Love and Widowhood: Grief, Community, and Healing after Loss with Tina Fornwald

How do we find the strength to keep going when the life we built with someone we love is suddenly gone?

In this poignant episode, host Nina Rodriguez speaks with Tina Fornwald, an empowerment coach, podcast host, and retired Chief Warrant Officer, about her journey through grief after a miscarriage, surviving breast cancer, and losing Mark, her beloved husband of 32 years.

Through her story, Tina illuminates the complexities of grief, the importance of community support, and the unique challenges faced by widows and widowers. 

This episode is a testament to the strength found in vulnerability, the importance of honoring every facet of grief, the need for open conversation, and the enduring power of love.

Tina discusses the challenges of redefining her identity, embracing grief, and the duality of love as she moves forward in life, emphasizing the importance of community support, the validity of one's feelings in grief, and the ongoing connection to lost loved ones. Her insights provide hope for others experiencing similar losses.

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Click here to watch on YouTube

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Takeaways:

• Widowhood encompasses a unique set of challenges and emotions.
• Grief is a complex and multifaceted experience.
• It's important to allow individuals to express their pain.
• The language of grief is often difficult to articulate.
• Coping with loss requires understanding and patience from others.
• Being present for someone grieving is a powerful gift.
• Grief can manifest in various forms beyond the loss of a loved one.
• There is no hierarchy in grief; each person's experience is valid.
• Sharing stories about the deceased can help in the healing process. 
• You have to redefine your role as a mother after loss.
• Grief is a journey that requires honesty and openness.
• You can still have a purpose and a story after loss.
• Community support is crucial in the grieving process.
• There are no timelines for grief; it's a personal journey.
• Remarriage does not diminish the love for a deceased spouse.
• It's okay to seek help and talk about your feelings.
• You can create new traditions while honoring your loved one.
• Your love story continues even after loss.

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Join THE COMMUNITY by Grief and Light | Access support anytime, anywhere.

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Connect with Tina Fornwald:

• IG: @widowhood_real_talk_with_tina
• Facebook
• widowhood-realtalkwithtina.org

Related episode: Forever my brother: a journey through grief and light

Connect with Nina Rodriguez:

• IG: @griefandlight
• Website: griefandlight.com
• 1:1 Grief Support
• Join Grief and Light: The Community

Disclaimer: griefandlight.com/safetyanddisclaimers

Chapters

• 0:48 Introduction, Meet Tina Fornwald
• 5:14 Allow them to keep their pain
• 10:40 In hindsight, the losses prepared me
• 18:08 Your presence is the present
• 23:35 No platitudes, please
• 25:08 Understanding widowhood
• 36:03 A new sense of identity: from 'we' to 'me'
• 44:56 Year 8 without Mark
• 47:25 Normalizing grief
• 49:07 Welcoming new love, and keeping his last name
• 56:53 Advice for new widows
• 1:02:20 Connect with Tina & Upcoming Events
• 1:07:54 Closing Thoughts

Transcript

I just survived breast cancer. I'm over here feeling invincible. The kids, they're about to move out of the house. We're about to move down to Virginia into this house we had and start living our empty nester life. That got ripped away in a blink. But at the same time, I was supposed to go out of town for work the week that Mark passed. And I heard a guy telling me I needed to go spend time with him.

that even in the most horrific moment after Mark passed, God was still telling me, I'm with you.

You just lost your loved one. Now what? Welcome to the Grief in Life podcast where we explore this new reality through grief-colored lenses. Openly, authentically, I'm your host, Nina Rodriguez. Let's get started. How do we find the strength to keep going when the life we built with someone we love is suddenly gone? Today's guest is going to share her story of resilience, faith, and rediscovering life after profound loss.

A retired chief warrant officer, empowerment coach, and ordained minister, Tina Formwald faced the unimaginable after a breast cancer diagnosis, followed by the unexpected passing of Mark, her beloved husband of 32 years in 2017. Through grief, healing, and the unwavering support of her community, Tina has not only learned to live life again, but has also become a guiding light for widows and widowers navigating their own journey.

Tina currently hosts Widowhood Real Talk with Tina, the podcast, a registered 501c3 organization and community for those navigating life after loss. Welcome to the Grief and Light podcast, Tina.

Speaker 1 (01:45.634)
Thank you, Nina, for having me here. Thank you for your community for listening.

It's an absolute honor and for those who may or may not know, I was actually on Tina's podcast last year. We had a beautiful conversation. So thank you as well for the work that you do there and the stories shared. I know that this is an important topic for so many people navigating not just the loss in terms of widowhood, but the ripple effect of such losses into other people's lives. So I'd like to get started with when did your relationship with grief begin?

That is an interesting question. And when I look back, I can identify, I didn't even put the word to it at that point in time. But my first experience with grief is when I had a miscarriage. My husband and I, my late husband and I have been together, I want to say maybe three or five years, and stopped taking the birth control pill and got pregnant right away. Totally excited, told the entire world. And then I had some spotting.

which was at the same time as my normal menstrual and I called my OBGYN and they said, you have an appointment in a couple of days, as long as it wasn't something massive, you should be fine. Well, surprise, surprise, it was not fine. I guess it was the way things needed to happen because from, so then you go in and I have an exam and they're skirting around and I'm like, something's not right.

And they finally tell me what happened. And lo and behold, the day that that happened was my late husband's birthday. just total devastation. I remember as I look back now, walking around in this fog, showing up in friends homes and places without a reason and just sitting there, a shell of myself. I remember this one time I was changing the license plates on the vehicle and I just sat in the driveway, just digging in the dirt.

Speaker 1 (03:38.636)
I didn't have words to articulate like I do now, that profound sadness, but that was my first major experience.

Thank you for sharing that. And I also find it interesting that you said I didn't have the words because so much of navigating grief is learning that language and really understanding what it is, what we're dealing with, what we're feeling and how it's manifesting. And I'm sorry for the loss, for the miscarriage. Anybody listening that can resonate with that, you understand how profoundly that impacts you and how it's so unseen. It's one of those losses that is very...

profound, but people don't really see it as much as perhaps the loss of your husband.

People often, they'll start saying, you'll have children again. It'll be okay. You're young. That dismissive wording comes into play. And I've learned so many years later, we have not always properly learned how to hold space and just let someone be in pain. Not trying to brush it away very quickly. You have no idea if I would have ever had children again. You don't know what that looks like. All we know is that certain, that place that I'm in there.

and just honor that and let me be sad. Let me lament, let me just go, this is hard. And then everything else that had to happen afterwards. I had to have a procedure to literally clean everything out of my body because it didn't process and all of those things. But I can look back and see my friends that showed up, even though we didn't know what we were navigating, they continued to show up in the future.

