Following the death of her husband, she took vows of celibacy, obedience to the Church and simplicity in life
By Jeff Kurowski | For On Mission
ALLOUEZ — On a March morning in 2018, Dottie Borowski knelt at the side of her bed, sobbing. Her husband, Dennis, had died of cancer three weeks prior.
“I was in a deep fog,” Borowski said. “I looked up and said, ‘What am I supposed to do? Who am I, Lord?’ As clear as can be, I heard, ‘Help others to love me as much as you love me.’”
During the middle of the next night, Borowski was awakened to another message.
“I heard, ‘I will give you the grace that you need each day to go forward.’ What happened after that I couldn’t explain. I had a fire that wouldn’t go out. To this day, it’s a hunger I can’t satisfy,” she said.
Borowski answered that call to serve others. On February 3, 2019, she became a consecrated widow, taking vows of celibacy, obedience to the Church and simplicity in life, which are renewed each year. She offers gratitude to the Widows of Prayer for teaching her “what God is expecting of us and also how powerful the prayers of a ‘Widow’ are.”
Borowski is a lone widow, not affiliated with a group. Her prayer passion is for vocations, especially to the priesthood. Borowski, a member of Sacred Heart Parish, Appleton, evangelizes and promotes vocations on social media, assists with vocations events, is a member of the Fiat Prayer Society and sets up vocations tables at church picnics featuring a career wheel for young people that leans towards religious life and cutouts so boys can see themselves wearing a Roman collar and girls a religious habit. Her friendships with many priests in the diocese are a blessing, Borowski said.
“I attend all the ordinations,” she said. “The procession of the priests brings me to tears. They’re family.”
Borowski, a mother of two military sons, said that Fr. David Irwin, a priest from Manchester, England, was also influential in her discernment. She met him when he was a seminarian serving in Shawano.
“I told him my deep love of the Church and especially our priests. I shared that I would give my life for our priests; I love and respect them so,” Borowski said.
Fr. Irwin encouraged her to learn about St. Margaret Clitherow, who was martyred for harboring priests
in her home.
“(Fr. Irwin) said that I reminded him of (St. Margaret Clitherow), which left me speechless,” Borowski said.
Borowski, who was born and raised in Plymouth, Wisconsin, is open to sharing her vocation story. Deborah Gretzinger, a theology teacher at Notre Dame Academy in Green Bay, regularly invites Borowski to speak to high school seniors about what it means to be a consecrated widow and about how God calls “all of us to a sacramental life.” She has discovered a way to capture the students’ attention immediately.
“I show them a photo from our honeymoon of me with Dennis on a Harley,” she said with a laugh. “Their jaws drop. I tell them that I know there is a young man and young woman here thinking about a religious vocation and that I’m already praying for them.”
Borowski, a retired human resources director, also serves as a parish ambassador for Catholic Charities, helping to facilitate programs in 23 parishes in the Fox Cities. She has led collections of items for refugee families and was involved in the “Hope in Hand” project that collected items to create hygiene bags for area parents.
Outreach is a way to give back to honor those who helped her through some dark times, Borowski said.
She grew up on a farm in a strict Lutheran home, and childhood was difficult, Borowski said. Following her chores, she would go into the woods to talk to God. One day, the trees were blowing in the wind, creating an opening for the sun to emerge, she said.
“I recognized it as a consummation between God and myself,” she said. “I felt that it was a marriage.”
At age 12, Borowski asked her teacher to speak to the Lutheran pastor. She told him that she wanted to be a nun.
“He looked at me like I was the biggest troublemaker that God created,” Borowski said. “ He said, ‘You can go back to your classroom.’”
She explained that she now looks back at that incident as the initial call she answered decades later as a consecrated widow.
Borowski, who entered the Catholic Church in 1982, would face more hardships. She was the victim of domestic abuse while living in California and Arizona. In 2000, she was diagnosed with lung cancer and given eight months to live.
“I escaped with the help of strangers,” she said. “I made it back to Wisconsin with one suitcase. I was free, and I was alive. I saw that it was all God’s plan to get me back here. That was a start to a brand new life.”
When she met Dennis, a widower for 25 years, he taught her the rosary, and they grew in their faith together.
“It snapped him back into practicing the faith,” Borowski said.
“The people who got me on the plane. The people who gave me pots and pans when I didn’t have anything. They were strangers. It was amazing what’s been given to me, so I want to give,” she said. “I want to make people happy. I want to make them smile. I want to tell them that love, happiness and laughing all come from God.”