Certified Life Coach

Karen R. Smith-Racicot (Tall Karen) is a certified Life Coach and co-owned an accounting firm for over 20 years with her late husband. After her husband’s untimely death, she authored the workbook “I Didn’t See That Coming!” as a guide for organizing important legal, financial, and insurance documents. She has spoken on that topic at various venues in the DC metro area.

Karen is remarried and has five adult children/stepchildren and seven grandkids. She loves to quilt, and enjoys traveling and camping with her husband, Bob, especially throughout the beautiful US National Parks.

M.B.A.

Through twenty-nine lifetime moves, Karen S. Justice, M.B.A. (Short Karen), developed skills for facing change. Becoming a widow, however, was one of the most substantial changes she’s faced. After her husband’s death, Karen focused on building a new future. The effort combined fear, freedom, excitement, disruption, joy, and sadness. She learned much more about challenges and adaptation to change.

Karen has used her knowledge and experience through mentoring, teaching, and writing.

Ph.D.

Rebecca K. LaChance, Ph.D., lost her husband of twenty-five years from a heart attack in the early days of the Covid pandemic. Her experience of becoming a widow and grieving was deeply influenced by pandemic restrictions, her neurodiverse brain, childhood traumas, and her introversion.

Rebecca was a Registered Nurse for over thirty years, specializing in Critical Care. Her academic career focused on the impact of a significant other’s death, including her doctoral thesis about how advance directives were implemented in a military medical hospital.