BW 151: Are You Waiting on God… or Just Avoiding Your Life?
May 20, 2025[TRANSCRIPT BELOW]
So many widows say:
💭 “I’m just waiting on God to send the right people...”
💭 “I’m praying for connection and healing…”
But after months—or even years—of waiting… nothing changes.
In this episode of the Brave Widow Show, Emily shares the critical difference between faith and action.
You’ll learn:
✅ How trauma puts your body into fight-or-flight—and keeps you stuck
✅ Why praying alone won’t rebuild your life
✅ What taking aligned action actually looks like (without forcing it)
✅ Real-life stories of healing, connection, and courage
✅ How to know if it’s time to act (and how coaching helps)
If you're tired of feeling stuck and are ready to feel alive again… this episode is for you.
👉 Book your free consult now: https://www.bravewidow.com/consult
📥 Free grief starter guide: https://www.bravewidow.com/start
#GriefSupport #ChristianWidow #FaithInAction #LonelinessAfterLoss #BraveWidow #LifeAfterLoss #RebuildAfterGrief
Resources & Support for Widows:
💛 Ready for more support? Join my coaching program to navigate this journey with confidence. Book a free consult here: https://calendly.com/bravewidow/widow-consult-call
🔹 Join the Brave Widow Membership: Get coaching, workshops, and a community of support → https://bravewidow.com/join
🔹 Download the Brave New Widow Starter Kit: A free guide to help you navigate the first steps of widowhood. → https://bravewidow.com/start
📌 Subscribe & Stay Connected
👍 Like this video if it helped you
🎧 Subscribe for more stories and strategies for life after loss.
💬 Leave a comment if this story resonates with you or if you want to share your own experience.
📩 Share it with someone who needs encouragement
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction: Are You Waiting on God?
01:15 The Consult Call: Taking the Next Step
03:22 Personal Story: Waiting for Friends
12:34 Biblical Examples of Action and Faith
19:36 Building a Full and Vibrant Life
33:27 Practical Tips for Building Friendships
36:48 The Power of Coaching
39:34 Conclusion: Faith and Action Together
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Hey hey, I’m Emily Tanner. I was widowed at age 37, one month shy of our 20 year wedding anniversary. Nathan and I have four beautiful children together, and my world was turned completely upside down when I lost him.
Now, I love my life again! I’m able to experience joy, achieve goals and dreams I thought I’d lost, and rediscover this next version of me.
I did the work.
I invested in coaching for myself.
I learned what I needed to do to move forward and took the steps.
I implemented the tools and strategies that I use for my clients in my coaching program.
This is for you, if:
- You want a faith-based approach to coaching
- You want to move forward after loss, and aren’t sure how
- You want to enjoy life without feeling weighed down by guilt, sadness, or regret
- You want a guide to help navigate this journey to the next version of you
- You want to rediscover who you are
- Join the Brave Widow Community: https://www.bravewidow.com/join
- Schedule a consult with Emily: https://calendly.com/bravewidow/widow-consult-call?month=2024-08
Find and take the next steps to move forward (without “moving on”).
FOLLOW me on SOCIAL:
Twitter | @brave_widow
Instagram | @brave_widow
Facebook | / bravewidow
YouTube | @bravewidow
#widow #widowed #widowhood #widowlife #widowsofinstagram #widowshelpingwidows #grief #griefcoach #griefshare #griefsucks #griefquotes #griefsupport #griefjourney #griefandloss #griefrecovery #lifecoaching #lifecoach
BW 151 Waiting on God
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[00:00:00] welcome to episode number 151 of the Brave Widow Show. Are you waiting on God or are you just avoiding action? Today I wanna share with you something that's come up recently on a consult call that I did and something that I hear frequently from widows, which is I just need to wait on God.
