COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT
Hello from Minnesota!
Kelli B. and Katie O. are Community Advocates for the Modern Widows Club Minneapolis South community. They’re about to celebrate their 1-year anniversary serving widows in their community!
They first met at the MWC Minneapolis West community, 5 years ago. They both agree that attending Modern Widows Club meetings is the best decision they made in their healing journey after losing their spouses.
At that time, Katie was living very near the MWC Minneapolis West community but Kelli unfortunately was not, and spent at least an hour commuting to attend meetings. They continued attending meetings and getting to know one another throughout the years. As life often does, a curveball was thrown and Katie ended up moving a couple of miles down the road from Kelli. With both living so close to one another, they wanted to serve more widows within the Metro area of Minnesota. And so, with much encouragement from the MWC Minneapolis West Community, their chapter was born. They held their first meeting in April 2022.
Their philosophy from the beginning was to organically grow the group by opening their homes. They wanted to start small while they became more confident in their Community Advocate roles. It was important to both Katie and Kelli to have the meetings set in their homes to make it comfortable for the widows they serve, and to have their children see the importance of the work they are doing.
They relied on website traffic and word of mouth. Much to their surprise, they’ve had more than 50 widows reach out within this year, with an average of 8-10 widows attending each meeting. They are serving a variety of widows along their grief journey.
Some of the special things they’ve done this year include connecting with the Minneapolis West community for a boat cruise, a holiday party with games and gift exchange, and a Valentine’s Day celebration that included Katie’s 12-year-old son making Valentine’s treat bags for all of the ladies attending.
Katie and Kelli are so thankful for the wonderful ladies who have attended their meetings, and are excited to celebrate their 1-year anniversary next month.
To learn more about the Modern Widows Club Minneapolis South community, or our other regional, international, and virtual communities, just click below.
MWC SPECIAL EVENT
Join Us in St. Louis on July 28 for a Special FUNdraising Event!
Join your Wisters (widow + sisters) for an evening of fun and baseball when the St. Louis Cardinals meet the Chicago Cubs at Busch Stadium.
Come experience the cheers, the laughter, and the sheer enjoyment of a summer night under the ballpark lights with your friends at Modern Widows Club!
First pitch is at 7:15pm. Be sure to arrive early for a pre-game honorary pitch by Modern Widows Club Founder Carolyn Moor, fulfilling one of her life-long dreams!
Your ticket costs just $75 — the average ticket price for this game is $95! This special baseball FUNdraising event benefits Modern Widows Club.
All seats are in the Right Field Box, sections 128-130. We’ll be together in a group! Only 500 tickets are available for our group, so be sure to purchase yours soon.
Click below to learn more about this special event and buy your tickets.
MOOR THOUGHTS
Reimagining a Future for Widows’ Health: The Next 20 Years
By Carolyn Moor, Founder, Modern Widows Club
This weekend I attended the visionary event Lake Nona Impact Forum. You may or may not have heard of this innovative 3-day event focused on a commitment to cultivating health and wellness innovation that can advance quality of life, yet it’s the most awe-inspiring, life-changing experience I’ve been honored to partake in. Partners in the innovative, health, and technology sectors are plenty from KPMG, Chopra Foundation, Guidewell Innovation, Verizon, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Fortune and Worth Magazine, Advent Health, HCA Florida Healthcare, Microsoft, Nemours Children’s Health, UF Health and the Edyth Bush Charitable Foundation (which sponsored my delegate invitation).
A list of world-renowned speakers from many countries flew in to Lake Nona over three days, beginning at the KPMG Lakehouse, an 800,000 sq. ft. facility and training center for their worldwide business.
I have spent hours attempting to put into words what I experienced, knowing that it was life-changing while I was experiencing it moment by moment. The #LNIF23 list of speakers is a convening of the Nation’s Top Thought Leaders in Health and Healthcare. They actually brought in International Top Thought Leaders too!
