BW 167: When Grief Days Get Hard: The 3-R Bad Day Protocol (Regulate • Relate • Reengage)
Sep 09, 2025[TRANSCRIPT BELOW]
What to do when a hard day (or season) won’t let up — Emily’s 3-R Bad Day Protocol: Regulate, Relate, Reengage.
If you’re tired of feeling like you “went backwards,” this episode gives you a gentle, doable plan for the worst days — plus how to move through a longer season of suffering without burning out.
Key Takeaways
- A hard grief day doesn’t mean you’re back at square one; it’s part of the process.
- Don’t aim for “happy now.” Aim for grounded, peaceful, purposeful.
- On hard days, do less; regulate first, relate second, reengage last.
- In extended suffering, use a broader blueprint (help, healing, routine, movement, faith).
Chapters:
0:00 — Announcements: Free Four Seasons of Grief live training (Wed, Sept 10) + Grief Recovery Method group (Tuesdays, 12–2 pm CT, Sept 30–Nov 18; $400 creditable toward Academy or 1:1).
2:30 — Farm-life update: the donkeys! The “messy middle” analogy.
5:00 — Why healing looks worse before it looks better (closet/brush-clearing analogy).
6:30 — When milestones, dates, and “the body remembers” make life heavy.
10:00 — We’re not chasing “happy”; we’re building capacity for multiple emotions + grounded peace.
12:00 — Why many widows get stuck between Isolation (Season 2) and Self-Discovery (Season 3).
14:00 — The 3-R Bad Day Protocol:
- Regulate your body (slow down, do less, food/sunlight/rest).
- Relate (reach out; be witnessed, not fixed).
- Reengage (one tiny thing: shower, pay one bill, sit in the sun).
20:00 — If it’s not a “bad day” but a season of suffering: switch to a fuller framework.
24:00 — The Chaos to Calm Blueprint: help, emotional healing, routine, movement, spiritual connection.
27:00 — A soft place to land + your next brave step.
✨ Work with Emily: Ready to stop just surviving and start rebuilding? Book a free consult at bravewidow.com.
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Book a free consult here: https://calendly.com/bravewidow/widow-consult-call
Download the Brave New Widow Starter Kit: A free guide to help you navigate the first steps of widowhood. → https://bravewidow.com/start
Free Training: Four Seasons of Grief — Wed, Sept 10 (replay available).
Grief Recovery Method Group: Tuesdays 12–2 pm CT, Sept 30–Nov 18, $400 (credited toward Brave Widow Academy or 1:1).
Brave Widow Academy: Next cohort starts in November.
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
- 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
Introduction and Announcements
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Emily: [00:00:00] welcome to episode number 167 of the Brave Widow Show. Before we dive into today's episode, I wanna make sure that you're aware of a couple of things. So if you're listening to this podcast real time, we have the Four Seasons of Grief Free Live Training that's happening on Wednesday, September the 10th. To register for that or to find the replay, just go to brave widow.com.
And then secondly, I'm hosting another group in Grief Recovery Method. So this group is gonna meet on Tuesdays from 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM Central Time. And you guys may have heard me talk a lot about Grief Recovery Method. I think this is such an amazing foundational step for people to take. It is an eight week group program and we limit the group to eight participants as required by grief recovery method.
And our sessions are gonna [00:01:00] start on Tuesday, September 30th, and run through Tuesday, November 18th. So just in time right before the holidays really start, coming into play with Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year, you can have completed. Grief recovery method and have the tools that you need to be able to navigate grief and navigate building a life beyond grief.
We have the next round of Brave Widow Academy starting in November as well, and so this round of grief recovery method, the class is going to be $400. And if you choose to join the academy or you choose to do one-on-one coaching, I will credit your $400 towards the cost of those other things. So I would love to see you in grief recovery method.
If you're interested in signing up, you can go to brave widow.com and schedule a consult call. Or you can send me an [00:02:00] email at [email protected]. If for some reason consults are full and you're booking them out further than you want to, just feel free to send me an email. Let me know you're interested in the class, and if we still have an opening, I would love for you to be there.
Alright, let's dive in to today's episode.
