Not Just a NURSE!!! Podcast
Not Just a NURSE!!! Podcast
How A Sudden Loss Reshaped A Mother’s Life And Helped Her Reclaim Herself
Grief doesn’t just break a heart; it rewrites a life. We sit with Roseanne as she shares the day her husband died by suicide, the instant plunge into darkness, and the long, imperfect climb back to light. Her story is raw and steady at once—part survival, part surrender—and it opens a wider conversation about black grief, gendered expectations, and why therapy remains taboo in so many families.
We talk candidly about shock, denial, and the relentless to-do list that follows a sudden loss: children to care for, businesses to close, homes to manage, and unfinished plans that won’t wait. Roseanne explains how “strong black woman” armor keeps you moving but can also keep you from feeling, and how allowing collapse—crying in the quiet, resting when the body demands—became a turning point. She describes the early months as steps from minutes to days, when distraction helped her function, and reflection helped her heal.
Support becomes a lifeline in this conversation: friends who flew across borders, family who moved in, check-ins that made grief bearable. We explore the hidden nature of trauma, how joyful masks can hide deep pain, and why de-stigmatizing therapy is not a slogan but a safety measure. Roseanne also shares the strange grace of dreams and symbols—a hummingbird in the window, a voice in the night—that helped her shape meaning from loss. Over time, she learned to move lighter, manage stress, and reimagine work and life with her values at the center.
If you’re walking through your own valley, you’ll find practical hope here: take time with yourself, ask for help, try therapy, and accept that healing is less about going back and more about learning to carry love differently. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review to help others find their way to this conversation. Your story might be the light someone else is looking for.
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Welcome back to Not Just a Nurse Podcast. You're here with Nurse Jax and another wonderful guest.
SPEAKER_02:Welcome back to Not Just a Nurse Podcast. I have a wonderful guest today. And today we have Roseanne. She'll be able to tell us a little bit about herself. But we are talking really about grief today and how it affects women, mostly black women versus black men. We're going to have a couple of, you know, meetings, such as we're going to meet with a therapist and we're going to meet with Roseanne, and we're also going to meet with actually her brother-in-law, so that we can just get a different perspective. And then we're just going to have a group meeting where we all come together and kind of just bounce off of each other how grief affects us. So, as you know, grief is different. Everybody grieves differently. Today we're talking about something that touches every human being at some point. We go through grief. Whether it's the loss of a loved one, a relationship, a dream, or even a sense of identity. Grief changes us. But how we experience it and how we express it often look different in men and women, and particularly black men and black women, because we are taught to always be strong. So we stay in that survival strong mode, right? So this is one of four segments, as I said before, to approach how grief works in our lives. And no one says it has to look one way, right? But we're going to just dig in and see how it looks on us. The goal is to offer insight on knowing that it's okay to grieve, no matter how it looks. Grief isn't just sadness, it's just love with nowhere to go. So I'm going to stop talking and I'm going to let Roseanne introduce herself and tell us a little bit about herself, and we'll go from there.
SPEAKER_03:So my name is Roseanne Grant, and I am a mother of two. My son is 15 and my daughter is 21. And I am a widowed going on, I think next year, April 30th, would be two years now, since the passing of my husband. And we've been married for about 22 years, built a whole life from scratch. So I'm here to talk about, I guess, my experience, even to delve into the experience of being a mother and shifting from being a wife for so long, having a partner, to going from that to now a new life of moving on as a widowed, single, with two children.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, so when you say you lost your husband, how did you lose your husband?
SPEAKER_03:My husband committed suicide. Yeah. He committed suicide actually in the island of Barbados. So I'm originally from Barbados, born and raised 13 years of my life, and I migrated to the United States. And he is actually Jamaican, Jamaican-born, migrated to the United States at the tender age of nine, and he's the last of eight children. So it's seven boys, one girl, eight.
SPEAKER_02:So he's a and we don't often see that. I'm Jamaican, we don't often see that in Jamaican men taking their lives. So was it surprising to you? Yes.
