Friends of St Louis CREW -Supporting Local Widows

09/24/2026

Fall is around the corner! It’s spooky time, pumpkin spice, sweaters and crunchy leaves, my favorite time of year.

Fall also signals time to rest, look forward to holidays and spend time with family.

Please take a moment to sit with me for a moment and learn how this time of year can feel to a widow, from my personal experiences. I tell my own story because it’s the only one I have the right to tell, but u promise you that the thousands of widows I’ve walked with the past almost 14 years, fall is a painful shift.

I have photos of every one of my babies in the middle of a pile of pumpkins. The pumpkin patch, carving pumpkins and posting them on Facebook to judge whose was best, the toasted pumpkin seeds and the fall hikes made this time of year full of joyful memories. On Halloween, all the kids friends and parents came to our house got chili before heading into the neighborhood to see friends and neighbors.

Thanksgiving was usually made up of 30-40 people at my mom’s house. We passed around a book every year that everyone wrote what they’re grateful for. It was cool to look back year after year to see what each person was grateful for. Then we lost Joe and a lot of other family members. The book got stored away, now too painful to look at. The big family celebrations stopped and we now do very little on Thanksgiving. I’m still grateful for so much blessing, but the old traditions just don’t feel like “home” without those missing.

Christmas Eve, Joe read the Christmas story from the Bible, we let the kids open one present, then sent them to bed. I filled stockings and we put all the presents under the tree. We wrote letters from Santa to the kids and hung them from the mantle. It was magical. Then one year suddenly my stocking hung empty and there was no gift under the tree for me. All these years later, that day just seems like a day now and never quite recaptured the fun it once held.

Then New Years Eve - what do you mean I’m starting a year they’ll never be a part of?!

Valentine’s Day - don’t open social media and see all the love you once knew and deeply long for as others celebrate this day with their person.

Then, for me, I had Joes birthday in November, our oldest son’s birthday in February, the anniversary of his death in March, my birthday in April and our anniversary in May.

We do what we do at the CREW to make this journey less lonely for new widows than it was for me. But, we can’t do it without you. We need you to keep showing up and not forget that just because I’ve found healing a joy that the work is not done. We have 650+ women depending on us to help them navigate this terrifying reality. Some days out from their loss, others on this journey much longer than me.

If you have a company or personal donations that you make at the end of each year, please consider donating to our 501c3 to ensure we can keep doing all the good we’ve done since we stepped out in faith to create this space where widows can find community.

The 3rd Annual Trivia Night is a great way to have some fun while making a difference. It’s just a couple weeks away and we still need sponsors, table sales and auction/raffle items. Please reach out if you can help in any way, and thank you to those who’ve made this possible from the start.

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09/11/2026

Thank you Mascots for another fun night and for your donation of a portion of the proceeds from tonight! We had over 25 friends show up tonight in addition to the regular crowd to support us! Also, the CREW and the winner of the 50/50 raffle took home $155 each because we NEVER accept raffle winnings back - what’s the fun in that?! We are so humbled by the constant show of love by our community!

09/10/2026

Asking for a friend...
Do you believe in the mission of STL CREW and want to be a part of making sure we can continue to support the 650 (and growing) widows who turn to us for help and support? Our friends and neighbors in St Louis and St Charles Counties have shown us consistently for years that we are not forgotten and that we matter enough for you to show up. We are always looking for local grant programs as well, but we are currently looking for sponsorships for our upcoming events. If you would be interested in being a corporate, organizational or personal sponsor, here are some of the options in the coming year:

Trivia Night Sponsorship-all proceeds from trivia night will be used as our budget for planning events and outreach from Christmas 2026 through trivia night 2027.

Monthly Lunch Sponsor: $350 for catered lunch to feed around 40-50 people each month

Christmas Adoptions: Let us know if you'd like to purchase Christmas gifts for a widow and her kiddos at the holidays, and we can provide you with items matching your available shopping budget or you can donate to this outreach and we will do the shopping.

Christmas Party: This event costs our organization the largest portion of our budget each year, with this year's event expected to cost over $5,000 for hall rental, food, ballon artist, face painter, goodie bags, crafts, decor, and most importantly, our widow shop, ensuring each widow will leave with one or more wrapped gifts to have under her tree on Christmas morning.

