Grief is a universal experience, yet every journey through loss is unique. In this episode, Andrea Lott Haney shares her extraordinary story of navigating the complexities of double widowhood. Andrea opens up about the profound grief and emotional challenges of losing two spouses, offering a unique perspective on the similarities and differences in grieving multiple losses. She discusses the importance of self-care, community support, and faith in her healing journey, and provides inspiration for others facing adversity. Tune in to hear Andrea’s courageous story and discover how to find hope and meaning in the face of life’s greatest challenges. I am sharing my experience of loving the same man for 32 years, a mother to two adult children, a retired military officer, a breast cancer survivor, and my connections with others.  Anyone experiencing suicidal thoughts should reach out to a suicide hotline or local emergency number in their country: Psychology Today Suicide Hotlines and Prevention Resources Around the World — Watch the episode here   Listen to the podcast here   All Grief Is The Same And All Grief Is Different: A Double Widow’s Story With Andrea Lott Haney Finding Community & Support After Loss: The Widowhood Club Andrea, welcome to the Widowhood. Thanks for having me, Tina. I’m very honored to be here. What do you think when you hear, “Welcome to the Widowhood?” What was the first thing that came to your mind if the ticker tape would have just printed on your forehead? I say a lot whenever I meet somebody newly widowed that it is the worst club to belong to and we have the best members. We support each other like no other club, the Widowhood Club, in both the specific sense of your group and then also the general sense of just being widows and how, once you’ve been through it, you know things that the general public does not know and you have been places the general public has not been. There’s a solidarity there. You nailed that. For people who are reading and just to make them jealous, when you say my group, what does that look like to you? What did that look like to you before you became part of that group?     TikTok: A Digital Oasis For Young Widows I met you on TikTok, but I was not on TikTok prior to Brian’s passing. I specifically got on TikTok because other social media platforms were too emotionally loaded for me. Being widowed twice, my first husband, Gary, who passed in 2010, his passing predated my first iPhone. I did not have a huge social media presence in those days. I was on MySpace and I had just gotten on to Facebook for work, but I didn’t have a ton of digital memories and so forth of him. When I got together with Brian, I really wanted to change that. I made it a point to document digitally and on social media all these seemingly unimportant moments of our lives because they were important to me. After he passed, I’m so glad that I did that because I know that those memories are so precious, but in the immediate aftermath, I did not want to see them. It was more than just turning off the memory feature on the platform. It would be like my friend would change her profile picture and it would say, “Brian Haney liked this photo or something.” It would come up non-consensually. These other social media platforms were just so emotionally loaded for me. I went to TikTok because it was a fresh slate for me. That’s where I met you and where I met a lot of the other ladies and men who are part of supporting each other through your organization, Widowhood Real Talk with Tina, and how you use your platform to not only engage with us and to help us when we express our feelings, but also you go live, you include us in your videos. We’ve created this network in the way of a lot of us know each other now. Some of us have even met outside of social media or exchanged phone numbers and talked offline, and we’ve become our own little support group in a way. That is so huge. Thank you for explaining that. I must admit, before I got on TikTok, I thought everybody was gyrating or somebody was dancing, and that’s all I was going to see. There are subcultures for any topic that you’re interested in. If you’re an author, there’s author TikTok. If you’re a stay-at-home mom, there’s stay-at-home TikTok. There’s actress TikTok. The ability to create a network. The thing you mentioned about going live, that ability, if you’re not ready to talk to people and sit on the outside, watch these conversations, and then decide, “I’m going to say something or I’m going to get engaged,” they did this right. I’m not a tech person by any means, but I’ve heard it explained that it’s an interest-based algorithm as opposed to a follower-based algorithm. They’re better at knowing what you want to see. If I’m on grief tok or if I’m on widow tok, it connects me to other people like that. The very first video that I made on TikTok was basically introducing myself as somebody who had been widowed twice at a young age and saying, “I knew nobody in my real life.” Over the years of being widowed, I had met hundreds of young widows at that point and I knew nobody who was double a widow. Now I know people who are my age and double widowed. What does that mean for you in your grief journey to know that and to know them? The Power Of Community In Grief In my grief journey the second time, I have done a lot of throwing my fists in the air and saying, “This is so unfair. How could this possibly be happening to me