This study explored the tiger widows’Tiger widows (bagh bidhwa) place-based adaptationPlace-based adaptation in coastal Bangladesh; examining their transition from vulnerabilityVulnerability to resilienceResilience to climate change and their experience of ongoing social exclusion. Tiger widowsTiger widows, whose husbands were killed by tigers in the SundarbansSundarbans (while fishing), are one of the most vulnerable and marginalised communities in coastal Bangladesh. The coastal communities have been repeatedly devastated by climate change-related disastersDisaster (e.g. cyclones, flooding, irregular rainfall, soil salinity), particularly the tiger widowsTiger widows who not only face climate disastersDisaster but are largely excluded from society and identified as superstitious communities. We analysed how tiger widowsTiger widows adapt to climate change to survive alone with their extended families without the primary male earners of the family. Drawing on a qualitative study, the study was conducted in the village of Datinakhali (tiger village–locally called, bagh bidhwa gram) at Burigoalini Union under Shyamnagar upazila of Satkhira district in 2022. The primary data were collected through focus group discussions, face-to-face interviews, key informative interviews, reconnaissance surveys and field observations. We examined how tiger widowsTiger widows (the left-behind community by husband) manage to survive. We found that these womenWomen mostly rely on place-based resources from the SundarbansSundarbans for their livelihoodsLivelihood, build their adaptive capacity through livelihoodLivelihood capitals of social capital relationship and utilise their traditional local knowledge. The results call for policy recommendations to look at how the tiger widowsTiger widows adapt to climate change from vulnerabilityVulnerability to be resilient through the social connections with NGOs.