Strange Bedfellows
COMMUNITY CHAMPION
━ From Issue 01 · May 2026
Next to the loss of a child, few losses are a sou-wrenching as losing spouse — especially after a terminal illness.
STORY BY JENNI KEAST
Kathy Kunde at the Grand Canyon. After losing her husband of 40 years to ALS, she found unexpected purpose tutoring women recovering from addiction at the Good News Rescue Mission.
Kathy Kunde said goodbye to her husband of 40 years just six months after his ALS diagnosis. He was 65.
Afterward, Kathy, a retired educator, found herself alone in a house that no longer felt familiar. So she moved to be near her children. "I'm setting up my house. I'm praying every day," she says. "But I'm doing it all through tears. And I kept asking, 'What am I supposed to do?'"
Kathy didn't wait for the answer. She got in the car, drove down the road, and planted herself in a women's Bible study. She knew absolutely no one. "For me, that was courageous," says Kathy, a self-described introvert.
While there, Kathy met a woman who had gone through a women's addiction recovery program at the Good News Rescue Mission. Captured by her story, Kathy was moved to help — but she didn't feel qualified. "I knew nothing about addiction, or homelessness, or anything like that," she says. "I lived in a bubble."
Despite her reservations, Kathy soon found herself in the office of Kevin Hancock, Director of the Dr. Ray Johns Academic Center housed at the rescue mission. Hancock made an intriguing pitch: "Volunteer here, and I promise you'll learn the world's best-kept secret."
Kathy bought it and jumped right in. That single decision changed her life. "Helping women who've been beaten down by life get back on track is the most fulfilling thing I've ever done," she says.
At first, she was taken aback by how many of the women's lives were never "on track" to begin with. They were trying to learn — or relearn — things like fractions, basic grammar, and keyboarding. "But as I got to know them better, I understood," says Kathy. "I mean, who could possibly focus on school assignments after what they went through?"
She was also struck by how grateful the women were for even the smallest gestures. When she helped one student fill out a job résumé, the woman broke down in tears. "You would do that for me?" she asked. "You would have thought I had given her Christmas," says Kathy. "It was so humbling."
“The bravest step isn’t surviving loss — it’s getting in the car and driving toward someone else’s.”
One of those women is Shar Bowden. In her 50s and raising a teenage daughter with medical challenges, Shar had spent years in instability — including a stretch living on a pot farm — before finding her footing through the residential addiction recovery program.
"I wanted something different," she says. "For me. For my daughter." Eighteen months later, she graduated from the program and found a place of her own. Now she's studying for her GED — with Kathy beside her as her tutor.
Listening to the two of them talk, you'd think you'd stumbled into a mutual admiration society. They are each other's biggest fans. "I may be teaching her academic skills," Kathy says, "but she's teaching me perseverance."
Shar has received from Kathy, too — more than just help with obtaining her GED. When Shar asked Kathy for help filling out the Salvation Army's Angel Tree application last Christmas, she'd hoped for something modest — a gift or two under the tree. Instead, Kathy quietly rallied her women's group. What arrived was a sleigh full.
"It was the best Christmas of our lives," Shar says.
Kathy and Shar. "I may be teaching her academic skills," Kathy says, "but she's teaching me perseverance."
In many ways, Kathy and Shar are strange bedfellows: a financially stable widow navigating grief; a woman clawing her way out of generational instability and addiction. They don't share backgrounds or life stories. What they share is loss. And in that shared space — one grieving for what was, the other fighting for what could be — transformation happened.
It didn't arrive as a lightning bolt. It started with help with a résumé. Then a GED practice test. A Christmas quietly organized. What Kathy has learned through all of it is this: the bravest step isn't surviving loss — it's getting in the car and driving toward someone else's.
“It was the best Christmas of our lives.”
Jenni Keast is a freelance writer based in Northern California. She's a lover of the Great Outdoors, photography, architecture and all things mid-century. Some of her favorite authors are G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Leif Enger, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Walter Isaacson.
Read Kathy's journey of navigating loss at thewalkofawidow.blogspot.com.
Issue 01 · May 2026
Read it the way it was meant to be read.
Kathy's full story — along with five others — lives in the print edition of HUMAN. Find a copy in Redding, Red Bluff, Chico, or Yreka.