Farm Life Update: Welcoming the Donkeys
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Emily: Guys, the donkeys have made it to the farm. If you haven't been following along or if you're new, we rehomed a couple of donkeys from Robert's dad's farm to our farm.
They're our first official farm animals that we are responsible for. And my daughter has just fallen in love with them. We have been going out there every day just working with them and. Giving them bites of little bites of apple, and my daughter has managed to get a halter on one of them. So slowly but surely, she is winning them over, which [00:03:00] is amazing.
They're super sweet and have allowed us to pet them and groove them and all of the things. So it's just been a lot of fun. And while we were out at the farm this weekend, there's a ton of work happening. We're clearing some of the brush Robert's living his best life, cutting down trees around the pond where it's super overgrown.
And there are a lot of changes that are happening, and I ended up taking a picture yesterday because as I was looking out across the pasture, it looks like just wreckage, like it looks like things are going downhill fast because in areas where we had. A lot of brush and overgrown trees and just briars and all of the things that had to be brush hogged.
It had to be mulched down, and so it looks just like a mess in several [00:04:00] areas. We're also clearing up some land and making it smooth so that eventually a pad can be built for our shop and where my office is gonna be here hopefully in a couple of months. And again, it's like the pasture is so beautiful, but you just see all of this, what looks like chaos.
All of these just branches and sticks and piles of dirt and rock and stuff that's been moved around and I'm like, wow, this looks worse. This looks worse than if it looked before. If people were to drive by, they'd be like, wow, this place is coming downhill fast. But because we have a vision for what it's going to look like, sometimes the road to getting there looks really messy and it can cause us to second guess like what we're doing.
I think about this analogy a lot in [00:05:00] organizing a closet or decluttering and organizing your room, right? Like when you start, you're pulling the stuff out of the drawers, you're pulling stuff outta the closet, you're like making different piles. You go get something to drink, you come back and you're looking around and you're like, what have I done?
Instantly, this just looks worse. Like it was better when everything was just shoved in a drawer or shoved in a closet. This is utter chaos.
Navigating Hard Days and Seasons of Grief
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Emily: And the re reason I really want to lean into this analogy is because right now I have a few clients that are really going through a hard time. Whether it is, we have several students in our Brave Widow Academy who are having big milestones or anniversary dates or the dates that their person died and or a beloved pet that died recently, like for a few of our students.
It just seems like. They're hitting [00:06:00] some of these hard days, or they're hitting these hard seasons where it just feels like they can't catch a break or they have a hard day and feel like, oh no, what am I doing? I, I've gone backwards. It's all gone wrong. I help, I don't know what to do. And so this is the value.
Of having a coach, of having someone who can help guide you and allow you to know that what you're experiencing is normal and when you feel like giving up. When you hit those moments where you feel like. Why am I even trying? Why even bother? Why even dare to believe that I can enjoy life again because it's all pointless.
Pointless because my person isn't here and I just keep trying and it's so hard and it's so overwhelming and I just wanna give up that you have someone in your corner that's like, yeah, some, sometimes you're gonna have hard days and you're gonna have hard days. Whether or not you are [00:07:00] taking steps forward,
when you are looking at the wreckage and you're looking at the mess, and you're looking at all of the reasons why you just want to give up. What keeps you going, What keeps you focused, What kept me focused yesterday was, okay, this is just one step forward towards this beautiful vision we have for the farm here towards this beautiful vision that I have for my closet, my room, whatever it is I'm organizing, like I believe that.
This is a necessary step in order for me to have something beautiful in the future. And so even though no one's guaranteed me that, even though no one's promised me that, even though I can't see perfectly exactly how it's going to look, I take that step forward in faith [00:08:00] anyway. And even when there are piles of reasons.
Why maybe I should second guess that decision. I'm not so sure. Even though there may be evidence around me that brings up fears and doubts and concerns, I decide to keep stepping forward, out of belief and out of faith that there's a reason why. I started this journey. There's a reason why I wanted to be able to take these next steps because I believe that if I will keep going, that this place, this life this journey is gonna be so unrecognizable that when I look back, this won't even be hardly a blip in my memory.
So today I wanna walk you through how I help my clients, how I think it's helpful to move through those days [00:09:00] that are really hard,
i'm also gonna share with you a bad day protocol with three Rs. Three things specifically that you can do to navigate that tough day and even begin to navigate a tough season, if that's you.
