A ministry born from loss. Built on love.
Miriam Neff did not set out to build a ministry.
She set out to survive.
When her husband Bob died, after a life built together in faith, family, and broadcasting, Miriam learned what most widows learn too late: there were almost no resources built for women in her position. The practical tools. The honestconversations. The simple reassurance that someone, somewhere, had walked this and was still walking.
So she made them.
Widow Connection began with a question Miriam started asking other widows: what do you actually need? The answers were specific. A budget that worked. A friend who would not flinch. Scripture that met them in the dark. A reasonto get up tomorrow.
That listening became a one-minute daily radio feature, New Beginnings, now heard on more than 1,200 outlets. Four books followed. Then sewing workshops in Ghana, financial training in Albania, vocational projects in Brazil, and skill-building work in thirteen countries. And alongside it all, a community of women who never have to explain themselves to one another, because they already know.
Today, Widow Connection enters its next chapter alongside Miriam's daughter, Valerie Hogan. An attorney, wealth advisor, and Certified Financial Planner, Valerie has spent her career in the rooms where widows are most often overlooked: the bank, the law office, the conference table. She brings her mother's conviction with her, that no woman should face this alone, and that grief, with the right hands around it, can become something useful.
The mission has not changed.
No widow left behind.
Here, and around the world.
ABOUT MIRIAM
I never planned to be the woman writing books about widowhood.
For twenty-three years, I was a high school counselor. I went to Northwestern. I built a life with my husband Bob, who spent his career in broadcasting and was my partner in every sense of the word. I taught. I parented. I served. And I assumed I would grow old beside him.
Then Bob died.
What I learned in the years that followed is that widowhood is not a side topic. It is a country. And too many of us are arriving at the border with no map.
I started writing what I wished someone had handed me. Eleven books later, including Not Alone, From One Widow to Another, and Where Do I Go From Here?, plus Wise Women Managing Money, co-authored with my daughter Valerie, I am still writing. Still listening. Still learning from the women who share their stories with me.
Widow Connection grew out of those conversations. The daily one-minute New Beginnings feature, now heard on more than 1,200 radio outlets, exists because women asked for one honest minute of encouragement to start their day. Our global skill training projects exist because widows in Ghana, Albania, Brazil, and beyond told us what they needed. Everything we do, we do because a woman said, this would help.
I am the founder and president of Widow Connection. But this ministry belongs to every widow who has ever picked up the phone, written the letter, sent the email that began with, me too.
Thank you for being here.
ABOUT valerie
Valerie Hogan grew up watching her mother turn grief into something larger than herself.
She also grew up watching what happened in the rooms her mother helped widows walk into. The bank. The attorney's office. The financial planner's conference table. Rooms where women arrived disoriented, often handed paperwork no one had ever explained, and asked to make decisions that would shape the rest of their lives.
Valerie decided early to spend her career on the other side of that table.
Today she is a Wealth Advisor in the Family Office Practice at Clearwater Capital Partners, where she works with women, families, and business owners on the financial decisions that come at the most consequential moments of life. She holds a J.D. and is a Certified Financial Planner® and Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA), credentials that allow her to advise across the legal, financial, and transactional questions widows so often face at once.
Alongside her work at Clearwater, Valerie is the co-author of Wise Women Managing Money with her mother, and serves as a strategic voice for Widow Connection's next chapter, helping the ministry extend its reach while preserving the warmth and clarity that have defined it from the beginning.
Her conviction is simple. The financial world has too often spoken past widows rather than to them. Valerie's career is built on the opposite assumption: that women, given clear counsel and real respect, are more than capable of running their own lives.
She has made it her work to make sure they get both.