Learning to share your story after loss can feel daunting—but it’s also one of the most powerful ways to heal. Writing coach Romana Hasenöhrl joins Dr. Tina Fornwald to explore how creative expression helps us navigate grief, remember our loved ones, and rediscover joy. Through her own experience of losing her grandmother, Romana found comfort in writing, eventually transforming her pain into purpose by helping others find their voices. Together, they discuss the emotional release that comes from storytelling, why joy and sorrow can coexist, and how sharing your story can bring light, connection, and meaning back into your life.

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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Watch the episode here

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Share Your Story: The Healing Power Of Writing With Romana Hasenöhrl

Voices Of Widowhood: Healing Through The Holidays

Finding Joy & Healing: Navigating Grief And The Holidays

Has grief told you that you’re not allowed to be happy, you’re not allowed to laugh, and you’re not allowed to have purpose anymore? Our conversation with Romana, a writing coach, is going to blow past those negative myths. We’re going to talk about how you are allowed to be happy. At the same time, you’re allowed to cry. You’re allowed to have purpose. You’re allowed to miss your loved one. The duality of those is not a choice between one or the other. Let’s get into this conversation now.

Romana, welcome to the Widowhood.

Thanks for having me. I’m so happy to be on your show.

Thank you. When you hear “Welcome to the Widowhood,” what’s the invisible ticker tape that goes across your head, thinking about this community and having this conversation?

One of my best friends is Marie Alessi, and you’re connected already. I know what she’s doing, and I have quite positive feelings. I have to tell the truth. If this conversation had been years ago, I would be like, “What?” The more you get into the topic and talk to people, the better you understand what it means.

Where are you located?

I’m in Salzburg, Austria, which is The Sound of Music city.

Thank you. I am glad that you were able to join this series, Voices of Widowhood: Healing through the Holidays. This conversation is intended, knowing that the holidays and grief are not good partners. They can be very difficult. You mentioned that years ago, this conversation would have been different for you. Can you share what’s happened in that five-year timeline? Why does it make it different?

First of all, I got to know Marie. She’s working with widows in Sydney, Australia, and not only widows, but with the topic of grief in general. We met via the internet, through Facebook. She saw my name. “She’s Austrian, too.” I got to write her some lines. We got in contact. In 2021, my grandma died. I grew up with her. I never expected that this would hit me so hard. My grandma was a very happy and lucky person. She was 94. I went into those childhood feelings and behavior. I yelled out, “You promised me you would get to 100. Now you died at 94.” I was devastated. I felt out of my body, watching myself acting. I’ve never had that before.

After two or three months, I called Marie and said, “Is that normal?” In my family, it’s not normal to talk about death, grief, what comes after, and how to behave. There’s nothing. That’s like a white landscape. I got into that conversation on what’s normal and why it’s not necessary to act normal because you are an individual. You’re grieving. You’re dealing with it, and especially with the holidays. That’s your individual phase. My granny died in September. When Christmas was coming up, I always spent Christmas with her. That was a hard time. I was very glad I had someone who guided me, like you guide people in those situations.

The Power Of Community: Finding Solace In Shared Grief

Thank you for sharing that. I understand, and I know from you, working with Marie, that all grief is the same. At the same time, grief is different, depending on the relationship. I know a lot of people who are tuning in to this conversation may have lost their spouse. By you losing your grandmother, it sounds as if it’s giving you a concept of how profound and more extreme a loss could be of losing their spouse, someone that they’ve mended their life together with and done those different things. Speaking with Marie, having that community, but being in a family where that was not permitted or allowed, how did that make you feel to be someplace that you could talk freely about your grandmother and the grief that you were experiencing?

For me, there was a big release. It is allowed to cry. In my family, it was like, “She got to 94. What are you crying about?” This is unbelievable for me. It is allowed to cry. It is allowed to share. There were people in the group. I was invited to join a group that had lost their spouse and had lost their kids. We all shared what our feelings are, how we think the future will be, how hard it is, or how we might make it a little bit easier, first of all, by sharing. As I’m a writer, also in writing. For me, it was that clue to write it down.