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely. I think you know, for someone to take their lives, it's always a shock to family and friends because you most oftentimes you don't see it coming. Because what I've learned in this journey of suicide is that oftentimes they're dealing with the trauma and the pain internally. And so what they do is they make up for it, they have a facade. So they show you from the outside that they're jolly, they're great, they're, you know, life is great, they're happy, they're the center of attention, they light up the room, they pour into others, so you don't think that there's something going on internally. With him, I know he battled with trauma from a very, very young age. But, you know, just to describe my husband, he is a socialite. He would walk into the room and he's the light of the room. You know, people gravitate towards him because he was a very sociable butterfly and got along with everyone. Very jovial, very friendly, kind-hearted, genuine person. But he was dealing with a lot of trauma from early on in his childhood until you know, he carried it through adulthood. And I think one of the things that, you know, it's like taboo in the Caribbean culture, black American culture, is that you can't therapy is you know, taboo.
SPEAKER_02:You know, you're just like where are you going?
SPEAKER_03:You're gonna speak to someone and they label you crazy, ah, or they just brush it off. Oh, you know, don't worry about it, you'll just get over it. It's just something that you're just going through. But there's something that needs to be addressed with people who struggle mentally. So he committed suicide and he was struggling, but as a partner of his for so long, I didn't know the extent of it. And there's a lot of things that unraveled post his passion that explained why he did what he did because it came as a shocker to everyone. When I tell you this man had everything going for him, beautiful family, you know, thriving business, he was doing really well for himself. So the things that I found out after his passing is what made me understand it a lot better. A lot of people I think he could have sought help. And it's easy for me to say, you know, well, he could have sought help, he could have done this, he could have done that. But I think I don't know to the extent his mental state, honestly. I didn't know that led him down into a dark path where he felt as though this is the end for him.
SPEAKER_02:So being married to someone, what did you say, 26 years?
SPEAKER_03:22 years.
SPEAKER_02:22 years, and it's almost like you didn't know you didn't know him like that. You didn't know that part of him.
SPEAKER_03:Right. I know he had struggles, you know what I mean? But like I said, a lot of people hide, a lot of people hide it really, really well. And he did just that because everything was great. But like I said, it was more, it was a lot more that was going on with him that he struggled with mentally. And you know, these are the things that I found out afterwards, and still even finding out those things, it's like it's not the end of, you know what I mean? It's something that during time would have time heals. So I feel as though it wasn't that bad. It wasn't, it wasn't, it didn't call for him to do what he did. But in his head, again, in his head, he felt as though this is it for him.
SPEAKER_02:So there are different stages of grief. Where do you think you fit in? Like, what have you done to grieve? You know, you have kids, so you gotta keep moving, right? What have you done to help yourself get through this where you're able to just like be okay and not like be crying every day?
SPEAKER_03:Right. So here's my journey, and this is just my experience, and everyone is different. I've been a very strong-minded person from a very, very young age, at a young age, and so not having both my parents in my life caused me at a very young age to make a path for myself, and I think part of that caused me to build up these barriers and cause me to just keep fighting, to keep going, even when I felt at a loss, right? So it kind of made me very, very tough. Now it's different when you lost someone when they're ill. You know what I mean? You have time to protect the process. Correct. And you have time to say your goodbyes, you have time to say all the things that you need to say. But when it's something that's like like a light switch, it just goes completely off and you're left in the darkness. That's how I felt. So, from my experience, it was someone turning off a light switch, and it just totally was just dark, and I had to find my way through darkness until light. And how I managed that with this new Roseanne, because now I'm a widow, I have these children, I have to be strong for them, I have to forge a way, you know, forward being alone. It took a lot of time. To this day, it still takes time, a lot of navigating because you know, you went from both parents to just one parent, and now everyone's dependent on you. You know, roles aren't split anymore, everything just comes at you. And when he left, it was a time where it was just a lot going on. Like we were in the middle of building this home in Barbados, and the business was going great for him. And we had just dropped my daughter, she was two years into, she was just entering sophomore year, right? And yeah, my son was in elementary. So once that shifted, I had to now navigate, you know, this new life. And for me, I just had to go into survival mode. I was thrust into survival mode. It wasn't a matter of taking time to really give myself time to heal. I had to heal along with it, everything was going just simultaneously. Like I had to heal, I had to play. Work, you had to sing, you had to cook, finish up all these unfinished things. And I just went in, it was a matter of just survival mode. And I don't think anyone really talks about the afterlife of for the person who is left, the survivor, right? What it means for them, because you're thrust into all these different roles and all these responsibilities, and then especially if you have children, it's extremely hard, you know? And so the only time you really get to sit down and get to like reflect and that to cry if you have to cry is when you hit the bed.
