BW 068: Breaking Chains: A Widow's Journey from Darkness to Healing Light
Dec 07, 2023Watch the video here or on YouTube; listen anywhere podcasts are played (Apple, Spotify, Google…)
The Transcript is below.
Content warning: Suicide, firearms, ADHD, PTSD, Depression , Anxiety, Abusive, Death
As we share inspiring stories of widows finding joy after loss. In this episode, we dive into Tammy Denny's journey—a tale of overcoming trauma and discovering happiness again. Despite facing hardships, including an abusive past, Tammy's resilience shines through. Learn how she found laughter, smiles, and genuine joy, thanks to the support of a special person in her life. It's a heartwarming exploration of healing and hope.
Quote:
I Loved Shan very much and I hold on to the fact that I loved him. I've been very blessed and fortunate to have met a man in my life. He has brought a lot of healing to my life and to the kids lives. They don't feel as If they've lost as much because he brought new and wonderful things, said we'd been separated.
So it was a little easier to move forward, but I never wanted to just move on. It was never about forgetting Shan. It's never been about that. It's about remembering him and remembering the good and the love that we had. And the family that we created.
The Brave Widow Community is a place where you can connect with other widows, find hope and healing, and begin to dream again for the future. Learn more at bravewidow.com.
Hey guys, I’m Emily Jones
I was widowed at age 37, one month shy of our 20 year wedding anniversary. Nathan and I have four beautiful children together. My world was turned completely upside down when I lost him. With faith, community, and wisdom from others, I’ve been able to find hope, joy, and dream again for the future. I want to help others do the same, too!
FOLLOW me on SOCIAL:
Twitter | @brave_widow
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Transcript:
Video
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Emily: [00:00:00] Hey, hey, welcome to episode number 68 of the Brave Widow show today, I have a special guest, Tammy Denny, but before I introduce her, and before we tell her story, I do want to offer some trigger warnings and, you know, here on the Brave Widow show, we talk about real life. We talk about things that happen to real people on a daily basis and these things we discuss openly.
Sometimes they may be more graphic or discussed in more detail than others. So I don't do trigger warnings on most of the shows, but I am going to do You might call it a content warning a trigger warning. I don't know the appropriate term these days, but in all seriousness, uh, this is not an episode for the young kiddos.
So we do talk about, uh, several things, including drug use. We talk about., things like suicidal thoughts and, firearms [00:01:00] and just a wide variety of those sort of topics. This is a traumatic story that Tammy is bravely and openly sharing with you all as the audience and her experience. So, if those things are disturbing to you.
Or if you have young children or this content might be disturbing for other folks, please note that this is, a serious content warning where we talk about just the. brutal and honest reality of what some people's stories are. Tammy is a lovely person. She has just a beautiful smile and presence and she has a beautiful smile and presence and I think that you will enjoy hearing her story and what advice she would give to widows who are going through the same.
Hey, hey, welcome back to another episode of the brave widow show today. I have a special guest. I have Tammy and Tammy. [00:02:00] I think that you're going to love her personality, her spirit, her essence, just as much as I have in the first few minutes. We've spent talking together, but she's had some real tough challenges that she's had to overcome.
So I'm excited to uncover some of the ways she's been able to do that to navigate this grief with All the kiddos that she has and, to hear about her journey. So Tammy, thank you so much for agreeing to come on the show and I'm excited to talk to you.
Tammy Denny: Well, thank you, Emily, for having me on and giving me the opportunity to share my story.
Emily Jones: Absolutely. So I guess we should start where most stories start, which is the beginning. So if you don't mind, let's just jump right in and walk through your story.
Tammy Denny: I met Sean in February of 2015, just after my daughter turned a year old. She was the third of my kids. Um, I actually had [00:03:00] left an abusive relationship with her father, and She was staying, the kids were staying with my ex husband, my two oldest kids, his dad at his home.
And I was staying with my parents. I met Sean at work. First thing I thought when I saw him was he's kind of cute. Wonder if he's single.
Emily Jones: Scoping him out.
Tammy Denny: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, um, he was in the process of going through a divorce at the time so we became friends and we started spending time together.
Go over to his house. We both work second shift. So, like, I'd go over to his house some nights after work since my kids weren't home and we'd watch a movie. Whatever this developed into a relationship and we ended up, uh, getting a house together while a trailer actually moved into the trailer park out of his 1 bedroom apartment.
