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Joan Vassos is opening up about how her journey on “The Golden Bachelorette” helped aid her grief over the loss of her husband.
“My husband passed away during COVID, and I really didn’t embrace the whole mourning thing,” the 61-year-old told People Tuesday. “I was in charge of being strong. I just buckled down and ignored it.”
Vassos’s husband of 32 years, John, died in January 2021 from pancreatic cancer. At the time of his death, the reality star looked into group therapy but was unable to find any due to the pandemic.
Vassos — who appeared on Gerry Turner’s season of “The Golden Bachelor” and exited during Week 3 — shared that it was time to acknowledge the pain once she started making connections on “The Golden Bachelorette.”
She said of her grief: “I had to face it.”
“It was in my face that I was feeling really guilty, honestly, about having feelings for somebody else,” Vassos confessed. “I almost felt like I was cheating on John, which is crazy because he’s passed away.”
The mom of four also recounted that before John died, he told her: “I want you to find somebody. You are the greatest wife in the world. I don’t want you to be alone. I want you to find somebody.”
Vassos felt “uneasy” about moving on more than three years later. However, she worked through those feelings with a team of psychiatrists from “The Golden Bachelorette.”
“They said, ‘You don’t have to let go of John. Picture it like this: you have two balloons, one in each hand, and John is in a balloon in this hand, and your potential person that you’re going to fall in love with in this hand. You don’t have to let go of him from this hand to pick this one up and have a life with this one,’” recounted the private school administrator. “And it was such a good lesson.”
Following that discussion, Vassos felt free to discuss her late husband with her suitors.
“You’re trying to establish a relationship with somebody else, you don’t want to talk about your deceased spouse, but keeping his memory alive didn’t seem like I was being weird,” the Maryland resident told the outlet. “I felt comfortable finally doing it. I talked about how funny he was and stuff like that, and I feel like the guys really appreciated that.”
And talking about John also gave the men permission to bring up their late spouses.
“It opened up the door to talk about people that were really important parts of your lives,” Vassos continued. “You can’t ignore it. It’s going to be there. Talking about it and letting it out makes it more almost joyful.”
Which was a monumental moment in her grief journey.
“I went from not being able to think about him or even having a picture in my house that I could see every day — I had pictures in the guest room and other parts of the house I don’t see every day — to the point where now I’m feeling so much better about it,” explained Vassos.
Nowadays, the ABC lead continues to keep John’s memory alive.
“Putting his name on a bench or planting a tree, none of these things are good enough,” Vassos said. “So I said, you know what I think he would like the most? Is that you don’t forget him. Tell me stories. It doesn’t hurt me anymore; it makes me happy.”
Ultimately, being the ABC lead “cured me,” Vassos stated. “This journey made me open to love. And I figured it out partway through the journey that I really wasn’t there when I came, but I got there.”
In January, Vassos took a moment to remember her late husband on the anniversary of his death.
“It’s been three years…,” she wrote on Instagram beneath a family photo. “Some days it seems like it just happened and I can’t catch my breath, still feeling the shock of it. Other days it feels like he’s been gone a lifetime, those days are worse because I’m afraid the memories are fading. I think that’s what scares me the most.”
She concluded in part, “He was the husband that always made me feel safe and cherished. He was the parent that was always the fun one because that’s all he knew how to do…lucky kids because fun in his book was generally epic. Please keep telling the stories, don’t worry, they don’t make me sad…let’s be honest, most of them are funny! As the Greeks say, ‘May his memory be eternal.’”
Viewers can watch Vassos’ journey unfold when “The Golden Bachelorette” premieres Wednesday, Sept. 18, at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.