I'm sorry to hear about your wife. I echo what Jai and Eric mentioned, the network is really a vehicle not only to build your own site, but to help out others. The best way to do that is over time, get to know the other members by visiting their their sites, leaving comments, linking to other blogs when their information is related of valuable to your readers.
My best advice is to remain engaged and involved with the other members, sign up for their rss feeds, like their FB pages, follow them on twitter….. and last but not least, remain patient.
Johnny, good luck to you.