By Stephanie Gardiner

Michelle Moriarty was instantly besotted with Nathan Johnston, who was tall, wore Doc Martens and drove the loudest V8 in town.

“Our friendship grew into something more, there was always chemistry between us,” Ms Moriarty said of her teenage sweetheart.

“We grew into young adults together.”

Amid the fits and starts of youthful romance the pair split in their early 20s, but reunited about a decade later in their home town of Bunbury, south of Perth.

“We had this conversation that we really loved each other and wanted to be with each other and wanted to start a family,” Ms Moriarty recalled.

“We were together from that point on.”

Life was busy as the couple welcomed their son Cody in 2016, Ms Moriarty built her career as a social worker and Mr Johnston worked as a fly-in,-fly-out miner.

One night in June 2018, the future they imagined ended when Mr Johnston died suddenly, leaving Ms Moriarty widowed at 38.

She went into a profound state of shock for months, navigating life without her partner and unsure of what each day would bring.

“Words can’t describe how in-depth my grief was,” Ms Moriarty said.

“It’s not just that you’re missing your person, every single aspect of your life is different.”

Though her family and friends rallied around her, it wasn’t until she met another widow that Ms Moriarty saw a glimmer of the future.

That bond moved her to establish the Grief Connect online support page for young widows.

The group – which has more than 500 members – grew beyond Ms Moriarty’s expectations, along with a page for over-55s set up after the death of her father Neville in 2022.

Members are far from alone: there were more than a million widowed people across Australia in 2021, 80 per cent of whom were female.

“There are heaps of us and we can survive this and we can delight in life again and live with hope again,” Ms Moriarty said.

Her work to establish the groups earned Ms Moriarty the 2023 WA AgriFutures Rural Women’s Award, which helped her expand Grief Connect into counselling, workplace education and keynote speaking.

Her latest venture is the launch of conversation cards, which aim to help people talk to others dealing with grief or difficult emotions.

“These cards need to go on every mining mess table, every staff table,” Ms Moriarty said.

“It’s for when you think ‘gosh, I don’t know what to say’.”

A go-to question for checking in on people in turmoil is not “how are you?”, but “how are you travelling?”

It’s something Ms Moriarty’s fiance Ross Craigie asks her regularly.

“It’s like we’re on a journey together,” Ms Moriarty said of her favoured expression.

“Grief is such a fluid thing, I’m on a grief journey but I’m also on a life journey.”

* Applications for the 2025 AgriFutures Rural Women’s Award close on October 9.