[00:00:00] Nina: Welcome to another episode of Dear Nina, conversations about friendship. Today I have a guest with a personal story to share about starting a new life after a horrific tragedy.

. Her name is Jen Zwinck, Jen wrote after my husband was killed, I moved with my daughter to a small island in the Caribbean where I didn’t know a single person. I went there to heal. What surprised me was the friendships that I formed while I was there.

These women who came into my life divinely, I believe, became my angels and my stand-in family. We shared the bond of being expats, and I’m still close with them to this day. Jen will of course, expand on that story. There’s a lot to tell. I just wanna tell you a little bit more about Jen before we get started.

Jen’s Wink is a co-founder of the Widow Squad online community. A widow advocate and an author. She has interviewed over a hundred widows and coached hundreds of widows through her courses and online programs. , she lives outside of New Orleans now, but I will let her tell you how she got there. It’s an incredible story that I myself, have not heard , so I just knew I had to have her here and we could all hear it together. Jen, welcome to the show.

[00:01:11] Jen: Thank you so much, Nina. Thank you for having me.

[00:01:15] Nina: I’m really grateful that you’re gonna share this story because I think it encompasses a lot of the things I talk about here, which is having friends help you in a tragedy. Having to start over in a whole new place. ,

so I’m just gonna let you go and let you get started. I’ll interject when I have questions.

[00:01:29] Jen: Okay, so we can just start with the story of what happened to my husband. This was 2011, so it’s been, it’s been some time, but he was invited to a bachelor party and he decided to go, I. Was encouraging him to go because this was a man that never went out. Like he loved to stay home with his girls.

We had a two-year-old daughter at the time. so I just encouraged him to go. He said, I don’t really wanna go, but I’m gonna go. And anyway, so this party was in the French Quarter, in New Orleans. And

[00:02:06] Nina: living in New Orleans at the time?

[00:02:08] Jen: We were living about an hour outside of new. And so he went to the party. He, you know, it was a quick kiss, goodbye.

He said, do I look okay? I said, yes, you look great. Go have fun. so he walked out the door. It was a Saturday night, October 15th. 2011 he called me from the car and we talked for, you know, a good 45 minutes while he was driving down there. , I was going to spend the night at my parents’ house while he was at the party.

Anyway, he said he was going to text me when he got back to the hotel after going out at night. So he went, I went to my parents’. Maybe like four o’clock in the morning. He was, , supposed to text me. He did not, I was looking at my phone, no text. Then it w got to be like, , eight o’clock in the morning, still no text.

I went home because he was supposed to meet me back at our house to have, breakfast. And then , we were gonna watch the Saints game. Saints game was supposed to start at noon that day. So , Claire and I, my daughter, we were just sitting there waiting again, nothing happening. Then noon comes and the game was starting and he still wasn’t.

Then I started texting his friends and I said, okay, he’s not home. Did you guys go to breakfast? What’s going on? He texted me right back and said, no, we haven’t seen him since last night. I’m gonna go to the hotel room and go check and see if he’s there. So he went to the hotel and he wasn’t there

his friend called me and said, it doesn’t look like he came back last night. Like there’s no sign of him sleeping in the. he said, why don’t you bring the baby to your mom’s house and then come down here and I’m gonna get on the phone with the police and we’re gonna start, trying to look for him.

And meanwhile, in my head, I’m just like, what are you talking about, ? You know? Okay. So I called my parents and I said, Hey, Brent’s missing, Can you watch Claire? I’m gonna go down there. Like, it just sounded just weird coming out of my mouth.

[00:04:13] Nina: , where were his parents living

[00:04:15] Jen: in, Minnesota,

in Minneapolis, Minnetonka actually

[00:04:19] Nina: Yeah, it’s a weird coincidence, but Jen and I really just met through the podcasting world and I knew about her story and wanted her to share it, but we didn’t know until today that her husband was from the exact suburb I live in and went to high school where my kids go to high school.

