BW 152: How to Make Friends After Loss (Even When It Feels Impossible)

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After loss, everything changes—including your friendships.

 

You might have thought your people would stick around...

But now you’re sitting in the silence, wondering if you’ll ever feel connected again.

 

In this powerful episode, Emily shares:

 

Why 75% of your social circle disappears in the first year of widowhood

The three biggest myths that keep widows stuck in isolation

Why making friends again after loss feels so hard—and how to do it anyway

A step-by-step process for rebuilding meaningful connection, even if you’re an introvert

Details about the 30-Day Make a Friend Challenge and our June 18th workshop inside the Brave Widow Membership

💛 You don’t have to feel invisible anymore. You’re not broken. You just need a new way forward—and we’ll walk it with you.

 

✨ Free Resources & Ways to Connect

🎯 Join the Brave Widow Membership (30 Days Free!)

→ https://www.bravewidow.com

 

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🎧 More Podcast Episodes

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⏱️ Timestamps:

0:00 – Intro: Why making friends after loss matters

2:34 – The loneliness no one warned you about

5:01 – The shocking stat: 75% of people disappear

7:20 – Myth #1: “If they cared, they’d be here”

9:45 – Myth #2: “It shouldn’t be this hard”

12:30 – Myth #3: “I’ll just wait until I’m invited”

15:02 – The mindset shift that changed everything

17:40 – How to start rebuilding your circle (step-by-step)

21:10 – Introvert-friendly ways to connect

24:00 – The Brave Widow 30-Day Make a Friend Challenge

26:18 – Why community isn’t optional—it’s vital

29:00 – Your next step

 

 

 

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make friends after grief, widow loneliness, how to stop feeling lonely after loss, widows and friendship, Brave Widow podcast, rebuilding life after loss, grief coaching, Christian widow support, healing after widowhood, grief connection, how to find purpose again

 

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TRANSCRIPT:

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Introduction to Episode 152
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welcome to episode number 152 of the Brave Widow Show. Today we're gonna talk about making friends after loss so that you can kick loneliness to the curb.

Emily: Welcome to the Brave Widow Show, where we help widows find hope, heal their heart, and dream again for the future. I'm your host, Emily Tanner. After losing my husband of 20 years, I didn't know how I could ever experience true joy and excitement again for the future. I eventually learned how to create a life I love, and I've made it my mission to help other widows do the same.

Join me and the Brave Widow membership community and get started today. Learn more at BraveWidow. com

The Challenge of Making Friends as a Widow
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Now, recently I've been posting on TikTok. Just in the last couple of months and earlier this week as I'm recording this, I started posting a mini series on how to [00:01:00] make friends as a widow.

What to say to people when you don't know how to handle small talk, and I. Realized I touched a nerve with people. I started getting all kinds of comments telling me that I was wrong. It's not easy to make friends as a widow. It's impossible when you're past a certain age. If you're in your sixties or you're seventies, your life is just.

Over at that point and how you can make acquaintances, but it's not possible to make friends. And the reactions of some of the commenters was so visceral. Like I had really touched a nerve with the people, but it was great because even more so than the people who were adamant about telling me how wrong I was.

That you could make friends. Again, there were even more commenters saying that what I had [00:02:00] shared really resonated with them, that they had been able to make friends again and they even, I even learned about a new app that someone shared in the comments that she was using to meet up with people and make new friends, and what a great experience that has been.

So I. Knew that this was a topic I had to talk about more. We need to make more visible and we need to help widows learn how to make friends.

Loneliness is one of the deepest pains that a widow can experience. And the thing about it is that it doesn't magically just go away on its own.

The good news is that you don't need a million friends. You really just need one or two people that you can be real with and that you can be your open, authentic, genuine self with, and yes, to one of those commenter's [00:03:00] points. Making friends as a widow isn't easy. But it is simple.

Proven Process for Making Friends
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I have a proven process that I've used for myself, that I've used for many of my clients that all the members of the Brave Widow community have access to on how to actually step by step, go meet people and make friends.

Upcoming Workshop and 30-Day Challenge
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And for all of my coaching clients, for all of my Brave Widow membership clients on June 18th, I'm hosting a two hour workshop on how to meet people and make friends. And this is not a workshop where you're just gonna be learning, you're gonna be taking some notes. No. In this workshop, we are gonna start taking action.

You will start looking up places to go. You will find events to go to. You will make your plan for going to some of these places. You'll identify people in your life you may want to nurture friendships with, [00:04:00] but this is actually kicking off. A 30 day challenge, make a friend in 30 days, we're gonna do a challenge in the Brave Widow membership community.

