The journey of widowhood can be a lonely road, but remember, you’re not alone. In this episode, you’ll find a raw and honest look into the complexities of widowhood. It breaks down the enduring nature of grief, debunking the myth that it magically fades after a year. This episode reflects on how losing a spouse transforms identity and emphasizes the importance of community support during this difficult time. Be encouraged to embrace new identities and to find joy in life again, while also fostering understanding and empathy among those supporting the bereaved. Tune in for an enlightening conversation about navigating life after loss.

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: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/suicide/suicide-prevention-hotlines-resources-worldwide

—

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Understanding The Realities Of Widowhood

The Grief Journey

To keep myself straight, I don’t have anybody asking me questions. I have a list right here. We are going to go down the list and I’m going to share some things with you from my perspective. I understand that everyone may see this from a different vantage point. I’m sharing with you my lived experience and conversations that I have had with hundreds of widows over the last few years.

First of all, what I want people to know about widowhood is that grief is a journey. After one year, grief continues. There is not something magical that happens after one year that you should think that your friend or your family member who is grieving their spouse that this grief has completed itself. What may happen within that first year is they may no longer be dealing with a grief fog or a grief brain. You may say, “What is that?”

When a person experiences a great loss, they can often have trauma in their brain. That will show up that the prefrontal cortex in the back of the head in the amygdala is operating differently. I know for myself that for the first 6 to 9 months, my brain was protecting me from the reality of the full trauma that Mark had left this world.

What that did for me. I was operating in a fog. I was not my normal self. I feel like I was floating through and watching my life go as I was also a part of it. When I look back at that first year and I ask different friends and family members what they remember, my vision is cloudy. I know that is part of the mechanism of this body to be able to help protect me from that trauma.

In that first year, they may have moved past that grief trauma, that grief brain, and that grief fog, but rest assured that there is more grief ahead of though. I say that to validate my widows and widowers and people who are grieving, and also for people who tune in to this episode who are supporting others who are grieving, and they want to know what is behind that veil that they may not be given privy to know and to understand. Please know that this is a life journey, and they need you. They need you as long as you know that person is no longer in this world. It does not stop after one year.

The complexity of it changes. Recently, I received some documentation that required me to have to provide my late husband’s death certificate, birth certificate, marriage license, and DD-214. Seeing all of those in one sentence is more than a notion. Having to open up my safe, find these documents, and think about Mark’s life and death have catapulted me back into thinking of things that I have not thought of in a long time.

It has made that grief return in a heavier and different way. I’m still able to function, but I know if this would have happened in that first year, I would not. It would be different, but I do know that there are still things happening in my life that allow my grief to resurface. I want you to know that in one year, it’s not over.

A Spouse’s Identity

The second part that I want you to know is a part of a spouse’s confidence, assurance, and identity has been wrapped up and connected in their marriage to their spouse. When my husband passed, I had to practice saying my name alone. I had said Tina and Mark for so long. I had to practice saying Tina without something accurate.

It was hard to think about who I was if I was not Mark’s spouse. It was hard for me to think about who I was as an individual, what my goals were, and what were my life aspirations if they were not tethered to Mark’s existence. I did a lot of work. I did a lot of journaling. I did a lot of introspective looking at Tina and seeing, “Who am I? What is it that I enjoy doing? What gives me pleasure? What do I not like to do?”

My identity was sometimes understanding that I don’t like green jelly. I had it in the house because Mark and the kids like grape jelly. I found out I like orange marmalade and that’s okay for me, but it took me to the grocery store, consciously choosing not to purchase things that I purchased on rote, and to look for things that were different.

Do I like going to bed earlier? Do I have to have meat with every meal? Do I prefer going for a walk versus when I can drive? What do I want to do with my life and my career? All of those parts of my identity were something that I now had to figure out without Mark. It was a strange place to be in because I never considered a world without him. That was tiring and exhausting. In the throes of his death, and then for me to also consider who am I without him, it was hard. It was something I did not want to do.