Because we knew we couldn't put all 5 of us in a 1 bedroom apartment. It was just, let's not going to work. [00:04:00] I can see that. So we moved into the trailer park, uh, knowing that we were going to buy a house within the next year. We just had to both be at our jobs a year in order to qualify for the mortgage.
So we moved into the trailer park. We he continued to work at the place we met. I left there for a better opportunity for work. He was miserable there. Like, his mental health was, he, I knew when I met him, he was, uh Um, soldier, well, he's a veteran. He had served in the 293rd, in Iraq, at Twight Base Ballad.
I was there for about a year. Um, didn't talk to me a lot about the things that happened there, but I knew there were things that happened. He had, was going to therapy at the VA. Um, he was not medicated at the time. He was taking Adderall for his adult ADHD, but no, [00:05:00] um. No, nothing for depression or anxiety or any of that.
In the beginning, but he was, he, he hated his job. He hated a lot of things, uh, you know, and so I, felt like I wanted to make his life better. So, I, you know, there were days early on where the kids would do something like before they left for school and we had a neighbor who helped get my kids off to school, so I,
um, and then they, So they, they would leave a mess or whatever, and he would have a massive meltdown, uh, about the mess. And so, like, he would get up to go to work second shift. I was working day shift. I'd get a text message, and there was a lot of stress there. Him learning to live with kids because he didn't have any kids, and It's a big change.
[00:06:00] Yes. So, about a year after we started dating, we had our first conversation about whether or not we were ever going to get married, and then we were married six months later. We just, we had both been married before, so we just decided, ah, we're going to go to the courthouse and get it over with. So we got married on a Monday, and he went to work, and I went home and waited for the kids to get out of school.
It was nothing, it was nothing especially romantic, it was nothing, he was very practical, so, he struggled through the job, the job was awful, he was miserable there, and no matter how many times I told him, leave, find another job, there are other jobs, he just couldn't Bring himself to do it. He worked really hard.
I mean, there are times it, you know, he worked six or seven days a week for a while until his mental health took. In 2018,[00:07:00] I got pregnant with our, uh, youngest kid with our son, whose name is Doc. His name is David. Nobody calls him that. We all call him Doc. Sean was a huge Doctor Who fan. I love it. I love it.
So again, David, Doc. So, uh, I got pregnant with Doc and about two weeks before Doc was born at the end of June, he has his birthday is four days after his dad,
his birthday is four days later than his dad. Okay. So about two weeks before that, he hadn't been really weird, just not himself. He was. Even more angry than usual. I couldn't seem to, like, get him to bring it down a level. he woke me up at, like, one o'clock in the morning and he's like, I need you to sit with me.
I'm like, okay, I'll sit with you. He's like, I'm afraid I'll hurt myself if you don't. I said, okay. So I [00:08:00] got up. And I sat with him, and the next morning I called his, VA therapist and, or the nurse practitioner he saw at the VA, and they got him back in to see his regular psychologist, and they started him on meds, and he was not happy about being on meds.
Um, he didn't want to be on antidepressants. He didn't want to do any of that. Honestly, I think it was what he needed at the time. He said it was a hard year, his best friend for his birthday that year, knowing that things had been, um, kind of rough bought him a, well, so it's a motorcycle, technically it goes 70 miles an hour, but it's actually like a Japanese like scooter.
It's like a Japanese motorcycle and it had been imported and he painted it blue, like the Tardis. And we got TARDIS stickers, and it was the TARDIS cycle, as the birthday present for him that year.[00:09:00] Jeff and I put that together for him. Then, things just, I don't know, we got, he lost his job because of COVID, like right at the beginning of COVID.
He lost his job, and I just said, okay, it's not a big deal. Like We'll make it through we cashed out a 401k and he was off work until July of that year. He took a job at, like a rent to own facility, like delivering product for people who were doing rent to own items, um, could not tell you what happened there.
What I know is that he got fired a few months later. But I didn't know he had been fired. I had gone to work on Friday going to work,
Emily Jones: like, acting like he's going to work.
Tammy Denny: Yeah. So I had come home from work on Friday and my sister in law calls me and she's like, Sean's in Pennsylvania. Like Sean's in Pennsylvania.
What are you talking [00:10:00] about? He's at work. She's like, no, he got fired. I'm like, what? So apparently he had, so he was originally, they lived, he lived in, he was born in Framingham, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston. And they lived in New England, all over Connecticut, New York, in Massachusetts until he was 13 when they moved to Indiana.