Speaker 2 (05:14.944)
And thank goodness for friends like those, make all the difference. And I want to highlight what you just said about like allowing somebody to keep their pain. We are so hardwired to help and jump in and rescue and all these things. there's a part of it that's innate in us and wanting to, out of good intention, help the other person. Talk to us about why in grief, it's a bit counterintuitive. Like why should you let somebody keep their pain? Say a little bit more about that.

that is a good question. Pain is a trigger to do something. If you're cooking and slicing onions and you accidentally cut your finger, you would not ignore that and just keep cutting the onions. You would stop. You would tend to what that is. You would wrap up your finger. You may wrap it up really big. Your husband may look and go, no, no, Nina, we need to go to the doctor. So then you're going to the hospital.

You're getting stitches on it. You're putting antibiotics on it. You're caring for that wound and allowing to heal. And you're being gentle. You're not using that same finger the way you used to. You may be weird, kind of cut and do stuff. Well, many, many moons ago, when people lost a loved one, they will wear a band on their arm. They would wear dark clothing. So they knew that person is going through something. Handle them a little gently now.

They're still human being, they're still going, but honor that they lost someone. Honor that they are having a hard time in honoring that one day I may be wearing those dark clothes or that band of death and I'll need somebody to hold that space. Just like you accidentally would have cut your finger. That is how we, when we're grieving, need to tend to ourselves. Maybe I need to pad myself around certain people cause they don't know how to hold space.

But when you don't see my grief because it's mental, then you assume you saw me laugh in the other day, but you don't know a secret in my head. I was laughing at a joke that my husband told me and it came across my mind. And you don't know that people will show up that are grieving often in public. They do the things they have to do, but when they return home, they are isolating. They don't connect with other people and they're staring at the wall.

Speaker 1 (07:36.17)
in devastation that their life has been altered in a way that they never comprehended. And when we hold space for people who are grieving and let them know, feel how you feel, I'm okay with that. It allows their healing process to happen because if not, they are stuffing it all inside and not able to release it. So now you're grieving, you don't have a safe space, your blood pressure is going up, you're eating your feelings.

You may be masking your grief with unhealthy coping skills because the ability to talk, to cry, to exhale is part of our grieving process. But if we're not given that and safe spaces, oftentimes people will meet with a mental health professional five, 10 years later. And when they roll back and look in their past, it was a place that grief was not dealt with. And let me expand also, not just the grief of the passing of

a person you love. You got fired from a job and you never felt your self-confidence again. You had a health issue and your body never responded back to being able to run 10K. You had to relocate with COVID. You broke up with this person you thought was going to be your spouse. Grief is something that we deal with on such an expansion level. When you're reaching out for something and it's no longer there in your life,

You're probably grieving, missing, or trying to adjust your life to the absence of that item, person, place, or thing or part of yourself. You're welcome.

Thank you for that. So, so true about, you know, when we have a cut or a physical injury, we tend to it and other people, when it's visible, especially, they know to be careful, like, don't watch out for their shoulder, watch out for their hand or whatever got injured. And yet the emotional is so invisible. It's treated differently. And it's interesting because you mentioned the band, you know, the dark clothing or band or outward expression of grief that we don't have anymore or is not as

Speaker 2 (09:40.782)
common anymore. I'll give you an example. My grandmother, she's still wearing the dark clothing and I tell her, you don't have to anymore. She's like, no, but I want to. And I say, okay, that's perfectly fine. And it's a matter of being able to express everything that's going on on the inside publicly, not just to let other people know, but because grief needs expression, it needs an outlet and it needs witnessing. So thank you for touching on all of those points. The grief is not just related to the death of a person or a loved one or a pet. It's also all these other ways in which we experience loss.

and life-altering change for all the things that you mentioned. So that is something that in this season of the podcast, we are going to be addressing the different ways that grief touches our lives that is not just death related. maybe talk to us about how you experience this miscarriage. There's the grief of the loss of dream, hope, and the life you thought you would have, and how eventually that also included a diagnosis and the loss of your beloved husband, Mark.

You know, thank you. As I look back now, I see where the loss is built in time. And I want to say they prepared me for the loss of Mark in different ways. So I had the miscarriage. We had a pet that was like our first experiment of being parents and stuff like that. We loved that dog, that dog passed. We had children. I dealt with breast cancer.

All of those things when they happened at that moment in time, worst thing ever, zero out of 10, do not recommend, thought that was the world imploding. And I learned I can endure hard things. I can carry that weight. I can reach out until everyone that will care how I feel and I'm not going out quietly. They're going to either know and choose not to do something, or they're going to choose to take a pebble out of my backpack and realize it's too heavy.

And the breast cancer diagnosis happened a year and a half before Mark passed. And that was the place where I realized I am so, so incapable of doing everything I thought I could do. I remember Thanksgiving, Kate. I'm sorry, go ahead.

Speaker 2 (11:59.758)
Say more about that, please.

Thanksgiving came and I'm usually making Thanksgiving dinner. You know, the whole shebang, I couldn't do it. I couldn't even get out of bed to go grocery shopping for the things to make Thanksgiving dinner. And I told my family, said, we're probably not going to have Thanksgiving because I can't do it. And they sat by the bed as I gave them the ingredients of what to purchase, what to do, and went out and purchased everything and cooked the whole meal. And what I learned from that?

I didn't take it back. Once they had been empowered on how to do things, that weight was lifted from me and I allowed them to do that. Where I was having treatment was 90 minutes away, one direction. So my husband was caring for the children, trying to manage the house. Now I have cancer treatment for like six weeks in a row every day. Right. And I was like, he can't do that. Take me.

So I made, I'm a project manager by trade. I made a spreadsheet, had people's names in there. People were showing up either coming from out of town or local to take me to treatment. I fell asleep before we even got there because I was just so tired. But I had to trust other people to care for me and trust the God that I serve because even in all my project management skills, I messed up the schedule and there was one thing that I missed.

Mark, my husband and were talking about how I could drive to where my treatment was, stay overnight and then come back. And I was getting prepared, making hotel reservations and lo and behold, friend called and she said, I know you've been going through a lot. How can I help you? And I was like, okay. I said, I have treatment tomorrow. If you can be here. And she made sure she was at my house on time. She was 90 minutes away and she came, right. She came.