I Will Never Be The Same Person

The next thing I want you to know about grief is I will never be the same person I was when Mark was alive. I will dare say to my fellow grievers, widows, and widowers, you are no longer the same person that you were when your spouse was here. The reason being who I was because of who I was with Mark. Who I am as Tina without Mark is not the same person, and that’s okay.

It’s okay to the reality that who you were and that version of you was a version that was with your spouse. I was eighteen years old when I met Mark Fornwald and I was 51 years old when he left this world. I evolved into the woman that I am because of Mark, and the relationship that we had, the things that we talked about, the plans that we made, and the way we walk through life together.

When Mark was no longer here, that connection and relationship no longer existed. I could not show up in life in the same way that I did with Mark. I still show up in life but this version of me is not the version that the world had when Mark was alive, and that’s okay. This version of me is wiser and more compassionate. This version of me has a listening ear and understands having empathy for someone in a way that I never did before.

Oftentimes, a widow or widower will hear someone say, “I miss the old you.” Deep down inside, we want to say, “So do we. We do miss the old us. We would have preferred to be the old us,” but that’s not the hand that we were dealt. We are doing our best to make it the version that we are now. I encourage you to help the person that you are supporting to understand, “I know you can no longer be the person that you were because the person that you were was tethered to your spouse, and this version of you, I still love you.” For the person who is grieving, “I ask you to give yourself permission to love yourself now.” The version of who you are was built off of that relationship. It was built off of who you were with them and who you are now and your individuality is good enough. I want you to give yourself permission to be okay.

A Better Person

The next thing that I want to share with you is that as a widow, I am a better person now because of loving my late husband. It hurts. It is sad sometimes that Mark is not in this world, but I know a part of him lives within me. I raise our children or I should say parent them because they are adults. I parent our children based on the wisdom that I received from Mark.

My ability to sit in spaces and be quiet and watch and observe a room close to Mark. I carry the wisdom that he has placed inside of me that I watched over the years of our marriage. The things that may have been rough with my feathers, now they don’t because when things get super tough, I say, “Did somebody die?” If they haven’t, we can live to do this another day. We can resolve whatever the problems are and look at that. There are so many times where people are all wound up and I’m thinking, “Nobody died. We will be able to figure this out. We have space to still work on this.”

That wisdom shows up at work and in my parenting. My daughter sometimes will say, “Mom, you don’t get fired up like you used to.” I’m like, “I will save my energy or something else,” because what I have learned life is short and I want to make sure that I am living this life that I have to the fullest capacity. Sometimes that means not giving energy to get riled up for things that have no value for me.

We Will Always Miss Our Spouses

The other thing that I want you to know about a widow is we will always miss our spouse. I can dare say that even goes from my widows and widowers who have complicated relationships, where they may have been abused or where there may have been substance problems. They will miss the expectation and the desire for the spouse that they never were able to have, unfulfilled expectations and dreams that were not fulfilled, in cases where the marriage is healthy and the people are happy.

I will miss Mark forever. I thought we were going to grow old together and live this life where we were in two scooters or walkers, but he left this world before me. I will forever miss Mark Fornwald. There is not a day that goes by that I do not think of him in some form or fashion. I will never forget him. We are seven years into this journey and I would dare say 50, 60, or 70 years later, or how much life gives me, there will be a part of me that will always miss Mark Fornwald.

I am so grateful to my family and friends for giving me space to miss Mark Fornwald and never tell me, “Aren’t you done talking about him? Aren’t you done mentioning his name?” I know that there was a large community of people in widowhood who did not receive that validation, support, and acceptance from their family and friends. They have been told, “It’s been a year. Aren’t you done talking about that? It’s been eight months. Haven’t you moved on?” They are crushed inside because the people around them do not have the emotional bandwidth to support them in the way in which they need.

That is why I want to share with you that we have a brief Discord where a community of widows and widowers are coming together, sharing their stories, and providing encouragement because the community is healthy and necessary in this journey of grief. It’s so important to be around people who understand what you are going through. Not in a brief trauma bonding way that is unhealthy, but in a way that provides support and encouragement for you to continue with your particular grief journey.