SPEAKER_02:And by that time, you're probably too tired, exhausted, you just exhausted, exhausted.
SPEAKER_03:So I know for me, I like when he passed away first few weeks, you know, I just was in shock. My body was just in denial. I was in total denial. At the same time, my brain is like denow trying to convince me that you know he's not coming back. Like you're not gonna see him ever come through that door, you know. And sometimes you sit and you just you're just in a trance because how are you going to move forward? How are you going to navigate this new life? So I would say to women who experience this, especially, you know, if it's like that light switch where it just so sudden, you know, that you just have to take one second, one minute, one hour, one day, one month, one year at a time.
SPEAKER_02:And you have been going through this journey. So when you think about grief, what's the first image that comes to your mind? Uh darkness.
SPEAKER_03:Um darkness in the sense of you're in pain, you don't know which way to turn, you can't see forward, you don't know what the future holds, everything, your world just instantly paws because your mind is in so many places, you're feeling all these emotions, and so you don't see a path forward because how can you in that moment, right? So, my whole thing is that you have to give yourself time to come out of that darkness, and it's not something that's like instant, it takes a long, long time.
SPEAKER_02:So, do you feel like that light switch you compared it to like someone turned the light off in the room and you now have to stumble through these furniture and stumble through and find your way in this new room, right? And it's dark. So, do you feel like a candle is lit, a flashlight, anything? Do you feel like the light is back on in the room? Right.
SPEAKER_03:So that darkness doesn't last forever. Okay, it doesn't, it doesn't. It's just in that moment of time because now you're from like I said, this is my experience. For me, I had to figure out how to navigate to find a light. So that took some time, and I found a light. And once you find a light, it's like a spark hit again, and you have a clear understanding of all right, you're picking up the pieces and you're putting them together, and you could see your way forward. And again, this takes time. It's not instant, it takes time, but instantly, when you experience that loss, instantly I was thrust into darkness because I just couldn't. For me, I was like, How am I gonna move forward? How? And then every day it gets a little better. You're coming out of that darkness and into the light, and you're seeing that you have to put the pieces together, you know, to make a path, a pathway forward. It's the only way there are some people that would probably stay in that darkness longer than others, right? I was too busy to stay in that darkness, I had too much going on.
SPEAKER_02:So your busy life kind of helped you a little bit. Yeah. So staying busy or just keeping your mind occupied.
SPEAKER_03:Right. Yeah. Some form of distraction.
SPEAKER_02:So how does that distraction affect your physical body?
SPEAKER_03:It's tiring. It's tiring because you're going, going, going, going, going. And you know, at times you feel like you don't want to do anything. You don't want to think. You, your body is just telling you, just rest. You don't want to get out of bed. You know, you feel heavy. All you could think about is all these things I have to do now. You know, everything is coming at you. So the weight is very, very heavy. And there are often times where I just curled up in bed and just say, you know what, to hell with it. I'm just going to just stay here and just have a moment for myself. And that's the time where you get to thinking. Although you want to take the break and you want to relax, you're feeling heavy. But then when you do, you relax your mind, you relax your body, and then all these triggers just start coming in. And then you just, you just cry. That was my experience. I just cry. And I feel as though looking back on that, I needed that. I needed to do that because you can't keep going and not face your emotions and not face the grief, not face the heaviness.
