BW 174: Why Time Wasn’t Healing My Grief (And The Real Reason I Created Brave Widow Academy)
Nov 05, 2025[TRANSCRIPT BELOW]
When my husband died, everyone told me, “Just give it time… it’ll get better.”
It didn’t.
[Enroll for the Brave Widow Academy here: bravewidow.com/academy]
In this episode, I’m sharing the real reason I started Brave Widow and why, three years later, the Brave Widow Academy is still my favorite offer for widows who want more than just survival.
I’ll walk you through:
The moment I realized time alone wasn’t going to heal my grief
The gap I kept seeing in traditional grief support, therapy, and church groups
How the 4 Seasons of Grief (RISE) framework gives you a clear roadmap instead of random tips
What actually happens inside the Brave Widow Academy each week
Real feedback from current Academy students (what’s working, what they’d change, and what they’d tell someone on the fence)
If you’ve tried counseling, grief groups, podcasts, and books… and you’re still thinking,
“Okay, but what do I do now?”
…this episode is for you.
🎧 In this episode you’ll learn:
Why your “old life” is gone (and why that truth is painful but freeing)
The 4 core phases widows move through from raw survival to rebuilding a life with peace, purpose, and real relationships
How we calm your nervous system, stabilize your routine, and rebuild confidence step by step
Why group coaching + community often works better than doing this alone in therapy
The weekly rhythm inside the Academy (2-hour Monday calls, live coaching, worksheets, progress tracking, and 24/7 messaging support)
🧭 Ready for more than survival?
👉 Learn about the Brave Widow Academy + join the next round:
bravewidow.com/academy
👉 Not sure what you need yet? Book a free consult with me:
bravewidow.com
💌 Free resources for widows:
Brave Widow podcast + blog: bravewidow.com
Free Brave Widow guides & checklists for family and friends
Community + meetups inside Brave Widow
TRANSCRIPT:
Emily: [00:00:00] welcome to episode number 174 of the Brave Widow Show. Today, the podcast is a little bit different and I'm gonna be testing something over the next few episodes where I actually record my podcasts while I'm on a live stream. And. This is just, the wave of the future with ai, with technology, with all of this virtual interaction that there's so much information available out there and I want to start showing up more as a real human.
And while I would love to show up. In your living room maybe. I don't know. Is that weird? I would love to be with you in person as much as possible. It's really difficult, and I've been having so much fun on these lives. I have been doing a lot of lives on TikTok over the past few months, and I love the interaction. I love seeing the comments and the questions and [00:01:00] knowing what resonates with people or not.
So I'm gonna be doing more lives and I figured that while I'm doing lives, I might as well record some content for the podcast.
We are launching the academy. So ding ding. If you're the person that waits till last minute to enroll, that day is going to be here very soon. We are starting Monday, November the 10th at 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM Central time. I would love to see you there. In the academy, we already have people who are pre enrolling and.
As soon as you enroll, you get access right away to some things that are in the academy. You get access to message me and message the group, and I would love to see you there. So here's the episode I hope you enjoy, and I would love to see you in the academy.
Welcome. I would love to know in the chat where you're connecting from.
Today I'm gonna talk about why I started Brave Widow, [00:02:00] the gap that I see just in traditional support. What is in the academy? What to expect, why three years later the Academy is my favorite offer. And what students are saying.
So I met with my academy students yesterday and I asked them what's working, what they would change, and what they would tell somebody who is on the fence about joining. So I know that you're probably very curious what they had to say. And if we have time, I'm gonna walk you through what behind the scenes of the academy and what it looks like and the workbook and all of that.
So if we have time today, we'll go through that. If not we will have time on Thursday. So I will also be going live. Tomorrow, which will be Wednesday, November the fifth at 9:00 AM Central. And I'm gonna share some real stories of [00:03:00] real widows that have been part of Brave Widow. Some real examples of what you could expect if you're part of the Academy, and some real quotes from them of what they are saying.