Today I'm gonna break it all down on when we wait on God. When we take action and how do we do that in even just the framework of meeting new people, of making friends, of building relationships and all of the good things, have you ever thought, I'm just waiting on God to bring the right people into my life, but months or years later? You're still alone. Having faith and trusting in God and waiting on his timing doesn't mean that we [00:01:00] become passive. It doesn't mean that we sit still and we wait and we do nothing. So the question that I want you to consider today is are you waiting or are you hiding? I was on a consult call recently in the last couple of weeks, and there's always a point on the consult where people go from full belief that coaching is right for them. The membership is right for them, but when it comes time to actually taking that next step forward, they freeze up. And for widows, I understand that this is especially true because it is an investment.
My one-on-one 5K coaching program is a big investment for people in themselves. Yeah, and I know that widows are already struggling with confidence, struggling with making big [00:02:00] decisions, and struggling with just fear. Fear from every side. We second guess our decisions. We doubt we don't wanna invest money in certain things, and so I get that it is a big decision.
And what's amazing is the transformation that can happen. Just in making that decision. So on the consult call, when I'm explaining to widows how we are going to move them forward, where they are now, what their struggles are, and what life can look like six months from now. Many times people are super on board, they're ready to go.
They feel like this works for them, and the moment they start to think about money, they really pump the brakes. On a recent consult, what one of the potential clients said to me was yeah I, what I really need to do is I just need to pray more. I just need to wait [00:03:00] more, and I just need to be hopeful that God's just gonna bring the right people in my life.
No. No, that is not what you need to do. Yes, you need to pray. Yes, you have to wait on God's timing. Yes, you want God to intervene for you, and also you need to take steps forward. I had to realize, listen, I'm an introvert. I don't like big crowds. I don't like small talk. I am not someone who just loves going out and meeting new people.
That's not my natural wheelhouse. I've come to appreciate those things more, but it's not just something I would want to do for fun, right? There's generally a purpose behind it. I live in Arkansas in a rural community, and I used to, until very recently, live out in the country on a private drive, 15 minutes outside of a [00:04:00] small town of.
9,000 people. Okay. And I used to sit at home just wishing and hoping and praying that God would just bring me friends, bring someone who cares about me into my life. Now, could God have done that? Sure. But is it also super realistic for me to think that I could be sitting on my couch every day waiting for someone to roll up on my house, knock on the door?
And be like, I'm here. I'm here to be your friend. That's not necessarily very likely. And once I came to grips that is the reality of, okay, if I want to make friends, if I wanna build new relationships and connections, I have to put in some work then. I realize that of course God can do anything and he can work miracles, and also we can decide to create a [00:05:00] future that we want for ourselves, and we have a part of responsibility in doing that.
How I responded to the person on this console was no, you don't. Just sit around and wait on God and pray and be hopeful and just keep waiting like you've already been waiting for years. Years. What are you waiting for? If it hasn't happened in seven years, it's not gonna happen in the next seven years.
So whether or not you choose to work with me, work with someone, do the things I've outlined for you in the order, I've outlined them to find success, but sitting back and waiting and hoping and praying is not gonna help you move forward.
One of my favorite Bible verses is Proverbs 16, nine, which says A person's heart plans his way, but the Lord determines his steps. [00:06:00] Okay. It doesn't say, people don't come up with a plan. They pray to God and just wait. They wait for God to give them the plan. They wait for God to tell them to take the next step.
No, this is a man heart. A man's heart creates and devises his plan. We take steps forward. The Lord determines and guides our steps well. He can't guide our steps if we're not stepping. He can't open and close doors if we're not walking up to any doors. So how I think about this visually is as human beings, we create plans.
We take steps forward and pray. We trust in God's timing and we trust when God opens and closes doors.
An example of this would be last year it's been at less than a year, we wanted to sell our house that was in the country and we wanted to buy a house [00:07:00] that was closer to where we're gonna be building our new house in the future. Musical houses. I know it's a little crazy. But we, I bought a couple years ago, 40 acres of land that it's beautiful pasture land.