SPEAKER_02:Because so when did you think you face that heaviness? Like how far in the journey? Because you said it's about two years now, right? Yeah. So, like, when did it start getting clear for you? Just to give other people hope, you know, that it's it's not gonna be darkness forever.
SPEAKER_03:No, it's not gonna be darkness forever. I would say for me, it was like the first five months, right? And that's me just the total process, really and truly going into darkness the first few weeks, the first month, and then slowly coming out of it the second, the third month, and then going into like survival mode, you know what I mean? The first five, six months, and then after that time, you find, you know, you're finding yourself somewhat again, and you're seeing the path forward, you're seeing it, but you have to take baby steps because for me, I felt as though I gotta do this, I gotta do that, I gotta get all this stuff done because you're dealing with, you know, the estate, you're dealing with the closure of the business, you're dealing with the children, you're dealing with the household stuff, you're dealing with the building, you're dealing with so many things, closing out all loose ends, you're dealing with all of that. That's like the first six, seven months. Sometimes it takes people longer, maybe a year. Me, I am the person that I just want to get it done, right? So I just went full throttle. So the heaviness, I would say where I kind of like took a break from that. I would say maybe the fifth month is when I was able to, because this is April, May, June, July. Right, September. I think I was back in Barbados in September. And he passed away in April. We had his memorial late May. I went back to New York June, early June, and I was there for a month or so, and went back to Barbados. So I was in Barbados around fifth or sixth month, September or so. And, you know, you start to have reflections, you go to the beach. It was like a come in to myself. A realization that it's all you now.
SPEAKER_02:Now, did you have, you know, women, we usually have our friends, our besties, our support system. Did you have a support system that rallied around you? How long did they rally?
SPEAKER_03:And I would say Tiffany from the beginning to this day. She is like my sounding board. I'll never forget when she heard the news, and you know, Silas at that time was still a baby, and she was busy doing her gigs and everything. And when she got the news, Tiffany boarded a flight, left her baby, and was in Barbados the next day by my side on the beach, sitting down, just going through it with me. And it's something that I hold dear. Like I never forget that. She stopped everything, you know, to be with me. She couldn't stay for the memorial because she had to get back, but every step of the way, she was checking in. She was coming over when I'm in New York, she was coming over, she was checking on me, checking on the kids. You know, to this day, she's still my sounding board. To this day, she's still my listening ear. And so we depend on each other very, very heavily. We're like each other's support system. And then there was my aunt Deborah, my cousin Tamika, my cousin Patrick. So, you know, I had people, I had people to help me along the way. That's important. My kids had parents as well, because if it wasn't for them, I would not have been able to go back and forth between Barbados and New York because they uprooted from their apartment to come and live with me so that they could ensure that Chari, my son, was good. Because my daughter was off to college and my son was still there by himself. So they uproo, you know, where they were living to come stay with us to ensure that they take care of Chari. So absolutely, Brian and Natasha, shout out to you guys if you're listening to this. You guys have been my day ones as well. And I really, really, truly appreciate it to this day.
SPEAKER_02:Because those are the moments you remember. I remember losing my dad and the people who showed up for me. It was an overwhelming pouring out, you know, because as type A women, we are always the one pouring into others. And we really don't feel like, oh, nobody's gonna do this for me. I just need to do this for myself. And when you get that love, that overshadowing love from everyone, that is huge, you know? And those are the things you probably hold on to more so to get you through some of the bad days.