And I'm also gonna read you a beautiful email that was sent to me about someone who started working with me, ghosted me, and then came back. And it's a really beautiful story, so I would love to be able to share that with you. So let's talk about, I have a lot to cover today in this amount of time. And so I wanna start just by sharing why I started Brave Widow and especially the Brave Widow Academy, because people will often guess why it's not always accurate.
For those of you who don't know me, this is your first time hearing about me. I'm not gonna do a deep dive into my story today. You can rewatch the replay from [00:04:00] yesterday in the four seasons of grief, if you wanna get much deeper into the story. But essentially, over four years ago, I was unexpectedly widowed, just three weeks shy of what would've been our 20th wedding anniversary.
We have four kiddos together who were all teenagers at the time, and I'd worked in healthcare for 20 years. I was a senior vice president. I had thousands of employees. I was responsible for, I traveled most of the time for work. And so not only did my whole world change whenever my husband died, but. Just logistically how I got my kids where they needed to go and the cooking and everything was a huge challenge like it is for many of you.
And so as I think about that first year or two as I was widowed, I was super frustrated. In [00:05:00] the beginning as a widow, you are devastated. I talked about the four seasons of grief yesterday. You're in the season of rawness. You're in this season of just trying to survive and just getting through the day, which is super difficult.
But there comes a point where you start to get your feet underneath you a little bit. You start to develop this new routine and all of a sudden it's is this it? Like this? This is my reality now, this 40 more years of this. And I remember very clearly. Being there and just being frustrated because there were so many different Facebook groups, there were different books, there were different podcasts, and it was like everybody had a different opinion about, could you get over grief?
Could you ever be happy again? Did people get to a point where they enjoyed life again? And even if they did, when I would ask them like what do I have to do? They would [00:06:00] say you just give it time. Just give it time and it'll be better. Get better with time. And I was like, no, time is not helping me.
It's been a year, it's been 18 months. It's been two years. It is not getting better. I was so frustrated. And I remember one story I'll share in particular is that I was. Driving to Tulsa. So I live in Arkansas. I was driving to Tulsa, it's a little over two hour drive and I was gonna see Jordan Peterson in person.
And I remember this is like one of the first times that I was going to do something like positive, something that felt like I was trying to live life again. And I'd taken the day off and I was driving out there to Tulsa. And I remember about halfway there, there's a really big rest stop convenience store [00:07:00] area.
And I'd had the windows down, the music was cranked up and I pulled into this rest stop convenience area and all of a sudden I just start bawling, makeup ruined, ugly tears like crying because all the thoughts that come up are like, what are you doing? Like you're pretending to have a good time, you're trying to do something for yourself, but what is the point?
He's not here to enjoy it with you. He's not here experiencing this with you. So what are you doing? This is pointless. And I remember going inside, getting some McDonald's napkins, like wiping the tears away. And I'm like, no, I'm not going back home. I'm just gonna keep going. And this was probably almost a year and a half after Nathan had died.
And so I drive to Tulsa, I go to the mall and I'm walking around the mall. And of my teenagers, one of them just starts blowing up [00:08:00] my phone text. And they are having a mental health crisis. And without going into a lot of details, these are the type of texts that no mother wants to be getting.
And again, I had all these thoughts rush up inside of me that's see, this is why you shouldn't be gone. See, you're a bad mother. You should be there for your children. Now you need to go back and pick your child up. Now you need to do this. Why did you think that you should be trying to do this? You should be grieving.
Don't you miss your person? Don't you miss your husband? Like, how are you out here trying to have fun and you're just ruining your family? Like the thoughts that came up were really harsh, brutal, nasty to myself. And the guilt was just really overwhelming. And so I was out of town. I couldn't just easily go get my kiddo, so I called my mother-in-law, Nathan's mom, [00:09:00] and she went and intervened and that was a huge help to me.
But I just remember that so clearly and that season of life so clearly and I was so frustrated 'cause I'm like, what am I doing wrong? I've done everything I'm supposed to do. I've already been in counseling, I've already, talked to other widows. At this point I'd already started interviewing other widows.
I'd started the Brave Widow podcast and I had other widows come and tell people like what was helping them. I had read tons of books and listened to the podcast and there was like no clear answer. It was just so overwhelming if you just Googled what do I do as a widow? And it's all full of stuff.