Speaker 1 (13:52.962)
hour and a half away to be there with me and then drive and had a gift and all this stuff in a journal. And I'm just like, I learned I don't have to always fight all of my battles. I can trust God to provide, to carry, to make the path for me straight and align the people to love and support me. I wish I could have just been downloaded that information. I mean, I would have preferred not to have it that way.

But there is something for me when you're having to press in that all the things that you say I believed in, this is go time. This is where the rubber hits the road. I remember being so consumed by the treatment, thinking of my own mortality, I wasn't sleeping. And so I received sleep medication for the first time. And I was in the kitchen with the kids and we were talking.

And I had taken a sleep pill and said, you have such and such amount of time. So I'm trying to do the last little things I can do in the house. I kid you not. I went to sleep around the floor in the kitchen. tell my kids, I said, I'm going to take a nap, like right here. They told me, it was like, is mom okay? And then they're like, she took the sleeping medicine and my son carries me and puts me in bed to this day. He loves talking about like, I took you in mom because you know, you needed me to have you. It just, but it's scary when you, when your body.

is not operating the way you're accustomed to. You have to rely on other people, especially if you've been hurt in the past or mistreated or you trusted people and they didn't show up. And now you may feel like life is attacking you. And why is this happening to me? But we live in a world where we have smokestacks where chemicals are coming out. There are pesticides and things that are going on. And no one in my family has breast cancer at all.

no one in my immediate family feel like it was the random egg. But I trust God in that process that even in this, he will determine what is well in so many ways that he was faithful. And I'm grateful for that. Scared, anxious, trying to figure out day by day 100%, but that foundation. And we only have so much time in this world anyway.

Speaker 1 (16:15.414)
I wanted to be worth it. And I'm grateful for the people that showed up and allowed me to just realize like I had friends come visit. I couldn't walk to my mailbox. And now my son and I would get up and go run a 5k like every Saturday. And so the reality of that and come to terms like this could be the thing that removes me from this world. And so that breast cancer diagnosis then turned to what looked like into an emergency hysterectomy.

because it was going to uterine cancer. And I had that procedure October of 2016. Then in November of 2016, Mark relocated to Virginia because we were trying to move here.

One thing I keep hearing is how differently the grief manifested. I don't know if that's the right word, but like manifested itself in the, for example, the miscarriage versus the diagnosis versus the treatment versus the fear of, like you said, maybe this is this thing that takes me out. Like I don't, the uncertainty of what's next and how long do I have, right? And the everyday having to figure out even logistics and how beautiful that even amidst the absolute chaos and just not knowing what's next.

you have these moments of grace, like these friends that show up and what a lesson in how to show up for somebody too. So it is so oddly, strangely beautiful in a way, looking at it in retrospect, maybe not in the moment, but looking at it in retrospect.

I was seen in a moment and if I could circle back to something you just said, you said those were examples of ways to show up for somebody. I believe that we want to show up for people. just don't know how. We're weirded out by their situation, feeling awkward. And we give these cliches, these one-liners, we say these things and we feel like we've checked the box and I've taken care of them. Let me dear say you have not.

Speaker 1 (18:09.236)
If you are looking for a way to show up and this is someone you know, someone you've enjoyed and spent time with, think about the things they enjoy and drop them off. Rent a movie or go to this, I'm sorry, show my age, I'm 50 and think about going to rent a movie. Say I'm going to come over and we're just going to watch that movie we love to laugh about and bring the goodie bag of all the different stuff that they like and sit there and just watch the movie. You don't have to say it.

I'm coming to talk to you about this situation. I just want to come hang out with you in lab. And if they decide they want to talk about a thing, but being present is a gift that you can give and it almost costs you nothing. I know time is our biggest commodity, but if you have someone that is grieving anything and you're letting them be alone, I encourage you to get out of your own self and spend some time with

Oof. Your presence is the present, if you will. It is the gift. Please elaborate on why just showing up and you don't need, you can address the issue. Like, yes, I know you're going through this hardship or this loss, that's fine. But why sometimes it's not even necessary to elaborate and talk about that only sometimes it's just that sense of normalcy that you're gifting the person through your company. Maybe say a little bit about that. What was your experience like?

Thank you for that question. The reason being, I don't wanna talk about it all the time. I mean, I know it's trash right now. I know it's hot garbage. Sometimes I just wanna be normal. Sometimes I don't wanna be hyper-focused on that. I've journaled, I've seen my therapist, I probably drank a whiskey sour, I've done all those different things. I just wanna laugh. I just wanna remember the happy things in life. Sometimes they don't even know how to articulate.

And the other thing, you may think that you're prepared for the things that they may say and you are not. You are not prepared for the heavy weight of the loss that's going through their mind and what that looks like. Just recently, I shared on something, brace yourself listeners, that when my husband passed, the first thing I thought about were these other husbands that were not faithful and they got to live. And I was like, huh.

Speaker 1 (20:34.742)
He's been faithful, committed and his ticket got punched. Look at there. You just, but if I would have said that immediately, my gosh, how could you say something like that? it's true. We don't know how these things work, but we have to come, we choose to come to peace and to terms with it. But if you heard all of the things that were going through my head, cause you were asking me questions, like the one thing someone will say, how are you doing? I told my friends at work.

I know you love me and you asked that question, but what I need you to ask me is how are you doing this moment today? Because, or don't say, is there anything I can do for you? Can you bring him back? I mean, because that's where my mind was rotating heavy in those first 90 days. But people, you don't want to talk about something you may not have the capacity to handle the conversation. So I encourage you.

Get some books, read. There are so many great books out there. The one book that was super helpful to me is I Wasn't Ready to Say Goodbye by Dr. Pamela Blair. Excellent book. Someone gave this to me like the first week after Mark passed. The second book that she's a part of is The Long Grief Journey. This is for like people a year after and you're still grieving and a year is over, cause it's a long journey. It's not a

And I'm sure you have a lot of books that you recommend and what that looks like. And for people with pets, this book here by Mary Beth Decker, Peace and Passing. And there's just a wealth of information, cause you don't know if you haven't traveled that path, but it's helpful for you to read what other people are sharing to empower you on how to really be there for the person you love. Because they also may not have the...

ability to articulate their own feelings, they're in uncharted territory. They're going through a grief brain, a grief fog. They're trying to remember like, am I supposed to do every day? And being able to express this heavy weight of the loss of their loved one or the experience they're grieving, they may feel more intimidated and afraid to share with you their inner thoughts because they may be concerned of rejection.