Maybe someday, a story will come up with all the thoughts. Maybe a novel, or maybe not, but keep on writing. This was very important for me as I’m a person who loves writing and deals a lot and heals a lot with writing. This gave me so much ease and brought me back to my happiness. Four years later, I’m starting my third novel, which is about grandma. I love that so much that it took its time, but it’s here.

There are so many pieces of being in community that are helpful. There is the ability to be in the space with other people who have lost a loved one, and everyone is uncomfortable together. The idea of losing one’s child, the idea of losing one’s partner, and the idea of losing one’s grandmother are obviously different losses in impacting the individual in a different way. There are some similarities in that grief. There is the idea of needing a safe space to talk and the ability to be able to know that people can relate to how I feel, that this is normal, even though normal may have been the idea of trying to shut it down. Having that, what do you think your grief would have looked like if you didn’t have that type of support?

Grandma’s Legacy: Turning Grief Into Creative Inspiration

The most important difference for me is that I had all those memories, like the dishes grandma made. I’ve been a vegetarian since childhood. I didn’t like meat. She was the only person respecting this and cooking for me without meat. If I hadn’t had that support, I would have cried and cried all over. I don’t have that support anymore, those dishes whatsoever. What happened afterwards was that we talked a lot about what you miss most. Is it the person, or is it something the person did or made you feel? I picked up the cooking part.

Between 2021 and 2023, I wrote two cookbooks with all recipes in them. I grew into being a good cook. That’s what I took from her. This process, if it had ever happened, would have happened much more slowly because I wouldn’t have gotten the connection between what I miss so much and what I could carry on. There were so many more little things, like the gardening or how she dealt with daily life, where I now realize, “I picked that. I’m continuing with that.” This reminds me of her every day, but in a very good way. It is not in the “I miss you so much” way, but in the “there’s always a place in my heart for you” way.

Thank you for sharing that. Those are things that anyone can use in their grief journey. It may be harder. I know for me, doing things that my husband did sometimes is too hard because the relationship is so close. As time has continued, there are some things that he did that do bring me comfort. They do bring me joy in carrying on his actions. There’s a part of me that feels like his memory and his purpose are still here in this world through me doing things or our children doing things that he did. You also mentioned writing. Where can somebody find your cookbook that you’ve written? Can you share the names of those with us?

The cookbooks are unfortunately only in German. I did self-publish them. Over here in Austria, we speak Austrian, but we write in German. Those are published in German. They are called Star Cooking because I am an astrologer as well. I connected my astrological knowledge with the recipes. I made some fun stories about every star sign and nice recipes fitting to every star sign. There was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, I’ve written eleven books, but the only one that ever got translated into English is one about coloring fabrics with plants, which is a handicraft book. That’s the only one translated into English.

Our show is seen in over 114 different countries, so it’s not limited to just the US. If you would share where people can find the book, as they may be interested, or your website, where they can go and see all eleven, you may find that there are people in this conversation who would be interested.

My website is RomanaHasenoehrl.at. There, you can find all my books. Most of them are available on Amazon, but not the Star Cooking books, as they were self-published, like 200 pieces. You still can get some copies when you send me an email.

Culinary Astrology: A Humorous Approach To Zodiac-Inspired Cooking

You can email me if you’re not able to find it, because we would love for you to be able to connect and get that information. Let’s explain a little bit more about astrology and connecting that to the cookbook. That is a very unique approach.

It is because when I came up with the idea, I did some research. Are there books out there about that topic in the German language? I found none. That was very trendy in the ’80s. In the ’80s, astrology had its peak here. There were some books published, but they are not available any longer. I thought, “That’s a good idea. Let’s do that.” As I’m a humorous person with that spark in me, I am not being too serious, but for example, writing for all the star signs down, if you invite a Leo person, an Aries person, or whatever, what you have to think about. We had a lot of fun with that. If you invite a Leo person, you have to have golden plates.

If you invited the Taurus person, what would that look like? I’ll put myself out there. That is my zodiac sign.

