some highlights but don’t ask me to give you a full script of it. I want to say nine months to year two, the fog was gone and I’m like, “We’re doing this every day?” When you think of year one and two, what is that look like for you?

You’re one with pure grit and not the grit that like Angela Duckworth writes about. Grit as in like I grew up in Philly and I can do this. I wanted to be, I called the 100% best widow ever. When anyone asked my extended family, my late husband had a big family, “How’s Donna and the kids?” I want them to be like, “They’re doing fantastic.” Winner. I did. You’re one widow. Down pat. Year two hit and it was like, “I just got through the year of the first.” This is the reality and I sunk. I sunk quick. That’s when I started looking for solutions, peer counseling, spirituality, friends, and red wine. Whatever was going to help me. I’m not above it.

Riesling and whiskey sour, that’s me.

I remember saying like, “I’m the only parent on duty. How many wines can I still drive?” It would be like, one and a splash.” That’s it. I’m a lightweight.

I’m light weight, too. Very much so.

It’s gotten worse as I gotten older. Year two is when I started writing down this stuff that was worrying me and carrying on my head. My mom used to always have Post-its in her nightstand. I used to make so much fun of her, but I remember grabbing a pen and those Post-its. When it was on my mind, I couldn’t sleep. I write them down then you go back a week later and you’re like, “That’s ridiculous or that didn’t make sense or that one still sticks.”

I started doing this process of, “This is what I’m saying to myself. Next column., why is it not true? Next column, what would I rather sound like?” I would do it again and again. Sometimes the reason why it’s not true are like ten of the one sentence like I’m not lovable. Why is that not true? What do I want to sound like? I am the most huggable person when you walk into a room. That’s what I want to sound like. How do I make that happen? Can’t control other people and God. I can only control me. That’s it, three columns. What it said, why it’s not true, and what’s going to sound like next.

Thank you for sharing that. I want, if possible, to explain the difference of saying that in your hand versus the power of writing that down and then reading it back to yourselves because somebody may say, “Why do I have to do the Post-it note? I can just think it. It’s just as good” What would you share from your learned experience of that?

There’s something about the repetition and writing it down. There’s something about being able to run your fingers over the words that just turns on a part of your brain. The subconscious that is now absorbing this again and again because of that habit that I would be doing of running in a Post-it, it’s like I’m reading it. I’m dissecting and focusing on it. It’s not just lying in the drawer like we’re working with it.

Even just riding it down, it embeds something differently. You can now visualize those words where before they were just floating. It’s almost like a way that your brain could organize and when maybe you’re sleeping. Work on it. Every morning, I write down like top ten lists of my top ten goals for the year. Personal, I do it. It’s called what do you want from yourself? Three for personal, three four community, three for my business and then one bonus extra ten. I write them down every morning before I do anything else. Top of my mind, I write them down.

Maybe I write some gratitude too. Maybe that’s just it because I got to pee. These are the things I’m writing down and that has changed where I focus my day. If I’m doing something during the day, it doesn’t support one of the three for the personal, the community, the business or that bonus fun one. Why am I doing it?

Redefining Identity After Loss

That changes a lot because we know that we have a limited amount of time in this world. What am I doing with the time that I have? Sometimes I hear people think that because we have remarried and you’re no longer a widow. What would you say to that statement?

If I could step out of the widow shell and be like, “No, just married person.” I wouldn’t want to. I love the fact that I was a widow. I love that it’s part of my kid’s story. I love this part of my story and it impacted my entire world. As I said, like the person I am now, I don’t know if that would have fit the old marriage. If it wasn’t for Greg’s passing, everything might have felt very differently. I don’t want to leave that behind but I get it.

I now have that second person to lean on. I am no longer a solo parent where there’s no weekends off and there’s no one to run an idea and pass. I do have a partner in that so it does change the dynamic. With that, my husband was divorced before I married him. His ex-wife passed away while we were married. He’s like, “Can I be a widower even though we were divorced before I am?” I’m like, “You are your very own show my friend. Let’s figure this out,” because he faced challenges that none of my widows or my widow friends have chased like not having rights to some of your kid’s information for healthcare because they were on his ex-wife’s self-care.

