Grief changes everything, but storytelling can help us find our way back to ourselves. Dr. Tina Fornwald opens her heart to share the journey behind The Five Widows Club, her upcoming book that explores love, loss, and the raw reality of grief. Drawing from her own story of widowhood and the collective experiences of five women—Monique, Carmen, Ava, Trish, and Joyce—Tina reveals how storytelling helps us see ourselves in others’ pain and find light in the darkness. Through these women’s intertwined paths, she reflects on what it means to grieve honestly, love deeply, and continue living with hope. More than a book, The Five Widows Club is a testament to community, compassion, and the power of sharing our stories so no one has to heal alone.

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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The Five Widows Club: Stories Of Love, Loss, And Living Again

Voices Of Widowhood: Healing Through The Holiday

Unveiling The Five Widows Club: A Deep Dive Into Grief and Healing

Last week, you heard that I wrote a book, and I know you want more details and a little bit of information that I shared last week. This conversation is the deep dive into The Five Widows Club. You are going to enjoy this conversation. If you have more questions that I didn’t answer, please email me so I can give you the rest of the tea. Let’s get into this conversation now.

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Widowhood, I promised you monologue conversations, and here’s one that I owe you. Last week, in my conversation with Romana, she mentioned that I have written a book. Our conversation is to give you some more details on the book, my how, my why, and yada yada. I have notes here, so pretending like these are you asking me questions, but some of these came from conversations that I had with the advanced readers.

Number one, what inspired me to write The Five Widows Club? I lost my husband. My husband Mark died on March 11, 2017, and my world was altered forever. I was in the military for 21 years. I have survived breast cancer. Oftentimes, when I hear books speaking to these different topics, it’s very clinical, or it’s so high in the sky. Everybody’s happy, and no one’s living the real reality. I felt like that type of story needed to be shared with the Widowhood. There are resources.

There are clinical books, but a story. A story that you can relate to, a story that you could share with family and friends, that they could read, that book in some way, understand how you are experiencing and what you are going through. I am pretty certain that when you read The Five Widows Club, you will see yourself in these whittles and you will say, “I am seen. My story is validated, and what I’m going through is real.”

Meet the Widows: Monique, Carmen, Ava, Trish, and Joyce’s Journeys

This is not a happy-go-lucky, everyone-ends-up-like-life-is-ending for so many of us. It is continuing. It is still going on. These stories are real. They are gritty. They are raw. They are happy. They are crying. They are everything that we experience in this widowhood journey. Who are the women in this story, and how did they shape their journey? I’m going to go over what I have here, which is a summary of the book, and then give you some information on each of the widows.

When the unthinkable happens and their worlds fall apart, five women from very different walks of life find themselves in the same grief support group, united not by choice, but by loss. What begins as an awkward circle of strangers slowly transforms into a sacred space of honesty, healing, and unexpected sisterhood. Meet Monique, Carmen, Ava, Trish, and Joyce, five widows, navigating a jagged terrain of grief.

Each woman carries a story, a secret, a weight she never expected to bear. Through shared silence, passes of stones, and reluctant cups of tea, they confront love, loss, and the truth that healing isn’t linear, but it is possible. Raw, poetic, anchoring real life. The Five Widows Club doesn’t sanitize grief. It holds space forward for the forgotten voices, for the private aches, and for the moment you whisper, “I’m still here.”

Monique, the perfectionist who found how to breathe. A boutique owner, a checklist queen, always in control until the morning she found Darnell’s body. She didn’t cry at the funeral. She made sure the jazz band played his favorite and smiled through the condolences like a hostess. Behind closed doors, she crumbled in her stilettos on the living room floor.

Monique’s journey from performance to presence, from pretending to participation, she’s learning that being strong doesn’t mean being silent. “I burned the dinner again, but I still ate it, and I laughed because he would have teased me.” Allow me to read something. The fact that this is my first printed copy. As you can see, there are a lot of tabs.

There’s a lot of editing that I’m making right now. I’m recording this. My goal is to finish going through all of the edits and then clean it up on my soft copy. I have an editor to whom I’m sending it. We have a timeline. From there, I’m going to move forward to publishing. The goal is to have the book in print and available for our event, Hope Grows Here, on May 16th, 2026, here in Norfolk, Virginia.

Hope Grows Here is a 60s theme event because, yes, we are celebrating my 60th birthday. What better for me to do but to celebrate the wood of Hood. Hope Grows Here, you can find it on Eventbrite, and you can find it on our website. We’re selling tickets now. The hotel block is already available for you to come and join us.

We’re going to be raising money for a college scholarship fund because one of the things that I have learned in this journey is that when someone’s spouse passes that they often do not have the funds to be able to continue to live in life. Maybe you have children who are in college. Maybe you yourself need to return to school to have a livable wage, and you’re looking for funds. The widowhood is looking to help and support, and provide that. There are other different things.