So he apparently was really not well and decided that he was going to drive out to New York and take his own life. So he called me, he got all the way to Erie, Pennsylvania before he called my sister in law and he called. His sister and she got him a hotel room and she called me and I drove to Pennsylvania to get it and I stayed with him.
I was angry. It's a four hour drive. I was angry for the first two hours of the drive. I wanted to, I wanted to kill him when I got there. Just wanted to yell at him. And then I was, by the time I got there, I was calm and[00:11:00] sedate. And, you know, I was just like. I understand, like, I'm not mad at you for losing your job, I'm not, you know, it wasn't the job for you, we'll find something else, it'll be fine.
Don't ever just disappear on me like that again. Don't just ever don't ever do that. And he's like, okay, I promise. I promise. So then we went back home He I had ended up getting him a job where I was working He was working night shift in our warehouse I was working day shift in the office, but he'd come in every day before work and you know For like half hour sit in my office and we'd catch up on the day and touch base on kids stuff.
I don't know Then he started to struggle. We had a new, he got a new warehouse manager who wasn't very nice to him and was not understanding of PTSD or complex PTSD [00:12:00] or mental health issues. He's young. He's 20 something felt like he was, you know, had something to prove though. They had had several head butting experiences.
So I went to his boss and I was like. They moved him from second shift to day shift. And so he needed to adjust what time he took his meds. You know, with antidepressants, you take them at the same time every day. And so he was taking them at like, 10 o'clock in the morning. So, once he switched to day shift, he would come into my office at 10 o'clock in the morning and.
Take his meds because he didn't want to leave his meds just sitting in a locker in the break room area. So he would just come to my office, get a drink of water, and take his pills. His boss seemed to think this was some kind of horrible thing. My boss had no problem with it. The person I share an office with had no problem with it.
But he claimed that people were upset about it. Oh, so I asked him not to say anything. I went to his boss and I said, hey, can you not? Like make the situation worse, like he's struggling right now, you know, five minutes [00:13:00] later, he went out and said something to him again and set him off. So then Sean quit his job.
So that was August of 2022 and didn't think anything of it at the time. I didn't think it would, you know, make a bad situation worse. I'm just like, okay. So about a week after he quit his job, he said Wednesday night, yeah. He said, I'm gonna look for a job tomorrow. I'm like, awesome. He's like, I'm gonna go to this place and I'm gonna go to Walmart.
I'm gonna go to Meyers and I'm gonna go to a couple of the dispensaries because we lived, we lived in Indiana. Michigan's right across the line from US. And so he was going to go work at one of the marijuana dispensary. Hey, why not? It's legal there, right? So like, okay, awesome. So I went, To work on Thursday morning.
I came home from work on Thursday morning or Thursday afternoon. I went to our 5 year old son's, preschool [00:14:00] orientation and got home 1130 noon ish and he's not home. And I'm like, uh, he's out looking for a job. No big deal. Well, by 2 o'clock, I hadn't heard from him. He hadn't called, he hadn't texted, I'm like, something's weird, so I sent him a text and I didn't get a response.
3 o'clock, I'm really worried. 4 o'clock, I'm even more worried. By 5, I was calling all of our friends, and his parents, and my sister in law going, has anyone talked to him? Nobody knew where he was, his phone was going straight to voicemail. And I honestly Truly, in my heart, believed that he wasn't coming back, like, I called our local police department.
They're like, well, he didn't say anything. He didn't do anything. Oh, wait, I should back up. I skipped a step here in June of 2022 before he quit his job. And all of that. We had had a [00:15:00] really bad argument.
Completely lost his temper. I, having been in an abusive relationship previously, have some, when someone gets angry, I tend to, like, Withdraw into myself, and I want to make myself very small. Well, he was angry, and I was doing that, and that apparently angered him further. He, uh, grabbed me by my throat, uh, walked me backwards into our bedroom, was holding me down on the bed and told me he had a gun and he was going to kill himself.
And then he left the house. I pulled myself together enough to call the police. The police found him, they pulled him over, they arrested him. He did have a firearm, which I didn't know about. Uh, he apparently had bought it in 2019 without my knowledge. So they arrested him for possession with a hand, of a handgun without a proper license and, uh, possession of hash oil.
