Finding my true love and getting remarried one day, hosting events for widows and creating beautiful spaces for them to connect and feel cared for, and living a long life with nothing missing, nothing left in me when I die.

hopes I'm holding onto:

Walking, listening to music and podcasts on Spotify, taking pictures, gardening, decompressing on the couch with a movie or show, reading nonfiction books, and driving my daughter to cheer, tumbling and friends' houses. 

YOU CAN FIND ME:

Chaos, conflict, division, dysfunction, disorder, game playing, lack of self awareness, staying stuck, being cold, and
cold weather.

things i don't like:

Love, adventure, wisdom, confidence, peace, authenticity, order, justice, beauty, and time.

my personal values:

Thanks to the care of a highly-skilled team at Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, Seth's primary eye tumor was successfully treated. For three and a half years, we went in for regular check ups to monitor the progression of the eye tumor and make sure the cancer wasn't metastasizing to other parts of his body. Somewhere in there, Seth was part of a major corporate restructuring and was laid off for nine and a half months. He landed a wonderful new position with another major corporation, so we made a cross-country move with our three children and signed on to build a four-bedroom house custom made for our new life. Just five months after we moved from Minneapolis to Seattle - the same week we were set to close on our new house - we found out that Seth's cancer had metastasized to his liver. We were devastated. Two years and unsuccessful treatments and clinical trials later, Seth passed away from metastatic uveal melanoma that spread from his eye to his liver, abdomen, abdomen lining, lymph nodes, rib bones, and spine. March 2020 marked his passing at 46 years of age. And I was a 43-year-old widowed mom of three children aged 16, 14, and 8.

I've been a widow for six years now. Since my husband's passing, I have seen one child graduate from high school, graduate from college, get a job and start his own life as an adult. I've witnessed another child go through high school, graduate from high school, go to college and prepare for her upcoming early graduation. And the third child has grown from a just-turned eight year old when her daddy died to a 14-year-old teenager who's just a couple inches shorter than her mom and big sister. Seth has already missed so much. A few years after he died, we made another cross-country move, this time from Washington to Tennessee. I have done my fair share of post-loss dating with four relationships and a lot of love, grief and loss behind me; I am currently single and not actively dating, but am working to rebuild myself (again), deepen my faith, and my renew my hope for a future love and future husband I have desired so deeply. And now, I find myself pivoting, yet again, with my career. Once a speech-language pathologist, turned photographer and writer before I knew my husband was going to get cancer. Now bravely moving forward attempting something new - a widow helping widows and widows-to-be with care, community and a podcast, while still keeping the doors wide open for the things I set out do to before my husband died - photography and writing. The future is unknown, but I am here. Still trying. Still living. Still battling HARD for HOPE and LIFE. 

Amy

Three seems to have been a magical number.
I prayed, discerned, analyzed, over-analzyed, and consulted wise counsel for three years, and finally decided I was going to leave my 15-year career as a speech-language pathologist to pursue professional photography and writing with the goal of becoming a published author someday. Exactly three weeks after officially leaving my career, Seth was diagnosed with uveal melanoma, a very rare form of eye cancer that affects 6 in 1 million people. We could have never predicted
this turn of events.

Whether you're a widow or widow-to-be, I'm honored that you're here. My greatest hope and deepest joy would be that this place serves you in some small way, that you feel seen, known, and cared for on your journey. That you feel LESS alone, MORE supported, and MORE connected to community. That you find resources that are relevant and stories you can relate to. That you feel safe enough to ask the question weighing heavy on your heart, the question nobody's had an answer for, the question nobody's listened long enough to truly hear. That after leaving this place, you'll feel like someone gets you, hears you, understands you, knows where you've been, where you are, and can help hold hope for where you're going.

I'd love to share a little about my own widow story. My late husband, Seth, and I were college sweethearts. We met on the lawn of his fraternity house my first week of college; he was a junior transfer student and I was a newly-minted, incredibly naive freshman who had absolutely NO idea she had just met her future husband. I remember thinking he was the most handsome guy I'd ever met, but we didn't start dating until the end of that school year. All in all, we were together for almost 25 years and married for almost 22 years. The best way I've found to describe our marriage was that we were partners, teammates, and best friends. We built a beautiful life together, which included three states, three apartments, three homes, three beautiful landscapes, and three beautiful children. Seth had a highly successful career in marketing, and I was a speech-language pathologist figuring out how to balance work, home, and mom life with varying degrees of full and part-time work. Life wasn't perfect and we had been through a LOT over the course of our relationship, but looking back and knowing what I know now, I can tell you that our life was largely stable and predictable. We had an amicable marriage. We worked hard. We took lots of Disney vacations. We participated constantly in kids' baseball, basketball, volleyball, dance, cheer, and gymnastics. Life was working for us, it was working for our children, and we assumed we would grow old and gray together.

Hello and Welcome.
My name is Amy.