January 23, 2018 my life changed forever and I never saw it coming. That morning, I woke up to find my husband of 9 years in cardiac distress and non-responsive. By 7:30 that night, I had become a widow at the age of 30. No one is prepared to handle this type devastation at any age but I found that my younger age brought many additional situations that I hadn’t considered and was not prepared to deal with. Given the title of widow at 30 brought all sorts of social landmines to maneuver.

While Brant was alive, we focused on all the regular young couple issues: completing our educations, career development and decisions, finances, and planning when to start a family, etc.  Grudgingly, we discovered that we had became part of a group that we didn’t plan to join and weren’t happy being members: we were infertile. We dealt with the ongoing trauma of loss for over seven years. I do not want your pity, life can be hard and often is for many of us.

My family life growing up had not prepared me for these struggles since my life was relatively easy in my formative years. But what I did discover was that I am stronger than I thought I was, and that given no choices, I could do hard things. And my family was there to support me in all their individual ways. My dad helped me evaluate financial decisions and was also there to help me with any and all handyman issues. My brother who is an attorney, jumped in to handle more paperwork than I think I even know to this day.  The support of my immediate family and my husband’s family was a constant comfort to me.

That experience got me thinking about each individual that shared their wisdom or expertise or comfort or smile with me. Those individual slices of the pie helped to make up the whole of my recovery. Each person had a gift that they were willing to share with me, and as those gifts of self added up, so did my healing.

I began to think about women who aren’t as fortunate to have a network of individuals to care for them. It made me remember that during this time I noticed a serious lack of professional resources available to me, in particular, help that was personal.  I have never been the girl who asks for help easily but help was required in my situation.  I didn’t want to attend large, institutionalized group meetings, I wanted someone to listen to ME and help me with MY problems.  I wanted a more private and individual form of help that let me help myself.

My lack of personal and professional resources for myself and the knowledge that other women must be struggling with their own life and death experiences led me to start WOVEN HEARTS.  I was able to navigate my challenges and through it all, I found ways to maintain hope and my life is considerably different today.  I have remarried and found purpose through my work with WOVEN HEARTS.  My goal is to bring our tapestry of resources to women who are struggling to deal with the challenges that life throws at them. Whether that is in areas of personal finance, grief counseling, career consultation, unwanted pregnancies, infertility, etc. we want to help. The goal of WOVEN HEARTS is that NO WOMAN SHOULD EVER FEEL STRANDED OR WITHOUT HOPE.