I wanna build my future house there. That has been the goal for several years, and it was amazing because as we were looking at houses to buy less than half a mile from where I want to build a house, was a house for sale on two acres. It was five bedrooms, three baths. It was big enough for our family, plus it had an office like it just looked like.
Maybe not the perfect house, but definitely a great place. I created all these visions, right? Oh, this would be the office, this is where the kids' bedrooms would be. We could put a pool in. That would be amazing. And every day I could drive by where our [00:08:00] dream house is being built and check on the house.
And it puts me on the side of town that I wanna be. It puts me closer to my in-laws where I wanna be. Like all of the signs were there, like this would be a great house like. This. Wow. I couldn't have cleaned it better myself. We were supposed to close on the house on July 5th of last year, and on the 4th of July on a holiday weekend, the deal fell through and I was sitting back going, why?
Why is this deal falling through? Like it looked so perfect. It looked like it was supposed to be the house. For us, it looked like that's where we were supposed to go, but the door got closed, and so I could have spiraled for a really long time on how the universe is unfair and God's unfair, and why would he let this happen, and all of those things instead.
I focused myself on moving to a place of peace and acceptance that for whatever [00:09:00] reason, the door was closed and there would be something different for me, something better for me than what I could imagine right now. And that was really hard because here in Arkansas where I'm wanting to build my house, there's not just like a ton of other houses nearby.
So I was thinking what would be more perfect than this house? Like it's right on the street from where I'm building my future house. It's right where I wanna be. It's big enough for our family. It has room to grow. Like it would be so great, but there's a reason it didn't work out.
And I didn't get frustrated that I had done all the work. I had met with the title company. We had the realtors involved. We did all of these things. We took action, we took those steps and for some reason it didn't work out. But just a week or so later, we would be looking online on Zillow as one does when looking for houses.
And we would [00:10:00] find a really wonderful house that we now live in. It was a great setup. It was downsizing from our old house to make life a little bit easier. It was in town. It's five minutes away from the kids' school. It's five minutes away from my office now, where if you're watching this on video, I'm here in my office and the great thing is we didn't have to invest any money into fixing it up.
The other house we would have needed to invest in money to paint, to do some minor construction, to fix things up, to replace the flooring. That smelled a little funky. Okay?
We ultimately would've had to invest quite a bit of money to fix up the other house, to make it marketable, to resell in the future. It really probably needed, depending on whether or not the HVAC system was gonna go out. Because they were aged, it could have taken 80 to a hundred thousand dollars to fix up that house to be what it really [00:11:00] could be to maximize resell in the future.
Whereas the other house we found was actually less expensive than the first house and has already been updated. So no more investing, no more work like it was move-in ready and it will be marketable in the future. But in that moment of the in-between. I just, I couldn't understand why didn't that other house work out?
It just seemed like it would've been so perfect. But now that I have more perspective, I see that where I'm at, even though it's not right next to where I'm building my dream house actually does work out better for my family than that first house would have. So that's one example I could give you so many.
Of where we want to live in a state of having this combination of taking steps forward, of taking action, of praying for God's timing, praying for [00:12:00] him to open and close doors, praying for him to bring things to fruition, but we're still taking action. We're not sitting back and just waiting on God to do all of the heavy lifting.
So here is what waiting on God often looks like in grief. We're praying for some sort of connection. We're hoping that someone shows up. We isolate ourselves, but we call it rest or we call it healing. But ultimately, we sit on our couch, we lay in bed, and we are crushingly lonely.
Some biblical examples of taking action and waiting on God's timing. Noah built the arc before the rain came. Now, you could say God told Noah to build the arc, which is true, but he built the arc for years and years and years before the rain came. The story of Ruth, she went out in the field.
She didn't sit back at home with Naomi and wait for [00:13:00] Boaz to show up and knock on her door and offer to marry her. No, she put herself out there. She took action. She believed in God's timing and provision, but she was a woman of action. She was not a woman that sat around and just waited for God to magically solve all of her problems.
