May was loud: music, dancing, laughter, a 60th birthday celebration, a first book signing, an Amazon Bestseller, fundraising, family, community, and a retirement that officially closed a chapter of my life that had lasted decades.
June has been quieter, not empty. Just different. I am learning that after a milestone comes something we don’t talk about nearly enough: the ordinary morning after. The decorations come down. The congratulations slow. The photographs are saved. The book sits on the shelf with your name printed across the cover.
And then you wake up and ask yourself: Now what? For the first time in most of my adult life, I am no longer organizing my days around a full-time job. I retired from civil service after 45 years of working.
Even writing that sentence feels enormous. I planned for retirement, prepared for it, and looked forward to it. But I’ve discovered that being ready to retire and understanding who you are once you have retired are two different things: 1. There is freedom here. 2. There is also adjustment.
Retiring at 60 was not a dream I created alone. It was part of the plan Mark and I had for our life together. We worked, planned, and looked toward a future when I could step away from full-time work and enjoy a different pace of life. I reached the milestone we had planned for, and there was tremendous joy in finally being able to say, I did it. I retired at 60. But there was also an unmistakable ache because Mark was not here to see it happen.
June made that absence particularly tender because June 1st was Mark’s birthday. His birthday has always been a day that belongs to him in my heart, and this year it arrived at the beginning of such a significant transition in my own life. I found myself honoring him not only by remembering the man I loved, but by recognizing how much of the life I can live today was built during the years we shared. This retirement was once part of our plan, and reaching it without him reminded me again that grief can find its way into even our happiest accomplishments.
At the same time, I am deeply grateful for the husband who shares my life today. Fred has cared for me, supported me, and helped make it possible for me to retire at 60 and step fully into this next season. I don’t take that gift lightly. Widowhood has taught me that gratitude for the love I have today does not require me to diminish the love that helped build yesterday. Both are part of my story. Both deserve to be honored.
Then came Father’s Day. Father’s Day in June is always hard for our family. Mark wasn’t only my husband; he was Catherine and Alexander’s dad. They are adults now, but adulthood does not remove the longing for your father. We spent time on the phone talking about their dad, remembering him, saying his name, and acknowledging that we still miss him. Some days, grief becomes a family conversation again, and Father’s Day is one of those days for us.
As their mother, I cannot take that loss away from my children. I cannot give them their father back. What I can do is stay connected to them, listen, remember with them, laugh when the memories make us laugh, and allow the sadness to be present when it needs to be. Nine years later, we are not pretending the loss no longer matters. We are learning how to carry our love for Mark together as our own lives continue to change. Perhaps that is another lesson inside this new season: moving forward does not require leaving anyone behind.
For years, Widowhood Real Talk with Tina, my podcast, writing, speaking, nonprofit work, and the countless conversations surrounding grief existed alongside a career. Evenings, weekends, lunch breaks, calendars, deadlines, and the constant negotiation of where my energy needed to go next.
Now there is space and, strangely enough, space requires adjustment too. June has allowed me to begin asking a different question: not what do I have to accomplish next? But how do I want to live this next chapter? That distinction matters. Because purpose does not have to become another job. I am still showing up.
The Five Widows Club is now out in the world, and this month I have had opportunities to meet readers face-to-face at author events. There is something entirely different about watching someone pick up a book that once existed only inside your imagination. They turn it over. They read the back. They ask questions. Sometimes they tell you their story. And suddenly, the book isn’t entirely yours anymore. That may be one of the most beautiful things I am learning about becoming an author. Publication is not the end of the writing journey. It is the beginning of a relationship between the story and the people who find themselves somewhere inside it.
The nonprofit work continues, too. Widowhood Real Talk with Tina continues reaching people far beyond anything I could have imagined when I first began speaking openly about widowhood and grief. The programs continue. The podcast continues. The conversations continue. Even our Children of Widowhood Secret Santa program is already preparing for another season of supporting families. Retirement did not end my work. It changed my relationship with it. And perhaps that is one of the most important lessons June has given me. I don’t have to fill every newly available hour simply because it exists. That lesson is becoming particularly real as I prepare for another transition.
On June 30, I will have knee replacement surgery. My knee has been through quite a journey of its own, from a car accident last November to a fall in December when it gave out, to physical therapy, exercise, and attempts to strengthen it enough to keep going.
Eventually, the body has a way of telling us when continuing to push is no longer the same thing as moving forward. So, this next chapter will begin, quite literally, with learning how to walk again. There is something almost poetic about that.
I have spent years talking about rebuilding life after loss. Now my body is asking me to practice some of those same lessons differently: patience, rest, accepting help, honoring limitations. Trusting progress, even when I can’t see it immediately. And perhaps most difficult for someone who is accustomed to doing: allowing healing to be productive enough.
I don’t know exactly what July will look like. There will be physical therapy. There will probably be frustration. Some days progress will feel obvious; other days it won’t. But there is something wonderfully freeing about realizing that I don’t have to know.
May reminded me of what can bloom. June is teaching me what happens after the bloom. You tend what has grown. You protect it. You give it room. And sometimes, you allow yourself to sit beside it and appreciate that you made it here: sixty years old. Retired, a published author, an Amazon Bestseller, still leading a nonprofit born from one of the most painful experiences of my life, still learning, still becoming. And now preparing to receive a new knee that I fully expect will have me walking into whatever comes next.
Maybe this season isn’t asking me to do more. Maybe it is asking me to experience more of the life I worked so hard to build. For now, that’s enough. If you are standing in the strange quiet after one of your own milestones after the celebration, the achievement, the ending, or the beginning you don’t have to decide what comes next immediately. Sometimes the next chapter begins by letting yourself arrive. Pull up a chair. I’m learning how to do that, too.
— Dr. Tina Fornwald
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