Monique: The Perfectionist, Who Found How to Breathe

If you’re looking to be a vendor at the event, there’s a place where you can sign that maybe you cannot come, but you want to sponsor a widow or a widower, or you want to donate. Those options are there, too. This is a community, like everything else, and everyone has a part in it. Allow me to share something with you about Monique in this chapter. “She found him collapsed in the hallway, just outside the bedroom. He looked peaceful. It was that false peace that wrecked her.”

“She screamed, but the scream didn’t echo. The walls didn’t answer. The house stayed quiet if it had already decided to be a tomb. The funeral was tasteful. She made sure of it. His favorite jazz Quartet, a slideshow sent to the corner. She wore her tailored black dress and stilettos that pinched. She greeted people like a hostess at a party, accepting hugs, deflecting pity, and smiling like a mask. She didn’t cry.”

“Everyone says she was strong. You’re holding up so well. She wasn’t. The minute the door clicked shut behind her and the last guest left, Monique collapsed on the floor, stealing the same damn heels and screaming again. This time it echoed. She lay there until her cheek left the sweating floor and left a print on the hardwood floor.”

I can relate to that. Yes, that part is kind of me, but it didn’t happen that way for me. When my girlfriend, Jennifer, dropped me off the day after Mark passed, I knew that that was going to be my last moment in the house. I fell on the floor. No more than I said goodbye to Jennifer. I fell on the floor, and I fell apart, and I screamed and I screamed because my husband had died, and I didn’t have anything else to give to the whole world at that moment.

I needed that private moment to scream and be by myself because I knew the world was coming, and I may not have felt so comfortable screaming like that in everyone’s presence. Yes, I am in a little bit of all of these whittles. None of them is particularly Tina. You don’t have to worry about guessing which one is me. You’ll find me in each one of these women, as I believe that you will find yourself.

Carmen: The Firecracker with a Shattered Center

Let’s move on to Carmen. Carmen, the firecracker with the shattered center. She carries anger like armor and shame like a secret tattoo. In the group, she finally speaks. The room holds its breath. Carmen’s journey, rage, reckoning, and rediscovery. Learning, she didn’t fail him, and she doesn’t have to fail herself. Her husband, Miguel, took his own life. He left her a note and told her not to carry it, but she carried it anyway. What else do you do?

When your spouse leaves this world by taking their own life, it is very difficult not to wrestle with the idea of what I could have done to make this different. Where should I have been to prevent this from happening? The idea of our spouse leaving this world by their own hand is very difficult to reconcile, but it is possible. I knew it was necessary to talk about that type of journey in this story and not to leave that out.

I have spoken with people who have lost their spouse by suicide, and they told me about the shame and the disgust that people present to them when they say that their spouse committed suicide. Your grief is important. It is not required for you to have shame. This is not something you would have chosen for yourself or wanted for your loved one. I wanted your story to be represented in this Five Widows Club.

Let me read something to you from Carmen in this book, from chapter two. “The folding chairs set in loose imperfective arcs, the meeting legs wobbling against the sculphlononium. Whenever someone shifted, someone still before a faint tape residue where the past events stayed. A pale dusty light filtered through the small basement windows, cutting into the dim light of ribbons.”

“Light of ribbons. It caught the floor specks in the air, marking them and glittering for an instant before it vanished and was gone. The hum of the overhead fluorescence was constant and low, almost like static, joining the faint scent of coffee from the folding tables in the corner. The coffee smelled burnt, as if it had been on the hot plate since this morning. Beneath it lingered the old hymns stacked on books.”

“Carmen made a slow circuit, gazing around the room, passing over the bowed heads and hunched shoulders of the other women. She marked each door, the one behind her, the coffee table, the push, the narrow hallway, and everything else before entering the room. Every scrape of the chair lay. She shifted and she looked and said, “I’ve been through worse,” but had she? She stayed at the door, and June gave her a nod to come in.”

Ava: The Gentle Soul, Who Never Got to Say Goodbye

The next widow is Ava, the gentle soul who never got to say goodbye. A new mom, a former dancer, grief called at 2:17 AM. Miles was gone, and she was left with their daughter and the home still smelled full of his scent. She wants to fall apart but doesn’t know how. She rocks the baby and scrolls through old texts and tries to remember the sound of his laugh without breaking.

Ava’s journey, surrender, and softness, relearning how to breathe through grief while holding a life that’s still new to her. Allow me to share something with you from Ava’s story. “Later, with Charlotte asleep in the house still, Ava curled up on the couch and reached for her phone, not to scroll, to hear him. She tapped on the voice memo app and scrolled to the one she hadn’t played since the funeral, Myles’ voice warm and ordinary, filled the room.”

“Babe, I’m at the store. They’re out of the good wipes again. Think the off-brand will do? Call me. It was stupid and simple. Ava clung to every word like it was oxygen. She hit replay twice. She tucked the phone under her pillow and looked out the window. No prayers tonight. Ava didn’t believe in that anymore, but she did believe in this moment, in stillness, in surviving.”