For a Taurus person, you have to show what you have in the sense of what dishes you offer. For a Taurus person, if you want to make them happy, you don’t offer just one dish like baby carrots and mashed potatoes. You offer more dishes. In Austria, we say it looks as if the table nearly falls because there’s so much food on it. Taurus always wants the whole world, the full world, the ripe world. If you want to make them feel like that, you offer a lot. You do some nice decorations. Not too opulent, not golden, but very nice.

I never thought of presenting the meal according to someone’s zodiac sign and what that looks like. That is very interesting.

It’s so funny because I’ve been doing astrology in a professional way for fifteen years. I watch people. I watch my clients. I always see those same patterns. Every birth chart is individual. That’s clear. You see those patterns shining through. For example, the Aries people never have time. They are always in a hurry. There’s so much to do. They don’t have time to kneel and do their shoelaces or close their shoes. They are always different. The same is with every sign.

For example, I had one Scorpio client over here. I knew if you start with them, they don’t say anything. They either sit there, close their arms, and say nothing, or they occupy you for four hours. They don’t want to stop. You always have the extremes, either this or that. You can’t say they all sit there and say nothing. No, but it’s always an extreme. You have to be very strict. I knew before we started that this would be something about borders.

Writing As A Healing Tool: Unlocking Creativity In Grief

I should have told you I was a Taurus before this conversation. Maybe that would have helped you prepare. You mentioned clients. I want to circle back to something that is going to be the most focused part of this conversation. You alluded to it a little bit about you using writing as a tool to manage your grief. People who are going through the holidays, losing their loved one, their loved one passing, and trying to grasp their emotions, a lot of times, they go, “I don’t want to journal. I’m not into that.” I want to invite them to consider the power of writing and how it can be part of their healing journey in grief. Tell us about the work that you do with people on learning to write, or just that whole concept.

I’m a writing trainer. That means we do creative writing training. I do that. I guide them from the creative part to structuring and publishing their books. It doesn’t matter what kind of book. It might be nonfiction, fiction, poetry, or whatever they want. It is because the procedure is always the same. Even the publishing part is always the same, no matter which country in the world you live in. When we start with the creative part, for example, for people who say, “I’m not into journaling, but I want to help myself to get through the holidays,” there are some tiny little exercises from creative writing that you might use.

One of them is at this moment, pick three items you have in reach. For example, I have something here to put my hair together. I have some cream for my knee because it hurts, and a pen. You start writing a one-pager, a fictional story that must contain the three items. That’s how we get started, because then your focus is not on your grief, not on what you should do to heal, and not on the journal. You get crazy with that. You get funny. You write, “There was a little cream called Jenny.” You get very creative with that. This is for opening up our little synapses in our brain that are closed and say, “I don’t want to write. I don’t need that.” We open them.

Another little exercise is you pick some little pieces of paper and write on them different genres. For example, Western thriller, children’s story, and love story. You put them in one little glass. In the next glass, you write down some items, like a glass, a pen, a cup, and a book. In the next glass, you put names. From each glass, you pick one piece of paper. That means you have to write a thriller about a pen called Mary. You have to write a one-pager. This is so much fun because you have to think, “How do I get into that genre? What’s a thriller all about? How should I begin? What’s my first sentence?” These are little exercises to start with. People will find out after three of those stories, you keep on writing. You don’t stop anymore. The thoughts come up.

I love that because if you didn’t explain that, in my mind, limited and not a trainer, I’m thinking you’re just going to take your journals, try to elaborate on a story about that, and create this book. What you have explained is how to open up that creative part of yourself that is not related to the grief, and write a story to see that flourish from yourself. It is probably so different than what a non-writer would have thought about. We would think, “Let’s get right to it.” You’re thinking, “Let’s learn how to talk about it. Write it down and let that creativity flow.” What has, and not naming the person, the hardest person you’ve had to work with that couldn’t release that? How did you bring them over to releasing their creativity?

There was one person. She has visited so many courses up to now. She always says, “First of all, I don’t want to write at all,” but she’s still coming.

Why come? Bring those two together.

“I don’t need that,” or “I’m going to do that when I’m retired.” All those things people say because their inner boycotter doesn’t want them to become happy. People have inner soldiers that say, “No, it’s not allowed to be happy,” especially when you have lost someone. It’s not allowed to ever be happy anymore, or it’s not allowed to be successful. It’s not allowed to get applause. It’s not allowed to do what you love. We all have those restrictions in ourselves. In traumatic situations, those restrictions get very strong.