Getting Married

The next thing that I want you to know is that dating or getting married does not solve the grief journey. It does not. We cannot plug and play one person in and out of our life. If you try to do that, I am most certain that it will not work well. I speak with widows and widowers and they say, “I want to find somebody like my spouse. I want somebody with their personality. I want to be loved like they loved me.”

Going back to the beginning of this, we are in this situation because of the person we look for. We still love them now and are no longer in this world. If you are trying to plug and play or let dating or getting remarried solve your grief journey, I want to let you know it’s going to be a failure most of the time. What I encourage you to do is to learn how to date yourself. Learn how to take yourself out to eat. Learn to take yourself to the movies. Learn to take yourself to a park. Learn this version of you.

I asked you to do that because your healing or your coming to peace with the reality that they are no longer in the world is the first place to start. This is an opportunity to nurture and cultivate a relationship with yourself. In time, you may be in a place where you want to spend your life with someone else or to spend time with someone else. I asked you to make sure where you are mentally, physically and spiritually is equivalent to the place where you would want somebody to present themself to you.

If you are thinking, “I want to have my new person,” let me encourage you to first think about dating. Dating is a lot of work. Dating requires you to connect with people. Maybe one at a time or multiple at the same time, learn about their likes and dislikes. Understand who they are as a person, and understand who you are in their presence.

Understand if they are willing to have a relationship in terms that you are comfortable with. Understand someone’s faith and how it impacts a relationship. Understanding how to be close, thinking about holding somebody’s hand again for the very first time, kissing them, and being intimate with them. What does that dating experience look like for you?

Oftentimes, I find the widows or widowers want to get to the good part where we have this relationship and they know us, but that is built up over time. Please know that dating and getting married will not solve your grief journey. It may make it more complicated because there’s rejection sometimes involved in dating. There are so many different emotions in getting ghosted. Please be careful before you have the concept that dating will solve the widow’s journey.

In regards to dating, I recommend that you check out my YouTube channel because every Friday, I put out a dating tip as a widow. Yes, I have dated. Yes, I have remarried, but that was not where I started immediately after my husband passed. There are valuable tips that you will be able to enjoy. Go to Widowhood Real Talk with Tina on YouTube and look for the playlist Best Dating Tips in 2024. These tips will provide you with some gems in the dating experience when you are ready.

Parenting Children

The next thing I want to share with you is that my children are who they are because of their dad. I cannot parent them exactly the same way that Mark did. My children will have a life without their dad, and we will grieve his absence together. My children will have new life experiences that will not include their dad, which will make his absence even more a reality, and that is okay. Going back to the idea that the grief journey is not over in the first year because life continues, we can continue to have experiences in life with a person we love absent from those experiences.

I highly recommend that you give your children and other family members the space to grieve the same loved one in the way they grieve. The way I grieve for my husband is different from the way that my children grieve their father. I should not assess, dictate, or try to control how they grieve their dad, but I should give them space to be able to miss their dad on their own terms and be there to support them.

I can tell you in the first 4 to 6 months after Mark passed, I was out of it. I remember looking back at the text thread between my children and me and seeing all that gap. No communication because I was struggling to keep my mind together. I had no parenting love, advice, space, or capacity to give them. About 6 or 9 months later when my grief fog lifted, I reached out to my children and told them that I was so sorry that I was not there, “Your dad died and I was emotionally trashed and didn’t have anything to give.”

I asked them to forgive me because I’m sorry I didn’t have anything to give to them. I was barely holding on to myself. They forgave me, and it taught me that who I am without Mark, they are somebody different without their dad too. They have the right to grieve their dad on their own terms. I should support them, love them, and encourage them, but let them know that it’s okay to not always be okay.

Loving Two Great Loves

The next thing that I want to share with you is I can love Mark and my current husband at the same time. It is possible to have two great loves in your life. Fred does not resolve my grief with Mark. It’s just that I had space in my heart to love someone else and to love Fred for who he is. My love for Fred does not diminish my love for Mark. I have come to the conclusion that I loved Fredin in a deeper, more intense, and harder way than I love Mark.