Speaker 1 (23:02.04)
Those are just a few things that come to mind to me at that question.

There's so much pressure in broad questions for a griever. So how are you doing? That is a huge question and life is already overwhelming. I remember when I got that question, how are you feeling? And I just thought, I don't know what I'm feeling. I'm feeling everything and nothing at the same time. And I don't even know how to explain that. It's very confusing. I remember somebody asked me, how was your morning? Bringing it back down to a more immediate time.

That's a little bit more helpful because it's like, well, this morning I had coffee and this morning I was okay. So I can answer that, but like, how are you doing is so broad. don't make the griever lift the heavy weight with these questions, usually well-intended, but very misguided. And that's why we have these conversations. And like you said, those books, the social media accounts, these podcasts, this is why we have these conversations because if you've heard this episode or any other episode, you will hear that one of the most hurtful

and damaging things you could possibly do immediately after loss is these platitudes, these very generic bumper sticker statements like, God needed another angel. I interviewed a woman who lost her son and her neighbors gave her a plaque that said, life is about learning to dance in the rain or something. And she's like, I wanted to throw that plaque back at her because it was so out of touch, probably well intended, but so out of touch. So thank you for that. And let me ask you, when Mark

passed unexpectedly. Who did something that was helpful to you in that immediate aftermath?

Speaker 1 (24:36.366)
One of the immediate things was a friend, Reggie Lockhart, that gave me that book, I Wasn't Ready to Say Goodbye. The second thing was a friend recommended, her husband had passed, I want to say about nine months before Mark, and she immediately reached out to her therapist and told her therapist about my situation. And her therapist agreed to meet with me. First time meeting with a therapist was the day I viewed Mark's body.

but I called her because I realized I'm a reader. I'm a seeker of information. I realized there's more I don't know than what I do. And if I don't reach out to the people that have that information, I am lacking. So I remember when we were having children, we read this book, What to Expect When You're Expecting. There's all these things you read about being a new parent. I was like, I have no clue about what being a widow is. I have no clue about waking up every day.

and Mark is not going to be there. I have no idea of the road ahead of me. Yes, I'm going to see a therapist that been talking to other people. And there were, there was a widow that reached out to me immediately. And she said, I'm coming to pick you up and we're going to go to the spa. I was like, are we supposed to be seen at a spa? Like, is that appropriate? Like what's the optics on that?

Protocol here, right?

Right. Well, she said, we're going to be fine. But I felt like she took a young Padawan under her wing and gave me space to talk to Sheer about all the things that no one had said to me because they haven't traveled the road that I was on. And going back to the miscarriage, after I had the miscarriage, there were several women that came up to me and I had a miscarriage. And they gave me that behind the veil experience that they went through.

Speaker 1 (26:29.794)
that no one else can speak to that. I can listen to you have conversations about your brother, but I can never say I know how you feel. And even if it's in the widow that spent the time with me, she told me, I will never tell you I know how you feel because how you feel is unique because you and Mark were two unique people, had a unique marriage. I can relate to it because she lost her husband.

And I took that to heart. never tell someone I know how you feel. I can relate to that. I can grasp that. I can imagine that, but I can never say, I know how you feel and just brush that away. So just a lot in that.

a powerful point, my goodness. The relating versus saying, know how you feel. You're not that person, you weren't in the relationship, you didn't know their everyday moments and their inner secrets and that intimate language that you have with the person you love. what a beautiful and important point to bring up in terms of grief and loss. And you're absolutely right that, like for example, sibling loss in my case, loss of a spouse in your case, you

people who lose children versus parents. So all these different losses have their own nuances, their own ways in which this manifests. So talk to us about widowhood as a whole. How is it different in your opinion, in your experience, and from the people that you've worked with and the stories you've heard, how is it different from other losses?

Thank you for that question. And I want to say this first. People go, whose grief is the worst? The one you're experiencing, the one that you are going through right now. And I say that because one widow I spoke with, she was divorced, widowed, and lost her child. All of those different things were the most impactful and now built upon the previous loss. So I just want to say there is no measurement of whose grief is worse.

Speaker 1 (28:32.87)
And the word widowhood for me, I am the widow. That hood part means family to me, that collaborate, background. My children lost their father. My husband's brothers lost a sibling. His nieces and nephew lost an uncle. There was someone that lost a friend. Everybody is having a different experience of that widow or widower.

And so people are on the outskirts with their own laws and very careful about how that is portrayed to the widow. And I realized no one wants to make their grief look worse than me who has lost my spouse. But I can tell you when I gave them permission to share their story and to tell me how much they miss Mark, it reinforced I was not alone in missing him.

before I gave them that permission and start speaking about it, they were very at bay keeping their sadness. But when I opened up the floodgates of Mark's stories and how they felt about him was made available. So I share that to say, if you know someone that has lost a loved one, ask them if you could share a story about them. Give them permission to say yes or no. If you're the person grieving, give your tribe.

permission to talk about your loved one because they may have a story popping in their mind and go, I don't want to make them upset. I see this like this. So I'm a Marvel person, a character. And one of the things they'll ask the Hulk, they say, how do you, you have to be mad. They asked Steve Banner, you have to be mad to turn into the Hulk. How do you do it so quickly? said, cause I'm always mad. We're always missing them in some level or another.

Don't think you texting me is all of a sudden gonna remind me that Murk died. Baby, I know every day, but it does something wonderful to my soul when that hood and that widowhood reaches out and let me know that I'm not alone. As for the widow or widower themselves, have a station in a way that is hard to comprehend. This person, and let me say this, this I have found.

Speaker 1 (30:52.482)
whether you had a healthy marriage or unhealthy marriage, it's still hard. The complication of someone that didn't have an unhealthy marriage, you may feel relieved. You may feel like we're on the cusp of getting a divorce and going through very difficult things. And now I don't have to do that because this ended organically. That leaves you in a place where other people are talking about how difficult their grief is and you think,

I'm over here like, okay, this was a better option. And so now you're dealing with complicated grief and you don't have a space where you can be organically around other people to share how you feel because you may have kept it a secret that the marriage was not going well. So now your grief is not something you can openly speak about, you're hiding it, but yet you're still grieving that person because of hopes and dreams that never manifest the marriage you wanted it to be, the relationship you wanted.

that past when they died also. For me, gosh, I had no idea I could hurt so bad. I had no idea I could cry and feel like I was going to dehydrate and keep crying. I had no idea that every part of me ached and was devastated. And to think that some people have three days and you're supposed to go back to work.