So if you have been on the fence, if you've been debating whether or not coaching is right for you, whether or not joining the membership is right for you, or if you're totally new, this is the first podcast you've ever heard. And you're like, oh, that sounds super interesting. I wanna be part of that. I'm lonely.

I could use another friend or two. Then come join our 30 day challenge. It's gonna start on Wednesday, June 18th, in the afternoon. It's a two hour workshop that is hands on. This is not learning only. This is implementation because I know as a coach, we need to take action, not just absorb information. Come join us. I would love to have you. The Brave Widow membership community is $97 a month, [00:05:00] or if you're like bargains like I do, you buy two months, get one free, so it's 1 97 for a quarter. My six month coaching program is a 5K investment. But it is really the way to propel yourself forward the fastest in any of those packages you will have access to all of our courses, our call replays, and.

The 30 day challenge to make a friend. You also can find in the free resources the ability to join 30 days for free without putting a credit card in, without having to commit to a payment method like name. Email, 30 days access. Done so you could actually join the Brave Widow Community free for 30 days.

Attend this Make a Friend Challenge in 30 days and get started on your process at no cost to you, no credit card needed. This is an [00:06:00] excellent way to start and I highly recommend that you do that if this is even something you're just thinking about.

The Reality of Loneliness After Loss
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All right, so why are we talking about loneliness and friendships and why is this important? I found a statistic once where it said that widows lose 75% of their social circle within the first year, and. Anecdotally, I feel like it's more than that just based on what I experienced on what my clients have all experienced and what all the widows in my Facebook groups have said.

The vast majority of people feel that after a few weeks, all of their family and friends disappear. There are a lot of reasons why that happens. One is the dynamic of your relationship may have been around the dynamic of you as a couple. Two, is that in your relationship, the relationship may have actually been through your spouse more than it was through you [00:07:00] three.

It may be that your family and friends are grieving in their own way, and as one of Nathan's family members told me, it just makes them too sad to be around us. And we could go on and on about all of the reasons why these things happen. But ultimately, at the end of the day, they do happen. And those are things that are somewhat out of our control and we are gonna focus on what we can control.

As grievers and as people who have experienced one of the most traumatic things a human can experience, we. As humans tend to isolate, we hibernate, we pull inward, we focus inward. Like we are only able to function with surviving the day. We don't have time for friendships. We don't have time to go do stuff with people.

And in fact, I told several of my friends and several people that were reaching out to me like, Hey, [00:08:00] I appreciate what you're doing and I love you. And I do not have the capacity right now to be a good friend, so you can keep reaching out to me. You can keep inviting me. I hope that you do. But please don't be offended or upset if I don't remember your birthday or I don't get you a Christmas present, or I don't check on you, like it's not gonna happen.

I'm just not in a place where I can do that. Yeah, but once we get through that first season of widowhood, which is that devastation, it's that survival mode, and we start moving into season two, where now we're in a mo a season of desperation, of maintenance, mode of autopilot, and we start to realize that this might be our reality the rest of our lives.

And it's awful and we want to change it. That's where we start to come out of. If you think of grieving as pulling [00:09:00] inward, of isolating, of being in this cave of hibernating, now that we're in this next season, we're coming out of the cave, we're looking around, everyone's gone, and we have a decision that we get to make.

And that decision is we can continue to stay in the mode and in the life that we have in our new routine for forever, or we get to build something new. A lot of widows tend to get stuck in this transitional season of time because they believe that they can somehow go back to normal. They can feel like they used to feel they can go back to the way that things were.

And so the hard, honest, tragic truth is that our old life is now an ash. It's over, it's gone, but [00:10:00] we get to decide to build something new and it can still be something very beautiful and abundant and better than we could have imagined. We have to make that decision. It's not gonna happen on its own.

After Nathan died, I remember just feeling so incredibly lonely and I had some family members and some friends that were reaching out, but no one that was really close in my area and no one that I didn't work with, which is another challenge with friendships, and I just realized that most of. My social relationships and people that I would do things with were either through Nathan and his relationships or through extended family.

And I realized that most of my friendships, I had several amazing friendships, were people that I worked with. So they lived out of state, they lived far away. They [00:11:00] also had a different type of relationship because when you're friends with someone you work with, it just looks a little bit different.

And so I remember thinking to myself one afternoon I was sitting on the couch that I really had not done a good job at all of making friends with people outside of work who are local in my community, who were, friends with me and would want to do things locally. And I also realized that my life.

Outside looking in looked very boring. I had four kids. I was a widow. I worked crazy hours and traveled all the time. And other than that was pretty much all I had the bandwidth for. I didn't even have time to watch TV shows or movies or read books like I tried to think about what could I tell someone I was doing other than work, family, school, kids, [00:12:00] home.