We will let you know of other opportunities for sponsoring 2027 events such as our Widow and Kiddo Easter Egg Hunt, Family Picnic, and Retreat! If you'd like more information about our group or how to partner with us to support the work we are doing in our community, please reach out through a comment here or a private message.

Thank you!
Gina, Cyndi, Lisa and Destiny

Send a message to learn more

09/10/2026

Hope to see you at Mascots tonight for Music Bingo. Mascots has generously giving back 10% of proceeds from food and drink sales this evening to support local widows served by StL CREW! It's free to play, but they ask that you enjoy a drink or something delicious off their menu so they can continue to support local organizations like ours. Thanks!

08/26/2026

As Dolly assured all of us recently in a video she posted that she’s “not done yet” despite some health concerns, as a widow I could see the cracks in the strength she has always carried with such grace. She looked tired and sad even as she smiled. I wondered if she had any widow friends in her life to walk with her after the loss of her husband and I wished I could wrap her in a hug. Research (Holmes & Rahe) shows that widowhood is the most stressful life event someone can experience, and considering all of the secondary losses that come with it widows often have an 80% higher likelihood of major health breakdown in the 24 months after their loss. Widowhood isn’t just an emotional problem, or something that we can just cheer up and move on from. It changes us to our core. Dolly’s life blessed so many in the ways she showed up for the most vulnerable. Today, find a way to be like Dolly.

07/17/2026

We want to express our appreciation to Judy, our new official jBloom consultant at StL CREW, for the lovely necklaces for the swag bag. jBloom has been exceedingly generous with widows in our community since 2020, so this time we found a widowed consultant and paid it forward by ordering the 40 necklaces for retreat from her. She kindly offered a discount which we declined so she could be as blessed as we have been! Also, our friends at Baue provided bath bombs, lotions and lip balms for the bags. It was so fun to really spoil the ladies this week at retreat!

07/14/2026

Day two was full of fun, laughter, karaoke on the party bus to Hermann, silliness in the antique shop, cheers and breaking plates and unhealthy patterns.

07/14/2026

One of the ways I honor Joe as I move forward with life is by taking nature photos in the style he approached photography with. I printed 40 of my personal photos of flowers and we wrote personal welcome note to each woman. Each person got a different photo they could take home to frame as a momento of the trip. Also included in the swag bags are jBloom necklaces, CREW tumbler and shirt, personal fan, floral bag and cosmetic bag, and pampering items. Each swag bag is valued at more than we charged ladies to reserve their spot.

07/14/2026

Arrival day, Retreat 2026: Courage to Bloom. Swag bags, henna, massage, w**e and desserts, connection and luminaries on the lake. The first day is all about turning off the overactive grieving central nervous system and making everyone feel safe.

06/14/2026

We had our monthly luncheon and meeting today. We catered Qdoba lunch for 40 widows and Gina discussed the importance of saying our late husband’s name. Opportunities to talk about them doesn’t always happen as time passes. Everyone else moves on, and we move forward (never on)….at whatever pace we can. The reality is, most of us will heal. Most of us will find joy, purpose, passion and hope for life again, all of us on our own timelines. Grief changes for most of us, softens. But even at 13 years since losing, I cried and felt incredible pain while also overjoyed to be watching my daughter compete at the Miss Missouri pageant this past week. She performed CPR for her talent because she lost her dad at 8 years old when he was only 40 years old, to undetected heart disease, leading to a widow maker heart attack. He should be here watching her shine and I felt it deeply in that moment. I’m always going to be sad for what Joe has missed. He should have been here. She should have him in her cheering section, wearing Hawaiian shirts custom made with their daughter’s faces or “PAGEANT DAD” tshirts like the other dads I saw cheering their daughters on this week. My grief is mostly for my children, for Joe and for the world that isn’t the same without him, but I hadn’t cried in a really long time and the tears and pain were a surprise. I can usually think of him and smile, overcome with gratitude that he was mine for almost 20 years. But, I’ll always cherish times to share about who he was. Because of him, I created this community of support which has honestly healed me right along with every woman who has been brave enough to walk in the door. Because he lived, and he mattered, our daughter is making a difference in the world.

To our community: We thank you for helping us create this sisterhood and walk with women at various stages of healing. About half of the women in attendance said their name today. We shared lunch, laughter, tears, safe space, and each of us left feeling a little less alone in this.