So then the prosecutor had dropped the handgun charge and we're only going to charge him with the possession of hash oil. So [00:16:00] he was set to go to court the same. Right around the time he disappeared for 4 days. Um, so, yeah, I, like I said, back to that end of August, beginning of next was mid September. By the time he went missing, um, he, no, no phone calls.
No, nothing. So I called our local police department and they're like, no, there's nothing we can do. He didn't say anything. He didn't do anything. He's an adult. He's allowed to leave. I'm like, you don't understand, like. This is not okay. So, um, 1 of his close friends since childhood and I were very, very close friends.
My friend Don and I, we called every police station. We could think of in any town that he used to live in. Um, we had state troopers from New York searching. The parks out there, there were, you know, there's some, some national forests and some state parks out there. [00:17:00] And we had like patrol officers searching those areas for his car.
We drove for days around, uh, trying to find him and I was devastated. I didn't, I, I didn't know what to do. I couldn't find him, couldn't get in contact with him. Um. We even had people look north in Michigan, where there's a little state park up there that he really liked. We had friends that were up there that went looking for him.
We had everybody and their brother, uh, his best friend contacted, like, the Bob and Tom show, and then, a couple of his favorite podcasts. Like he reached out to them and they were going to put shout outs on their podcast to him to try to get him like to, like, contact the podcast or to contact one of the shows so that we knew that he was okay.
You know, in the back of everyone's mind, this whole time is he, is he dead [00:18:00] and, you know, the kids were scared and I was scared and he, so he showed up Sunday night at nine o'clock at night. I'm sitting in the garage. In the smoking chair in our garage talking to my best friend on the phone and I heard a car door and I leaned forward to look and he zoomed past the door and into the house and didn't say a word through your mind in that moment.
I was in total shock. My, my body was shaking. I, like, I was numb, like, like relief and fear and what is this really happening? Like, I don't know if this is real. So I'm on the phone with her and she's like, no, she's like, I'm like, I gota go. She's like, no, you need to stay on the phone with me. I was like, no, I need to get off the phone and she's like, okay.
She's like, I'm going to call you in 20 minutes. If you don't answer, I'm calling the police. Okay. Deal. So, um, I [00:19:00] walked into the house and the kids were sitting in the living room and they're all, they've all got this wide eyed look on their face too. And. I'm looking at them, and they're looking at me, so then I knew they saw what I saw.
So I went upstairs, and he was in our youngest. In our youngest, in our son's room, and he was holding our five year old, hugging him while he was sleeping. And I just stood there and I stared at him, and I didn't say anything for probably a couple of minutes. And he turned and he looked at me and I said, Where have you been?
And he just started yelling, screaming at me that I had no right to be angry that, you know, he, I should have known that he was going to leave because if I bothered to check his car the night before, I would have saw the camping gear in the car and I would have known he was going to take off. And in my mind, I'm going, you're an adult, I shouldn't have to do these things.[00:20:00]
And then he said, well, I don't want to be married anymore. I can't do this. I don't want a wife and four kids. So we need to get a divorce. And I'm like, Okay, that's what you want. And I was sad, of course, but at that point, I think I had distanced myself emotionally to try to prepare for the fact that he was that he had unalive himself. So I just felt like I could, you know, like, okay, well, he didn't unalive himself. So, you know, whatever else happens. We can we can figure this out. So then it was a matter of trying to figure out how to separate eight years of seven years, whatever of our life together. You know, it's a small town.
It's not a lot of places to live. But he kept, you know, saying, I don't know, he just, he was very odd about things. So that was September, mid [00:21:00] September.
Emily Jones: He never changed his mind or acted like, oh, I was just upset.
Tammy Denny: He did change his mind. He didn't change his mind and I told him, I said, fine, we don't have to get divorced right now, but I think that it would be the best interest of me and the kids for us to live separate for a little while while we try to figure things out.
So, just before Christmas, I had gone to, uh, I had found an apartment and I told him I had found a townhouse for the kids and I to move into because the house was in his name. he had the VA loan, so. My name wasn't on the house, so his house, he can keep the house. It's fine. The kids and I will go to the apartment.
We'll be fine there. He had told me that he didn't want me taking anything out of the house. Like, I wasn't allowed to take anything from the house. I'm like, okay. So I started making arrangements to get furniture and beds and all of this stuff. And I think now I probably should have seen that as a sign of what was coming, but I didn't.