Grieving is a traumatic situation. Those restrictions grow. With this student, I always give her the craziest things to do. I tell her, “Write a one-pager. You’ve got ten minutes.” That’s a lot of pressure. She always says, “I can’t stand pressure,” so I give that pressure. I tell her, “Write a short story that should be a crime novel about a dragon. The most important item in that story is, and let’s find something very crazy, a lawn-mower.” She writes stories where the whole class can’t stop laughing. It’s so brilliant. She’s in that energy, loves it, and knows that’s why she’s here. Always at the beginning, she’s like, “No, I don’t want to write.”

The power of our words and what we tell ourselves seems to be a big portion of the process, what we’re telling ourselves over and over again. You spoke about something very powerful and so relatable when people are grieving, the need to give ourselves permission, and the need to say, “I am allowed to be happy. I am allowed to find joy. I am allowed to laugh.” Doing those things does not mean you’re still not allowed to miss your loved one. You can allow yourself to be joyful, and you can allow yourself to miss your loved one. You allow yourself to laugh, and you can also allow yourself to cry. Do you think people feel like it’s one or the other, and it’s hard to realize that they both coexist?

That’s absolutely true. That’s why they stop allowing themselves to step out of that grief moment. Next to that, in our community, you have to stay in this, especially with widows, for way too long.

All gets boxed. Unfortunately, if you’re a man, it’s like, “Go get a girl. It’s time to live your life.” There is this idea that society has placed on women that we should be cut off. We should be stoic and no longer be vibrant, alive, and have to push through that. I would totally agree with that. Let me pull myself back because that one does not work for me at all. I’ve seen that way too often that that is a thing for people. You allow someone to tap into their creative writing. Let’s say they’ve come to you and said, “I want you to help me write a book.” You mentioned very lightly some of the things. What would happen if I decided to work with you on writing a book? What would some of that process look like as you were guiding me through?

The Writing Process: From Trauma To Transformative Storytelling

First of all, we would talk about your topic, your wish, nonfiction or fiction. Where are you going? We would like to find out where you want to go. I had a student, for example, who came out of a relationship. I don’t know the English word for that.

Domestic violence?

Yes. It was a very hard story. She was still traumatized, even though it had been years ago. She wanted to write it not as a novel, but as her story, an autobiography. I told her, “Let’s think and discuss if you really want to do that, because with this, you are in the story. If you transform it into a novel, you get the distance. You can look at the whole story from a distance.” This would be one of the first decisions we make. That’s what we did. This took us three sessions and a lot of conversation. She’s absolutely happy with the fiction idea.

The next part is we talk about how you write. Where are your little soldiers who say, “No, no, no?” We find them out. We get the creative writing part. I normally tell people it is possible, even if you’re not a professional writer, and you have your daily life with what you have to do. It’s possible to write 50,000 words per month. That’s possible. That is a novel that’s around 250 pages. I give them the tools to do that. They do not have to.

It’s very important for the first draft. That’s how we call it. You get into the writing flow and write, write, write. Don’t step out of the flow. Don’t think you can write every Sunday afternoon. No, we write every day. If people don’t have that much time, I give them, “Write fifteen minutes a day. Go, go, go.” After the first draft is spit out, we go into structuring. In some projects, we do the structuring first. That’s individual.

That’s the next part, structure. If it’s non-fictional, we need chapters. We need explanations, information boxes, pictures, graphics, and whatever. If it’s a fiction, then we want to build a storyline first. We need a storyline before we get into the writing flow. Every story has a hero or heroine. We want to know when here is A and here is B, what is that? What do we want them to learn or to find out? We have to paint that way, roughly.

Normally, I have one of those here. I give them materials. We do storylines with Post-its so we can repost them however we want. We have at one point that storyline we want to start with, that structuring work. After the structuring work, the hard part begins, because after writing, how do we publish? I teach them all about how to find a publisher and what to do if you don’t find one. Maybe you do not want the publisher. Some people say, “I do not want them because they want to talk about your content.”