To think that you would consider I would have the capacity to care about anything besides looking on the other side of the bed and thinking he will never sleep there again. That I had to get a death certificate, like who knew that was a thing? Or I had to pick up his ashes and drive home with them in the seatbelt and just looking at them and sitting in the car in...

I remember bringing his ashes into the house and placing them on the dining room table. And that's as far as I could go. So people are coming over to visit and they're sitting there going.

Speaker 2 (32:59.854)
I'm like, what is going on?

And in my mind, I'm like, you uncomfortable? This is my life. Get uncomfortable. I do not care. But I finally moved him into the bedroom and put it on his dresser with some other different things people had given. There was not a part of my existence that was not rattled by Mark's passing. Having to get on the phone and call every utility bill or call his supervisor every time the amount of times you would have to say,

My spouse died, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, just cry and be devastated after each one of those. And life is continuously going to be offended that the sun got up the next day after he passed. Like, it's just extra bright out here. Like, I don't understand. Right. No one is talking about this. No one's like he passed in 2017. I didn't see the plethora.

of information that you and I have created and other people have made space for and do. But I went and found some people. I went and opened up my phone book, every widow that I knew. I was like, I need to understand how this is going to work. Cause this, this is, this is high garbage. Like tell me, and it's just like, being able to talk, to connect with other widows or widowers to understand from their perspective, I was able to take a little nugget from each person.

to make my own version of that. But it also gave me the concept, there are people that are before me in this, and unfortunately there will be people behind me. And if we choose to lean into healthy coping skills, we can continue to live. And I say choose because some people feel as if being sad, being isolated, being removed from society,

Speaker 1 (34:58.026)
is how they want to honor their loved one and how they want to agree. I honor that choice because that is their prerogative. In understanding, I can't manipulate change or direct your grief to look the way that I want it to look, but I can hold space with you as you're figuring this out for yourself.

powerfully stated. I love everything you said about the honest reality of life after loss. A point of coincidence that stood out to me, he passed in your 32 years of marriage, my brother passed when he was 32, and that is a lifetime. And so you're with this person, you have children, you've built a life. Like you said, he sounds like he was a wonderful husband, father, and person. We

can't help but think sometimes like, did you take the good ones? Like, why are that you hear all these horror stories about people doing these awful things? And it's not to say that doesn't mean that we want this for somebody else. We don't want this for anybody. If people could just never die, that'd be great. Thank you very much. But we are blessed with these incredible people in our lives and they're yet taken away. Our lives gets shifted. You now have a new identity, which is widower and having to repeat Mark Pass.

over and over and over again on the phone for the sake of paying bills even. You have to redefine your role as a mother and you have to show up differently in the world, not by choice. So how did you get through that in the aftermath? What was the hardest part about it in terms of this new identity after loss and how has that shifted over the years? So the Tina that's in front of me today is years from the loss. I'm sure a lot has shifted, but how has grief and loss?

the concept and the lived experience shifted for you.

Speaker 1 (36:41.998)
Okay, I have never been asked that question, thank you. That first part of what grief looked like for me, I had been saying, Mark and Tina for 32 years. We're gonna do this, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. It was always Mark and Tina, or to literally practice saying I. To literally practice saying Tina is I'm going to do this without Mark.

and know that that was enough to feel like I was not less than because now I am Tina without Mark. The night my husband passed, we're in Delaware. A family friend has brought my daughter. Other friends have come, our family have come to join me. I'm in Delaware by myself. We're three and a half hours from where we lived in Pennsylvania and where we knew a lot of people in Virginia. And I'm taking a shower and my daughter,

comes in and she's like, dad the most, was he the greatest love and the most important thing to you? And I'm like, I'm trying to take a shower. Like this is the first two minutes I've had, you know. And I'm like, and I'm looking at her and she was a daddy's girl. Her life is shattered. You've got these dreams. I'm going to get married. My dad's going to walk me down.

I you.

Speaker 1 (38:09.676)
Mark showed her how to drive and I'm looking at her and I'm thinking she wants a Disney answer. She asked me, was dad the greatest love of your life? And I looked at her and I was like, I gotta give her the truth here. And I said, love your dad. And I have no clue what we're about to do. And in 21 years, she had never heard her mom say, I don't know about nothing. I'm a retired army.

Warn officer, we gonna figure this out. But at that moment, I didn't have a clue. I said, I love your dad. But if he was the greatest love of my life and he is dead, what do I have to live off of? I have to be the greatest love of my life because I knew words mean something. And if I started putting that pattern in my head,

that Mark was the greatest love of my life and he's deceased, what does that leave me with? What does that leave my existence? That means I'm nothing without him. And I hear people say that I'm nothing since they died. Baby, you are. You still have a story. You still have a journey. You still have a purpose. You still have a reason. I had to tell myself that every day. For that first year after Mark died,

I'd wake up and go, well, look at that, I am still alive. I won the life lottery another day. Like I expected, I was like, whoo, this keeps happening. Okay, what are we gonna do? I mean, literally I wake up in bed and shot going, okay, I'm up. Okay, what are we doing? What are we doing? And that reality, because I knew people passed, but it hadn't been that close. My parents were still alive. So that proximity of that was removed. It wasn't something that had

I just survived breast cancer. I'm over here feeling invincible. The kids are getting grown. They're about to move out of the house. We're about to move down to Virginia into this house we had and start living our empty nester life. That got ripped away in a blink. But at the same time, I was supposed to go out of town for work the week that Mark passed. And I heard a guy telling me I needed to go spend time with him.

Speaker 1 (40:31.882)
is why I was with him that even in the most horrific moment after Mark passed, God was still telling me, I'm with you. I know this is hard, but I knew it was gonna happen beforehand and I've been preparing you and I love you. I know it may be hard to hear. In the duality of still.

It can be hard to go to church because I'm not about to be raising my hand singing a worship song today, being okay that I don't have to pretend. So I went to other people's church because I don't need to be where I was at because y'all not ready for this raw level of pain. I don't have any space to put on a mask. There is no makeup. There is nothing. We have not bathed in weeks. We are just walking around lamenting. If I got up and took a shower, that was success. And if I didn't for a week or so,

I did not ask you to come over because I'm trying to deal with me. But that first two weeks, my brother stayed. After that, first cousin came and stayed. And then it was a month before my daughter and I were in the house by ourselves. And it was hard. She was afraid to get in the car with me because I was emotionally distracted trying to drive and different things. Hot garbage. But I regret none of that.