I just thought he was being [00:22:00] stubborn at the time. Um, he went to his parents from just before Chris, a couple of days before Christmas through what? The 1st, just before New Year's, he came home like the 29th or the 30th and I came home from work 1 day and he wasn't there. And I was worried. It's like. I didn't know where he was and I kept trying to call him and he didn't answer and he showed up like an hour later and he was like, I was at my dad's.
I'm like, oh, okay. Like, I again thought he had gone missing. Like, I was already traumatized at this point to expect it. But he did end up. Taking his life, um, oh, wait, while he was, while he was missing for the 4 days, uh, he had left his laptop and I had gotten into his laptop and looked into his,
looked into his purchase history on Amazon and, you know, what he was looking at on the Internet and what he was listening to and any, you know, looking for a clue of what was [00:23:00] going on. Well, I found that he had purchased, sodium nitrate. No night, yeah, nitrate, nitrate, which is just a food additives that you use to cure me.
But apparently is a very effective means for suicide, um, causes the blood to get very thick and then it's basically you just go to sleep and you don't wake up. It's not painful. It's. Fairly quick, you just get sleepy and then you just don't wake up. So I had discovered this while I was searching for everything, but again, the police wouldn't listen to me.
I forced him in the car to the VA the day after he came home. He told the VA, he told his therapist, he's like, you can admit me, he's like, but then I'm just going to tell them what I need to tell them, you know, to get out and then I'll kill myself, so. You can't hospitalize me, so they didn't and doctor, the doctor he was seeing, she had been seeing him for [00:24:00] years, like longer than he and I had been together years, so she and I talked and she, you know, he just wasn't she was getting ready to leave the V. A. So then he got a new therapist. So in November, I went with him to meet his new therapist and we had a really good conversation. But, Um, so anyway, to his parents, he came home just before New Year's. He spent New Year's with a mutual friend of ours. Her name is Mary hanging out doing stuff. I was with other friends with the kids doing my thing, you know, starting to try to get into a habit of doing stuff without.
Him or without concern for where he was. So on January 4th, I had gone to work in the morning. I, he had been very odd the days before, like. I would go to bed at night and he wasn't, he was [00:25:00] working third shift then, so he'd be getting up just as I was going to bed, or at least I thought he was working third shift, he had quit his job before he went to his parents house at the time.
I did not know that. I found that out the day after he passed. So I thought he was getting up to go to work. Like I said, didn't register much, but he'd been very coming in and arguing with me or picking at me or yelling and ranting about all the things that were wrong in his life. Like, it was somehow my fault, and I can the night before on January 3rd, he sat down on the end of the bed and he said, can I have a hug?
And I said, yeah, you can have a hug. I gave him a hug and he said, I'm sorry. I am so sorry for everything. And that was the last thing he said before he left the room. Now I feel like that was a sign of what's to come. But all the signs [00:26:00] are blazingly obvious later, right?
So on the 4th of January, I went to work. I came home, was on the phone with my friend. From the time I left work until I got in my driveway, because that's when I call my friends and talk is the, you know, short drive in between work and home, just to touch base and make sure everybody's okay, you know.
And so I sat in the driveway and talked to her for a little while because I didn't want to go in the house yet. I wasn't sure if he'd be awake, if he was going to be asleep. I got in the house and Kids were home, but he wasn't. My son had a couple of friends over. My, my 16 year old son had his friends over.
My 15 year old daughter had her boyfriend over. So I had a house full of people. I made dinner we ate. My son left with his friends to go for a walk. And girls and I were finishing cleaning up the kitchen. And, our friend, my Nashawn's friend Mary came. Over [00:27:00] and she said, John called me earlier, but he didn't, she's like, but he didn't answer when I called him back.
I haven't been able to get a hold of him today. I was like, oh, well, he's probably asleep. She's like, well, I'm gonna go wake him up. And I'm like, oh, please don't like, just don't wake him up because. He's cranky when he gets woken up and he's been hard enough to deal with as it is. He should be getting up to go to work anytime.
And she's like, well, what time does he normally get up? I said, uh, six, seven o'clock. She's like, well, it's six o'clock now. And I was like, okay. And so she went upstairs and she was only a couple of minutes maybe and she's, I can hear her yelling. I'm in the kitchen with three younger kids. So the My 15 year old, my 9 year old and my 5 year old and she's yelling call 911.
He's not breathing. And I'm like, that's not funny because my, my body, my, my brain was like, not prepared for, for that. So I went running up the stairs and she's, he's laying on the bed and [00:28:00] she's next to him. And I looked at him and I knew, like, I knew, and I'm trying to get my phone and I'm trying to call 911 and.