My love relationship with Mark started when I was 18 years old and in this span of reality, it ended when I was 51. Over the course of that time, I learned so much about relationships. I learned so much about who I was and how to support somebody else. Several years later, after Marcus has passed, this relationship with Fred has blown my mind. How sensitive, encouraging, and supportive I can be to someone else, and how fragile I know relationships and life are.

I now know how fragile our lives are and how quickly it can be over. I know that I love Fred in such a way because I understand. I don’t know how much longer I will have with him because life is a sphere. Because of that, my love for Fred is deep. I am amazed to even have a second opportunity of love. I love both my children equally even though they would say something different. I know that I have the capacity to love. That the duality of loving Mark and loving Fred can exist simultaneously. I do not have to choose one or the other.

Moving Forward And Finding Happiness

The last thing that I want to share with you is that it is possible to move forward and be happy in this version of your life. Some people may never choose to date, That’s not a criteria, but learning to fall in love with ourselves, learning to embrace who we are, and learning to know that we are resilient and that we have the capacity to fulfill. One of the things that we vow to do is until death do you part. Unfortunately, our society makes widows and widowers like somebody who should be swept away into the corner and we talk about them.

I say we should be celebrated. We should be honored and we should be put on a pedestal and shown as an example of what commitment looks like. We fulfilled a vow that may be for people and said, “Till death do us part.” I should be celebrated and honored for being able to do that. Not be pushed aside, put on dark clothes, and put up a corner where I can no longer express and share my emotions.

This is a journey that other widows and widowers want to hear because the goal is to be in my position. If you can be in this position and learn something from what I share and what other people on this platform share, you will be stronger in this journey. I encourage those who are supporting widows and widowers to celebrate them. Encourage them to share how they feel. Encourage them to express their emotions. Do not try to hush them away. Do not try to overcompensate when they are crying or when they are upset and you feel a little uncomfortable.

If you are uncomfortable, how uncomfortable do you think they are? They have to go to bed at night and look at the other side of that empty bed. They have to eat dinner, breakfast, and lunch at a table that they once shared with their spouse. When they get into a car and drive, in that vehicle, they think about the life that they had with their loved one.

These are the memories that we cherish as widows and widowers, and we are to be celebrated. I encourage you in all that you have accomplished to continue living. Find out the things that you enjoyed doing. Maybe you wanted to travel to all of the state parks in the area in which you live. Maybe you decided that you were going to start being a pen pal. Maybe you wanted to start crocheting. Maybe you wanted to learn to play a new musical instrument or learn a different language. You are alive and I want you to live. I want you to celebrate every moment of life that exists to know that your life is valuable, that you are worth living and you are worth celebrating, all that you are and all that you have done.

I appreciate you being here with me. We are almost wrapping up 2024 and I am excited about what 2025 holds for the Widowhood. I encourage you to check out our next event which is Dealing with Grief During the Holiday on November 9. It is on Eventbrite and you can purchase your ticket for $30. It will allow you to be in this event for 90 minutes. You will have a 60-minute session with that mental health professional. We are limiting the rooms to only eight individuals. You will have an opportunity to interface with a mental health professional because grief during the holiday has a different feel to it.

Even if you don’t celebrate all the different holidays, the atmosphere changes. We are starting to move into a time where it gets darker sooner. We are dealing with a lot of things with our having that direct vitamin D. There are coping skills and things that you can learn that will help you manage the holidays. I encourage you to check out this event.

I also asked you to share with me different topics or maybe someone who you would like me to interview on our show. I want to say thank you for being here with me. I also want to thank all of you who have donated financially because Widowhood Real Talk with Tina is a registered 501(c)(3) and we are established to support the bereaved. It is because of your financial support that we can continue doing what it is that we are doing. I asked that you consider further donating financially to Widowhood Real Talk with Tina or sharing or asking a friend or family member to support this organization because we are supporting you. Thank you for your time. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. I will talk to you later. Goodbye.

Important Links

• Widowhood Real Talk With Tina
• Tina Fornwald – LinkedIn
• Widowhood Real Talk With Tina – Youtube
• Widowhood Real Talk With Tina – Twitter
• Widowhood Real Talk With Tina – Instagram
• Tina Fornwald – TikTok
• Tina Fornwald – Facebook