THE BOOKS
Companions to help you grieve well
The Hardest,
Not the Worst Year
In her book, "The Hardest, Not The Worst Year", Kathie shares her story of deep love and profound loss after becoming a widow in her sixties. If you are grieving or know someone who is, this book will provide the trusted reliability of a compass to safely guide you on your journey of loss.
As she shares her ongoing journey of grief, Kathie also sheds a light on the beautiful blessings she has experienced along the way, providing hope and the promise that you will find your way through the darkness and the pain. The Hardest, Not The Worst Year, is a book she never thought she’d write, but she hopes it will ignite a passion in you to love life where you are with little regret. Remember: when we turn towards our pain,
we find the possibility for healing.
The Diary of a
Widow Unfiltered
This is a book of poetry from the words we aren't supposed to say when we grieve.
Grief doesn't arrive gently.
It breaks in. It rearranges everything.
And then it leaves you with thoughts you don't know where to put.
This is not a story of healing.
This is not a guide on how to move on.
This is what it actually sounds like inside grief.
The anguish.
The longing. The anger.
The questions no one wants to hear.
The love that doesn't disappear just because someone did.
These pages hold the words we filter out...
the ones that feel too much, too messy, too honest to say out loud.
Written from the raw, unedited space of loss, this collection invites you to sit with grief as it is: unpolished, unpredictable, and deeply human.
If you've ever felt like your grief doesn't fit into neat sentences or quiet conversations... you'll find yourself here.
Kathie doesn't do surface-level conversations.
She talks about grief. The real kind. The kind people feel but don't say out loud.
She's a grief educator, coach, author, poet, and speaker who has built her work on one thing: telling the truth, even when it's uncomfortable, messy, or not what people expect.
After her husband of 42 years died, everything changed. Not just her life, but her voice. Writing became the place where she stopped filtering. Where the anger, the love, the confusion, and the questions could exist without being softened for anyone else.
Kathie has been writing poetry since she was a child, but it wasn't until loss cracked her open that she returned to it fully, this time without trying to make it pretty. She brings a rare mix of compassion and candor to most everything she does. She will sit with you in the hardest moments... and she will also make you laugh in the middle of them.
She often says she is "a lot." She's right. She is as unafraid to cry as she is to laugh. And she doesn't believe you have to choose between the two.
Grief is part of her-but it doesn't get to define her. Grief is part of her heartbeat now. Kathie is a proud mother, grandmother, sister, and friend. She shares her life openly online. Sharing grief, growth, and the occasional dancing video with her sister (and roommate), who is also a widow.
When she's not writing or working with clients, she's walking her dogs, trying new things she's not good at (currently pottery), playing pickleball when she can, and holding space for the conversations most people don't know how to start but need to.