God often moves as we move. And how I choose to think about it is as we take steps forward, as we take action, we create ripple effects. We create momentum. We are making things happen. This, another example would be this business, brave Widow. This podcast right here, right? I could choose. To sit back and be hopeful and pray that God would send me clients.
God, please send me clients. I want to help widows. I want to help people who are hurting. I want to help them [00:14:00] restore their faith and their relationship with you. And I could pray and sit back and wait and be passive, and I could also not get any clients. Or I could pray and I could be faithful and I can be consistent when people don't show up to webinars when my copy isn't good yet, and it's not resonating with people and they're not compelled to join my offer when I'm having a difficult time finding people, but I'm taking action.
Praying for God, believing in his timing, knowing that when I am ready, he'll bring the right people to me. When people are ready, he will bring them into my path, and he has, and it has been amazing. So many people reach out. I found you on YouTube, I found you on TikTok, I found you on Instagram. And so if I had not put my videos on YouTube.
Put my videos on TikTok, put my videos and content on Instagram, then those people wouldn't be able to say, this is how I found you. [00:15:00] Could God still have brought me those people? Sure. I get plenty of client referrals and plenty of people that say, oh yeah, so and so told me about you, that I should reach out and connect with you.
Yes, it is possible and it grows exponentially. The more action and the more steps that we take. So let's think about this combination of waiting on God and taking action in the context of making friends and building up your social circle, which the majority of you have lost. Okay? When my late husband, Nathan died. I was a senior vice president of a private equity owned healthcare company, which is a long way of saying I was very busy.
I had tons of responsibility. I had teams of over 4,000 people across the United States. I had over a hundred hospitals and offsite locations of patients where I managed 24 7. I was literally [00:16:00] on call 24 7. Okay. If there were major issues, problems, whatever it was, it could get escalated to me. I was available, so I also traveled nearly full-time for work, about 50 to 75% of the time I was traveling.
So I didn't really have a lot of time or a lot of mental and emotional bandwidth to just have a bunch of friends. Nathan was my best friend. He was my cheerleader, my advocate. He encouraged me to keep going every time I wanted to quit or give up. And when he was gone, no one else could fill that void. My grief was real and raw, and there was also a grim awakening that my social circle had disappeared.
The friendships that we had. Were either through Nathan or through his family, or were with people I worked with, many of my friends and people were people that I worked with. We just had really great [00:17:00] relationships. But guess what, 95% of those people didn't live anywhere near me.
They lived in other states. They lived far away, so they physically couldn't. Be there for me to be friends with me. And when you work with someone, it's just a little bit of a different relationship. So I realized my social circle, my identity, my lack of friendships was a huge problem, and I didn't have a lot of time to just go out and meet people and make friends.
That just felt super weird. Like, how does someone in their forties go meet people and make friends? Because doesn't our, everybody already have friends, like I'm late to the party here. All the friendships have been established, and how am I supposed to make friends? Is there an app for this?
That was a question I constantly had. It is hard to make friends as an adult, and it feels weird and awkward and strange. It's [00:18:00] scary and hard to walk into a room alone, and unfortunately, most of your family and friends don't know how to support you, so they also disappear .
I remember distinctly one afternoon I was sitting on my couch, I'm sure it was over a weekend, and I was just thinking about like how lonely I felt, how disconnected, how hurt I was that people didn't show up for me. And the way that I wanted and how I just kept wishing and waiting and praying and hoping that, just magically people would show up and support me.
That magically I would just have friends. And I sat back and I started to think about navigating all the small talk. As an introvert, I just, I don't love small talk. Tell me your deepest fears. Don't tell me about the weather. Okay. But, and so I started thinking like, how am I gonna navigate small talk?