[00:04:37] Jen: Yep. I know. So strange.

[00:04:39] Nina: So they were still here. I didn’t know if they had moved , so,, they were still living in Minneapolis.

Okay.

[00:04:44] Jen: Still up there. So my mom watched Claire while my dad came with me. I grabbed some pictures of Brent and we went downtown, and by this time it was, I don’t know, three o’clock in the afternoon. , the police showed up and I showed pictures. Everybody. Out, you know, going to the bars, retracing steps, talking to bartenders where, you know, trying to get video footage from the bar.

The last time the guys saw him was about four 30 in the morning, and he was at the bar and he was done, like, he was just tired, right? So he wanted to leave. He was like, I’m done. I’m out. And that was the last time so they were trying to go back to that bar and just find out if anybody saw anything.

this went on for several hours. By this time it’s getting dark. We still didn’t know anything. I was on the phone with Sprint, that was our cell phones. We were trying to track his cell phone, and finally we were able to do that. And I don’t know, it must have been around eight o’clock at. We tracked his cell phone to, uh, a junkyard that was probably three or four miles from where he was. the police, we all got in our cars. Everybody goes over to the junkyard , it’s pitch black. It’s a Sunday night. There’s barbed wire all around the top. It’s a giant junkyard, there’s like rottweilers and dobermans underneath the fence, just like barking and everyth. so we’re just walking around, you know, yelling in there, thinking that he might be in there.

And I’m just in a day he is like, what is happening right now? And so the police got the fire department to come out because we couldn’t see inside and we couldn’t get in touch with the owner because it was a Sunday night. It was like nine, 10 o’clock on a Sunday night. And so they put the ladders up and they had these big spotlights on the end of the ladder.

And so they had two firemen up. And they kept telling me, they said, okay, Jennifer, we want you to call the cell phone and we’re gonna shut off our lights, and then we’re gonna see if we can see the, the phone light up in the junkyard. So I kept doing that. I kept doing that over and over again. And then they’d shine the light and then they’d look and then they’d shut it off.

And I was calling and they couldn’t find the phone. It was probably an hour and a half of doing that, maybe two hours of doing that. . the fire department leaves, the police were leaving. The detective comes up to me. There were two detectives in suits, and one of ’em said, okay, ma’am, try and go home and just get some sleep and just let us do our job seriously.

He said that to me

[00:07:15] Nina: Like you’re gonna sleep, unreal.

[00:07:17] Jen: what, what did he just say that to me? He really just said that to me. I. Didn’t think that they did that in real life. I thought that was just in the movies. . No, he said that to me. , so I said, I’m not leaving here. What I, I don’t have my husband. I’m not leaving,

my dad was like, let’s go, we’re gonna go. So this is a midnight, we get, back to my parents’ house of course I’m not sleep. I had so much anxiety. In the bedroom that we were sleeping in with, I, I was sleeping with Claire in the back bedroom and my mom had put a little nightlight in there for her because she gets scared cuz she was two.

the light was shining. Casting a shadow from this thing on the dresser. I just kept saying, gimme a sign. Gimme a sign that you’re okay. I need to know that you’re okay. I need to know. On the wall there was a shadow and it was , his silhouette on the wall, his full size silhouette. And I saw it and I was like, no, that’s not the sign that I want. No. Gimme something else. . Tell me that you’re okay. I need another sign. And so I just looked at it and I knew in my heart, if he was anywhere in this world, he would’ve gotten in touch with me, yeah, then it, the nightmare began. I, I knew that he was gone. My head was trying to make sense of it and say, no, maybe he’s just in jail, or maybe he met someone on the street and whatever. I was just trying to make up stories so the next morning was when we were contacted by the coroner’s office and I had to go down to the coroner’s office.

my brother came with me, my parents came with me, and I had to, , identify him , and then the nightmare started. that week was just planning the funeral, contacting friends, contacting everyone.