When the day is hard, the goal is not to be okay. The goal is not to just power through and get everything done. The goal is not to bring yourself back up to a state where you're just like, happy, happy, happy and carefree, and life is wonderful. The goal on a hard grief day is to be gentle with yourself, to focus on navigating that day and in doing only the things that have to be done.
It's about allowing yourself to be, have compassion for yourself to recognize like, ugh, today is hard. Yeah. It's just, it's hard. And I had a [00:10:00] client that recently said, you know, I hear you talk about finding joy again or being happy again and having a life that I love, but when I'm having these hard days or when I'm down in this hard moments, like I just feel. Guilty. Like I feel bad. Like how can I reconcile the fact that I'm gonna be sad at missing my person, but then also I'm just gonna be happy and have this other life.
Like, it just feels so foreign. It feels so weird to me. And one of the things that I gave her feedback on is that the goal isn't necessarily to be happy. We're not chasing happiness. Happiness is fleeting. Happiness. Like sadness comes and goes. Our goal is to expand our ability to hold multiple emotions, to be able to grow our heart, to hold a space so that we can be sad and miss our person, and we can experience.
Peace and a feeling of groundedness and a feeling of [00:11:00] purpose that supersedes that high that we get from being really happy, right? Like, oh, I'm so happy and excited, yay. Ah, I love my life. And it's more a place of i'm so grateful and so grounded and driven, and the purpose that I've uncovered and what's left for me and what's left for the future ahead of me.
That's what we're after. Happiness is really high on the emotional rollercoaster. Sadness is really low, so we are aiming for that place of neutrality, that place in the middle. Of being peaceful, of being grounded, of being centered and driven by something more than these emotions that feel really big up or really big down.
You'll hear me talk about seasons two and three of grief, how people really get stuck, which is like this season two of isolation of maintenance mode. You're [00:12:00] trying to move into season three, which is self-discovery and figuring out who you are and what you want and what life could look like and what you might want in the future.
And the reason why widows get stuck in this cycle is because they have these days that just can bring them to their knees or they step forward and they try something. Only to be smacked down by a wave of grief, or maybe it's another loss. Maybe it's an anniversary date, maybe it's a date their loved one died.
Maybe it's just that time of year that they're not even consciously thinking about what was going on that time of year last year, but the body remembers. I remember the first couple of summers without Nathan, and I would hear the pool outside and I would hear the fountains running, and it always just made me sad, like it pulled me down.
And the reason was because when we got sick and when he died, it was in [00:13:00] July. And so for those weeks that we're laying in bed sick. The weeks that he was in the hospital, that's what was happening is like the pool was going outside. I was hearing the pool running. It was hot, the, dead heat of summer.
And for the first couple of summers, even though I wasn't consciously putting two and two together, what was happening, my body remembered and. Had those memories stored where it made me sad. It made me feel depressed to be out there. I didn't wanna be out there in the pool or sitting outside or any of that because it just made me
feel down. even for people who are years out, you can have these hard days or these hard moments that can transport you back in time and make you feel as real and vulnerable and volatile as you were early on in grief. Over time, this can get better.
The Bad Day Protocol: Regulate, Relate, Reengage
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Emily: It does get better for people [00:14:00] who focus on healing our bad day protocol is three Rs. The first is we're gonna regulate, the second we're gonna relate, and the third is we're going to reengage. Now, oftentimes when we're having a bad day, we're even when we're deep in grief, our initial thought is we need to do more.
We need to do something to distract ourselves. We need to get a lot of things done. We need to. Put ourselves out there, whatever that is, when many times widows and widowers are in grief and they're struggling, the first instinct is like, oh, I need to do more. And the reality is that even though we may have a bunch of tasks that need to be done, or projects that need to be worked on, and even though we want to do more, the key here is to slow down and do less.