There's no timeline in grief and grief never gets better, but you just need to give it time. And I was so frustrated. Like I wanted the checklist, I wanted the process. I wanted someone to tell me [00:10:00] like, this is what you need to do for life to get better, for you to enjoy life again. I wanted someone to tell me, am I doing grief right?
Am I doing this wrong? 'cause it feels like I'm just screwing it up. It feels like I'm doing it all wrong. And that every time I try to do something for me, I try to rebuild my life. I try to, do something different that it ends up in tears. Like I can't even sit. In my kids' choir concert without tissues.
Because all I can think about is how unfair it is that their dad isn't here. And so I should be a happy mom sitting out in the audience and I'm just a mess because all I can think about is how their dad should be here. Is this the rest of my life now? Like grief has just ruined my life. Have I just died along with my person?
And this is just it for me. No one could tell me the [00:11:00] answer. How many have you guys felt that way? No one can tell you what to do. No one can tell you what to focus on. They're just like, oh, just give it time and you'll get stronger and you'll get better at handling the pain 'cause it doesn't get better.
And you're like, what? Really? I.
So in part of my story feels yes, I know that feeling. Yeah. In the deep dive I do on my story, I tell about a specific time where I was sitting out in the garden and I was reckoning with the fact that I felt dead on the inside, like the shadow of myself, a hollow version of myself. I often think about it as feeling untethered because I didn't know who I was.
I didn't know what I wanted. I felt like a little boat in the middle of the ocean, un anchored, untethered to anything. And I didn't even know which way to turn the [00:12:00] boat, and I was just getting smacked around in all different directions. And so I reacted to everything and it was like, if I dare to take a step in a certain direction.
I would just get smacked back the other way. Like it was just, I was like, what is the point? Why am I even trying this year? This is crazy.
And so in my story, I talk about how on that particular day, I probably stubbornly, if I'm being honest, decided if I've got to live, if I am going to decide to live, I am gonna figure out this whole grief thing. I'm gonna figure out how to get to the other side of it. I'm gonna figure out what it takes to build a life that you can love again.
And the more that I have, I've talked, I've interviewed probably thousands of widows. I've coached over a hundred hundreds of widows. And what I began to piece together. Were like, [00:13:00] what were the commonalities that I observed and what other people shared? What were the things I observed about my own life and what was working and what wasn't working?
And why did grief feel so hard? And why did our brains work a certain way? And why is it hard to make friends at this age and why is it hard to, to date? And like, how can you date again in your forties and you haven't dated since you were on dial up a OL internet and back then meaning someone online was like, not what you did at all.
Like how you navigate all of that. And I just documented all of my observations and all of the trends and the patterns and the commonalities of what I learned. And it actually came from, as I was coaching people in Brave Widow, the reason I built Brave Widow, the reason Brave Widow was born was [00:14:00] because so many people started reaching out to me.
So a few months after Nathan died, I had two employees who worked for me, who also became widowed. And then I had a coworker whose daughter was in her twenties that became widowed, maybe less than a year later. And I just had all these people reaching out saying, what can we do to help? What are widows supposed to do?
And I was sitting there thinking gosh, I don't know. So I would tell 'em like, buy plastic silverware. Buy paper towels. Go mow that person's lawn. Go clean their house. Be the hands and feet of Jesus. Just go help that person. And that's, that really started the Brave New Widow Checkbook.
It started the Brave New Widow Workbook. It started the Family and Friends Guide, all of which you can download for [email protected]. It started all of that, of wanting to be a place that people could go to and [00:15:00] find, help, find direction. Because when I would Google or look for things. It was overwhelming.
All the options, all the different opinions, everything was piecemealed. And so Brave Widow was born because I wanted one place that people could go and they could find what it was that they needed. Now, since I started Brave Widow, and I am on the third year, just October is when Brave Widow was officially founded, November 16th will be the third year anniversary of the podcast.