And I then I thought about how boring my life is, [00:19:00] right? Like I go to work, I take care of my family, and that's pretty much all I have energy for. I wasn't doing anything fun or exciting. I wasn't traveling, I wasn't going on adventures. I wasn't learning anything new really. It was just all of my brain power and all of my.
Ability to get things done was going to work and family. And so I was like even if I meet someone new, what am I gonna say? I don't even watch Netflix, I don't watch tv. I don't even have an interesting TV show. I could say, Hey, I've been watching this series.
I had nothing. I felt like I had nothing. So I decided that I was going to build a full and vibrant life, and if I was gonna make friends, that I wanted to make friends in spaces of people who had shared interests. So I've shared the story on the podcast several times, but one of the first places that I tried going was a real [00:20:00] estate investor group.
And I talk about how I sat in the parking lot for 20 minutes sitting in my truck debating whether or not I was actually gonna go inside. I didn't know anyone there. I was by myself. I already felt like I had the flashing sign over my head that was like, widow, everybody, look, this person's alone. She's by herself.
She's a widow. Ding ding. Nobody probably noticed, but I noticed and that was all that mattered, but I was terrified. I didn't know anyone in there. I wasn't a real estate investor, so I felt like a fraud. Going to this meeting, I felt do I even deserve to be in the room with these people?
I. I felt like a newbie. I didn't know where to sit if people were gonna be nice, if it was gonna be mostly men, mostly women, like what it was gonna be like. I didn't know. And so for 20 minutes I sat in my truck debating whether or not to just turn around and go home. And I was [00:21:00] like this close to just turning around and going back home.
Because I had that feeling of what is the point? Like why even bother? Why even try? But I walked into the room and I met people there that I am still friends with today, that I have used as mentors and have great relationships today, two years later. I also joined coaching programs, so I joined Dr.
Betsy Gures Faith-Based Coaching Academy, which was a live coaching certification program, and I expected it would be a program with other students, which it was, what I didn't expect was what an amazing, supportive group of women that would be. I've worked with women for many years and it is not common.
That you find other women who are supportive, who want to see you win, who celebrate your success without being [00:22:00] bitter and resentful. Who share in your struggles and who will be open and vulnerable on a Zoom call and cry and sob their eyes out and be frustrated and learn the process and try out their coaching skills and all of those things.
Like it was the most life changing experience I've ever gone through, and I've made friendships there that I still have. I met one of my coaches there. I credit her for. Robert and i's relationship because when I felt like giving up or I felt eh, I don't know if this is gonna work out, she coached the heck outta me and whipped me back into shape and helped me to open my eyes, right?
But I was able to form friendships of people who care deeply about what I care about, which is helping other people, helping equip other people to have. A beautiful life. A life that they can enjoy again, a life that they can contribute towards. But coaching is [00:23:00] all about taking action. That's what I learned in that life coaching program is we are forward focused, we take action, and we pray and seek God's divine guidance, but we take action.
I joined a grief certification program where I still have relationships with people in that space. And again, I now have friendships with people who deeply care about what I deeply care about, which is helping people navigate grief, helping them learn how in the world to function and survive and ultimately thrive, while also honoring their grief and their sorrow and their sadness.
So these are places that I went to meet people, to make friends, to share and shared interests and values and beliefs that have been so rewarding and fulfilling and amazing for me. But I wouldn't have met any of those people if I had just sat on my couch. I had just laid in my bed and cried and felt [00:24:00] lonely, and felt sorry for myself, which trust me, I did plenty of that.
At some point you gotta get outta bed. At some point you have to take action and take steps forward. I think about this balance of taking action and taking steps forward and balancing it with God's timing and his ability to open and close doors. With, when I say take action, we're not forcing something to happen.
We're not forcing a square peg in a round hole, right? So like when I meet people and I'm like, oh, I think I might wanna be friends with this person. Or even if I get excited oh man, we could be like best friends. This person is like amazing. I take action by extending an offer. Okay. Hey, would you like to go to lunch sometime?