If you want to do what you want, then you don’t choose a publisher. What are the possibilities for self-publishing? I often give people those bad examples out there. There are bad people as well out there in the publishing world. For example, one student of mine got an email from a publisher who said, “We are highly interested in your children’s book.” That children’s book has twenty pages. That’s a tiny book. They wanted to have €4,000 for hundreds of these books. I said, “No, these are bad people. We do not work with them. They want to take a lot of our money for things we can do much more easily.” Most people are not rich and say, “I don’t care. I’ll just publish the book.”

It’s not a moneymaker. You’re not going to feel like, when you publish the book, “I’m not stopping my day job for that. Let’s be clear.”

That’s what we talk about as well.

It is the reality of that. I know there’s more, but I don’t want you to give away everything because I do want to share that on January 10th, 11:00 AM Eastern Time, you are going to host a workshop for the Widowhood community. That will be on our Eventbrite page, very small fee. You have agreed to donate the fee for that to the Widowhood. Thank you so much for the support.

Can you explain to people a snippet of what they may get? It’s maybe the same as what you did there, or what they can expect, and the ability to work with you one-on-one, that they participate in this workshop and do something amazing? It may not be a book on grief. It may be something else that they wanted to do, but this is their time realizing the precious life, and they may want to do something different.

In the webinar, first of all, we will do one of those or two of those crazy exercises. I know that people always love that. After that, I will talk a little bit about how writing can help us to heal. I will tell a story from my life that I haven’t told here. That’s an exclusive story. That’s the story of how my first novel got created. That was a real healing story. The result was a novel. I talk about that. There is the possibility of asking questions. Maybe some people have already started. They have the same thing as my student. They have written to publishers already. They got back answers and don’t know what to do now. There will be time for questions and answers. Next to all the technical things, we’re going to have a lot of fun.

That is a gift. When people normally do something like that with you, what is the cost in being participating in that so they get a sense of what you’re giving to the community?

Exclusive Workshop: Writing For Healing With Romana Hasenöhrl

Normally, if it’s a one-hour webinar, that’s all the euro price. I think it’s almost the same in dollars. That’s for €96. I have four-day boot camps. We do two hours every day. You get a lot done in those four days. It’s a €490 package. I have my most beloved summer camp. That is eight weeks. We meet for a kickoff event all online. That is two days where we sort out what we want to do, what students want to have at the end of the summer, or meet at the camp. I often meet at the camp as well.

We meet up every week on Sunday and see what the questions are, what worked, and what didn’t work. They get a lot of content about writing, publishing, and what you can do. There are so many secrets I give away, gold nuggets. For example, you said before, “I didn’t expect that you would do a fun exercise.” There are gold nuggets like that. This summer camp is up for €1,900. At the end, we have a party for people who can come here in person.

They are then invited to present the project in front of an audience. If they cannot, they send us a video. That’s what we had. We had four participants presenting. One of them came directly from Sydney, Australia, with a video. The secret is we have an audience here, and they all get information about those books. They give away their email addresses. Those becoming writers have their first contacts and email addresses. That’s gold.

The community in this writing experience brings hope. It brings that this may be the most difficult experience in your entire life, losing your loved one. The reality is you are still alive and your life has meaning. Your life has purpose. It is being able to take your life. I know for me, my life is totally different than when my husband, Mark, was here. It felt like every day, I was crawling through hot lava trying to find out who Tina is, not seeing Tina and Mark. This is a wonderful opportunity to take your life and do something that you may find that you enjoy. Sometimes, you may find out you don’t like writing, but the trying of it brings you closer to something that you would enjoy.

I encourage you to be a part of this workshop. We will have it on Eventbrite. As I said, it is January 10th at 11:00 AM Eastern Time. We’ll have the details. I believe this will be something that will be extremely helpful and enjoyable for you as you give yourself permission to find joy, give yourself permission to be happy, and give yourself permission to love yourself. I would ask you something a little bit different. I try to give my guests an opportunity to ask me a question. Is there anything you would want to ask me? Reverse the roles to let you be the host and me be the guest?

I have two questions. As you mentioned, it’s so hard the role people want to put you in as a widow. How did you deal with it? Did you think, “I have to fit in,” at the beginning? How did that work for you?

