How Soulmate Survivors Began
On August 17, 2025, I lost my soulmate Donna. I had known her for 50 years, and we had been married for 49.
There was something unusual about our relationship. Words like best friends, lovers, or companions never seemed quite adequate to describe us. In our later years, I remember telling Donna:
“I think I love your soul—that part of you that goes beyond your presence or personality, that part that is the enduring you.”
Like many couples, I would sometimes ask her, “Do you know how much I love you?” But in those later years, Donna would pause, lock eyes with me, and answer in a serious tone:
“I do. I do know how much you love me.”
When Everything Changed
Donna was healthy and athletic. Then, five days before she went to heaven, a bacterial infection entered her body. She was misdiagnosed at the emergency room and sent home.
That night, her temperature rose steeply, and I took her back to the ER. Within hours, she lost consciousness and was placed on a ventilator. Five days later, with the counsel of my son, who is a physician, and the advice of Donna’s ICU doctors, we removed life support.
Donna went to heaven.
The Bible says, “the two shall become one.” We truly were one. And on that day, it felt as though half of me died with her.
Going home to an empty house, making funeral arrangements, and facing everything that followed was devastating. Donna and I had often said to each other, “I do not want to live a day on this earth without you.”
Now I was living that outcome.
Facing the Darkness
I made a decision that I would try to face the darkness rather than run from it. I forced myself to seek help.
I tried six different grief-support groups around San Antonio. Again and again, I would leave a meeting, return to my car, and break into tears. The people were caring, but nothing seemed to fit what I was experiencing.
Eventually, with low expectations, I decided to try one more time.
I quietly entered a GriefShare group led by Kathy and Tim. Something was different. Their love, guidance, and personal touch created a place that felt safe and healing. After completing the semester, I returned and eventually participated in a total of one and a half of their 13-week sessions.
Then the group took its four-month summer break.
Some of us weren’t ready to stop.
We knew we were far from completing our grief journey. In many ways, it felt as though a new chapter was just beginning. And we recognized something else: there were unique grief challenges involved in surviving the loss of the person with whom you had experienced this profound kind of oneness.
A Sanity Circle of Friends
So we began meeting in my home.
Soulmate Survivors was born.
The pain had not ceased. We weren't gathering because we had discovered a way to make grief disappear.
We gathered because we had found people who understood this particular loss from the inside.
We became what I have come to think of as a “sanity circle of friends”—people with whom we did not have to explain why the loss was so deep, why life felt so different, or why grief could still suddenly overwhelm us.
We learned together through quality books and videos, but some of our most meaningful moments simply came from sharing our lives with one another—supporting each other, listening to each other, and offering the insight that sometimes can come only from someone who has walked in similar shoes.
Opening the Circle
Over time, we began to realize that what we had found shouldn't remain only in my living room.
There are people throughout our community who have lost not simply a spouse, but the person around whom much of their life was built—the person they experienced as their soulmate.
Their family and friends may love them deeply and sincerely want to help. But sometimes we also need people who understand this particular loss from the inside.
That is why we are opening the Soulmate Survivors circle to others.
We don't claim to have completed the journey ourselves. We are still walking it.
But we have discovered that we do not have to walk it alone.
The Faith That Guides Us
Faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and trust in the truth of God’s Word have guided Soulmate Survivors from the beginning and remain foundational to who wew are.
Christian faith is not a prerequisite for being part of our group. We welcome with open arms those who are grieving the loss of a soulmate, wherever they may be in their own journey of faith. At the same time, we want to be transparent about who we are: our hope, our understanding of grief, and the encouragement we offer are grounded in the Christian faith and the promises of God.