“She rested her hand on her daughter’s back and whispered, “We’re still here. That counts for something.” There are so many widows that I speak to who have young children. How are they navigating grief and also parenting this young child, and keeping the memory alive of their parent? These are real struggles that we are having in this widowhood community. I wanted to make sure that I brought that story to The Five Widows Club.

Trish: The Soldier’s Wife, Who Followed the Manual

The next widow that we’re going to meet is Trish, the soldier’s wife who followed the manual, widow, military discipline, and was composed. “She didn’t collapse at the funeral. She didn’t scream. She just folded the flag and kept brewing two cups of coffee. Everyone says she’s strong, but strong is just a disguise the grief wears when it’s trying not to drown you. Trisha’s journey from rituals to rawness, letting go of control inch by inch to make room for memory. They gave me a medal and six months of paperwork, but no instructions for what to do with the silence.”

Joyce: The Quiet One, Who Loved Loudly

The last widow that I’d like to introduce you to is Joyce, the quiet one who loved loudly, the caregiver, the librarian, and the stoic. “She held Evelyn’s hand until it wasn’t warm anymore. Not every room feels haunted by what was once before. She doesn’t talk much. When she does, her words cut gently, like truth dressed in lavender. Joyce’s journey from fading echoes to sacred remembrances. She’s not trying to move on. She’s trying to hold on without it disappearing. Some loves don’t disappear. They just dry out slowly, curled at the edges, straight and caught.”

There are so many widows that I have met in this journey that have a same sex partner, and they too feel like their grief is not validated by the world around them. Who are we to judge who they love? Our job is to show up to be present and to love them and support them. They have lost the person that they love. That’s what’s important to be there and to hold space for their grief and to love them and know that their hurt, their pain is seen.

Beyond the Book: The Widowhood Community and Future Stories

The next question that I have is how this book balances grief with hope and healing. Grief is hard. You may be listening to this conversation, and you may have been fired from your job. You may have lost a friendship. Your health may be fading. Grief is unfortunately beyond the death of a loved one, and being able to understand that it’s normal, putting language to the grief, and being able to understand this is life.

It is not always a happy story. If I can connect and read and understand that there is a way to maneuver through this grief, to be able to cry and to laugh at the same time in the same hour, that’s fine. I’m not crazy that this is what grief looks like. To understand some days I may be tired, some days I may be fine, but being able to understand that there is hope for me to continue living because I’m still here and continue finding things that I enjoy in life and be able to share this book with someone in a book club and people to be able to read and understand, that’s how my friend is feeling.

That’s how my cousin is enduring. That’s how my mother is dealing with this grief differently from me as a child. It is important to be able to share stories that people will be able to understand. What do I hope the reader to take away from this book? I want you to feel seen. If you are grieving, I want you to be able to connect with these widows, or maybe June, who has a different grief story that you’ll learn about.

To be able to know it’s normal how you feel, that you don’t have to hide your feelings, that you can be honest with yourself, and to take off the mask of your grief, that the person who is no longer here is worth grieving. You love them today, and that is perfectly fine. To be able to know that expressing your love for them is necessary.

How does this book connect with the broader mission of Widowhood Real Talk with Tina? Widowhood Real Talk with Tina uses a lot of talking in the healing process to hear these women share their stories and empower you to share your own. The podcast, our annual retreat, our butterfly release ceremony, walk for love, all of the things that we do are about creating community. These five women created a community in their grief journey and have empowered themselves to walk it on an individual basis.

This connects with what we are doing with our mental health events and the resources that we share. What comes after The Five Widows Club? That’s a good question. The second book is The Five Widowers Circle, and the third book from there is The Children We Carried. The Five Widowers Circle is a book of five widowers and their journey on grief, and The Children We Carried are two children from the widows and two from the widowers, and then a new young adult.

The goal is to be able to cover everyone in the hood, because we’re all impacted in different ways by grief. I invite you to join the Widowhood community. You can join our private Facebook group. You can go to our webpage, WidowhoodRealTalkWithTina.org, and be part of our regular newsletter. You can register to be part of our event here on May 16, 2026, Hope Grows Here, and purchase your ticket. Thank you for allowing me to share The Five Widows Club with you, and I look forward to speaking with you soon. Bye.

Important Links

• Romana Hasenöhrl
• Share Your Story: The Healing Power Of Writing With Romana Hasenöhrl -past episode
• Hope Grows Here
• Hope Grows Here on Eventbrite
• Widowhood Real Talk With Tina

About Tina Fornwald

Dr. Tina R. Fornwald is the founder of Widowhood Real Talk with Tina, a global nonprofit organization supporting individuals navigating grief. A retired U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer, breast cancer survivor, and ordained minister, she channels her journey through loss into podcasts, retreats, and resources that show grief and greatness can coexist.