Hey, let's grab coffee. Hey, I would love to learn more about you. Do you like Mexican food? Let's go eat some Mexican, right? And if the person says no, I might ask again, but if they're repeatedly saying no, I'm gonna stop asking. [00:25:00] And I'm gonna take that as a sign of, okay, maybe they're not interested in building a friendship, or maybe they just have different priorities right now, but I'm not forcing it.
To happen, right? Just like buying that house in the earlier part of the pod podcast that I shared with you. In my mind, that house was pretty close to perfect. Like we definitely could have made it work. It needed some fixing up, but I could have forced that deal to go through. I didn't have peace about it.
And the reason it fell through was it needed work, it needed a new roof. It probably was gonna need some HVAC systems to be replaced, and so post inspection, as we were renegotiating ultimately what the price of the house would be, I asked for some concessions in the price because it needed a new roof and it needed a new HVAC systems in the short term, and it needed some other things done on the inside.
The seller wasn't willing to make concessions, so I [00:26:00] could have forced the deal to go through by agreeing to still purchase the house without those concessions, but I didn't feel at peace about that. My mind and what Robert and I had talked about was we had a price that we were willing to offer and a price we were willing to invest on the house, and if the seller wasn't willing to accept that, then to us, that was our sign.
I. This is not the house for us. And either in the future the seller will come back and say, okay, I agree. Or we'll find a different house or something else will work out. But we have prayed about it, we've thought about it, and this is gonna be our sign that we should not proceed. And that was a sign we got.
And it was super disappointing. It was a holiday weekend, it was supposed to be a fun weekend. It was supposed to be amazing. But we ended up having to say we're not gonna do this deal. We can't come to an agreement. It's just not gonna happen. And so when we talk about taking action and looking to [00:27:00] God for timing, for guidance, and for direction.
It's this art, of we're taking steps forward, but we're not, and we're being persistent, right? We don't wanna just give up when things get hard, but we're not forcing something to happen that we don't feel at peace about. That should happen. Okay. Take that example of the house. Conversely, with me starting Brave Widow and there have been so many times, I just wanna give up.
Guys in the beginning, it's hard. I've had Brave Widow now for two and a half years, okay? And this is episode number 151. But when you're recording episode seven and you're recording episode 13, and you're recording episode 32 and 20 people watch your video. Nobody likes it. Nobody's commenting, nobody's sharing.
It feels like a bit of a [00:28:00] slog. It feels should I even keep doing this? And my coach, Dr. Betsy will tell you, there were so many times she would say, success is inevitable. Keep going. And I would feel within me this deep desire to serve, to help to equip other people. And so even when it was hard and even when it felt like nothing was happening, there's no momentum.
I'm trying and trying and trying and trying and trying, and nothing is coming to fruition or it's very minimal. Oh, I got someone to sign up and pay me $20 a month. Oh, that took so much effort. Like my business is not making money. It's a losing money. When people would say, is it a nonprofit or is it for profit?
I would say, right now it's negative profit,
but because I felt called, I feel called to do this. I feel called to do this the rest of my life. Brave Widow, as long as I'm alive in some form or fashion, [00:29:00] brave Widow will be helping. Grievers widows. It will be helping equip widows. So deep in my heart and my soul, I knew this is the path and I don't know how is it gonna be successful?
How is it gonna even pay for itself? How is it gonna help pay my bills? Like that just seems so far away. I didn't know, but I just kept taking action. Step, steps, steps forward. Because I had that deep belief and that deep calling to do this. So to me, moving forward with Brave Widow isn't forcing action.
It isn't forcing something to happen. It's showing great perseverance and great resilience in times where it would be so easy to just walk away. We'll be so easy to just get up and do something different. So I want you to think about those two examples. The example of pushing a house purchase to go through, even when I didn't feel at peace about it, because I [00:30:00] had already a price in mind that I was willing to accept and to work with.