That's all I had. And I'm, and IF felt challenged by that because it didn't seem like a very fun, exciting, or vibrant life that people would be interested in hearing about. And so I knew that I was gonna have to do something different. I live in a really small, rural town out in the country, and I prayed that God would send.

People to me that God would send me friends. And on this afternoon where I was sitting on the couch thinking about being lonely and not having friends, and how boring my life probably seemed that I had to ask myself what was I expecting?

The Importance of Taking Action
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Was I expecting out in the middle of a country that people would walk in and knock on the door and just be like, Hey, I'm here to be your friend, I talked about this in last week's podcast episode in that sometimes we pray and we wait on [00:13:00] God, and sure he can perform some miracles for us, but at some point we have to decide that we are gonna take action, that we are going to put ourselves. In that vulnerable, weird, awkward place of inviting other people and trying to connect with other people and doing our part to make something happen.

So let's talk about why loneliness feels so different after loss. Our social world and our social circle has changed. We know some people drift away, some people pull away. For some people, the dynamic totally changes. Also, you're not the same person anymore as you used to be, and you may be trying to figure out who you are now.

What you want now, what you like and enjoy now, and there may be a good percentage of the times that you don't feel like you truly, deeply enjoy [00:14:00] anything. And when you don't know who you are and you don't know what you want, and you don't know what you like, and everything just feels so murky, it can feel really hard to connect with other people or to even demonstrate the type of person that you are Now, you might also feel just tired and exhausted.

Too tired to make an effort, unsure who you can trust. One of the comments on my video said, but isn't this how people take, get taken advantage of as a widow is by putting yourself out there. And yeah, sure. To an extreme or in an unsafe environment, putting yourself out there means that you could be taken advantage of or you could be hurt.

If I try to build a friendship and someone doesn't reciprocate or they disappoint me, or whatever that is, it is risky. It is risky trying to build relationships and connections, but. It's also really hard being lonely [00:15:00] and not making an effort and not having the hope of making any friendships. So if loneliness feels really different after loss, and if you feel just confused about who you are or who you wanna be, you are not broken.

You haven't done anything wrong. This is grief. This is figuring out the next steps forward after grief. The great news is it doesn't have to stay this way. One of the commenters on my video said, Nope, you can't do it. Can't make friends. And I just responded and I said, you get to decide. You're right. If you decide you're not gonna make friends that you can't do it, you don't wanna do it, then you're not.

But you can also decide that you do wanna make friends and you can, but it starts from that place of belief.

Myths That Keep Us Lonely
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So I wanna share with you three myths that keep us lonely. One, if [00:16:00] people wanted to be there for me, they would. At the end of the day, it is a skillset to be someone who reaches out to other people, who checks up on other people who makes plans, who makes offers and invitations to do things together, who will relentlessly reach out to someone and let them know that they care.

It really takes a skillset. So for let's say 80% of people, they are not good at that. And if you look at your past relationships and your past friendships, you could probably notice over time that maybe they weren't that great at it before either. Maybe they weren't great at really showing up for you at really listening and validating you at rolling up their sleeves and pitching in to help you out when things get hard.

Maybe when you had a win or a success in your [00:17:00] life, they knocked you down. They really didn't even celebrate those wins and successes with you. They were jealous. They were resentful. When we have the clarity of things that are truly important in life, this whole new perspective of being a widow, of knowing what's important, of knowing what true relationships and connection and friendships mean.

Sometimes we can look in the past and see that some of those relationships weren't healthy, weren't great. It was. I'm close to my family because that's what families do. They're close and they get together and they do things together, and they celebrate holidays together, and that's just what we do.

But if I were to look and be honest with myself, maybe that family situation isn't really greatly functional. Maybe it's dysfunctional. Maybe we all just pretended superficially oh, we're family. We're friends. We love each other. But there wasn't [00:18:00] that deep emotional connection and relationship. And if that's you, it's okay.

It's okay that you're identifying those things as some of my clients will share, I. They realize that their family and friends weren't there for them in their time of most need, like they wanted them to be. And if they were honest, those people have never really been there for them the way that they desired for them to be.

So sometimes we have this myth and this belief that if people wanted to be there, they would, but the reality is that people are not good in general at. Following up at reaching out at extending invitations. At making plans it. And think about it this way, like how many times have you had the conversation like, oh, one of these days we should go to lunch, go to the movies, go to dinner, whatever that is.

