PWN International Literary Award Recipient

Books Authored:

• Pathways: From Victim to Survivor and Beyond
• 7 Ways To Heal From A Loved One’s Suicide (out Winter 2019)
• Widow Women Connect (out Fall 2019)

Areas of Expertise:

• Overcoming Adversities
• Finding Your New Normal
• Mentoring

Seminars or Keynote Topics:

• Overcoming Adversities
• Finding Your New Normal
• Widow 101
• Why Negative Labels Are Destructive and How To Transform Them To Positive
• Suicide Prevention
• Healing From A Loved Ones Suicide
• Ending the Stigma of Mental Illness
• Childhood Sexual Abuse Trauma and Healing
• Placing a Child for Adoption – Becoming a Birth Mom

Karen Nielsen, an author and speaker, is the co-founder of Widow Women Connect, a sisterhood of widows who connect, mentor and support each other through the wilderness of life after losing their spouse/partner. Karen lost her husband Robert to suicide in January of 2018, and through her pain and grief, realized she had a platform in which to help others. She speaks to groups on suicide prevention and mental health awareness, both of which plagued her late husband, as well as to those who have been left behind after losing someone to suicide. Being a witness to her late husband’s struggles in life, and his death, as well as her own life story, led her to write her first book: “Pathways: From Victim, To Survivor, And Beyond”, published in September 2018; her second book “7 Ways to Heal From a Loved One’s Suicide” is due out by end of 2019. She and her Widow Women Connect co-founder Roni Ketchum are co-authoring a book of the same name, due out early 2020, detailing their shared loss and their vision of being in service to other widows. Karen’s topics of speaking do not end with life after losing a spouse, she also speaks on overcoming adversities, finding your new normal, and letting go of unwanted negative labels. And she passionately speaks on childhood sexual assault trauma and healing, placing a child for adoption, which includes being a birth mom, and her own battle with depression, anxiety and PTSD.

Karen is also a mentor to women of all ages, helping them to find their self-worth and cultivate the ability to overcome adversities in their lives. She spent 30 years in the corporate world and only after her husband’s death, did she fulfill a lifelong dream of writing and becoming an author.

Karen is an encourager of everyone she meets, she loves to smile and laugh and has a zany, sarcastic sense of humor, a trait she learned from her Dad who she says is the ‘king of puns and one-liners’. She has one adult son Chris, who she is delighted to call one of her best friends, and current!y lives in her favorite city on earth, Boise, Idaho along with the man in her life, a black cat named Puma.

You can find Karen on Facebook:
•Karen Nielsen Author
•Widow Women Connect