And when that didn't happen, I didn't feel at peace about it. And so I let that go. Versus knowing and believing like I'm called to do this. I'm called to help other widows. That is what I'm meant to do at this point in my life. And I will do it as long as I'm called to do it. And so in every obstacle and every hurdle, it's me building my resilience, my stamina, me expanding my capacity to experience failure, to experience shame, to experience fear of what are people gonna think?
'cause life coaches aren't real jobs, right? Healthcare is a very old school industry. So life coaches like, what's that? But being able to overcome that fear of who cares what anyone else thinks, I'm helping other people. That is not forcing action, that is not trying to do something and thinking I don't know if God [00:31:00] really wants me to do this.
This is no, I believe God wants me to do this and I'm gonna keep doing it. And as I show perseverance and as I show resilience, he opens more doors. I got to speak to almost 200 funeral directors last year in New Orleans about how to help support widows and grievers beyond the funeral service.
Amazing. I've had the opportunity to help coach and equip widows in 20 other countries. Oh my gosh. That's crazy. But those doors wouldn't have opened if I didn't continue to take action. God isn't just gonna give me amazing opportunities if I do not show that I will care for these people. I will care for these opportunities.
I will treat them seriously. When I was awarded the ability to speak at the funeral director's biggest international Convention and Expo, I took it [00:32:00] seriously. I hired a coach to help me write the speech. We worked on it for six months. Six months of preparation for that. That is how seriously I was committed to that opportunity and how I showed that I was willing to step up into that opportunity.
If I don't take action, if I don't do those things, if I would've just winged it or waited till the last minute to put my speech together, which. I can be a procrastinator, which is why I hired a coach. 'cause I didn't wanna wait till last minute. Then why would God continue to give me more opportunities if I wasn't taking action and treating the opportunities I had?
Seriously? So why would God bring friendships into your life if you don't treat your current friendship seriously? Why would he bring you healing or. Friendships or relationships or exciting things for your future if all you're willing to do to get it is sit on the couch. Now, don't get [00:33:00] me wrong, there is a time for grieving.
There is a time for healing for mourning. The Bible even says that there is a time for mourning, and so this is not for you to use against yourself. Oh, I'm three months out and I haven't made any friends. No. There is a time for mourning and there is a time that you'll reach when you are ready to rebuild your life, and that is the part where we need to start taking action and doing that.
So here are just a few practical tips for you on ways that you can take action in building friendships and in rebuilding your social circle in ways that are simple and scary and awkward and all of the things. But this is what I help coach widows through.
You could start by joining a group of other widows, of other grievers, of other people who are walking a similar journey and a similar path to you who see you, who understand you, [00:34:00] and who aren't there offering advice, but who are there to say, wow. Yeah, this is a really tough journey and I'm here to walk it through with you step by step.
Separately, I recommend that you join a group that has your shared interests, values, or beliefs. So that could be a church, it could be a real estate investor group. It could be a line dancing group, it could be a pottery making group, whatever interests, values, or hobbies do you have? It could be a quilting group, who knows?
But join a group where you can meet new people who aren't looking for you to go back. They're not looking for you to go back to quote unquote normal. They're not comparing you to who you used to be. All they know is the version of you that exists today as you exist today, and they love you and they wanna be your friend.
Okay. Joining those groups commenting on online forums or Facebook groups that can start and [00:35:00] ignite relationships. Asking someone to coffee or lunch be the weirdo. Okay. Be the person willing to make offers to go to lunch, to go to coffee. And don't keep it vague, make it very specific. Hey would you wanna go to lunch on Friday?
A Friday doesn't work for you. Would another day work for you? And not every person is gonna say yes, and that's okay. And even if they say yes, you might go to lunch with them and be like, eh. Okay, maybe this person isn't the person I wanna build a friendship with, and that's okay. Think of this as getting in your reps, getting in practice, getting in your way of connecting with other people and being curious about them and building relationships.