People say that all the time. Oh, one some day we should do this, or, we really need to get together and do that. But [00:19:00] how many times do people say, Hey, what are you doing next Friday? Do you have time for lunch? And so one of the skills that I coach my widows on is in being the person who extends these invitations, who puts that awkward first, gesture out there of inviting someone to lunch or to coffee or to dinner, because sometimes people just aren't good at it.

Doesn't mean they don't want to. The second myth that keeps us lonely is that I shouldn't have to try this hard to make friends. That is a thought error that if we looked underneath the surface, is actually full of entitlement and ego and not entitlement in the aspect of, oh, I'm such an amazing person.

I shouldn't really have to work this hard to make friends. But entitlement of. Everyone should have friends that are there for them and that we connect easily with, and I deserve to have friends. That shouldn't be this hard for [00:20:00] me. The reality is that all strong relationships require effort.

Think about marriage, think about maybe your own marriage or marriage of other people that you know. It's very easy to get complacent. To settle, to get into the day in and day out routine and to become like passing ships in the night to become roommates, to become caught up in our own world, in our own lives.

It takes intentional effort and work and planning. To go on dates, to have emotional connection to reignite the spark that first brought you together. It takes work and we think to ourselves like I shouldn't though, like we're married. It shouldn't take work to go on dates. It shouldn't take work to try to tap into that romantic energy.

But the reality is that it does, and it takes work and effort to nurture friendships.

And [00:21:00] so again, as I shared earlier, it doesn't have to be hard in the aspect of, oh, it's so complicated and we have to do this, and we have to do 25 steps to making a new friend. No.

It's simple but doesn't always feel easy. It's not easy to ask someone to lunch for the first time. It's not easy to walk into a new place for the first time and introduce yourself and go around the room and feel super awkward and uncomfortable, but it is simple. Simple steps. Alright, myth number three, that keeps us lonely.

I'll just wait for someone to include me or to invite me. You can wait and you can wait and you can wait and you'll probably be waiting a really long time. The truth is that connection is something we build. It's not something that we wait for, and you can wait as long as you want. And you can tell [00:22:00] yourself that it's not possible to make friends or that you shouldn't have to work this hard, or that if people really wanted to be your friend, they would invite you.

They wouldn't wait for you to invite them. You can believe all of those myths and all of those thought errors, and you can wait and you can be lonely for as long as you want, or you can decide. That connection and friendship is worth the effort it takes to build that with another human being. And guess what?

After you make friends, it's gonna take more effort to continue to nurture and strengthen that relationship.

It just does. It doesn't make it burdensome, but it does take effort. Every year in the Brave Widow membership, we go through an exercise where we're planning out our next year and what we want more of in our life. Regardless of where you are in the seasons, regardless of where you are in your journey we have a [00:23:00] method of being able to help you project out your next year.

And one of the things, part of the exercise is identifying two or three people that you want to nurture and build a relationship with, or that you are going to go out and make friendships and a connection with. And the reason we do this is because it takes intentional planning and effort to do that.

And maybe it's as simple as saying, on the second Tuesday of every month, we're gonna go to lunch. Or once a month I'm gonna send a text like, Hey, I was thinking about you. This reminded me of you. I hope you're doing well, but you really can only do that sustainably with a few people. You can't expect to be really close friends with 50 people.

So in that exercise of planning out our year, we identify two to three people we wanna maintain and nurture and be intentional about building a relationship with. [00:24:00] And then our goal is at least once a month that we are doing something to strengthen and maintain that closeness and that relationship.

Have you ever heard people say. Oh, we used to be friends, or We used to be in a great relationship, and then we just grew up drifted apart. We just grew apart, okay? The reason that happens is because there wasn't intentionality. There wasn't a closeness, there wasn't a plan to build together, to grow together, to progress together.

You grew apart because you went down different paths and there was nothing bringing you back together. Another myth or thought area error that I see people get caught up in is that it's more difficult to make friends when you're older than when you're younger. And typically that stems from a few insecurities and fears that people have. But one of the underlying, underlying thought errors we can have is that, oh by the time you're 40, 50, 60, 70, [00:25:00] everybody already has their friends, right? But we live in a society that even though we have phones and we have social media and we have texting, and we have email and all of these things, we're connected so virtually that in person people are starving for true connection and friendships. So no people don't have. Typically really close friends that they're intentionally building friendships with, they desperately wish they had that.

Instead, they're doom scrolling in their home, looking at everyone else out there, living their lives and wishing that they had something great to post on social media. Or they're commenting on someone's picture like, oh, I get to see pictures of you and your family. This is so nice. It's just a distraction from the loneliness that they feel on the inside.

So don't let that thought hold you back. Recognize [00:26:00] that many other people, they want connection and they want true friendship and they don't know how to do it either.