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely, absolutely. And so the people that like you said, we don't like asking. Ask for help, yeah. And so we just do things on our own and we just move and navigate in this life, just you know, doing for ourselves. And then oftentimes we neglect to ask for help. And that was my whole big thing, you know, with my village. Like they would just say, just Roseanne, just ask for help. But I'm the kind of woman, and I've been like this from the very young age. I don't, if I have to do something, I'll do it my own, you know. I don't like asking for help. But this was the moment where everyone showed me that they're there for me and my children. And so I never forget that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's important. A village is important when you're going through these type of situations, and it's just important for us to lean on someone. Like you can't just think that you're you're on this earth by yourself or for yourself, and so that is what took me through my grief, actually. Just but it was a point where you just have to deal with it. And how did that look for you dealing with it?
SPEAKER_03:First of all, the dreams, right?
SPEAKER_02:It's like oh, the dreams, yes, the dreams.
SPEAKER_03:First of all, the let me tell you the dreams that were coming that were flooding my mind when I'm trying many sleepless nights, many sleepless nights, and the dreams, and then you try to interpret those dreams and what those dreams meant. It's like he was trying to talk to me, he's trying to send a message to me, something it's and it was just trying to navigate what that meant. I felt as though when I go to sleep and I'm in this dream and I'm dreaming, I felt as though I'm in a different timeline experiencing these things with him.
SPEAKER_02:Wow, that's crazy. When you had the dreams, were you scared? Like when you woke up, were you were you afraid? Were you feel do you feel his presence at any time?
SPEAKER_03:Yes. It's so funny. So the dreams, it was just overwhelming. It wasn't I was scared, it was that it made me very, very, it was just very overwhelming because in the dreams, it's like I'm mad at him. He's very regretful, his head was always hang low, he's very remorseful, and he wouldn't say much. He wasn't saying anything really. It was just his demeanor and how he was moving. And it was me just like upset at him and just like, I'm just done with you, like you should have never done this. Those came very often, and now they're subsided. Now it's happiness, but we're never together, we're always separate. But he's in the distance and he's happy, and I'm happy. And if we're even close, we're happy together, but we're still very much separated. There was another dream that I've had, I remember it vividly, and I was dreaming, and I I swear I thought it was real. He came, I hear his voice as day, came to my ear and said, Roseanne, if you hear me blink. When I tell you, Oh my gosh, I froze, my body froze to the point where I could not move. I could not, I was not blinking because I know I heard his voice, I know he just said that to me. I didn't move, I didn't move, I didn't, I didn't do anything, I was so scared. And then he said, That's okay, that's okay, I'll always watch over you. And with that, he rose up and became a phoenix. What? Yeah, and so down the road I remember sitting in my little office area in my home in Barbados, and there's a tall picture window, and a hummingbird kept coming to me, kept coming like the hummingbird would just come straight up to the window and just face me, and just he kept coming, kept coming. So I looked it up what a hummingbird you know means, and it's saying messages from the spirit world. What? Yeah, I thought that was creepy, but yeah, but the dreams were very heavy, so the dreams subsided, it's nothing heavy like it was before, and for me, my therapy sessions, I keep up with that. Great, and what I do now, I find myself moving in this new world very light. Before I used to get riled up on certain situations, and you know, I tend to manage that. I don't have a short, well, I've never had a short fuse, but you know, you get to like you over-stimulate sometimes. So I'm learning to be much calmer, especially when a lot of issues arise. I tend to like, you know what, it'll work itself out, and it always does work itself out.
SPEAKER_02:Always, 100%. God is always in the vessel, working it, working it out.
SPEAKER_03:So I don't get riled up, and even to my daughter like this too, she passed me. She goes through issues as well. She's faced with certain things. I said, you know, it's not always gonna be like this. So I have to keep reconstantly reminding myself that Yeah, because you're still a mother, correct?
SPEAKER_02:So I you're their example, you know.
SPEAKER_03:So one day I take one day at a time and I take care of myself. And I listen to my podcasts. Uh there's this one podcast that I listen to, Eddie Pinero, on YouTube actually. And he's very inspirational on his uh teachings, and that helps me to get through certain days that are heavy.
SPEAKER_02:So you have to do what works for you, you have to take care of yourself because it's so important because there's so many people that literally are just dropping dead from stress and pain and hurt, and it's not okay, you know.