So what happened was he had left the. he was followed by a guy. He went, , a block from the bar and then he took a left instead of turning right, the hotel was to the right, he took a left and it was a really dark side street.

And this person came up behind him and hit him on the head and took his wallet, took his phone. So he had no identification And so when he, he was found, somebody came walking down the street and he was on the sidewalk and they found him, they called 9 1 1, they took him to the hospital they didn’t have any identification, so they had to contact the police and the coroner and everything.

And then it finally got to us on Monday morning,

[00:09:53] Nina: Oh my gosh,

[00:09:54] Jen: him. this person, That did this to him was found. Eventually The detectives that worked on that were incredible. They were amazing. They were climbing down into sewers to find evidence, like they had taken his ID and just thrown stuff in the sewers, and they were looking at video cameras and they were trying to find, all this evidence, just compile all the evidence that they could The person that did this tried to run, they did actually get on a bus and go up to Missouri to stay with family and hide, but the family turned them in.

[00:10:30] Nina: That’s so interesting.

[00:10:32] Jen: family turned him in. they brought him back to New Orleans then he went to jail. This was probably three weeks after it took a

few weeks.

[00:10:39] Nina: actually kind of faster than, you know, you see these, or here are these stories where, I mean, it takes so long and I’m glad there was video that they were able to all the evidence. That’s unbelievable. So he went to jail. Did you ever have to confront him

[00:10:54] Jen: The way that, yeah, I know , our justice system is very slow. , we had. Put a plea deal in for him since day one, he refused it and didn’t take it. And so there was trial dates and trial dates and trial dates, and then they would get postponed. So I would have a trial date set and then four months later it was canceled because they were trying to get more evidence and they had contacted a witness or they thought a witness, and then they would postpone it.

And this went on for four years. Four years?

[00:11:34] Nina: just horrific. So this is dragging on. So you must not have left, , town. Yet in, in your story, right, because you were, you kind of stuck there

[00:11:43] Jen: No. Actually it did not work out that way two weeks after he was killed, My mom was, , outrunning errands one day she asked if I wanted to come and join her, I said, sure. You know, I’m in total. hadn’t gone back to work yet.

She said, meet me at the McDonald’s. we’re gonna go run some errands after. I said, sure. Okay. So Claire and I go to meet her at McDonald’s we’re sitting there. We had gotten our food the people behind the counter. I started to notice them talking a little bit louder. , it sounded like something was going on back there. And, and then I heard one of them say, oh, he’s coming this way. and I was like, what is happening? My mom had gotten up to go to the bathroom with Claire, so they’re in the women’s room, I’m sitting there eating my french fries. out of the side window right next to me, I see this police car pull up and just screech to a halt. And then the policeman jumps out. He’s got his gun out like this, runs into the bathroom, runs into the men’s bathroom, and runs back out, jumps back in the car, and then screeches off away. I’m just sitting there eating my fries in a total daze, What just happened Then my mom comes walking out of the bathroom with Claire and says, guess who just went to potty? Because she was potty training her.

[00:13:08] Nina: Oh

[00:13:08] Jen: Uh, we were potty training her. We were in the middle of this, so she’s two, I’m just sitting there like, I can’t deal with the world right now.

There was just so much violence. What happened was a guy, a guy had robbed the bank across the street and. This is little suburb. This is, nothing happens in this town. No kind of violent things. And then this person robbed the bank across the street and ran over and was hiding around the McDonald’s that we were at.

the police were looking for this person in the bathroom with a gun with my mom right there with my two year old. And I felt like the world was coming down on me and I. Like I was just being crushed and everything around me was violent and everything was this brutality and violence that I could not handle.