My widow advocate heart was on full alert, seeing clearly how widows and their health could benefit from so much that existed in this space to solve the complex issues and challenges that have gone unseen, unsupported, and unresearched for women in widowhood. I was able to see how solutions in other areas could overlap with the solutions yet to be created for our community. Mental health, well-being, advocacy, innovation, technology, prevention, research, education, awareness, and stories of impact.
It made me imagine a new future for widows’ health and challenged me to challenge myself to think “What does it look like to be in the most stressful life event — losing a spouse/widowhood — and be unprepared vs. equipped to have a health pathway to ensure that widows flourish?”
It needs prevention, intervention, acute responses, and short- and long-term planning across the many decades of a woman’s journey, because widowhood happens from the 20s to the 90s. There is a flow to the single, to wife, to widow process that is happening millions of times every day. The entire process from wife, to pre-widow, to wife-to-widow transition, to the widow journey. 70% of married women become widowed in their lifetime, and in 2023, that will be over 1 million wives to widows. The United States has the world’s third largest population of widows, and Florida has the fourth largest population of widows among U.S. states.
Click below to continue reading Carolyn’s article.
MENTAL HEALTH MOMENTS
Creating a Life After Loss
By Cyndi Williams, MSW, LCSW
March 16, 2023 marks 10 years since I lost my husband, best friend, and father of my children. Ten years ago, when Joe’s life ended, it felt like mine did too. Everything I thought I knew about who I was, how I would raise my children, and what my future held was ripped away unexpectedly by undiagnosed heart disease.
As his angelversary approaches each year, I often find myself reflecting on the days and weeks that followed. I had family, friends, a career, and children who needed me to heal and show them that we would get through the devastation.
After weeks of feeling an agoraphobia-like fear of leaving the house, I realized I had to make an active choice to live, a choice my husband wasn’t afforded. It was a terrifying prospect to think of creating a life and future that did not include him physically with me.
Joe and I met in our late teens and became fast friends. When we later fell in love, we had no idea what the future held for us. We faced what life presented us year by year, never planning too far ahead, but living in the security that we would face whatever came our way together as a team. After 16 years of marriage, we were both happy with our life, family, and career, but life didn’t look like either of us might have imagined it would 20 years earlier when we had first met.
As I slowly came out of my grief fog and my heart began to heal, I realized that in losing the life we had built and loved, I was also given the unique opportunity to create the life I wanted.
As we create a life after loss, we can choose to make new connections, engage in life, and find comfort and joy in those moments. We can choose what we want to take forward in our new life. We can also choose what we don’t want to take forward. We can choose to be intentional and purposeful in finding out who we are now. This is a new beginning, and we can choose how we want to proceed.
Widowed in 2013, Cyndi Williams is a mental health advisor and contributor for Modern Widows Club. Follow her on Facebook at CyndiWilliamsLCSW.
#WEE2023VIRTUAL
Meet Our WEE 2023 Virtual Speakers!
Throughout March and April on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, join Modern Widows Club Founder Carolyn Moor LIVE for discussions with our WEE 2023 Virtual speakers!
These conversations will be a fantastic opportunity to learn more about our speakers, the powerful work they do, and the topics they’ll be discussing at WEE 2023 Virtual.
The interview series begins tomorrow, March 17, with professional organizer Suzanna Kaye from Spark! Organizing.
You don’t need to register to watch! Just join Carolyn and Suzanna live at 11am ET for a great discussion.
Please check in regularly on our social media channels to learn dates and times of our other upcoming live conversations with our WEE 2023 Virtual speakers.
To learn more about WEE 2023 Virtual, or to register, click below.
#YOUTUBEVIDEOS
Have You Visited Us on YouTube?
We share a lot of great content on YouTube, including videos from Carolyn Moor and the Modern Widows Club team, livestreams and interviews with widow champions and advocates, Carolyn’s monthly videos discussing our seven Pillars of Healthy Widowhood, special events and presentations, and much more.
If you haven’t yet checked it out, we hope you’ll come by — and please click the “Subscribe” button!