Meet Corinne Janet
September 24, 2024 | People in Our Neighborhood
Meet Corinne, a young widow who turned her personal journey of loss into a mission to help others. After losing her husband Adam to cancer at just 30 years old and while raising their 9-month-old daughter, Corinne discovered the power of community among other young widow(er)s. This experience inspired her to create the “Way Too Young for This” Connector Network in Baltimore.
Corrine opens up about her personal experiences of grief and healing, highlighting just how important it is to find people who truly understand what you’re going through. Her story talks about building connections that support and uplift, proving that even in the darkest times, you’re never really alone.
Could you share a bit about yourself and what inspired you to become a Connector for young widow(er)s?
To tell my story and why I am a Connector, I will start in the summer of 2019. I was 30 years old, a new mother to a 9-month-old daughter, and just said goodbye to my husband who died from cancer. My eye toward the future and my family life all came to a crashing halt. I felt completely lost.
In the first few months after Adam passed away, I was invited to a dinner party in DC comprised of all young people (mostly aged 25-40), who had lost a partner. I was tentative, but that group made a lasting impact on my grief journey. That night was my first experience of true relatability in my new identity as a widow. I could be honest, I could hear my story in other people’s stories, and I didn’t feel like the odd one out for once.
I’ll fast forward through a lot of grief and self-work to Fall 2022, when I joined a group called “Not the Plan” at the Soul Center. This supportive group of widow(er)s spans all ages, and reminded me of the comfort I felt gathering in community. It also sparked my interest in creating a group of young Jewish widow(er)s in Baltimore, modeled after my first experience back in 2019 of people who are all “way too young for this.” By 2023, when I started the “Way Too Young for This” Connector Network, I had invested in my own healing and now I could be a convener for others. I feel so grateful to be able to give and receive so much love to this unique community.
How did losing your husband Adam change your outlook on community and connection, and how do you see that reflected in the work you do today?
Losing my husband at such a young age changed everything. I have an incredible support system in my family and friends, but I could never expect them to understand my day-to-day pain and all the multifaceted ways my life had changed…all while parenting a baby. I needed a community of people who just “got it,” people who had unfortunately walked a similar path to mine and could relate and give me insight based on their own journeys. I always felt on the fringe of the widow(er) community as well, an outsider because of my age, the age of my daughter, and my stage in life. It wasn’t until I spent several years working through my own grief that I realized that I was the person to form this community. I wanted to do this work for myself and my friends who are all “way too young for this.”
What are some key challenges young widow(er)s face that you feel are often overlooked?
Being a grieving parent can make the holidays feel awful, but when you have young kids, you don’t want your personal grief to overshadow the holiday joy for your kids. One aspect of the “Way Too Young for This” community is to make connecting with your kids through Jewish holidays as a widow(er) a little easier. As a group, planning a hamantaschen bake together can take that stress off the parent and provide a meaningful holiday treat for the kids. When we do it together, suddenly we don’t feel so alone. When you feel like you have someone who “gets it” to confide in, to lend you a hand, your life is still hard, but you have a community to reach out to. To know that you’re not alone.
How has your own healing journey influenced the way you support others going through similar experiences?
When you’re a new young widow(er), it’s important to feel affirmed in your thoughts and feelings by other people who can relate. When everything feels upside down, it is so valuable when someone else tells you “I felt the same way” or “that makes so much sense.” As a new widow(er), the whole world feels dark and impossible, and it can take someone a little further in their journey to show that the darkness does start to lift, little by little. That it’s okay to smile. It’s okay to cry. It’s even totally normal to do both at the same time. We’ve been there and we get it.
You’ve called Baltimore County home since 2016. What does the Baltimore community mean to you, especially after such a significant life transition?
It was always clear that Adam and I would make Baltimore our home. Adam’s parents showed me love beyond measure and always included me as a daughter. When Adam passed away, my initial connection to the Baltimore community was gone. I thought a lot about whether to stay in Baltimore or move back home to Southern California, but what has ultimately kept me here is the connection to Adam’s family and the strength of the Jewish community.
How do you balance your personal passions, like hiking and needlepoint, with work and being a mom?
As a solo parent, just getting through the day with a baby/toddler was all-consuming. After I put my daughter to bed at 7pm, I would often just collapse on the couch and watch mindless television and then head to bed myself. Needlepointing is something that I do while I watch tv (convenient, right??) and I find that it’s an activity that is a perfect blend of mindfulness and mindlessness. Hiking is something my family always did growing up on vacations, and we’ve been lucky enough to take my daughter along on similar vacations to Shenandoah, Yosemite, and to Olympia National Park this coming summer. I could not do any of this alone—I depended a lot on my parents, in-laws, and nanny to help me take breaks. Overall, balance and hiking on a somewhat regular basis came back in my life when I met Josh, the wonderful man I married in May 2024. Learning how to co-parent after loss has led me to grow, and creating a trusting, loving relationship with Josh and Ricki has truly helped to bring balance into my life in a way that was very hard to envision several years ago.
How do you envision the young widow(er) community growing and evolving, and what are your hopes for the future of the network you’re helping to build?
I always say that I hope this group continues to be small because I don’t want anyone else to face the grief that I and my friends have felt. However, I know that this pain will sadly find more people, and for them, I hope that this group will always be a welcoming community to those who need it. As our group continues to meet more over time, I hope that our children build relationships with each other too, so that they can have models of other kids who have lost a parent and so they, too, will not feel so alone in their identity.
What advice would you offer to someone who has recently lost their partner and is navigating life as a single parent?
The first days, weeks, and months feel so incredibly heavy. There are important decisions to make under an incredible weight of sadness, disbelief, and pain. Incrementally and at your own pace, that weight will eventually start to lift. It won’t be all at once, it may also feel like two steps forward and three steps back, but in your own time, you will find yourself again.