I couldn’t, I said, I can’t take this. I cannot be here. I don’t feel safe. so I left the McDonald’s after having a little bit of a panic attack, , with my mom. Told her what was going. I took Claire straight home and I bought a plane ticket. I bought us plane tickets to go down to Turks and Caicos.

in the Caribbean and this was our vacation spot. This was our happy place. This is where we always went, a couple of times a year just to get away. Brent loved it. It was one of his favorite places too, and I was familiar with it, so I said, I’m gonna go down there for Thanksgiving because I’m not even gonna attempt to try and stay here and feel like there’s a normal Thanksgiving happening,

, I can’t do that either. So I’m gonna take Claire and we’re gonna go for like two weeks. And a really good friend of mine came with us. So she was there for a week, and then it must have been like day three or something. I told my friend, I said, I really feel like I need to live here She said, okay, let’s see if we can make that happen. You know, she was, she’s a really good friend of mine and she’s an engineer and she’s very Type A, so she sat down with my books and my balances and just said, can we make this work financially? At the end of it, she said, I think we can, Jen, I think we can make this work.

[00:15:20] Nina: That’s a good friend, by the way, who can sit there? It’s like a lot of times we have different friends for different reasons, and a friend who could sit there and help you make a decision like that, practically, not just emotionally, but literally, can you afford this and going through it with you. I mean, that’s a really, that’s a treasure.

Are you guys still

[00:15:35] Jen: Oh, absolutely. . She was my roommate in college and dear sweet, awesome friend of mine, and she did that for me. She came down, she said, I’m gonna go with you. Just so that you can do what you need to do. If you wanna go sit by the pool, if you wanna go sit by the beach, if you wanna go walk on the beach, I’ll watch Claire.

I’ll just be here for you. And she did. She took a week out of her life and did that for me. So that was amazing,

[00:15:59] Nina: So when you first went, it was just to get away, be somewhere else for Thanksgiving, you weren’t necessarily intending. To

[00:16:05] Jen: right? Not until the third day and I said, okay, I think I need to be here. It’s just so peaceful and it’s. It’s quiet and I need the solitude. I just need to be away from everything that I know. So I found a place. Here’s another interesting thing. I wanted to stay, in the places that I was familiar with on the beach.

I wanted to get a condo if I could, , afford it. And my friend told me I could. I started to contact, The owners of these condos just to see if they would do a long-term lease for me. And the only one that responded to me was a guy from Elie, Minnesota. Brent’s favorite place to go is was the boundary waters to go fishing and kayaking and camping.

That was his love of his life, and this guy that owned the condo. Was a Bush pilot in the boundary waters and lived in Elie, Minnesota. I was like, I cannot believe the divine intervention that is happening right now. . But he, yes, so he emailed me back and he said, I can work with you.

This is how much it’s gonna be, . My friend helped me and I signed the lease and I said, okay, we’re gonna be back January 1st. So this was Thanksgiving. I came home and, told my parents that I was going

[00:17:27] Nina: I was wondering how that went, telling your parents and telling your in-laws.

[00:17:31] Jen: so my dad said, nobody knows what you’re going through, Jen. Nobody knows how this feels. He’s like, a year is a really long time. Why don’t you go for six months? And I said, no, six months is not gonna do it. It’s just, I had removed myself for Thanksgiving because I didn’t want that reminder.

I wanted to be down there for all of those occasions, all of the firsts, because we had Valentine’s Day coming up. We had, you know, mother’s Day, and then Father’s Day coming up and his birthday, and all these occasions and all these things. I just did not wanna be home for that, for that first year, and, A lot of times what happens with grief, I mean, we just, we lose control, right?

Your life is totally out of your control. It really is. I was trying to control as much as I could, by making those decisions. And it didn’t make sense to a lot of people. I mean, I didn’t know anybody down there. I didn’t know a single person. I just felt in my gut that this is what I need. I need to.

Be in a place where I can focus on being a mom, because my parents offered for us to go and live with them. And they kept saying, let us help you. You can come and stay with us and we’ll help take care of Claire. And I know a hundred percent they would’ve done that. They would’ve let me lay on the sofa all day, every day and just help me.