They’re not going to be on his. They’re going to be on her benefit but then it doesn’t go in his name because he’s divorce. He doesn’t get the benefit, so his name doesn’t go in of the youngest child. It’s insane. He had to navigate all of this and there was no God book. There’s no one to lean on. As you said, there’s no group for I was divorced and then she died and I’m a guide God. No. I get it. There’s none. Lucky for him he’s married to a widow. Together, we were able to navigate the social security and navigate those things but it’s weird.

He needs to be a guest. I feel like we need to have a conversation.

You need to have a two-hour episode. He talks so much. God bless him. He’s a chatter. We’re dynamic, isn’t it?

I’m just going to say yes. I don’t think I’ve come across that particular scenario.

Tough.

Dating & Remarriage After Loss

How did that you were ready to think about dating? Did dating look like getting married to you initially or was it just having a friend? How were you ready to say, “I’m ready to put my toe on that water?”

I jumped into dating way too early like right after the first year or right around the first year. Let’s go back to this suicide thing. I need to work on me a little bit because I feel like I wasn’t lovable. If you love me enough, if I was worth staying alive for, you’d be here. I was going out there dating trying to make myself feel lovable and worth being around. It took many years of therapy, straight out therapy to figure that out.

I was just doing it to make myself feel like I was worth something. Those relationships didn’t go so well and that’s okay. I took a breather. The husband that I met, I just met him organically. We were friends for years before we ever started dating. That was very easy to have someone that you would consider of your top five friends and all of a sudden, be someone you dated. That was nice. I got to say that. I don’t have much advice for going out there dating using apps going to dinners. It didn’t do well. It crashing and burned.

I pulled myself out. I remember when my husband currently, when we went on our first date, even though it wasn’t official date. He was like, “I know you’re not dating anymore.” His divorced was a little over a year. He’s like, “I’ve always had a great relationship with you. Would you like to try dating?” I am mad. I was like, “You’re going to ruin our friendship. I cherished my friendships. Now you made it weird. Thanks a lot.” I was bad. I was horrible. “I want to raise those was kids. I don’t want to do this. No way. That’d be six kids between us. Forget it. No, I don’t want to date you. Thanks for ruining our friendship.” Slammed the door. The very next morning, I called back up, “The stuff I said, I’m sorry. I thought about it. Can we try this again? Can we try it again? I would love to go on a date with you.” Very different.

Did he hang up on you or did he allow you? What happened?

He allowed me. That’s why we’re here. He had some grace. He still makes fun of me for it then there’s a list of top ten rules like, if I date you, this is the best. I’ll give you the number one.

I want all ten.

That’s his episode. He’ll go down. The top one was like, if I date you because we were friends for so long. I don’t want you to date anyone else and I’m not going to date anyone else. I’m not telling you it’s like exclusive or going steady or engage. I’m just saying I won’t be able to tolerate that. I adore him as a person so much. I don’t think I could stomach you dating someone else and me at the same time. I remember him saying, “What you’re telling me is that you want to date me and only me? You’re not going to date anyone else.” I’m like, “Yes.” He’s like, “Okay,”

This is not the rose ceremony at the end. You’re going to get a rose and he’s going to still be there. At what point did this friendship turn into, “I think I want him to kiss me or I could see my life with this person?”

Right when we started dating. You just knew. It was just so comfortable and so real. It was almost like we just had to work the logistics out over the years. It was just being with the best friend. I consider myself very lucky to have found love twice in life. Very damn lucky.

It is and I want your thought on dating and remorse doesn’t solve the widow or grief.

My husband’s very good at sharing stories about my husband or getting me to talk about him out loud. I do the same with his late ex-wife. We knew one another through high school, so that was a little bit different. We talked about these stories at the family table with all six kids there because we want the kids to bond together, too. They are great. I got to say, for a blended family, we hit the jackpot. They fell in together. They’re good buddies. They’re fine.

We want them all that the same shared story. When we start sharing stories about, “When I met your mom. When I met your dad. When we dated and all. His worst habit was. Do any of you kids do that?” It starts the bond everyone together. The family has shared stories of the lost loved ones. When you walk into our front door, we have a wall and it has the flag from my husband’s casket and the award he won and the awarded that my step kid’s mom won. They both were federal agents. You know what house you’re walking into when you walk in but it’s there in the front for you for a very important reason.

