Laura Cannon: Creating Space for Grief and Connection Through Just Okay
Grief is an unpredictable, profoundly personal experience that doesn’t adhere to a timeline or a set of rules. For many, it is a journey of survival, self-discovery, and learning how to exist alongside loss. Just ask Laura Cannon. After losing her husband to cancer at a very young age, she moved through various phases of coping, redefining her identity, and evolving into the grief advocate she is today. Meet Laura and learn more about her new organization, Just Okay, where she’s opening up the grief space for connection through loss at all levels.
About Laura: A Life Rooted in Compassion
“I think what drew me in was people — wanting to help people. And I think we all relate to that in some form or fashion — wanting to find purpose in what we do and help people.”
Laura is a proud Kentucky native, something she readily acknowledges. "If you've spent any time with me, it's something I mention very frequently," she says. “I’m very proud of the state I was raised in.” Though deeply connected to her roots, life eventually took her across the country to Austin, where she arrived in 2019 to follow a career in oncology.
Professionally, Laura is a trained oncology pharmacist. She attended pharmacy school at the University of Kentucky, followed by specialized residency training in oncology. This path brought her to Austin, where she worked in clinical practice and later transitioned into academia, teaching at the University of Texas College of Pharmacy. Though she has since left clinical practice, she still teaches part-time, finding joy in guiding students. "I'm very excited and thrilled that they have me on as part-time, so I'm able to do that and kind of pour into students."
Her journey into the medical field, particularly oncology, might appear as though it was shaped by personal tragedy, but her interest predated that. "You might think I chose that path because of my husband, who was diagnosed with cancer, but I was actually interested in it before," she explains. From a young age, Laura was drawn to patient care, realizing the importance of connection through her high school job at a small pharmacy. "I missed the people and the interactions — just being able to have conversations, get to know them, and figure out how I could help in the best way."
Love, Loss, & the Depths of Grief
“I was very young and very determined. A lot of our relationship was me being in school and saying, ‘We'll have this later. We'll get to enjoy married life later. We'll get to have a normal life later.’”
Laura met her husband, Tom, when she was just 19. In true small-town Kentucky fashion, they married a year and a half later. "I was married at 21, and he was four years older than me. But I was like, 'Hey, I'm going to pharmacy school. So, we're either doing this or we're not,'" she recalls.
Their early relationship was marked by the challenges of her rigorous academic path. "I was taking 23- and 26-hour semesters. I had a part-time job,” she shares. “He was a middle school math teacher, and teachers work a lot." Their lives revolved around demanding schedules, leaving little time for leisure. "It was always about just getting through and not necessarily living in the present. But there were a lot of good moments and good memories."
Then, during her final year of pharmacy school, everything changed.
Her husband began experiencing severe stomach pain, leading to numerous ER visits and misdiagnoses, including a suspected case of Crohn’s disease. Laura remembers a particularly bittersweet moment. "I remember my pharmacy school graduation day; he was miserable. It was really hard. On the day that I was celebrating something we had worked toward… we were getting to the next part of our life, and he was in pain and miserable."
By the time she started her oncology residency, his condition had worsened. She recalls a desperate moment of prayer on her drive home one evening, asking for clarity. "If there is something wrong, it's gonna have to be really bad for me to get him into the hospital because we’ve done all the tests. We’ve done everything. It has to be bad enough for me to convince him." When she arrived home, she found him in unbearable pain. "He was on all fours, hovered over the recliner, in so much pain. He had a fever." Though Tom blamed it on the stomach virus going around, Laura knew then. This was more than a stomach virus.
A visit to the emergency room where she was in residency revealed the devastating truth: an 18 by 22-centimeter mass in Tom’s stomach. Amid her first year of oncology residency, training to help cancer patients, Laura faced the cruelest irony — her own husband had cancer. He fought for nine months before passing away.