Be willing to be awkward and feel weird. It does get easier and you get more confident the more times that you do it. You don't have to feel ready. You don't need to feel confident. You're gonna feel the fear, you're gonna feel the insecurities, you're gonna feel the [00:36:00] awkwardness, and you're gonna do it anyway.
This is why coaching is so valuable because instead of spending hours and weeks and months just spinning. And all of your thoughts around, I don't have anywhere to go. I can't meet people. I have a client I coached recently, and she's weekends are the worst. Like weekends are just terrible.
I have no one to do anything with on the weekends. And it's okay, where can you meet people who you could do something on the weekends with? And in a one hour session we went from, I know no one who will do anything with me on the weekends to here are all the places where I know I could invite someone to do something with on the weekends to then, like her very next weekend was booked completely full.
And I was like, wait a minute, what happened? What that is, the power of coaching. I had a client who was swirling in doubt overselling her house and trying to buy a new house and finding the right realtor and how much would she [00:37:00] get for her house, and she has spent months swirling in all of that doubt. We coach through it over the course of a couple of weeks and then one week.
I leave her and she's okay, I am gonna have a realtor come over and I don't even know why she's coming over. This isn't gonna go anywhere in one week. She went from that to having the realtor come out to taking listing photos of her house, to getting it listed, to hosting an open house, to getting a accepted offer on her house and sold in less than a week What?
That is the power of coaching. That is the investment in yourself of I am worth not sitting here for the next six months or for the next seven years, like that consult I had talked with. She has been lonely and spinning in self-doubt for seven years. And when it came down to investing in herself, she thought the [00:38:00] solution was to keep waiting and hoping, and praying.
You can do that and you can go another seven years, and my heart hurts for that person, but this is why coaching is so valuable. I invest in coaching, I invest a lot back into coaching. In fact, even with Brave Widow. What I make through Brave Widow, I invest first into coaching, into opportunities to grow the business before I ever pay myself, because that is how valuable it is to me.
Coaching gives you a safe space to process all of your fear and all of your self-doubt. It allows you to make a plan that's actually gonna work for you. And it allows you to get unstuck when things feel hard. When you get in those thought spirals, when you get in that mode of feeling sorry for yourself and wondering why the universe is conspiring against you and wondering why God just [00:39:00] wants you to be lonely.
'cause he's not bringing friends to your life and maybe God is the one saying, I have them. They're waiting for you. Get out of your house. Go meet them. They're waiting. They're waiting for you to put yourself out there.
You can move from feeling invisible and isolated to being connected and alive again, but it doesn't happen by sitting on your couch.
So I wanna encourage you to think about this question, and then I will leave you to think about that question. Is this season of my life really about me waiting on God or. Is God waiting on me to act? I encourage you to have this season, be the season that faith and action work hand in hand together. If you are ready to take that next step, if you are to get [00:40:00] unstuck and finally move forward.
If this hit home for you and resonated with you, you're tired of feeling stuck and alone. You're ready to move forward and feel connected. I would invite you to book a free consult with me and let's talk about what support could look like for you and what the next six months could look like for you In six months, it will be the middle of November.
You will be rounding the curve into all the big holidays. Thanksgiving, Christmas, new Year's, and many of you also have milestones with your late spouse that hit around the time of the holidays. That can make it even harder. Let's do the work of preparing now to go into the holiday season, feeling connected and loved and supported instead of feeling unseen and forgotten and isolated.
Go to brave widow.com, book a consult call with me and let's make this [00:41:00] happen for you.
If you're newly widowed and aren't sure where to start, you need the brave new widow's starter kit inside brave new widow. You'll find a starter guide to help you through your first few months. A quick start guide. You can share with family and friends so they know how to help you. And a collection of some of the frequent topics that widows want to learn more about. To get the brave new widow series.
Just go to brave widow. Dot com slash start it's free and you'll get instant access. That's brave widow.com/start S T a R T. See you there.