It's to have compassion for yourself [00:15:00] and to acknowledge like you're having a hard day. It's okay. It's okay to have a hard moment. It's okay to have a hard day. Those things come. So the first R that we wanna focus on in our bad day protocol is to regulate, is to check in with our body and with our heart First, what are you feeling? How are you feeling? If all you can do today. Is walk around inside your house for a few minutes, maybe go sit outside in the sunshine, eat enough food to sustain you and to support you and find rest like that's enough. Wanna regulate our physical body as much as possible because ultimately grief is exhausting. And even though sometimes people will say, yeah, I'm exhausted, but I haven't done anything.
The reality is when you are wrestling with grief or you're [00:16:00] wrestling with sadness, your brain is working on overload. It's potentially producing chemicals in your body like cortisol, like adrenaline, like sadness. It's sending off signals throughout your body, and so even though physically it may feel like you haven't really done anything, your body is actively working.
And so on those days where grief is hard, we wanna slow down, do as little as we can possibly do to get through the day, be gentle with ourselves and focus on doing the things that allow us to feel peaceful. That allow us to feel safe and rested and warm and gentle.
The second R in our bad day protocol is to relate. Maybe it's with someone in the Brave Widow community. Maybe it is by look looking at your evidence, bank of past wins that you've had [00:17:00] past, things that you're grateful for. Maybe it is reaching out to a friend and just saying, Hey, there's no fix needed here, but I'm just having a hard day.
' cause sometimes you just need people to sit with you in the sadness. To sit with you in the uncomfortableness, in the awkwardness, in the, I don't feel like getting outta my pajamas today. Ness of it all. Like you need someone to just sit on the couch with you and just exist.
Loneliness is one of the top three challenges that widows struggle with and that they want to. Overcome. And so even though our first instinct is to withdraw and to pull inward and to isolate, it can help for us to have that trusted friend or person that we can reach out to, to say, Hey, I don't necessarily need you to like fix me or to make me feel better, but I'm just [00:18:00] having a hard day.
Can you. Be with me. Can you just allow me to not have to have to be okay or to not have to be strong? Can you just talk to me while I do the dishes? Can you come sit on my couch? Can we, you know, go have coffee together? Whatever that is. It's okay that they. Sit in it with you instead of them trying to lift you up out of your sadness, because being fixed isn't what you need right now, being, there's nothing that someone can say to make you feel better.
You also aren't broken, so you don't need to be fixed. But it helps to feel heard and to feel seen and to hear, feel understood. The third R in our bad day protocol here is to reengage, which is what is one small thing that you can do today?
Maybe it's taking a shower and putting on fresh clothes. Maybe it's paying one bill. Maybe [00:19:00] it's cleaning off the kitchen counter. Maybe it is. The act of reaching out to a friend and letting them know that you're having a tough day. Maybe it is literally like I in, in deep grief. I would go sit on my porch in the sunshine for five or 10 minutes and that was like all I could do for that day.
Felt like the only productive thing I could do was to just go sit outside and exist over there instead of existing in my house. And that's okay. Just re-engaging with your body, re-engaging with the world around you is that tiny, brave next step forward, and that's okay.
Now for some of you, you may not be in a full on season of grief. You may just have had a hard day. And so what I coach some of my clients on, if I know that they're not in this deep season of grief, is to say, okay, today's a hard day. We're gonna be gentle. We're gonna rest. We're going [00:20:00] to do things that feel comforting and warm and like a gift to ourselves.
And then tomorrow it's gonna be a different day. And even if we feel that same tug, that feels a little hard, we're going to step forward and do something a little different the next day. Now, if you are in a season of deep grief, or you are in a season where you're just suffering. My heart really goes out to some of my clients and some of you that are out there who feel like you just can't catch a break.
It's one thing after another thing after another thing, and I, in my own way, I'm not saying I know how you feel. I'm saying I know how I felt when it felt like it was one thing after another, and I remember praying to God and just saying like, how much suffering does a person have to go through? Like seriously, how much [00:21:00] heartache can one heart take?
I don't know. I feel like I'm on the edge of just breaking here. I felt fragile, like a piece of glass. Like if someone were just to like. Barely touched me the wrong way. I was going to shatter, and being in that place is so hard and it doesn't make any sense because you're sitting there thinking God, isn't this enough?
Isn't this enough? Like, how am I supposed to survive this? How am I supposed to ever get on the other side of this when I can't even catch my breath and something else is happening? I've had clients who, they're in grief and they have major issues with their house. I have clients who have multiple losses of close family members back to back, and it's, I don't view it as my job to make them feel better.