The Beginning of the Grief Process
“What was my journey of grief like? It was hard. Freaking hard. First of all, I had to learn. I had to become grief literate. I had to learn what things were. I went through a lot of ‘Is this normal? Is this my grief? Is this a normal 27-year-old feeling?’”
In the immediate aftermath of a loved one’s diagnosis and passing, survival often becomes the primary focus. Laura shares that she instinctively switched into a robotic caregiving mode, suppressing emotions to manage the overwhelming responsibility of being both a spouse and caretaker. As a trained healthcare professional, she knew too much — enough to prepare logistically but not emotionally. Her world became one of advocating, managing, and ensuring both her husband’s needs and their relationship were maintained, all while balancing the expectations of others around her.
Her "rock bottom" moment didn’t occur at the time of diagnosis. Instead, it came when the emotions she had buried finally caught up with her rational understanding of what was happening. Two weeks before his death, she began to realize she wasn’t ready to let go despite having spent months preparing for it. “My rock bottom was when my feelings caught up to my head,” she explains. “It was probably two weeks before he died. The whole time, I had been preparing. He was on hospice; I knew he was passing. But around that two-week-prior period, my feelings started coming back of wanting to hold on. I wasn't actually ready, even though that’s what we were choosing — what we were working toward.”
When the moment finally came, she found herself unable to sit with him after he passed, an admission that she still struggles to reconcile. Instead, she ran outside, overwhelmed by grief, guilt, and a sense of disbelief. Even though she had known this was coming, the finality of death was an unbearable shock.
Grief is often misunderstood as a linear process, but the reality is far more complex. Rather than a singular moment of hitting “rock bottom,” grief can be a series of emotional lows that gradually shape a person’s journey. In the years that followed, Laura oscillated between moments of deep sorrow and periods of compartmentalization — what is known as the dose-response model of grief. This model suggests that people process grief in small, manageable doses, protecting themselves from becoming completely overwhelmed.
A Shift in Perspective
“I think hearing ‘It's okay to do what your heart needs at this moment,” and “Don't feel bad about doing what you need,” was exactly what I needed to hear.”
For Laura, the early years of grief were about survival — finishing residency, maintaining a routine, and simply getting through each day. When COVID-19 hit, she realized she was oddly prepared for the isolation and uncertainty because she had already been living in survival mode for years. But as time passed, she began to focus on re-establishing her identity. Who was she outside of this loss? What did she enjoy? What did she believe in? Only when she had the bandwidth to explore these questions did a deeper healing begin.
When reflecting on the three most helpful healing modalities, Laura emphasizes the importance of:
Finding the Right Therapist – It took multiple attempts, but she eventually found a therapist who focused on meeting her where she was in the moment rather than following a rigid grief framework. “I highly advocate for therapy, but find someone who you relate with, who understands you, who you know doesn't spill their details as well. They [should] focus it on you. There [should be] personal and professional boundaries. I didn't start that until probably three or four years out. It can still be helpful whenever you're ready and willing.”
Memoirs and Books – Reading personal accounts from others who had experienced profound loss helped normalize her feelings and made her feel less alone. “It was reading the non-scientific books where the people who have been through it make it funny or normalize it,” she says. “I didn't know any 27-year-old widows. I lived in a small town in Kentucky… The only place I really had to turn was books. Find someone who’s gone through what you’ve gone through and knows how to talk about it.”
Supportive People – She leaned on those who truly “got it” and set boundaries with those who didn’t. “At that point in my life, I didn't have time for the people who didn't get it,” she says. “I know that seems rude and insensitive, and I knew I would come back around to them at some point and that relationship would be what it was, but at the time, I did not have the bandwidth for it. So, find the people who get it.”
Grief never fully disappears; instead, it becomes part of a larger, fuller life. Healing is about building around loss rather than erasing it.