Practical Ways to Rebuild Connection
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I. So what are some practical ways that we can rebuild connection? We wanna start with places that are, like, the stakes are low, but the opportunity is high to meet other people.

So we might try going to different hobby groups or event groups. And so I recommend like going to Facebook events, going to meetup.com, looking at different groups in your local area. Of people that hold classes or events or even pop-up events. You might wanna take some routine classes like pickleball or gardening or joining a book club or joining a quilting club or joining a car show.

One of the widows I talked to earlier today, she's taking a dance class. There are a lot of different hobbies and interests that you could join and that you could try. And just like I coached one of my clients on earlier [00:27:00] this week, my feedback was to give yourself permission to let this be fun.

Go try out a hobby for the first time you've never done, and just do it once and see if you like it. You who knows, you may fall in love with it or you may not really like it, not really connect with the people there. And guess what? You don't have to go back, but you tried it. It's kinda like when your parents wanted you to eat new food for the first time.

Oh, just try a bite. Just who knows? You may love it. Okay. But allow this to be something fun. Okay, I'm gonna put myself out there. I'm gonna try and I'm gonna go and I'm gonna be curious about other people. There are different volunteer opportunities. And almost every town has a place that you can go volunteer.

Whether it's a soup kitchen or the homeless shelter, or a women's crisis center, or a church or an animal shelter or whatever interests you. Whatever you feel called to as [00:28:00] assist with volunteering is a great way to meet other people who also care about people, care about giving back care, about connection with other people.

It's a great place to meet those kinds of people. Church classes, local events or classes online forums, online, Facebook groups, online forums like Brave Widow where you can meet with other widows. We've had some of our widows meet up in real life, which is amazing, and I love that.

As you are meeting other people, I have a whole course on how to meet people, where to go, what to say, how to navigate small talk. All of those things, and I don't have time on the podcast today to walk through all of that. But what I'll say is that when you're going to these places to meet other people, you want to be insatiably curious.

Curiosity will get you connection. It will [00:29:00] get you around. The, I don't know what to say. I don't know how to carry a conversation. It will get you connection and it will get you the opportunity to. I would just say, be the weirdo, just asking someone to lunch or asking someone to coffee, or if there's a concert that's coming up and you're like, Hey, I'm gonna go to this.

Do you, wanna come along? Hey, I'd really like to check out this new cafe that opened. Would you like to go with me and check it out too? And we can like, rate it, what we like about it, what we don't like about it. Like whatever. Just keep it lighthearted and fun and. Interesting, but being curious about the other person will really go a long way.

Proverbs 1824. The first half of that verse says a man who has friends must himself be friendly. And the way it was always explained to me growing up is if you want to find friends, you must first be a friend. And what do friends do? [00:30:00] They invite each other to do things. They are curious about each other.

They are searching for connection. And so while it might feel like I shouldn't have to be making new friends, I shouldn't have to be the person reaching out. If that is what you desire. Those are the things required in order to build friendships and connection. And the awkwardness and the weirdness and the effort and all of that will be worth it more so than the crushing isolation that no one cares.

No one sees you. You're gonna be alone for forever. What wouldn't be worth? Being able to overcome that and to feel deeply connected and cared for and seen, what would you not do to feel that again?

Final Thoughts and Encouragement
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Our goal is to rebuild connection slowly. Courageously and intentionally. So I wanna leave you with a challenge this week of saying hi to another human [00:31:00] being, to being curious about them and asking them questions. I.

Maybe you try going to a new event. Maybe you're just practicing your conversation skills in line at the grocery store, like wherever it is, step out of your comfort zone and try to connect with another human being.

If you feel stuck, if you feel overwhelmed, if you feel unsure about how to rebuild life, how to rebuild that social circle, how to make friends. Again, this is why you need to join us in the Brave Widow Membership Community and even in the coaching program.

You can join the membership program at. You can join the Brave Widow membership [email protected], and from that website you can also schedule a consult to talk about the coaching program one-on-one, and see if that's a great fit for you. As a reminder, I am doing a special two hour [00:32:00] workshop on June 18th where we're gonna kick off a 30 day challenge of making a new friend.

I would love to see you in the challenge. I would love to help encourage and inspire and to hold you accountable to stepping outside of your comfort zone,

and to start connecting with other human beings. You are worth it.

Emily: Are you a widow who feels disconnected? Do you feel like you're stuck or even going backwards in your grief? Widowhood can be lonely and isolating, but it doesn't have to be. Join us in the Brave Widow membership community and connect. We teach widows how to find hope, heal their heart, and dream again for the future.

Find your purpose and create a life you love today. Go to bravewidow. com to get started.