Because me openly giving myself to grief allowed me to be honest with my feelings. Because if I was stuffing it down the side and not dealing with it, what I have learned grief will wait patiently for you. Grief will pack a and let you like go on and do all that stuff. when I'm over here waiting patiently and when you tried to run, you know, work 64 hours a week and do everything else, drink whatever you're to do.

And all day, hey, work briefly like, come on, come come over here so we could, we could work on this. And I love this man today. And I did this exercise with a widow I was speaking with. And I said, how many years were you with your spouse? And I want to say it was 20. Take 20 years times 12 months. So now you have how many months you spent with them. Take those months, multiply that by 30, just average of 30 days.

Speaker 1 (42:51.456)
Now take those 30 days by how many minutes? It's been one year and you think those comparison to those minutes, me trying to struggle through life, I should be okay? The math is in math.

Absolutely. So many good things there. I love that you said with so much honesty and respect for yourself and your grief process that is so huge. That's something I wish people understood a little bit more. There are no shoulds and the more you push forward a should like I should be over this by then I shouldn't be so sad. I should all these self-imposed shoulds the more suffering you add to your grief experience. I love how honest you were with yourself, with your daughter.

with your community about how you were feeling about this is actually a normal response to a absolutely devastating loss. This is my reality and it is absolutely devastating and today I don't feel like, I don't know, putting makeup on or showering or whatever and it is such a common experience allowing it to be so helps facilitate your next step forward. It just adds a little bit of ease and gentleness. That level of honesty, I love that you said if he was the love of my life then my life is over.

So what a power, I get chills just saying that, like what a powerful statement. Thank you for sharing that because it is so true. And this could be with a spouse, but this could also be anybody that feels like my life is over because who I was in relation to this person is no longer. And now we get to walk in a different, unexpected, unwanted way, but there is still a life to be lived and it can be beautiful and there is hope. And if you remain the love of your life, if you hang on to your faith, which sounds like your faith was

instrumental and fundamental in how you move forward. A lot of this process, it's not that it's not going to hurt, but we get to live more honestly, removing all these external layers of expectations and math that no longer fit and things that are inauthentic. We get to live a bit more authentically, even though so much of this experience is unwanted. Thank you for that. What a powerful statement.

Speaker 1 (44:56.396)
You're welcome. Thank you. There was part two to the question. I think you said about where I am now.

Yes, absolutely, please.

This is year eight of Mark no longer being in this world. It blows my mind that it's been eight years since I've held his hand. It's been eight years since I heard him say something. I look back and I'm glad for every time I chose to say how I felt. I am glad for every time I went for long walks. I'm glad for...

when I needed to read books upon books to understand. I'm glad for when I had to watch the video about what being cremated looked like because that's what was going to happen to his body. And I wanted to know, I am grateful for the night that he died that I screamed until I couldn't scream anymore in the room with his body. And I didn't pretend like it's just going to be okay. Now I went into process mode and I have to do things, but I let people go.

I let my whole self fall apart. I'm a fall apart team. I'm like, what am I holding up? I don't have anything to hold up. I will talk about him because I love him today. Have I continued living? The duality exists, but I am grateful for going to the therapist. I'm grateful for the support groups that I've attended. I'm grateful for the grief share program that I participated in and that I do lead at my church. I am grateful.

Speaker 1 (46:30.158)
for all the whiskey sours that I drank that first year and a half. I thank my liver for being my friend. I drink more water now. I am grateful for every part of this. I am so grateful I got to know him. I am so grateful that he was my husband. I am so grateful that if I had to do this all over again and I could not change, I would sign up for it without any hesitation.

And I am grateful that I've been able to take what was the most horrific experience of my life. were on vacation together, the military base in Delaware, and he had that heart attack there. That was his time to leave this world. And he could have been in the one bedroom apartment that we got for him in Virginia. But I had the gift to be there with him because he deserved to have his wife there with him.

And for God to now take that and create a way for me to use that to help other people to know that they're not alone, like you have done with your brother's passing, to have a conversation, to normalize grief, to host mental health events, to provide resources and share with people to know, I hear you saying this is the most horrific experience of your life.

I am here to hold your hand because I have some scars, some battle scars from my grief right here. You may not see it because the coat is white and everything looks pristine, but when we get together and we start, oh girl, that scar there and over, you're not alone. We are on this journey together.

Thank you so much. That's the power of sharing these stories. Like how would you know what somebody else's experienced or going through if you don't share these stories? And sometimes I get like, yeah, but they're so sad. Talking about grief is so sad. I find it to be life-affirming. I find it to be a source of connection. I find it to be the opposite of that. Are there sad elements? Of course we lost our people. They passed her. There was a big unfortunate event. And like you said about the duality and

Speaker 2 (48:49.014)
We get to connect with people on a very human soul level. We get to help each other along the way. I don't think we're meant to do life alone. It's okay to be by yourself and be independent. And when things get difficult, it is really important to lean into community, to lean into these resources and to listen to these stories. Absolutely. One of our previous conversations outside of this episode, you mentioned something that stood out to me and I absolutely loved. You kept Mark's last name, even though you are currently remarried.

And I love the reason why. So if you don't mind sharing the with the audience, why.

I'm trying to get through this without crying.

Oh no no, you can here. can cry here.

So I did date, I did remarry. I met this wonderful man on a dating app and he literally lived like 20 minutes from me, but our lives just would not have crossed. So we dated for three years and now we're just a few months from getting married. And one of the ladies at work goes, so when are you changing your name? And I was like, who, what? I was like, I was like, wow, this could be a deal breaker. And I was like, I'm not sure. Well, I'm going to have to ask him because

Speaker 1 (50:01.582)
I'm going to have some tough conversations. So we're out eating. And I say, so what do you think about changing names? And he's like full on getting ready to bite into it. I think it was a burger. And he looked at me. He was like, you change your name? He said, your children would not have a parent in this world with the same last name. Girl, I was like, see that, that right here, that is why I'm marrying you because you get it. He said, I'm not.

in competition with Mark. You love me and I understand that. And what I have learned, if I may share from talking to other widows or widowers who are dating, you have to find someone that is confident and secure in who they are. They need to understand you will always love them.

It blows my mind that someone can get a divorce and talk about their ex. And everybody's like, yeah, yeah, da da da da da. But I talk about my husband.

