We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kat Combs. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kat below.
Hi Kat, thanks for joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
In June of 2020, at the height of the pandemic, I married my best friend, Michael. We were only 24 at the time, but knew without a doubt that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives loving and supporting one another.
In February of 2021 we purchased our first home. While we were moving in, Michael got a fever. His COVID test came back positive, and we were both sick in bed for weeks. While my condition improved, his worsened. He died a week before his 26th birthday, leaving me a 25-year-old widow.
In the weeks and months after his death, I felt completely alone in my experience. Friends would reach out, but no one understood what I was going through. Other widows reached out to ask me to coffee or provide a listening ear, but I didn’t have the emotional energy to meet anyone new. I needed support, but I didn’t know where to find it.
I soon realized that the community I needed didn’t exist yet, so I started Widows Lost & Found, a place online for those who’ve lost their person to find community. Widows Lost & Found’s online-only model allows widows to seek community from the comfort of their own home, putting their support system in the palm of their hand. We take away the stress of meeting new people over coffee or trying to put yourself together to go out into the world, and we meet you where you are.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
In the early days of my career I worked in the creative department for various churches and nonprofits. I transitioned from music to graphic design to video production positions, but somehow always ended up being the de facto social media manager; the shift from nonprofits to a marketing agency made a lot of sense.
My position as Operations Manager at Stratos Creative Marketing has helped immensely in growing Widows Lost & Found. I get to tap into the knowledge of our staff of content coordinators and use their expertise in the content I create, while also drawing knowledge from running my own passion project and use that to help our clients.
My dream has never been to be my own boss or to make a living off a passion project. I’m very fortunate to work for a company like Stratos that values our side hustles and passion projects, and provides me the flexibility I need to run Widows Lost & Found on top of my 9-5.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
When Michael died, I was quiet on social media for several days. That first post I made when I came back online was wildly well received—I was getting more engagement than any of my social media posts ever got. As I kept sharing my grief journey online, I kept receiving appreciation for my transparency and authenticity. I quickly became a strong source of grief education for my circle of online influence.
Because Widows Lost & Found is online-only and free-forever, it was important to me to create a solid social media presence to support the private group experience. What I’d learned through sharing my experience on my personal account helped me know how to create content for the Widows Lost & Found account. I started posting 3-5 times a week, sharing personal reflections on grief, stories about my own experience, how-to information for non-grievers to support their widow friends, and more. In a year, the account grew from 0 to 1,000 completely organically.
My advice to anyone trying to manage their own social media is to find the tools and systems that make it work for you. Develop your content buckets, batch-produce content, and find a scheduling software that helps you plan your content in advance.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Being in the influencer industry is often a source of imposter syndrome for me. I see other similar Instagram accounts that have bigger followings and higher engagement, and I start doubting the value of my own contribution.
But then I think back to that past version of myself who’d just lost her husband, who desperately needed a community like Widows Lost & Found. Everything I do, I do for her, and for every person like her who is scared and alone and needs support without leaving the couch.
Those early days of grief are all about survival. Just wake up. Just eat. Just breathe. Widows Lost & Found exists to be the support system you need during that time. When I was alone and missing Michael, I needed to be able to text someone who’d been there—not so they could fix it, just so I’d know I wasn’t alone.
Widowhood is lonely; I know this firsthand. When the imposter syndrome creeps in, I remind myself that I’m running this community and creating this content so that other widows don’t have to go through it alone.
Contact Info:
- Website: widowslostandfound.com
- Instagram: widowslostandfound
- Other: katcombs.com
Image Credits
Widows Lost & Found via Kat Combs