And I remember my oldest daughter trying to come up the stairs and she's already crying and I'm like, no, you cannot come up here. And then about that same time, the police are coming in and they're like, can you get the kids out of here? And I'm like, yes. And I tell my daughter, I'm like, you have to take your siblings and I need you to go across the street.
Like, I need you to take them to Nana's, because our neighbor across the street was a good friend, and all the kids called her Nana. So, take your siblings, go to Nana's. I will be over there and let you know what's going on as soon as I can. I remember them pulling his body off the bed, onto the floor, and they were trying to do CPR.
Mind you, my son is gone at this point. Like he had left and went for a walk with his friends and just before six and somewhere around six 30, he shows up back at the house and there are police cars and an ambulance and fire [00:29:00] trucks and people running in and out, and I'm standing outside of the cold because they didn't want anyone else in the house, so I'm standing out in the cold.
My mom, what happened? So she came and I just sent her over to Nana's with the grandkids like, go be with your grandkids. I need you to take care of them. I need to take care of this. And as much as I think it really hurt her that I didn't want her there with me, but I also didn't want her standing out there in the cold.
At some point, she did make it back across the street. I remember her being there when they told me that they couldn't, um,
that they had tried for 25 minutes to resuscitate him and they weren't able to.
We'll get to that. Um, I called my sister in law first. She lives in Seattle. She lives in Washington. It's like 3 o'clock in the afternoon there. She's going to pick, um, Our niece up from school pick her daughter up from school. And I'm like, where are you? She's like, I'm in the car. I'm like, I need you to pull over and I need you to stop [00:30:00] driving and she's like, well, I'm almost in my driveway.
It's like, okay, she pulled in the driveway. She's like, what is wrong? And I said. Sean's not breathing. I don't know what to do. Like, they're trying to resuscitate him. Like, she's like, Oh God, no. She's like, that wasn't supposed to be my last conversation with him. Cause she had talked to him two days before.
And I'm like, somebody has to call your parents. I'm like, do you want me to call them? She's like, no, I don't. I was like, do you want to call them? And she's like, no, I don't. So I'm like, well, 1 of us has to call them. And the police officers, um, or, like, local police said that they would, our local police said that they would, notify the sheriff
So sheriff's department said that they would be able to, contact the local sheriff's department where they live in Ohio and have 1st responder notify them. Meanwhile, I'm still dealing with our friend Mary and she's there and so, [00:31:00] uh, she actually called his aunt and then called his mom and told his parents before I was ready for his parents to be notified, which made everything worse.
And my mother in law was furious that she wasn't called first and that I called my sister in law first, but my mother in law is a piece of work, so she's very, um, narcissistic, some very narcissistic personality qualities, um. And I was simply just trying to do the right thing. I think no matter what I did in that situation, nothing was going to be the right thing for anybody.
Well, at least to some people.
Emily Jones: So what would you say or what advice would you give? Let's say someone is in a relationship now that mirrors what you had, right? They're dealing with someone that's struggling with PTSD and suicidal thoughts and, um, these, these volatile. Emotional outbursts, you know, what advice would you give them or what's something that was comforting to you or maybe that you would do [00:32:00] differently?
Tammy Denny: I had actually, uh, joined a group, uh, like a domestic violence support group and was going to weekly meetings with other women. In fact, there were like four of us in a two block radius. And those are the people who showed up at my house that night. Like, My ladies from my support group were the ones who saw the police cars come, and they were the first ones to come because they wanted to make sure I was okay.
Like, they thought something happened to me, and they stayed with me through all of it, even until them taking the body out of the house. They're holding me up, being my people. But my advice to someone else in that situation is, you can't control their behavior. You have to protect yourself, and you have to protect your kids.
I believe that people with PTSD can get better if they're getting the right treatment. So if [00:33:00] it's not getting better, you need to take it upon yourself, talk to their doctor, tell them what you're seeing. I think if I had told more of what I knew, we might have prevented this a little longer. My kids, my 16 year old son kind of summed it up perfectly.
He's like, I always knew it was going to happen. I just didn't know when.
Emily Jones: Yeah. And how has that been? Cause you've got four and with your foster daughter, right? Five, kiddos that you've been trying to navigate this grief with, and obviously they were there and I'm sure it's traumatic, you know, for them as well, even though they may not have seen everything, just the seeing what they did and hearing what they did and, Being along with you and part of that grieving journey, what, uh, what are your thoughts on how to best help children grieve as they move through that?