I don't view it as my job and my place to say, oh, it's gonna be okay. [00:22:00] Keep that chin up one day you're gonna get through this and it's all gonna make sense. Like, no, there have been many calls, many calls where I've sat with them over on Zoom and just said, I'm sorry, this is awful. This is just awful and I'm so sorry and I'm here for it.
I'm here sitting down beside you in just the awfulness of all of this suffering because I want you to know that you're not alone and I'm gonna sit with you until you're ready, until it's time for us to think about standing up. And then we stand up and then we take a step forward, and that time does come.
When you're in it, it feels like it's forever and it's never gonna get better, and you can't see a way out and it feels like your life is over, and maybe you at times think it'll be easier for that, but I'm a big believer in seasons. And whether [00:23:00] or not you've experienced loss or you've experienced grief, that life goes through seasons like we as parents, we have seasons of life, seasons where our kids depend on us for everything, and then they become more independent, and then they don't want us to help with anything, and then we're only there when they need us, right?
There's different seasons of life. That's why we have the four Seasons of grief is because you're not stuck there for forever. But also it's longer than a day. It's a season. It could be a season of suffering, and that's really hard. So when you're in that season of suffering, it isn't about a bad day protocol for one day.
It's about a whole process and a whole framework. This is what my chaos to calm blueprint is all about, right? When you're in that season of grief or that season of hard. You need things like help, which actually we're covering in today's Brave Widow [00:24:00] Academy class is how to ask for help and how to accept help.
'cause both of those can be hard. You need things like emotional healing. You need things like a routine and a schedule to help you feel like you have some sort of normalcy and control in your life. You need physical movement and spiritual connection and all of those things that are in the chaos to calm blueprint when you're in that season, like you're fully engaged with that blueprint and every aspect of it so that you can catch your breath.
So that when you have to live in this season of suffering, which is really like a season of surrender, like I don't understand what's going on. I don't know why this is happening. I have no control over any of this. And so in the beginning, I am surviving. I am existing, and that is enough. That is okay. In deep grief, if I can't get outta bed, [00:25:00] that's okay.
I remember after Nathan died and after we had COVID that went to double pneumonia, our, my heart and my lungs were really inflamed. That was really kind of the best guess from the doctor of what had happened because I couldn't. Hardly walk into another room. I couldn't sweep off my back porch. I would become so out of breath and I could feel my heart beating all the time. I talk about having heart palpitations or feeling a flutter in your chest. It was scary. I felt my heartbeat almost all the time, and I would run out of breath. I would become breathless so easily. Especially in those first few weeks, but it really lasted for a few months. The best guess was, oh, these organs are probably inflamed and it's just gonna take time for that to like calm down.
And so I remember telling my dad like, Ugh, I can't even sweep off the back porch. Like I can't even hardly move. I can't hardly do anything, and I'm just utterly out of [00:26:00] breath and exhausted. And he's like, just go sit on the porch. Like that's enough if you can't go for a walk. Can't get some sun on your skin for 15 minutes.
Just go sit outside. And some days that was hard, but that was enough and it's enough for you too.
Conclusion and Support Resources
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Emily: My hope for you is that when you are either in a season of grief, that's really hard, or you're having a hard day, a bad day. You have a soft place to land, a safe person to reach out to, and one tiny brave step towards life again, and that is enough.
When our days are hard. We wanna regulate, relate and reengage, and doing those things are enough. If you want more guidance, if you want more support, if you want more clarity. Go to brave widow.com [00:27:00] and schedule a consult call with me. I would love to help guide you through the hard days through the season of suffering, the season of deep grief and help you begin to heal so that you can start to rebuild your life again.
If you're tired of feeling lost, lonely, and second guessing every decision, my coaching program is meant for you. I help clients find clarity, create real connection, and build confidence up for good. Inside the Brave Widow Coaching Program, you'll learn real tools that you'll be able to use for a lifetime.
If you're ready for the next step, go to brave widow.com to book a consult. It's free. It's no pressure, and it can be your brave next step to healing your heart and building a life you love again. Go to brave widow.com today to book your consult. [00:28:00]