That’s a good question. No one has asked me that. I have always been different. I realized that this part of my life was not going to be limited to someone else’s perception or someone else’s viewpoint. My husband died, the man I spent 32 years with. No one else gets to dictate that experience. No one was his wife but me. I had to realize that in a powerful way, I was grateful that I have friends and family who have supported me through this journey. None of them told me how I had to do this.

What they did was make themselves available to listen. They made themselves available to hold space and to love me no matter what it looked like. I know that’s a confirmation from my family and friends holding me in love. A big part of that is also my faith in God and in what I saw what the Bible says about life after this experience here on earth, giving me comfort in that regard. The nonprofit Widowhood Real Talk with Dr. Tina is a non-faith organization. We meet people where they’re at in loving them, but my faith is important to me on an individual basis.

It was realizing that this is going to be something that I need community for, even with my family and friends. I learned to speak. I opened up my phone book. Every widow that I knew, I reached out whether I had lunch with them or breakfast, or a phone conversation. I wanted to hear how other people had endured this experience. Hearing their stories gave me further permission to navigate this. I needed to hear those other voices.

All of that was a part of me being okay with how this would look for me. I was in the Army for 21 years, so I was used to hard things. I was not used to this. I was in the process of recovering from breast cancer when Mark died. I had learned to say no to a lot of things that weren’t going to serve me and give myself permission to just be me because I didn’t know what this was like. I remember when we started to have children, we were reading books on how to have children. You read books on how to be a wife.

No one had said how to be a widow, so I got a therapist. I needed someone to deal with my mental being in close connection with my physician, and to understand how grief was impacting my body. My blood pressure went up. What different things were needed to be on a holistic scale to make sure I was managing every part, because Mark’s death impacted me on every level, and being intentional about myself?

That is a very strong message. Thank you.

You’re welcome. Those were the self-care things I did for me and this organization, Widowhood Real Talk with Dr. Tina, as I was looking at some of the things in preparation. They are built on some of those same premises because we need community. We also need the confidence to be able to do this our own way. There’s a mix of both of those existing.

Tina’s Book Journey: The Five Widows Club And Beyond

My second question is, some little birdie told me that you want to write a book as well, or you are in the process already. Tell me more.

I’m going to have an entire show on that where I’m going to share with everyone. This will be a tidbit of that. The book is called The Five Widows Club. It is an 81,000-word upmarket women’s fiction book. The book is done. I am going over some final edits. I have a printed copy downstairs. I’m going through it because it looks different in print than when you’re doing it on the computer. I needed to print a copy.

There are five widows. Ava is a young widow with a very new child. Joyce is married to Evelyn. Trish is married to her partner Grant, who is a military man. Carmen is married to Miguel. Monique is married to Darnell. These five widows met in a grief support group meeting led by June, who is the grief leader. It takes them through their individual journey from the moment their spouse died to where they are in this process.

Over about a five or ten-year period of their journey, you learn about their spouses through flashbacks and different memories that they have because, losing our loved ones, our mind often rotates back to the past. The story intentionally starts from the moment that their spouse died because that’s when everything changed for them. That’s when things change for people on an individual basis.

It has been an amazing journey. The goal is to finish all of my edits and put them in a soft copy. I have an editor that I plan to send them out to by the 1st of October. I spoke with them. I will have that ready. I’m leaning towards a hybrid publishing methodology. I want the team built in. I want the people because the advertising and putting those things together is important in getting the book out there to book clubs or to hospice.

I went with a fiction book because I wanted people to want to read a story. When I went into bookstores, the self-help books were all the way in the back, in the corner under Psychology. The juicy, tantalizing stories are up front. I believe that we learn from stories and by reading the stories of these five women. People who were appreciative enough to go and be my advanced reader all provided excellent feedback.

To your point, my first version was about 39,000 words. Everything happened too quickly. My characters did not develop. I didn’t have all of that inside. Getting to 81,000 words, I’ve now created that emotional arc of the story, giving each of the widows an opportunity to get to know them. Some of them I left out. I forgot about them because you’re writing away, then stepping back. Having advanced readers was hard, but it was good to be able to get organic feedback from people.