Tammy Denny: I think with my kids, they had experience with losing someone close to them. We lost my [00:34:00] dad three years ago, so they had, they had some experience with death, but I've made them. It is okay for them to talk about Sean. I've told them, let's talk about him. You know, a couple of days after he died, the girls and I sat on our bed, sat on the bed in our bedroom and watched videos, watched funny home videos of Sean and we laughed and we cried and we held each other.
I've made him as much a part of our lives as I can. Uh, we had him cremated. The girls, uh, all the kids actually have necklaces that have his ashes in them. My older daughter has pictures of him on her wall. We have pictures of him in our new house, where the kids can see him and talk about him. I've never, I was honest with them.
To a point, you know, age appropriately honest with each one of them about how he died. [00:35:00] Doc was four at the time, so I don't know how you explain it to a four year. I didn't have a clue how to explain it to a four year old, but I tried. I told him that his dad was his dad's brain was sick because he knows when you're sick, you go to the doctor.
And that the doctors tried to make his brain better, but they couldn't because sometimes we. Medicine doesn't always work, and doctors can't always fix things. So that was, my nine year old daughter was,
she understood what had happened. Uh, she's, she's about the most resilient child I've ever met in my entire life. She is sunshine and rainbows all day long, but we were very blessed. We had lived in a small community, had a lot of Support and loving people to surround us, you know, her teacher, uh, that it.
Her school had my oldest son when he was in the same grade, so yeah, so she taught two of my, two of my kids, so she felt [00:36:00] extra connected to the family, and so she was extra, like, you know, involved in checking in on Layla and our school counselor, like, I called them, and they, you know, she went to the counselor's office at least once a week to talk.
About things like, you know, just to check in and make sure she was doing. Okay. They, they're, I found out that there was a group of kids at the school that there was a grief group for kids at their school that met after school once a week. And it was for kids who had lost a parent. And so. They signed her up for that program.
My older daughter, she was doing some research for a school project. And so it was on transgender and like what, what it means to be transgender. And so she was looking up information and so she came across that they have a high suicide rate. And so she was looking into that. So she got called down to the office to make sure that she was okay.
And, you [00:37:00] know, my oldest son didn't want to deal with any of it. He barely made it to the funeral. Uh, it required my best friend going over there and forcing him into a car to get him to come to the funeral. He just didn't want to deal with his emotions. Uh, that manifested itself in a, Very negative fashion, he and some friends of his decided to get even with another kid they didn't like, and they shot up a house with BB guns.
He did 3, 000 worth of property damage, and he got himself into some serious legal trouble. But, we went to therapy, like, I made them therapy appointments, like, within a week of everything. I had all the kids signed up to see a therapist. Now, whether or not they wanted to talk, or if they were able to talk about things was.
A different story, right?
Emily Jones: Yeah. I always think it's so interesting how they each can handle grief differently. And I think as parents, we just try to do the best that we can to help them and give them the tools. But [00:38:00] at the end of the day, they have to decide whether they're going to use them.
Tammy Denny: My daughter, my 15 year old daughter has dealt with it with dark humor.
She'll frequently ask people if they'd like to meet her dad and then she'll pull out her necklace.
Emily Jones: Yeah. What, what is it with people who lose a loved one? Some of us go off the, off the cliff with the dark humor, but that's, yeah, that's fine.
Tammy Denny: Yeah. She's got the, uh, dark humor jokes to, to back it up. She met a boy at our, so we ended up moving and we had to sell the house and move because of the VA loan and all of the things.
And, so we ended up having to sell our house and move. So we moved to a small town, but it turned out to be a great thing for us. Yeah. We moved to an even smaller town than we already lived in, which is saying a lot, my, uh,
she met a boy that lost his dad to suicide about six years ago, and other kids at her school, like, it is, it was surprising to me how many kids have lost a parent
was my [00:39:00] mind was blown.
Emily Jones: I know at my kid's school, they had a group going as well, and they just said a lot with, uh, COVID, I think, had really impacted that, and they had even several students that had lost both parents, which was just really surprising. Cause I'm in a small town too, but so Tammy, in our last few minutes here, I know people are hearing your story.