That idea of keeping your late spouse’s memory alive is something that is possible and should be expected. You shouldn’t have to act like they didn’t exist because that’s a part of your life.

It’s funny when like one of the kids walk. One of my husband’s kids walks down and they have a sweatshirt on. It says, “Kendrick,” on the back. It might have been my late husband’s sweatshirt. They don’t know but they feel completely comfortable to wear the last name from their step brothers and sisters because it doesn’t feel that way to them. We are the Gee in Kendrick household. It’s just what we are. That’s lovely.

The fact that my step kids can fill in a sentence. I was like, “You know what Greg would say.” They know his one-liners. They never met the man. Keeping them alive is important and helpful. When I tell Jim stories about my first marriage, he’s taking notes. He’s like, “As a husband, I’m not going to do that, or as a husband, that works.” He’s taking notes and we are navigating because of those stories.

Navigating Isolation & The Need For Connection

I know in the widowhood community isolation, trying to find new friends and managing economics are some very common things that people deal with. What are some things that you found for yourself that were common in your experience and had to navigate?

I was lucky we wound up taking the kids to, it’s called Safe Harbor like the Dougie Center at a hospital near us. It’s a free peer counseling for kids age specific and law specific. They would meet every other week. While the kids were meeting, the parents had to meet. They would teach us about what they were teaching the kids that day. Talking about their grief perhaps, or how to say suicide in public. I was a very specific peer group of other spouses and lost the loved one to suicide.

We had that common denominator. We would bounce things off on another. I learned that sometimes the isolation is real. Sometimes you do it to yourself on purpose. Sometimes you have to do it. Sometimes it’s just too much and you need someone to pull you out of it. I can’t say there’s a right or wrong. What I will say is if you stay there for too long by yourself, go find somebody. Talk to that person at the food store. Talk to anybody. You just can’t be there by yourself for all too long.

I was quiet for the longest time of that peer counseling. It was disrespectful to talk about Greg taking his life because he was such an honorable man. When he started to hear other people’s stories, you’re like, “I get that.” A little bit easier. Surround yourself with people who can listen to it, hear it, be present, and listen and not talk. It’s a big one. God lean into the community itself and when they need to. I didn’t know where things were being paid early on. I was one of those people who didn’t have credit cards in her name but one.

When Greg passed, you’ve reported social security number and all the credit cards stop. There’s no line of credit for Donna Jean. I just lost his income. Now, I don’t have any credit. How do I get groceries? That was hard because we were fine. We’re middle-class America, but to say that out loud to someone like, “Can you believe this? I can’t.” I saw my mom get divorced in the ‘80s. How do I not have a credit card in my name? How did I not learn that?

All of a sudden, envelope of cash in my mailbox for groceries. Nobody would tell me who. Nobody would tell me how. Meal trays started up just for six weeks. Life insurance would come through. I told maybe one person and they activated a whole community. We had meals two days a week for six weeks. Amazing. Find that trusted soul. It doesn’t have to be everyone. You don’t have to scream your story from the rooftop. Find that one person who’s your go-to. Find that person and they might be your words for the rest of the community to help.

Advice The Newly Widowed

Donna, you have shared such very real information, your journey. If you could maintain everything you’ve learned and you were to talk to Donna the day after Greg passed. What would you tell her?

You’re good at this. Let’s do these a lot, Tina. I tell her to get a big girl panties on but make sure they’re comfy.

That is fair. I have asked you a slew of questions. Do you have any questions you want to ask me?

Tell me how you met your second husband.

Brad and I met online on a dating app called Zoosk. I want to say I moved to Virginia and it was 2019. I visited with a friend that has been single her whole life. I put a cup down and she was cleaning up behind me. I was like, “Tina, how long before you don’t have space for somebody else in your life? How is this going to work?” I was 50 plus. I went and started making me a little thing online at stuff like that because I had not run into anybody that seemed worthy that I wanted to spend time with.

A whole bunch of swiping left and learning a lot out here about the dating world. Shameless plug. Every Friday, I put out a YouTube about dating. Dating and loss is the playlist on my YouTube channel. By the time I connected with Fred, I had learned. We talked for a couple of days and I want to meet you in person. If you can’t meet me in person, goodbye because we’re not doing this. I don’t have time for none of that.