And I said, I, I have to be a mom. I have to figure this. And I can’t do that if I have all of my, people around me. And anyway, so there was a couple of reasons that I, I ended up leaving to go down there, but January 1st, we packed our bags I had, four suitcases went down there. I was able to get , Claire into a little British school.

They had a, a private school. It’s a British island. So I was able to get her into this little British school, three half days a week I think is what we started with. Just, you know, 9:00 AM to noon, but just enough for me to have her go and make friends and be social and all that kind of stuff.

And then give me that time to myself where I needed it. And you know, as soon as I would drop her off at school, I was crying, walking to the car. I could have my cry session and my pity party and just be sad and do what I needed to do to get through my grief and then pick her up at noon and, and we’ll have our day, so yeah. What happened was, I started to make friends through her school.

[00:20:09] Nina: were people from all over the place. Like what did other people get there, like kind of different avenues the way you did, not exactly the way you did, but for different reasons.

[00:20:17] Jen: So there were a lot of people there for, their husbands were contracted workers either at a resort, they were either a chef or, in management doing something at a resort. And so they would be there for one year or two years, or it was all temporary, right? There was a handful that actually lived there full.

But most people were just, were contracted to just be there during a certain amount of time. The wives were there for their husband’s jobs. , it’s not an easy place to work, you have to jump through a lot of hoops to get, a work permit to actually work there.

[00:20:54] Nina: I wondered if you needed a permit of some kind , can you just go live there for a

[00:20:58] Jen: You have to leave every three months.

and they don’t care if you fly to the US and you stay for 24 hours and then you come back .

[00:21:06] Nina: Maybe you could go see the grandparents,

[00:21:08] Jen: we did, , we scheduled it so that it, it, it kind of fell in line with Easter. And then it kind of fell in line with, okay, there’s summer break. So we would come home for a few weeks, each little three month stretch.

So I was meeting these women because of course we would drop off the kids and then everybody’s walking back to their car, so you just kind of start to chit chat with the moms and you get, kind of get to know them. And then this one says, well, everybody’s going to get coffee.

You know, do you wanna join us? And then I would go and join and, and meet them for coffee. So there’s this whole little expat community I kind of, stepped into that. They didn’t know me, but we’re all. On this island and we’re all there temporarily. and then the kids were getting along so great.

that was just this stepping stone for me to get to know these women. And what was funny was that these were highly educated, television producers and doctors and dentists and everything, and they moved to this island for their husband’s. But they weren’t able to work, and so it was all the moms.

I never really saw any of the husbands, honestly, but so it was all the moms all the time because we were all in the same boat and these friendships just started to form that way. The thing is, nobody knew. As the me that I was with my husband and nobody knew him. I’m stepping into all these new friendships as a person. I’m trying to figure myself out still, I’m still the person that I was, but I have changed and my experience had changed me so much in everything that I went through. however, I didn’t bring that into those relationships. You know, they knew my

[00:23:00] Nina: them what? Yeah, as I say, they must have known, I mean, I don’t know how they could, you could even make a friend without them knowing this kind of life story.

[00:23:09] Jen: I’m, a single woman with a two-year-old on an island. They’re like, why are you here

[00:23:17] Nina: You’re crying all the time, right?

[00:23:19] Jen: What is going on with you?

[00:23:21] Nina: It’s like out of a movie, Jen, what happened to Brent and. And you picking up and going was such a brave and hard thing to do, not knowing if you would make friends, and it’s probably, you probably like weren’t thinking of friends first and foremost.

It’s obviously, friendship is always on the forefront of my mind in this podcast. It’s not like you’re leaving New Orleans and heading to Turks and Caicos planning to meet friends. You’re just trying to get away. But I think without friends it would’ve been lone.

[00:23:48] Jen: it would’ve been a totally different experience. like I told you, these women, they just became my angels. It was like I went there. Seeking solitude, right? I was trying to get away .

I went there for peace and quiet and I went there , to heal. . The universe was like, no, no, no.