They're seeing your beautiful smile and even though you've probably had a great conversations with your therapist, or you've told your story many times because you're able to move through it with such finesse and grace, something that must have really wreaked a lot of havic on your heart. So How does someone who's in those early days of grief and misery and despair, you know, what are the keys for them to be able to look forward to the future with hope and that maybe one day they can find joy and laugh again, too?
Tammy Denny: I loved Shan very much, [00:40:00] and I hold on to the fact that I loved him. I've been very blessed and fortunate to have met a man in my life. My, I guess, chapter two, or is that chapter three, since Shan was my second husband? Anyway, he has brought a lot of healing to my life and to the kids lives. They, they don't feel as If they've lost as much because he brought new and wonderful things, said we'd been separated.
So it was a little easier to move forward, but I never wanted to just move on. It was never about forgetting Shan. It's never been about that. It's about remembering him and remembering the good and the love that we had. And the family that we created.
Emily Jones: And it sounds like, I mean, you had such commitment and loyalty and dedication to him and to the relationship that you had.
And it, you know, certainly sounds like the new relationship has [00:41:00] kind of sparked some hope and hopefully brought some healing and understanding for you and your kiddos.
Tammy Denny: Yes, definitely. Awesome.
Emily Jones: Well, Tammy, thank you so much for sharing your story today. Are there any parting words, any thoughts of wisdom, any other dark humor stories that you want to share before we go?
Tammy Denny: Oh, so when, right after I sold my house, I decided not to traumatize the whole group of people in Menards. We were. Buying stuff to remodel the basement to add an extra bedroom in a bathroom to make room for my kids. And, uh, it's the new house. And, it's right around tax time. We're checking out and the ladies, the guy behind us in line.
It's like a 7000 purchase. And I'm like, Oh, and the guy behind the line is like, oh, there goes your tax money. And every fiber of my being wanting to go. No, not tax money. Just dead husband money,
but I decided it would be unfair to traumatize a, uh, group [00:42:00] of, Strangers at a Menards.
Emily Jones: Yeah, yeah, sometimes those are those thoughts that you just keep to yourself, but are so quick to pop up. Uh, so, yeah, that's good. Well, thank you again for sharing your story and just being so open and vulnerable. I know there's going to be Others who hear that and see themselves in your story and find a bit of inspiration that if you can overcome this and you can have hope again that they can too.
So thank you again for
Tammy Denny: doing that. All right. Sounds good. Thank you.
Emily: All right, brave widows. Well, I hope that you enjoyed hearing Tammy's story, and even though it is a heavy story, and it's full of trauma, and hurt, and sadness, that you can see that she's able to laugh, she's able to smile, she's able to have true joy again in her life, and I just wanted to mention as a quick point, That when Tammy and I were talking about how she could have [00:43:00] joy again, how she could laugh again, obviously she mentioned the new person in her life that has helped her heal and has helped her kiddos heal.
And I think that's wonderful. I think she, uh, has shared with me earlier as well. She's done a lot of work with her therapist to work through some of those things. This is not in any way a way to say that, By finding someone new, you can be happy just because of that, or that, that new person really replaces your light spouse or.
Insinuate so that takes the place of the person that you loved and that you were with so I just want to caution that while I'm Really happy for Tammy and for her family and she speaks like someone who has done a lot of the healing work I don't want to insinuate for someone who's very early on in their journey That they should just go find another [00:44:00] person or they should find a boyfriend or get married again and that will be the answer to their sadness and to their healing journey.
You still have to do the work. You have to process the emotions. I highly recommend that you work with a coach, with a therapist, with a support group, but that you put yourself out there and actually Do the work of healing. And if you find someone that you want to share life with again, I think that's a wonderful bonus and a wonderful way that you may choose to move forward in your journey.
Emily Jones: Hey guys. Thank you so much for listening to the Brave Widow Podcast. I would love to help you take your next step, whether that's healing your heart, finding hope, or achieving your dreams for the future.
Do you need a safe space to connect with other like-minded widows? Do you wish you had how-tos for getting through the next steps in your journey, organizing your life or moving through grief? What about live calls where [00:45:00] you get answers to your burning questions? The Brave Widow Membership Community is just what you need.
Inside you'll find courses to help guide you, a community of other widows to connect with, live coaching and q and a calls, and small group coaching where you can work on what matters most to you. Learn how to heal your heart, find hope, reclaim joy, and dream again for the future. It is possible. Head on over to brave widow.com to learn more.
