Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Michele Neff Hernandez. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Michele thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.
On August 31, 2005 my world was turned upside down by the death of my husband, Phillip Hernandez, in a cycling accident. He was two months from his fortieth birthday, and we shared a blended family of six kids when life as I knew it ended. My defining moment arrived without notice or warning.
Being thrust into widowhood at the age of thirty-five changed my perspective, my career path, and my priorities. Common phrases about smelling the roses and making every moment count were suddenly personal. My usual technique of working hard to get what I wanted was useless when it came to wanting my husband to be alive. I could not fix what was broken for my family or for myself. We all had to learn to live without the guy with the thousand watt smile and the endless dad jokes.
Many tragic stories begin with the death of a pivotal person in the protagonist’s life. The way we process grief helps map our the rest of our life story. When left unresolved, grief is often expressed through anger, depression, violence, and abuses/addictions of many kinds. As I made my way through my own pain, I was comforted by the kindness of other grievers. Accessing healthy coping techniques and being surrounded by a supportive community made all the difference as I rebuilt my life. Understanding the critical role my support network played in my healing, I set out to ensure that other widowed people would have easier access to the resources and community that I found along the way.
After Phil’s death I founded Soaring Spirits International, a California based nonprofit that provides resources, programs and a community of support for widowed people around the world. Since our founding in 2008 we’ve served over four million widowed people through our in-person and virtual programs. This year, my defining moment has been captured and published by New World Library in my book, Different After You: Rediscovering Yourself and Healing after Grief and Trauma. This book is a love letter to anyone who has experienced a trauma that has altered their lives. My hope is that what I’ve learned through my own pain can serve as a comfort to another hurting heart.
We get to choose how moments will define us, even the really difficult ones. When we allow ourselves to be changed by our life experiences, we have access to every lesson we’ve learned along the way. My defining moment was created by a painful and life altering loss, but what was born as a result of my defining moment is a gift that continues to change the world.
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?
Soaring Spirits International offers in-person and virtual programs for widowed people around the world. At Soaring Spirits we use a broad definition of the word ‘widowed’. We welcome anyone who has experienced the death of a person with whom they intended to spend their life into our programs. Soaring Spirits programs are secular, inclusive, and life affirming.
We offer a unique weekend long in-person event called Camp Widow in San Diego, California and Tampa, Florida with international offerings in Toronto, Canada and Brisbane, Australia. Along with our weekend events, we offer one day Camp Widow Pop Ups in various locations around the world. Details can be found at campwidow.org.
Regional Social Groups are another in-person offering providing twice monthly social gatherings designed to foster community and help widowed people to rebuild their social structure. These events are led by volunteer facilitators who are widowed themselves in cities across North America, Ireland and Japan. Details can be found at soaringspirits.org.
Soaring Spirits offers a full complement of virtual programs including: a weekly Zoom gathering for those who are widowed one year or less, Pen Pal connections with other widowed people who share common experiences, and a robust virtual community called Widowed Village which houses a large variety of support resources for widowed people, and their support network. Details can be found at widowedvillage.org.
My book Different After You: Rediscovering Yourself and Healing after Grief and Trauma is published by New World Library. This book will help anyone who has lived through a life altering trauma process what they’ve experienced and learn to love and respect their transformed selves. Details and purchase information can be found at micheleneffhernandez.com.
Do you think you’d choose a different profession or specialty if you were starting now?
I landed in my current profession as a result of one of the most painful experiences of my life. My husband’s death shifted my priorities, and opened my eyes to the challenges faced by widowed people. I could have lived through my own widowed experience and continued in the career I loved (personal training), but the more I learned about widowhood, the more I felt called to serve other widowed people. My life was changed by sharing my pain with others and allowing them to share theirs with me.
Becoming a leader in the nonprofit world has required me to dig deep and access every skill I’ve acquired in my professional life. Founders of nonprofits wear a lot of hats, often several at once! Every career path I’ve traveled has been an asset as I built an organization to provide resources and support for widowed people around the world.
My personal widowed experience also led me to my second career as a writer. Publishing my first book is a dream come true, and being able to blend my love for widowed people with my love of writing has been the perfect combination.
Despite the pain of the path that brought me here, I’d choose this career path again and again. Witnessing the transformation of people who have lived through such difficult circumstances is an honor and a privilege.
Have you ever had to pivot?
The programs our team designed for Soaring Spirits leaned heavily on our in-person offerings. There is something magical about getting people together in one space to share their experiences and to learn, laugh and cry together.
When the pandemic shutdown began in March of 2020 we were three weeks away from a 350 person event set to be held in Florida. After a week of watching the pandemic begin to unfold, we knew we would not be able to hold our event safely in-person. We also had never held a virtual weekend long event. There was a lot of learning to do if we were to ensure that our programs could still provide the comfort and resources for which we are known. Because we have an incredible team, we pulled off this change of venue in less than two weeks and ran our full program in two time zones via Zoom which was a new tool for us! What a learning curve! Ultimately we discovered a whole new way to serve our widowed community using the virtual tools that were now available. As we slowly return to in-person programming, we have added virtual programming to our ongoing program options. This pivot has allowed us to serve even more widowed people and to foster global connections for people from all walks of life.
Contact Info:
- Website: [email protected]
- Instagram: @micheleneffher
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michele.n.hernandez
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michele-neff-hernandez-8a9056b/
- Other: soaringspirits.org campwidow.org
Image Credits
Becky Savell Michael Dare