Widowed AF: Real stories of love, grief and beyond - With Rosie Moss

In this episode, host Rosie Moss speaks with Ric Hart—a writer, speaker, and solo father who lost his wife Jade shortly after the birth of their son Hugo in 2018.

Ric shares the raw reality of grief colliding with fatherhood: bringing a newborn home alone, feeding Hugo through sleepless nights, and confronting what he believes were preventable hospital failures. From that devastation, he found purpose—writing children’s books that comfort his son, publishing an adult memoir, and creating a podcast and nonprofit work to support other grieving families.

He also opens up about how contrast therapy—a mix of sauna and ice baths—helped him regulate his nervous system and eventually became a practice he now shares with others.

Together, Rosie and Ric explore:

• The trauma of losing Jade during childbirth and the isolating experience of widowed fatherhood.

• How Ric broke time into “hour-by-hour” survival to keep going in those first months.

• The role of writing, storytelling, and advocacy in transforming grief into purpose.

• The social isolation of being a widowed dad in mother-centric parenting spaces.

• Rebuilding identity through contrast therapy and creating a coaching practice.

• Dating after profound loss and finding space for new love alongside eternal grief.

• Practical advice for anyone grieving: take small steps, let yourself feel, and lean on the people who truly show up.

As Ric says, it’s about “just turning up”—for your children, for yourself, and for others walking the same path.

In this solo episode, host Rosie Moss shares her own story with unflinching honesty.

Seven and a half years after losing her husband, Rosie now faces a second upheaval: the end of her marriage. She reflects on how new heartbreak can reawaken old wounds, leaving her once again asking, how the f**k do I get back up?

Rosie talks candidly about raising three children, two with additional needs, while navigating school moves, GCSE pressure, and the relentlessness of being the only adult her kids can lean on. She admits to feeling exhausted, isolated, and often overwhelmed, but also determined to keep going.

Amid the chaos, she finds moments of light:

• Finishing her first book on widowhood.

• Hosting her debut Widowed AF retreat, a space for connection and healing.

• Being named a finalist at the British Podcast Awards, a reminder that her work matters.

  
  

This is an episode about overlapping griefs, solo parenting, and starting again when you didn’t think you had the strength. With dark humour, humility, and fierce honesty, Rosie invites you into her world, proof that even in the wreckage, there can still be community, meaning, and hope.

In this episode, Rosie Moss sits down with Clare McCue, who faced one of the most difficult journeys imaginable: walking with her husband Mattie through ALS, and ultimately supporting his decision to die with dignity through Canada’s medical assistance in dying (MAiD) law.

Clare shares candidly what it meant to prepare her young son Hudson for his father’s death — not by hiding it, but by weaving him into every stage of the process. From navigating a chaotic healthcare system during lockdown, to explaining assisted dying with honesty and compassion, Clare opens a window onto the realities few families ever speak of.

The conversation explores:

• The emotional, legal and practical steps of pursuing assisted death in Canada.
• How Clare and Mattie made space for dignity and agency, even in decline.
• The raw reality of telling a child that his father had chosen the time and place of his death.
• How organ donation added a powerful sense of legacy to Mattie’s final act.
• The ways Clare turned grief into action through community fundraising and everyday rituals with Hudson.

As Clare says, “Hope wasn’t that everything would be okay, but that there would be meaning in how it worked out.”

This is an extraordinary story of love, courage, and the controversial but profoundly human choice of assisted death.

At just 31, Karla Hawkins’ husband Dan was diagnosed with stage four bladder cancer. Overnight, life became a whirlwind of surgeries, drug trials, and caregiving — all while trying to hold onto hope.

In this moving episode, Karla shares:

• The shock of a rare diagnosis in young adulthood

• Becoming a full-time caregiver while balancing work and finances

• The phone call that told her Dan had just one week to live

• Their last-minute wedding in his father’s garden before hospice care

• The decision not to use Dan’s stored sperm after his death

• How she rebuilt her life while keeping Dan’s memory visible

This is a story about love, logistics, loss — and the impossible choices we make when time runs out.

In this episode, Rosie Moss speaks with Rachel Powell, who lost her husband Andre to suicide after years of battling undiagnosed depression, sex addiction, and harmful church dynamics.

Rachel opens up about the reality of living in a marriage marked by broken boundaries, secrecy, and the crushing weight of spiritual control. She explains how her attempts to set a safety plan were met with resistance, and how guilt, silence, and church pressures compounded the crisis that ended in Andre’s death.