The story was good, but you’re missing something here. Some of this is jumbled, and all these other different things. It may be hard to give this to people, but if you’re trying to write a book that’s going to be good for the reader, you need to get readers to give you input. I found that extremely helpful. The book is part of a trilogy. The first one is The Five Widows Club. The second book is The Five Widower Circle, which will be a book of five widowers in their journey in grief.

The third book will be two children from the widows, two from the widowers, and a new young adult called The Children We Carry. From that perspective, it will give an angle from a widow, a widower, and their children from three different angles. I know there are other ways that we lose people, but that is the heartbeat of this organization. I’m excited to see how people will see themselves in this story.

I’ve had people read this book who are not a widow or a widower. My pastor read one paragraph. His eyes started to water up. He said, “That was me when I lost my dad.” People will be able to normalize grief and see that this is not something we have to hide. This is the thing that happens to all of us. We will either grieve someone, or if we’re lucky enough, someone will grieve our absence when our time is done in this world.

To be able to write something like this and put it into words, I would have never done so had I not had this experience. I am excited. We are having an event here in Norfolk, Virginia, on May 16th, a fundraiser. That is scheduled to be my first book signing, where people can obtain the books, probably hard copies, sign, and be able to celebrate in a fundraiser that we’re doing for the Widowhood. Thank you for that question.

I will buy my copy as soon as it’s out there.

Thank you so much. I am going to say something to our audience, and then if there’s something you feel like we missed or didn’t cover, then you can close out this conversation. Thank you for being here with us. I know this series of Voices of Widowhood: Healing Through the Holidays is going to be very impactful for you. We know the holidays can be hard, but we are on this journey with you. Thank you for being here. I am sorry for the person you have lost, who is no longer here and drove you to this conversation, but I’m glad that you found us.

All that’s left is to thank you so much for having me on your show. It was a great pleasure for me. For all people out there who want to reach out to me and have questions about writing, publishing, or how writing can heal and help themselves, be aware. I do it in English, German, and Austrian, so don’t be shy. Just call in.

Thank you so much.

Important Links

• Romana Hasenöhrl’s Website
• Star Cooking
• Happiness Reloaded on Facebook
• Romana Hasenöhrl on Instagram
• Lesen, Schreiben, Happiness on Instagram
• Die Literarische Stunde on Radiofabrik
• Romana Hasenöhrl on Amazon
• Widowhood Real Talk with Dr. Tina on Eventbrite
• Widowhood Real Talk with Dr. Tina

About Romana Hasenöhrl

Romana titles herself as “a lucky person” with a “happiness mindset” for all her life. Meaning: No matter, what happens, no one will manage to stop her being happy. R

omana has overcome many lifechangeing situations, but two of them might help people on their own way. In 2003 she had a bad accident in skydiving and this was the first time that she realized that life can end within a moment.

Romana talked a lot to people who are afraid of this topic afterwards and realized, that she can give support and ANSWERS. Within her astrological and psychological studies she found out a lot about fears, crises and changing. That’s why she specialized on “Happiness Mindset” and “Tools for crises” in her work.

Romana lost her job in the media branche in 2012, at the age of 44. With this she not only lost a job, but her long term dream job. There was no chance to find another job in this field. At the age of 44 you are OLD in terms of the media market. After one year of struggling Romana lost everything else: Partner, friends, confidence, security. By the end of 2013 she did not know how to pay her rent. Romana did not loose her happiness mindset and her courage. She founded her own company as an astrological coach and got back on her feet. With her story she was invited as a speaker at “Fuckup Nights Salzburg” and several radio, video and newspaper interviews. Romana started her own internet show in 2020, the “Brave Hearts Show” where she invites people with extraordinary life stories.

Since 2015 Romana has published eleven books. She offers writing workshops for people who want to overcome the “fear of getting started” with their first book. Romana believes in the power that is inside everybody and in the guidance of the universe. She also believes in the power of staying interested and curious all your life. Romana is a clown and certified laughter yoga trainer as well. She did those qualifications during the lockdowns in 2020 and 2021. “You can get the best of every situation if you take your chances.”