The Birth of Just Okay
“I realized I'd never pressed pause and said, ‘Who are you now after this event? You just kept going on with your life, but who are you? What do you want?’ And in doing that, I've rediscovered myself. I've been able to start Just Okay, and all these things have fallen into place.”
When Laura found herself repeatedly being asked for recommendations on grief-related books and resources, she realized something was missing. "I had a friend who texted asking, 'What do you recommend?' And that same week, I had gotten three or four different texts like, 'I have a friend going through this,' or 'I have a friend whose husband is passing,' or 'What books do you recommend?' And I was like, 'First of all, I still don't know.' Even going through it. I might know better, but I still don't know. And second, I was like, 'Why does this not exist?'"
Just Okay was born from that frustration and her personal experiences. While attending her grandmother’s funeral, she was struck by the traditional offerings of bird feeders and wind chimes. "Culturally, can we really not do a better job than bird feeders and wind chimes?” she laments. “That's still what we're doing; there's not a better gift?" And then, someone read a handwritten note from her grandmother that poignantly stated, "Take a risk." That was just the push Laura needed. “I thought, This is it,” she says. “I have to do it. I have to start something where we talk about it.
And just like that, Just Okay was born.
“I’ve followed the grief social media space for a really long time, and I've seen a lot out there, but I still don't feel there are actionable steps for a space,” shares Laura. “That was where Just Okay was birthed. I was at a point in my career where I felt I’d never really taken the time to figure out who I was. At the end of the day, I was just using work to dissociate versus deal with it. I was using it under the bridge of fulfillment because it’s cancer care. I also didn't know who I was. I realized I'd never pressed pause and said, ‘Who are you now, after this event? You just kept going on with your life, but who are you? What do you want?’ And in doing that, I've rediscovered myself. I've been able to start Just Okay, and all these things have fallen into place.”
Laura explains that Just Okay is more than a website — it’s a community. “It's a website and a community space, almost like a Facebook community, where you can go in and talk about things that have been helpful to you." There are various loss-related channels for people to share resources and experiences because, as Laura aptly observes, "Grief is so many things that we mislabel it. I lost my husband, and I’m a widow, and death is grief. We think about death as being grief. But I think divorce, friendship loss, job loss, pet loss … there are so many forms. We all felt grief during COVID. Any loss or transition can still be grief.”
The Just Okay logo is even in Tom's handwriting, emphasizing the personal and supportive nature of the forum.
One of Just Okay’s key missions is to provide better alternatives to traditional grief gifts and support. "What I want is to highlight small businesses that are doing stuff in the grief space," Laura shares. "There’s a Run Club here in Austin called Good Grief Run Club. I'm going to be selling their merch because I think it's super cool that they’re doing that." Another example is a woman in Fort Collins, Colorado, who started a candle business after losing her sister. "She has birthday candles and death anniversary candles," Laura says.
Laura herself is developing the "Leave the Light On" candle, inspired by the Maggie Rogers song. "It’s for those people in your life you’ve had to step away from, but for you to come back to,” she says. “The idea is to connect with all these small businesses and artists who are doing cool things in the grief space. Think Etsy, but a concentrated grief and loss space.”
So, How Can You Get Involved?
“Really, the best involvement is sharing and talking about it.”
The most important way to support Just Okay is to engage with it. "Instagram and the website are live, and you can join the free community space. Really, the best involvement is sharing and talking about it. I don't have all the answers, and I think that's a fear — like I'm starting this business, so I should know the answer. But the point is just to start having the conversations."
Ultimately, Laura hopes Just Okay will help de-stigmatize grief by making it an open conversation. "I think it’s about trying to view [life as thorough] everyone is doing their best in that moment. Maybe that’s their best because they're dealing with so many other things. Don't immediately jump to stigma or judgment. Instead of getting mad, maybe be curious about why. Because maybe they're going through something. Maybe they're struggling. Try to have more conversations like we're doing here. This is a way to de-stigmatize it — talking openly about it even if that’s uncomfortable.”