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.”