We talk about:

• The intersection of addiction, mental health & faith communities

• Surviving suicide loss while raising children and adopted relatives

• Leaving unsafe faith spaces to protect her daughters

• The judgement she faced from family and church members

• Her journey through suicidal thoughts, therapy, and rebuilding identity

• Founding Hope Speaker to support others affected by suicide and loss

Rachel’s story is one of unflinching honesty, deep pain, and incredible resilience. She shares how honesty with her children about their father’s death has opened a path toward healing, and how community, therapy, and a safer faith space have helped her reclaim her life.

This is an episode about truth-telling, survival, and the strength it takes to rebuild when the systems meant to support you instead cause harm.

More information about Rachel Powell can be found here www.hopespeaker.com/coaching

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In this episode, Rosie Gill-Moss speaks with musician Sephine Llo (Josie) about love, loss, and the complicated road to motherhood after bereavement.Josie married fellow musician Rob just days after his stage-four cancer diagnosis. Over the next two years, they endured 30 rounds of chemotherapy, multiple surgeries, and the looming reality of terminal illness—all while clinging to hope and planning for a family. Before treatment began, they froze embryos, a decision that would shape Josie’s life long after Rob’s death.When Rob died in hospice care, Josie was carrying their son Laurie. Years later, she returned to those frozen embryos to conceive their daughter, Connie. Now a solo parent of two, she speaks with raw honesty about postpartum depression, the judgement she faced for using embryos after loss, and the daily work of raising children who will only ever know their dad through photographs and recordings.Music threads through it all. For years Josie couldn’t write a song, until she found Rob’s unfinished demos and turned them into Diamond Fall—a posthumous album released on what would have been their tenth anniversary. She describes it as a conversation with Rob, and a way to keep his voice alive for their children.This conversation touches on:Managing illness, work, and finances as cancer takes over a householdIVF after bereavement and the emotions of parenting children conceived with a late partnerThe silences of grief: “I didn’t laugh for years”Dating again after monumental lossContent warning: Includes discussion of terminal cancer, IVF after partner death, hospice care, suicidal thoughts, and solo parent grief.If you’re a solo parent, bereaved partner, or navigating medically complex grief, Josie’s story may resonate—and remind you you’re not alone.

In this episode of Widowed AF, Rosie Gill-Moss speaks with writer and journalist Rachel Bourgham, author of Widow Land. Rachel’s world changed in an instant when her husband, Colin, was killed in a cycling accident just blocks from their home. What followed was the brutal reality of sudden loss: raising a nine-year-old alone, navigating paperwork and blame, and trying to make sense of a future she never asked for.

Rachel talks openly about the strange mix of grief and survival—the shock, the humour that creeps in at the darkest times, and the moments of anger and tenderness that come with parenting through loss. She also shares how writing became her lifeline, and how love found its way back into her life without erasing the past.

This conversation is honest, unpolished, and deeply human. If you’ve ever wondered how to survive when the ground shifts beneath you, this episode is for you.

#WidowedAF #GriefJourney #SuddenLoss #WidowSupport #ParentingThroughLoss #LoveAfterLoss #GriefAndHealing #WidowsOfInstagram #LifeAfterLoss #GriefPodcast #HopeAfterGrief #YouAreNotAlone

In this episode, Rosie speaks to guest host Orla Blackburn—a self-proclaimed “feckless” adult whose life veered sharply off course after losing her partner, Andy, to cancer. What follows is a no-holds-barred conversation packed with bruising honesty, dry humour, and the kind of emotional realness that defines Widowed AF.

Orla doesn’t sugar-coat a thing—from cheap wine in foreign campsites to the relentless slog of diagnoses, impossible medical decisions, and the numbing admin of death. She lays bare the daily grind of solo parenting a neurodivergent son, the silence that follows undelivered casseroles, and the deep loneliness that creeps in once the world moves on.

Together, Rosie and Orla navigate the mess of grief: a care system that fumbles the dying, the emotional landmines of funerals and family rifts, and the jaw-clenching terror of financial freefall. But amid the chaos, there’s also resilience—and even absurdity. Orla shares how tear-streaked yoga classes became her unlikely sanctuary, and how new routines, messy reinvention, and a raw, unfiltered widowed community helped her start to rebuild.

There’s hope in here too—fierce, practical optimism for anyone parenting through loss.

If this episode resonates, you’re not alone. Subscribe, share it with someone in the trenches, or just take a breath. We’re all muddling through—one step, one form, one funeral at a time.

