The Dead Truth Podcast

Five years into widowhood, Stacey Comer isn't pretending to have it all figured out. And that's one of the things I love most about her. Stacey met her husband, Chris, later in life, and as she describes it, their love was simply “just right." But when Chris's health began to decline, Stacey became his caregiver, his biggest advocate, and the person standing beside him through yea...

Content note: This episode discusses addiction, mental health struggles, and suicide. In this deeply personal episode of The Dead Truth Podcast , I sit down with Emerley, a 38-year-old mother of four who lost the father of her two youngest children. Their relationship wasn't perfect. There was love, addiction, separation, and the hope that someday they would find their way back to each other. ...

Being alone and being lonely are not the same thing. Widowhood taught me that. I've spent nights completely by myself and felt perfectly okay. Peaceful, even. And I've stood in rooms full of people and felt painfully alone. Because sometimes loneliness isn't about needing more people around you. It's about missing one particular person. The person you told the everyday stuff to. Th...

When someone dies, we expect to grieve the person we lost. What we don't expect are all the other losses that quietly follow. The loss of your future plans. Your sense of safety. Your identity. Your confidence. Your routines. Your financial security. Your friendships. Even the little moments that once felt ordinary. These are called secondary losses, and they're one of the most overlooked...

Not every episode is meant to be heard once and forgotten. Some conversations hit differently depending on where you are in your grief, what kind of week you’re having, or what life has decided to throw at you lately. That’s why we do Episode Rewinds —bringing back conversations worth hearing again, or maybe discovering for the first time. So if you missed this one, hit play. And if you’ve already...

What gets passed down through generations of widows? Strength? Resilience? Survival? Or do we also inherit the silence, fears, expectations, and ways of grieving that the women before us learned simply because they had no other choice? In this episode of The Dead Truth, Jen sits down with author and widow Dori Ann Dupré, whose new novel, Widows & Children, follows generations of women connecte...

People talk about living with grief. But sometimes that doesn't feel quite right. Because grief isn't always something sitting beside you. Sometimes it feels like the room you're standing in. You wake up inside it. Go to work inside it. Grocery shop inside it. Laugh inside it. Build things inside it. Have surprisingly good days inside it. And sometimes, out of nowhere, grief kicks the...

After loss, everyone seems obsessed with the question: Who am I now? And right behind it comes another one: What is my purpose now? And somewhere along the way, I think we've put an awful lot of pressure on grieving women to answer both. As if losing your husband wasn't enough. Now apparently you're supposed to reinvent yourself, discover your purpose, find the “new you,” rise from the...

Why do we apologize when we cry? Someone we love died. Our entire life changed. We’re trying to figure out how to live in a world without them—and somehow, when the tears come, we’re the ones saying, “I’m sorry.” Sorry for what? In this episode of The Dead Truth, Jen talks about the tears we fight, the ones that ambush us in completely ordinary moments, the days we can’t cry at all, and those huge...

Apparently, there are rules to widowhood. Cry—but eventually stop. Talk about him—but not  too  much. Keep your wedding ring on if you want—but apparently somebody will have an opinion about that. Don't date too soon. Don't wait too long. Be strong. Be vulnerable. Move forward. But for God's sake, make sure you're moving at a speed everyone else finds emotionally convenient. Got it...

Some grief begins long before someone dies. It begins in doctor's offices and hospital parking garages. In pill organizers, insurance calls, sleepless nights, canceled plans, and learning medical words you never wanted to know. It begins when the person you love is still right beside you—but life as you knew it is slowly changing. In "The Grief Before the Goodbye", I talk about the o...

Grief doesn't just empty your cup. It changes how much you have available to give—and yet we often keep expecting ourselves to show up, perform, help, say yes, and take care of everyone exactly the way we did before loss. In Part 2 of The Dead Truth Cup Method Series, we're talking about what happens once you recognize what's draining you. We'll talk about how grief changes emotion...