It’s not really what you need. You need these people in your life and I. Traveled with these women. I’ve been to their houses. They are from originally all over the world. the other interesting thing that I wanted to tell you about was the people that I met where I was living because I was living in a condo at a resort.

every day Claire and I were either down by the beach or we were swimming. I was teaching her how to swim. we were playing by the pool, had her Barbies, so there’s families everywhere. There’s families on vacation they’re there for a week, you know, like Saturday to Saturday.

And then they would leave and go back home. And so the kids, if they had kids, it was always the kids would get together and they would start to play by the pool, or were on the beach and the kids find each other and then they start to play. So Claire always had little friends around. She would make friends It’s so easy for kids, right?

And then I would go and sit and start talking to the mom or the dad or the grandparents or whoever was on the vacation. in the first five minutes they’re always asking, how long are you here?

When did you get here? How long are you here? And then I would say, well, we’re here, you know, for a year we’re gonna, we live here. I would say something like that. And they’d be, What you live here. Okay, what? How did that happen? And then I would tell my story sometimes, a lot of it, sometimes not much of it, it always ended up like, okay, I’m a widow.

I live here. I’m here for a year. And they would just kind of take me under their wing and invite me to come and hang out with them in the week that they were there. There’s these people here on vacation. Everybody’s happy. nobody’s, nobody’s ever in a bad mood. Everybody’s on vacation,

[00:26:02] Nina: and Tes. And Caicos.

[00:26:03] Jen: I mean, everybody’s got their drinks in their hands and walking around and there’s music playing and there’s tiki torches, and it’s just beautiful it’s paradise.

I’m surrounded by happy people, happy families. And they invite me to come. They’re like, you know, Hey, here, have a drink and come and hang out and we’re gonna go for a walk down to this restaurant later. You wanna come with us? And they would invite me to go. And so I would, I would say yes,

So I met so many people that way. Of course, they were just temporary people in my life for the week. And then they would go back home. I was never lonely.

[00:26:39] Nina: You know what’s interesting, Jen? the timing of this. If it was now I think all these people you were meeting sort of temporarily, you would be like Instagram friends in two seconds and you would maybe even have a false sense of having to stay in touch with people that weren’t necessarily meant, I’m not talking about the women who were the moms of the school, but just some of these other people in the condo who were on vacation for a week.

there’s something really cool about these casual people that come in and out of our lives that you don’t have to stay in close touch with everyone. It was the right time. Cuz that was just, if I’m remembering myself correctly, like that was kinda like the beginning of people our age being on Facebook and stuff.

It wasn’t like it is now. It wasn’t, I don’t know that you would’ve friended someone. I feel like now people were pretty quick to find each other on Instagram and this and that, but I don’t know that it was like that Then did you, did you find that to be

[00:27:27] Jen: So Facebook was definitely kind of getting going at that time. my intention when I did go down there was that I would stay in touch with friends and family through Facebook, then I was told by the attorney in our case. To not be on Facebook?

[00:27:42] Nina: Why? What did it have to do? It’s not like you did

[00:27:44] Jen: Nope. I didn’t. I did nothing wrong. But she said, and I’m so glad she told me this, she said, don’t put any pictures of you out into the world being happy, smiling, having a good time, showing that you’re moving on with your life.

She said you would not believe how people can twist and the attorneys will twist things to use against you.

Even just a picture of me smiling.

[00:28:13] Nina: That’s disgusting.

[00:28:14] Jen: The only way that I could stay in touch with my friends was through email. I would email them pictures, I would email them, here’s an update I was very isolated in that way, ,

because I wasn’t supposed to be on Facebook.

[00:28:30] Nina: But then it probably did force you to not overly connect actually. You wanna connect with people, but it’s like there wouldn’t be any reason to just be in touch with every tourist who came

through, like after the

[00:28:40] Jen: right.

[00:28:41] Nina: How long were you there in the end?