SPEAKER_03:Because I noticed that a lot, a lot of people are dropping. And I think that's what made me shift from my nine to five to entrepreneurship. Because I don't want to be constantly in a loop, perpetual loop every day working for someone.
SPEAKER_02:The hamster wheel.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:That's a whole nother subject, girl.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. So that I'm in the hamster wheel. I know, I know. And you will get there. It will come. Oh god. But I know for me, that was part of my journey too. Like I changed everything, Jackie. I changed up everything. Wow. And I remember Patrice François saying something about, oh, when you're in the depths of the valley, you make these irrational decisions based on emotions, and you tend to quit your job and you would do this and you would do that. But what if this is the other way? What if you're down in a valley for a reason and it's you to reinvent yourself and rise? And that's how I envisioned. That's how I saw my journey. I was in the darkness, I was in the valley, and it was a pivotal moment of my life for me to change the course of my future, change it, and chart a path for Roseanne this time around and rise up as a new person. So there's still a lot going on, but but at least you can breathe, right?
SPEAKER_02:And I think what you encountered, yes, we encountered death, everybody's death is different, but you saw it. You know, you saw it up close and personal. He took his life, which is something that you know a lot of people will have guilt. And is it me? And what could I have done differently? And so, you know, we're gonna end with me asking you if you were to say one thing to another grieving widow, what would that be?
SPEAKER_03:Just one thing.
SPEAKER_02:Just one thing, or if you were to talk to another grieving widow, what would you say to her?
SPEAKER_03:Take time with yourself. Take time with yourself. You have to take time with yourself. Allow the emotions, allow everything that comes with grief to happen. Embrace it because you have to go through it. It's inevitable, right? We're gonna experience it along the way, but take time with yourself to go through the process of grieving.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, well, thank you so much for joining me on Not Just a Nurse Podcast. And I will definitely have you again. I think, you know, I know enough women who have lost their husbands, including my mother, who have lost their husband, which I don't think is grieving very well about it. It's been 18 years, but it's been like 15 years, but I still think she's angry, and just to have, you know, a panel, like, and I hope you would be able to come back and share your story with other grieving widows and just have a panel of let's get through this grief together. Everybody's in a different stage, and it seems like you found your light in your darkness, and you're moving towards the light and not towards the darkness. Because believe it or not, there are people who just keep moving to the darkness. Yeah, they're stuck and they're stuck and they cannot get out. And I'm so proud of you for getting out.
SPEAKER_03:I understood that this is where I, you know, it was there to serve a purpose. That's why I say take time with yourself. You should not stay in there because life has to go on. Life has to go on, you know, and so a lot of and I use this for myself because you know, people would say in time heals, time heals. I understand time heals, but it could take a very long time. It could take a long time to heal, long time to heal, and I don't think you ever really truly heal, you just learn to maneuver in life with the loss, you know, because there are triggers that would send you right back, you know, but you have to learn to take time with yourself, just go through the process, and you know, in time it does get better, it really does. Yes.
SPEAKER_02:So you said something about the valley, and it reminds me of Psalms 23, verse 4, and it says, Yea, I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, that I will fare no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff will comfort me. And that is what you explain. And I just want, you know, right now for people to understand, no matter what you go through, it's through, like you're going through it.
SPEAKER_03:So there's another side through there's another side of through.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So continue to go through, continue to walk with your community and walk with your strength and find the light. And so with that, we just hope that you continue listening. We have a lot of great stuff coming up for us on Not Just a Nurse Podcast, where we just touch everyday lives and talk about everyday things. So listen out. We should be at least every other Wednesday or so, we'll be chatting with you. And feel free to reach out if you have a topic that you want us to share. Thank you and bye-bye.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you. Thanks for tuning in with Nurse Jack at Not Just the Nurse Podcast. Don't forget to like, share, and subscribe to Buzzsprout, Apple, and Spotify. Send your request and your questions for a chat with Jack. Be safe out there.