Never a problem. People ask me when I started a widowhood real talk with Tina, how does Fray feel about that? He's over like, she needs more people to follow her YouTube. She needs a hundred people about it because he's confident in who he is. And he wants me to support and encourage other people. And it's not about him because he's my husband.

such a mature person, a mature soul that sees a bigger picture and understands that our capacity to love is big and it is profound. like you said, you don't stop loving somebody because they pass. They are very much a part of your daily life and your daily life. also like the part where you said, well, if I remove my last name or I change it, my kids, they won't have a parent with the same last name. I thought that was very powerful and very beautiful. Thank you for sharing that story.

Speaker 1 (52:07.0)
Thank you. I love him for that. just, it shows that he understands that the duality. I often think about when parents have more than one children, even though the kids may bicker that one parent loves one child more than other. If you have the space to love your children and you have the space to do those things, I didn't see the logic of cutting myself off from love. And I'll add this. Sometimes people say, well, they, no one else can be like them. You're absolutely right.

There will never be another Mark Formwell. There will never be another man that can treat me like Mark Hood. But what I learned? There is the potential for someone to treat me better. There's a potential for someone to come to know this version of Tina that was created from loving Mark for 32 years that made me the woman that I am. That the version that Fred got of me is not the version that Mark got at 18.

grown so much, I have matured, I've traveled the world. I was in the army for 21 years. There are so many things that have cultivated and made me the person that I am. The level up is huge to be in that space with me. And for me to not make myself available to have had what I have now with Fred. And then on top of it, Mark had a heart issue in his entire family.

and unfortunately was very much thinking he would leave this world before 60. So we spoke about what life would look like if he left this world and he articulated to me, I want you to remarry. I want you to have a life. And I share that because if you're married, have those tough conversations with your spouse, because I cannot tell you the amount of guilt and difficulty from widows and widowers that want to...

Continue dating or remarry and feel like they're doing something wrong because they didn't have that conversation And you may not be able to have it now But what I can encourage you to do you can write a letter to your spouse Let that letter sit come back in a day or two and write the response. Maybe you need to hear it that way to Give yourself permission to continue living the other thing I'll say dating

Speaker 1 (54:31.606)
and getting remarried is not gonna solve your grief journey. That working on me, my grief was something I needed to do independent on a solid level before making myself available to a relationship. Fred is not solving my grief journey. That's a Tina work. That's a Tina therapist, God thing that has to happen before I could say that I was in a space that I can make myself available.

to love someone else and be available to them emotionally and physically and spiritually. Wow.

very powerful who we are in different stages and versions of our lives changes over time. Whether you lose somebody or not, change is the only constant and we are constantly evolving, hopefully evolving. But you are worthy of being loved then at 18 and you're worthy of being loved now in this version of yourself. so 15 inch wear.

D.A.

Speaker 2 (55:32.206)
And I just feel like that's so important for people to hear because the, unfortunately, the widows that I've spoken with, the women who have lost their partners or significant others and husbands, there's so much guilt in moving forward, not knowing like, do I take the ring off? Do I keep the ring? When do I, do I sell the ring? Do I change my last name? Do I move in with this person? Do I, there's so many questions about how do we do this? What's okay? What's not okay? Where do we draw lines? Are there lines? And

In that discovery process, the answer is different for everybody, but what advice would you give to perhaps the young widow, somebody going through this for the first time, somebody finding themselves with more questions than answers?

Wow, I want to say something before you said that. So you mentioned wedding bands. I actually just had this here. didn't wear it today. These are our wedding bands. The inside heart is my wedding band and the outside heart is Mark. I took it to a jeweler for them to reshape the wedding bands because I wanted to wear it always. The continuation of that love didn't end when Mark died. It shifted. But this is a representation like jewelry that I can wear all the time.

And when I was wearing them around my neck, it enlisted questions from people. Like, what is that? And why are you wearing them? Like, we're not trying to do this in the grocery store like ops. But this doesn't draw questions and it still represents to me. For that widow, first of all, I am so sorry that you are part of this widowhood and how you feel is valid and how your hurt

is manifesting is real. And if anyone's telling you that, seek advice elsewhere. I would encourage you to just let it be, to write it down. There is something so healthy in journaling. Now know you can do an audio message and I'm a fan of those, but there is something powerful about writing down your thoughts, your feelings, no matter how scattered.

Speaker 1 (57:40.598)
no matter how bizarre you may think they are, write it down because it's gonna be reflective for you to go back and share that. And it's interesting, I pulled out the right books. There is a widow named Addie Green and you can find her books on Amazon and she has a journal called Moving Through Grief, a healing journal. And she has another journal called the Interactive Healing Workbook, Bloom.

You want to go through some things you've never thought possible and you are your best friend. You are the expert on your life experience because you have lived it. And the ability to be honest with that, I would encourage you to find a mental health professional to work with. I mean, a therapist or a psychologist. I'm a grief coach. That's not who you want that first year.

you need reflective looking back in life and doing things. And I say that first year in a very nonchalant way until you're ready for something else. It may be three years or five years, but when you are in heavy lament, you got to worry about kids. If you have small children, you got to worry about trying to still hold up life. You may have financial struggles. You may, there are so many different things that life is continuing to go.

And you're on pause and life is not pausing. And if you have the ability to reach out to support group, and if you go to one and they don't work, leave them and go to somebody else like you with a hairdresser, do not feel like you committed because you went to a couple of meetings. Reach out to Nina, reach out to myself and say, this is my scenario. there a group you can connect me with? Because community is powerful.

Community is the lifeline. We have a grief discord and there are people with all different types of loss and at two o'clock in morning when you can't sleep, you can message somebody on the grief discord talking about what you're dealing with and somebody will message back and you go, I am not by myself. There are other people dealing with this. And reach out to people that you know that have gone through something similar. The other thing,

Speaker 1 (01:00:03.352)
There are people in your life that you love and they love you and they promise they were going to do everything and they were going to show up and they are the invisible people right now. You have not seen them since the funeral, since they dropped off that casserole you threw away. You have not seen them in a long time and you are bitter mad at them. But let me tell you, they don't have the emotional bandwidth, the mental capacity, experience.

to show up in what you need and they don't have the ability to even articulate that because they may feel like a failure. And the question I pose to you, who did you show up for before your spouse died? Were you that invisible person for other people? And I say that to let them go. Let that go from you. But take the people that know how to show up because I'm almost certain the people you wanted

to show up, didn't know how, but there have been some other people in your life that you have not been counting as high as you couldn't go. They did call me. They did let me cry. They did understand. did gravitate towards those people. Take the win. Take the people that understand because they just didn't know how. So don't put that weight on them. Get rid of the list. We tell them, I'm not talking to them anymore. I'm not talking to them. I'm talking to them.

