In this moving episode of Widowhood Real Talk with Dr. Tina, Dr. Tina welcomes grief educator, author, and speaker Vicky Edgerly, whose life was forever changed by the loss of her son to suicide, her daughter to cancer, and her husband to suicide. Rather than allowing grief to define her future, Vicky discovered a path toward healing that transformed her pain into purpose. Today, she helps others navigate life’s most difficult losses with compassion, wisdom, and hope. Together, Dr. Tina and Vicky discuss surviving complex grief, supporting widows and bereaved parents, finding meaning after unimaginable heartbreak, and why healing doesn’t mean forgetting; it means learning to carry love forward. Vicky also shares insights from her memoir, Through Grief-Colored Glasses: A Life Reinvented by Devastating Loss, and the lessons that continue to inspire grieving families worldwide. 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   Through Grief-Colored Glasses: Finding Hope After The Unthinkable With Vicky Edgerly Widowhood, our conversation with Vicky, she is going to share about suicide. That’s the conversation that people try to shy away from. They do not know what to do when we have no choice but to talk about it, but to experience it and to give you hope of what life can look like. In Vicky’s words, if you choose to, Vicky has dealt with the suicide of her son, her husband, and the cancer death of her daughter. Yet she has found a way to have hope and provide encouragement and support to other grievers. Let’s get into this conversation now.     Vicky, welcome to widowhood. Tina, thanks for having me. I’m grateful and humbled to be here. Your story, your life has a lot of layers. When you hear, “Welcome to the Widowhood,” what’s the backstory? What are you thinking about when you hear that? To be honest with you, Tina, I pushed back against that title when it first was applied to me. I want to say maybe 2 or 3 months after my husband Leo died, I went to attend his mother’s funeral. She passed away. I was surrounded by his family members, and one of his sisters started walking me around the room, introducing me as Leo’s widow. I hadn’t had that experience yet. It slammed into me. I wasn’t sure what I felt about it. I cried about it in my hotel room that night. I wore it like one of his old shimmy shirts that I used to put on just so I could smell the wood smoke from our fire pit, the forest that he always walked in. Evolving Beyond The Identity Of Loss I wore the title, Widowhood, as a warm blanket for a while until there came a time and a chapter in my life, about right after the second year, at the end of the second year, that there was an occurrence in my life that made me realize I had to let go of the marital relationship. I dropped the name Widow at that point as well. It still applies to me. I’m not Leo’s wife. I am his widow, but I am no longer approaching the world wearing that title upfront. It just comes out naturally in organic conversation. Thank you for sharing the evolution of that. I know for myself, when someone identified me for the first time, it was shocking. It took my breath away. Someone who has not become a widow, I think it’s hard to understand. It’s just a word. Why does it matter? It’s just like everything encompassing in that. I was like, “That’s where I am. That’s my life right now.” I can appreciate how you shared that over time your connection with that word changed. For someone tuning into this conversation, to realize the way you feel now versus the way it may change later, it has the potential to shift. That is important because some people feel like their death is final, but the way in which we engage it has the opportunity to adjust over time.     That is correct. Absolutely true. Your life is layered, and we have an amazing book, Through Grief-Colored Glasses: A Life Reinvented by Devastating Loss, and devastating loss indeed. Before we dive into the book, can you tell us about all three of the people in your life that have brought you to this place? Reframing Devastating Heartbreak Into Love It was a crazy ride for sure. Devastating in the beginning, but by the time I traveled through it all, I learned to actually love my story. It is, I think, a romantic story. Think about movies like The Notebook, which is centered around death. Is it not? However, it celebrates all of life. We all come away with tears, but our hearts are cracked wide open after witnessing such a beautiful story. I feel, just as a caveat to the readers or the audiences, that my story is beautiful. This is the place I’ve come to at this point in my life. It didn’t start out that way. In 2002, my eighteen-year-old son, Adam, took his own life. Unfortunately, twenty minutes after wishing me a happy Mother’s Day on the phone and telling me he loved me, he was gone. That was devastating. I will not get too deep into it, because we could be here all day with that particular story, but it rocked my world. I had no inner compass. I had no guidance for how to deal with grief, pain, and loss. Growing up, religion was just something we dabbled in on Easter and Christmas. It wasn’t