[00:28:43] Jen: So we ended up staying for a total of two and a half years. It was a little over two and a half. So the year went by and then I wasn’t ready to come back. Claire was about to start kindergarten, and that point was kind of this distinct line where I said, okay, I should probably get back home and just figure out our life from this point and have that be a starting point.

[00:29:10] Nina: That. That makes sense. Kindergarten’s like a good line. Did you know you wanted to go back closer to your parents?

[00:29:15] Jen: know where I wanted to go. That was the other

thing. I could go anywhere in the world. I chose to come back to Louisiana just because my parents are here and Claire is so close to with my parents, and so. I chose to come back to Louisiana because of that. You know, I have other family here and all of my previous friends ,

[00:29:39] Nina: I wanted people to hear that you can.

Create A community that can help you and it doesn’t have to be forever. it’s, sounds like you were very open and willing, even in a really tragic time in your life to like let people in.

Maybe there was something about it being temporary that made it less scary. Do you think so?

[00:29:57] Jen: Yeah, I think so. . like I said, those friendships, the, the solid friendships that I made with the other moms, they continue to this day. , those are my girls.

[00:30:06] Nina: How do you stay in touch and how do you see each

other? Or do you see each

[00:30:10] Jen: yes, Facebook. And then also, , well now after Covid, we can start traveling again,

So the, , other thing that, we didn’t get to touch on was my widow friends

that have also become, that have also become, , a huge part of my life was finding this community of local widows in Louisiana. That I can connect with and go to. Those are my go-to girls for anything related to widowhood,

It’s this instant bond there. It’s what’s bringing everyone together. There’s no subject that’s off limits.

[00:30:49] Nina: Are they around your age?

[00:30:51] Jen: Yes. Yes.

We’re all moms about the same age.

so again, it’s like, okay, well Claire said this and she’s asking about her dad. What do I say? You know, just, just to feel like you’re not alone going through this. It’s just a very isolating experience, widowhood in general. my friendships since Brent passed away, I would say, 75% of my friends now are widows, , people that I have met after he was gone, and the people that have come into my life through my podcast that has opened so many doors, I don’t know if it’s like that for you, Just changed my life. I mean, I’ve done over 120 episodes interviewing widows on Widow 180 these are new friends. Every time I talk to somebody, it’s a new friend,

[00:31:39] Nina: totally. You’re having an intimate conversation. You feel so close to the person

Do you have like an age cutoff in your groups?

[00:31:45] Jen: We have these little pods, is what we call ’em. We have pods for solo parenting. Pods of solo moms of little ones. We have the empty nester pod. so we have all of these different age groups that we bring in all these different topics and, guest speakers to come in and talk to our ladies about any subject, any widowhood subject

[00:32:08] Nina: That’s incredible that you, you’ve taken something so horrible happening to you and, and you’re able to help other people. You’ve been through something and not everybody can do that. I really commend you and you’ve brought so many people together. that is what helps us to survive these hard times as other people.

And it’s like you’re giving. Back to people who are now going through not your exact story cuz your story’s pretty unique I bet. Although unfortunately there is so much violence, there are people left behind.

You probably could help people with that too. So tell them where to find you.

[00:32:41] Jen: Okay, a couple of different places you can find our online community. That’s widow squad.com. You can find the podcast, that’s Widow 180, the podcast. And then also I do have a YouTube channel, widow 180, the channel. And then just go to my website because I have a bunch of different blog posts and resources and things there.

And that’s just www.widowoneeighty.com.

[00:33:03] Nina: Yeah. So if you’re looking for resources like that, you know, somebody then send them Jen’s way, she and her team can help you. Jen, thank you so much for being here, for sharing , your story with us. I know that was just a , slice of it, I think it’ll really help people who are listening

[00:33:17] Jen: Thank you so much, Nina. Thank you for having me.

[00:33:20] Nina: Listeners come back when our friendships are going well. We are happier all around.