We met and I said, “I just want to meet you in person. You sound very nice. We’re meeting a public place. This is not a hookup. I’m wanting to meet who you were.” Simple as that. We met in this coffee shop and sat there for three hours and just talked. To this day, neither of us know what that conversation was. We go back to that coffee shop. That’s like where we go for our anniversary dinner. It’s not something super. It’s just what it means to me.

It’s like, “Where do you want to go?” He’d be like, “Do you want to go to the coffee shop?” “I do. I want to go there.” He stood up and said hello. I said I’m a hugger and I hugged him. It sounds so cliché but if it felt like home from that very first moment because my late husband and I are together for 32 years and I was like, “God, how am I going to connect with a whole other person and feel natural after being with Mark for many years?” I thought it was going to be a lesser relationship or at least we’ll be friends and the sex does need to be good.

It just felt like home. Conversations were just so easy. We had been on a dating app and he immediately said, “I’m coming off the app.” I’m like, “I’m not sure about that yet, sir. Don’t try to figure this out.” I want to say after a couple weeks, it was like, “I’m not interested. I need to focus on what this looked like.” We dated for three years because he had been married before and it didn’t work out. My expectations were extremely high.

I know a lot of people and they’ll make statements like, “No one will be like my late husband.” They won’t. I’m sorry, they’re dead. Newsflash. No one will be. There’s no gold to repeat that. To me, it was to find somebody that was compatible with this version of Tina. I remember when I started dating, my son was like, “Mom, you’re super demanding like difficult. I don’t know who’s going to do with that.”

I was like, “I’m worth it. I don’t know what you’re talking about, son.” My son is walking me down the aisle for my wedding and we had a little dance together at the wedding. I look at Fred and just go, “I could never have a match that this would have taken place in my life,” but at the same time, if he sleeps into late, I’m like you, “Are you okay?”

That’s another episode.

It was taking the chance to make myself available to be loved. I had also come to the conclusion, I was okay if it didn’t happen if that’s what I got, because I do realize that some people go their whole lives and maybe have never had one person they felt like was a good marriage. Maybe I was a gift to him to be able to have something good. I’m happy about that, too.

Thank you for sharing. I love it. I love that when you gave him the hug it felt like home. That’s awesome. Well done.

Thank you so much for this conversation. I know you’re busy. I’m going to say something to our readers and then I would like for you to close out this conversation whatever final thoughts or recommendations or whatever you want to share. I want to tell you thank you for being a part of this conversation. I am sorry for the loved one that you have lost that has drawn you here but I’m glad that she found us. I look forward for the next episode.

I just want to thank everyone for reading. To tell everyone, there is love out there and it starts from inside of us. Find it. Have patient with yourself. Hug yourself and make that your home then you can give the others.

Thank you, Donna.

Important Links

• Donna Kendrick
• Donna Kendrick on Facebook
• Donna Kendrick on Instagram
• Donna Kendrick on YouTube
• Donna Kendrick on TikTok

About Donna Kendrick

Donna Kendrick discovered her husband Greg had passed away suddenly in 2013 and found herself navigating widowhood with three young children.

After getting settled in their new normal, Donna made the decision to relaunch her career into the role that she had found so impactful during that time of transition for her family; financial planning. She made it her mission to support families in transition.

She went back to school to take the coursework to become a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ practitioner and founded Sephton Financial which subsequently won the OSJ award for annual growth in both 2022 and 2023.

Donna is a speaker, host of the Wisdom and Wealth Podcast – Financial Clarity for Families in Transition, author of the #1 Amazon Best Seller, A Guide to Widowhood Navigating the First Three Years and also A Guide for Blended Families: Merging Assets and Navigating Financial Challenges (pub. Oct 2024.)

Donna is an avid long-distance runner who turns her passion into an ability to raise funds for local causes. Donna and her running group, Team Kendrick, have helped raise donations for Safe Harbor, a grief counseling program that provides free of charge services to children after the loss of a parent, sibling, or caregiver.

In 2022, Donna married her husband Jim and between them, they have six children, Connor, Katie, James, Jeanie, Delaney, and Seamus. Together with their Newfoundland, American Bully, and rescue cat, they enjoy living in Jenkintown, PA.