Get the love from the people that want to give it to you. And those are the initial things that I would share.

So important, powerful, and so relevant, yes, to everything you said, to getting rid of that list. It might be difficult at first. I remember how resentful I felt towards the people that I thought would be there and weren't. And I said, well, in my mind, I didn't say this to them, but I was like, you're gone out of my life. I can't stand you. I can't believe you didn't blah, blah, With time, I kept hearing, show yourself grace, grace, grace, grace. And then I learned in hindsight and with some space in between that that grace can be extended to other people, especially those who didn't show up in the beginning.

Speaker 2 (01:02:05.804)
because all the reasons that you just mentioned. And that's a very powerful lesson. It's not easy in the moment, but not everybody's meant to be in our lives. Some people are there for a season. Some people are there for a lifetime. And that includes in grief. Tina, you are a wealth of information and anybody listening, I know you're receiving so much wisdom in this conversation. If somebody wanted to work with you, I would love for you to share how they can reach you, where they can listen to the podcast and your community.

and where they can find you.

Thank you. You can find me anyplace on any social media platform. But if you go to our website, widowhood, real talk with Tina dot o RG, you can see the links to other social media platforms that we're on. You will see a link to our podcast. Wherever you listen to podcasts, you can listen to widowhood, real talk with Tina that is on audio on 15 different podcasts and applications. So where you're listening to podcasts were there.

If you want a video version of our podcast that is seen on our YouTube channel, also under widowhood, real talk, if Tina or on our website, on our website, you can see the different events. What I have learned is that when people are grieving, we're not always so ready to talk to other people. So, as you know, we leverage social media. have an amazing presence on IG where you're sharing content and you're given encouragement and the different clips that you give. So similar to that.

being on platform to share that information when someone's at two o'clock in the morning and I'm sure you get messages where someone said I just saw your video and thank you and you didn't even know they existed until they reached out to you and share that and it's important to do because sometimes it can feel like a thankless job. It can feel like you're doing something but when you know this is a thing that you're supposed to do and that one person reaches out.

Speaker 1 (01:04:02.37)
That's one person that knew they were not by themselves. And one of the ones I think that is the most popular is our Walk for Love event, which is the first full week of August. And for those seven days, we ask people to post hashtag walk for love, hashtag their loved one's name. And the reason being, and you probably can resonate with this, sometimes we don't have spaces to say our loved one's name outside of something like this.

So for seven days, people are posting their loved ones first name. They're doing video sharing about them and just sharing about who they were in their life and what life has been going. And it gets people out of the house also because when you've been grieving, you don't always take care of yourself and your wellbeing and to be out in the sun, getting that vitamin D.

And one mile is just enough to not be like intrusive, but like, okay, I did something. Some people may be out on their medical devices, wheelchairs, whatever it is, what it is to move your body. Some people walk in the house, but it lets them know they're part of this community that is embracing, celebrating love, celebrating our ancestors, celebrating the people that have been important in our life. And so the events are listed there. The different things that we do are all on the website.

Well, I will link everything in the show notes and the Walk for Love is, said the first week of August.

Correct? August 3rd through the 9th.

Speaker 2 (01:05:31.854)
August 3rd through the 9th. So make a mental note, put it on your calendars. I'll put it in the show notes. Subscribe to her channel, through her podcast to get notified. I think that's a beautiful way of making people feel included, seen, not alone and given the opportunity to share their loved one's name in community and love and community extends beyond our understanding and our physical capabilities. when we, please go ahead.

I'm sorry. We have three events that are in person here in Norfolk, Virginia. Okay. One, we have a butterfly release ceremony that is going to be on June 7th and we have butterflies we're going to release. We're being given people pins and journals, just being there and just to celebrate the person. The foundation is providing the butterflies. We are also starting a memorial garden in the same location where we're doing.

the butterfly release ceremony, and then there'll be some refreshments, like refreshments that day. And then also the first weekend in December, which is December 5th through the 7th, we have a get together here called, Survive in the Winter Holidays, where we have people from DC, from Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, Tennessee, come here and celebrate, laugh. Friday night we got together, had a social.

Then there's breakfast on Saturday, Saturday evening, there's another get together. And then Sunday there's breakfast and then people head home. So we, the need to be in person is huge, especially when you see people on the internet. It's like, want to know who they really are. And people came and we were in person and danced and laughed, took pictures and had a good time. So we do provide that also. just want, when you said about the virtual, I wanted to share that too, sorry.

No, I love it. And thank you for sharing that. I'll link that as well. And it's good to know that you have both options. So you have that virtual get together. I love the butterfly release concept, the memorial garden and the holidays. It's how we integrate the love and loss into our lives and how we move forward. I've heard, I was feeling so good for a few months and then it hit me again. That's the nature of grief. You know, it just sometimes shows up when we least expect it and having these outlets pre-planned way...

Speaker 2 (01:07:50.124)
better when we're in community. So thank you for all you're doing. Thank you for your offerings. As a final question, what would Tina today say to Tina after Mark's passing?

Girl, you okay? It's okay. You did good. And I'm proud of you. I am proud of you that you found your voice in this. I'm proud of you that you didn't let somebody else define what this had to look like. Because who would have ever thought

32 years of being with this man would on the flip side yield a nonprofit that has had over 4 million views across 106 different countries. You are still sharing Mark's love story today. There are sponsors for businesses lining up with us, supporting and doing that, that we had a secret Santa that kids who lost their parents got Christmas gifts and did that.

There is something beautiful that can be birthed out of our pain. I didn't go into it with that mindset and was the furthest thing from my mind. I allowed myself to be sad, to cry, and still crying today in different moments in time and relating to Mark. And it's okay. And I would tell her, you're gonna be okay.

Your love for Mark lives on in the most beautiful way that ripple effect echoes in eternity. Tina, thank you for sharing your story for all that you do for this community and for the ways you help so many.

Speaker 1 (01:09:31.022)
Thank you for allowing me to be here this year so much.

That's it for today's episode. Be sure to subscribe to the Grief and Light podcast. I'd also love to connect with you and hear your thoughts and your stories. Feel free to share them with me via my Instagram page at griefandlight, or you can also visit griefandlight.com for more information and updates. Thank you so much for being here, for being you, and always remember, you are not alone.