When someone dies, we expect to grieve the person we lost. What we don't expect are all the other losses that quietly follow. The loss of your future plans. Your sense of safety. Your identity. Your confidence. Your routines. Your financial security. Your friendships. Even the little moments that once felt ordinary. These are called  secondary losses , and they're one of the most overlooke...

What happens when grief doesn't show up right away? What if you've spent months—or even years—wondering why you weren't crying... only to find yourself falling apart long after everyone else thought you had "moved on"? In this episode of The Dead Truth, we're talking about delayed grief—the kind that quietly waits until life slows down, until the crisis has passed, or unt...

This is one of those conversations that lives in the quiet moments… the ones where your brain won’t shut off. You replay things... you question things. You try to understand something that changed your entire life. And the truth is… grief doesn’t just hurt. It totally confuses you in every way, shape, and form. So today… we’re going there… I’m asking the question, "Why does death defy logic?&...

So, how does grief in widowhood change over time? Surprisingly, it does. We call these “grief shifts." Grief shifts happen in subtle ways. It changes shape every time you do. It moves. It breathes. It circles back. Sometimes it softens. Sometimes it explodes. Sometimes you’re healing and hurting at the exact same time. And THAT is the part you are not prepared for. You don’t get over grief. Y...

When Stephanie's husband died unexpectedly, she found herself navigating grief, loss, and the complicated reality of a relationship that wasn't always easy. In this powerful conversation, Stephanie shares her journey through widowhood, the challenges of loving someone struggling with mental health issues, the importance of trusting your intuition, and the lessons she learned about standing...

I think one of the biggest shocks after loss… is realizing how lonely grief actually is. Not just physically lonely. Emotionally lonely. Because grief changes the way you experience the world. In this episode, I discuss the loneliness of grief. The invisible parts. The isolation. The disappearing people. The moments you feel emotionally abandoned. But I also talk about the unexpected people who sh...

Grief doesn’t just break your heart; it drains everything you have. And then the world looks at you like… why are you so tired? Why do you feel so exhausted in grief? And not just tired… like deep, bone-level exhaustion. The kind where even small things feel heavy. Because here’s the truth…Grief doesn’t just take your person. It takes your energy. Your focus. Your capacity to handle life the way y...

This episode of The Dead Truth is a powerful conversation with a widow who lost her husband to cancer over 15 years ago. She raised four daughters on her own, never remarried, and has built a life that now includes grandchildren — all while carrying grief that never fully leaves. This is the side of widowhood we don’t talk about enough: 👉 Long-term grief👉 Raising children through loss👉 Identity...

What if losing your spouse didn’t just break your heart emotionally… but changed your body in ways no one warned you about? What if grief in widowhood could actually kill you? Because the dead truth is… for widows, there is a real, documented increase in mortality after losing a spouse and no one is talking about it enough. The Widowhood Effect is the very real phenomenon where a surviving spouse—...

June is Pride Month - a time often associated with celebration, visibility, community, and love. But what happens when Pride arrives and the person you shared it with is gone? In this Pride Month episode of The Dead Truth, Jen explores the unique challenges LGBTQ+ individuals may face after losing a partner or spouse, including invisible grief, chosen family, end-of-life concerns religious trauma,...

What is one shift that happens when you become a widow that isn’t always talked about? In the “before” of your before and after… you didn’t have to think about everytYour spouse held part of the weight. And now? You’re the one thinking about: Safety, Finances, Emergencies, and “What if” scenarios. Before loss, safety was shared. But the part you weren't prepared for? It’s the moment you realiz...

Grief teaches you things you never signed up to learn. It changes how you flow through the world and it will change who you are. Not permanently in a bad way…but permanently in a real way. You stop pretending. You stop tolerating things that don’t matter. You stop shrinking yourself to make other people comfortable. And yes—that version of you might make some people uncomfortable. Let them be unco...

Nobody really teaches us how to honor love while we still have it. Most of us think there will always be more time… more conversations… more ordinary moments. Until suddenly, there isn’t. In this deeply personal episode of The Dead Truth, Jen talks about the painful realization many grieving people carry after loss: “Did I love them well enough?”Together, we unpack:The replay loop grief creates. W...