In this episode, Rosie sits down with Kelly Orme for an achingly honest conversation about surviving sudden loss, parenting through heartbreak, and building a new life from the ashes. Kelly found herself widowed in 2021 after her husband Nick died unexpectedly from an undiagnosed heart condition. With her trademark warmth, Rosie lets Kelly take the lead, sharing how she and Nick met as teenagers, built a life together in Sheffield, and weathered years of ups and downs—including other family tragedies—before everything changed overnight.

 Kelly details the wrenching day her daughter Holly found Nick and how grief ricocheted through their small family. The episode wrestles with the shock waves of sudden death, the messy admin and practical hurdles that come with it (spoiler: there's nothing fair about frozen bank accounts and endless forms), and how grief seeps into the daily grind—school runs, food shops, and negotiating new routines.

Rosie and Kelly don’t shy away from the tough stuff. They get into the guilt and the “what-ifs,” how trauma rewires your brain, and the way friendships and community can either buoy you or fall away. Parenting when your own world has collapsed is front and centre, with real talk about supporting a grieving teenager through unreliable mental health services and the weight of unanswered questions. Kelly shares how genetic testing has added complexity, and how both she and Holly have struggled—and grown—through it all.

But it’s not all bleak. There’s plenty of dry humour, a few wobbly laughs, and real hope: from Holly’s small triumphs to forging new traditions together and daring to take holidays again. Kelly’s story is a raw, relatable mix of pain, resilience, and the kind of fierce love that refuses to give up. Whether you’re newly grieving or finding your way years in, you’ll find solidarity, understanding, and maybe a bit of comfort in these honest moments.

If you felt seen by today’s episode, you’re not alone. Keep on keeping on—one slow step at a time.

In this episode, Rosie Gill-Moss speaks with Colleen Clarke, a widow from Australia who shares her deeply personal story of losing her husband Steve to motor neurone disease (MND). Through a candid and honest conversation, they explore the realities of caregiving, the emotional toll of terminal illness, and the resilience required to parent a young child while facing unimaginable loss. This powerful episode touches on motor neurone disease, grief, widowhood, parenting through terminal illness, and the long arc of healing.

Colleen and Steve met as teenagers and spent over three decades together. Their love story, which began with a pub dance and grew through years of shared life, took a devastating turn when Steve was diagnosed with MND—also known as ALS. Colleen recounts how the illness slowly robbed Steve of his ability to speak and move, and how she shifted from being his partner to his primary carer. She explains the uncertainty that surrounds MND diagnosis, the slow progression of symptoms, and how the family held on to normality for their daughter, Sarah, for as long as possible.

Listeners hear how Sarah was conceived after years of IVF and a surprising encounter with Brazilian jungle herbs—an unexpected yet joyful part of Colleen’s story. But the joy of becoming a mother was followed just five years later by the slow, cruel advance of MND. Colleen explains the emotional and logistical challenges that came with managing a terminal illness at home: palliative care planning, home adaptations, medical equipment, and navigating grief in real-time. Her experience highlights just how fragmented the support system can be, but also shows the difference strong community networks and dedicated carers can make.

As Steve’s health declined over three years, Colleen found strength in peer support, online communities, and palliative care teams who helped maintain his comfort and dignity. She also reflects on the communication barriers that emerged as Steve lost his ability to speak and how they found new ways to stay emotionally connected—including using an alphabet board and pre-recorded messages. Her story underscores the emotional complexity of being both wife and caregiver and the internal conflict that arises when love and duty become indistinguishable.

Colleen also shares the impact Steve’s death had on Sarah, who was just eight at the time. They discuss the delicate balance of protecting a child while being honest, and how Sarah eventually returned to education after years of disengagement. Now 18, Sarah is pursuing a degree in film and media—testament to her strength and the care her mother put into helping her navigate grief on her own terms.

This conversation offers rare insight into life with MND and the long road of widowhood that follows. Colleen’s story is a vivid account of emotional survival, practical adaptation, and the enduring strength of mother-daughter connection. Her openness about depression, the challenges of solo parenting, and her cautious optimism for the future provides real-world understanding for anyone dealing with terminal illness, bereavement, or solo motherhood.

Key takeaways from this episode include the unpredictable progression of motor neurone disease, the importance of early palliative care involvement, the hidden toll on carers, and how children experience grief differently. It’s also a testament to how human connection—through peer support groups, counselling, and shared experience—can anchor someone through the darkest seasons of life.

Whether you’re supporting someone through illness, grieving a partner, or parenting alone, Colleen’s story will stay with you long after the episode ends.