So today we're doing episode 1 74, so three years of weekly podcast. And since then I've learned a lot right, of helping people, coaching people, learning from other people and pulling it all together. And so [00:16:00] Brave Widow exists because it's what I wish I had. And the Brave Widow Academy, which we're in the middle of a launch for right now.
Our next group starts Monday, November the 10th. The academy exists because it's the container that I have found helps people make the fastest progress in the short amount of time, while also being connected to other people who are on the same journey. So it's less isolating. Now, the fastest, most direct progress people can make is in one-on-one coaching, which I do and I have done now for three years.
But what I find is that there's still this steep loneliness, of course, and. There's a lot of value in being in a group setting and being in the academy setting to where [00:17:00] people are learning from each other, they're normalizing their journey, right? So they don't feel like they're going crazy because other people are struggling with some of the same things and they get to just go on this whole journey with other people, which is amazing.
So Brave Widow was born because it was what I wish I would have had, and the Academy was born because it is the best container I have found to help people make the most progress quickly in their grief. There is a gap in support for widows and widowers, and therapy is helpful and it has its place, and I am a supporter of therapy.
Okay. Therapy is really helpful with processing, with working through trauma. And if you are struggling to, I'll say function in quotes, if you're struggling to function, like to get out of bed, to be [00:18:00] able to eat every day, to bathe like therapy and those process are super helpful. Faith communities are, can be very helpful.
Grief groups can be very helpful, but often what is missing, and the number one question I get from widows and widowers is, what's next? Maybe I've gone to counseling I've processed some grief. I do feel better than I did, but I don't like, what do I do now? What am I supposed to focus on now?
What is my next. Step. And so what is missing in the traditional support of what we have for grieving people is a repeatable pathway. Because I teach this for grief recovery method, it's evidence based, which means it's proven to be effective with grief. Recovery doesn't mean that it heals you perfectly.
It doesn't mean that [00:19:00] you know you never cry again after you go through it, but it is proven to help people with grief recovery. I don't care who you take this from. If you've never taken it, go take it. I even if you've not lost a loved one, even if you're just randomly finding this video or this live, we are not educated culturally in how to navigate grief and loss, and we all have experienced loss in one way or another.
This program, this book is amazing, but what is missing is what comes after. So to me, how I think about Brave Widow is like grief recovery and emotional healing is our foundation. It's where we start. We make sure that you have a good foundation. We make sure that you have a good place to start, and then we rebuild your life from the ashes.
On top of the tools that we have for emotional healing, we rebuild. And the number one thing that I [00:20:00] wish someone would have told me when I was widowed is that your old life is over. And it sounds cruel and it sounds harsh, and it's hard to reconcile when all you want to go back to is the past. But the reality is, and what I love about how Dr.
John Delony talks about this is that your old life is in ash and there is no going back. So while we think we're waiting to go back to normal when other people are waiting for the old version of us to come back, the reality is that's not going to happen. And the reality is that you get to decide if you're going to build something new, if you're going to build a new life up out of the ashes, and create something that you can enjoy again.
And in the beginning it's super hard because in the beginning, you don't want the future. In the beginning, you want the [00:21:00] past and you want your old life back, and you want your person back. And I know personally I know it's hard. And so the first few steps that we take are things like calming your nervous system, allowing your heart to heal.
Giving yourself time and grace to process the trauma and the horror of what has happened to you of what circumstance has happened to you. And then we start to build a new life in every area from the ground up. Mindy asks, how long have you been a widow? It has been four year, almost four and a half years now, since July of 2021.
I've been widowed. And so what is missing in traditional support is the roadmap, right? I like having the blueprint, the roadmap. I actually had a coach who challenged me to come up with different. [00:22:00] She called them like stages, right? Like you've, have you guys heard of the five stages of grief, right? And she's what are the stages of widows who come to you that want help?
Like you have people who are early in grief, you have people later in grief. But the way she challenged me to think about this really created the entire Rise framework in the Four Seasons of grief. Because I was like, okay, when you're early on in grief, you're like in season one, like you're devastated.
You feel overwhelmed. You think life's never gonna get better. You're in survival mode. That's the early part of grief. And then later on you go all the way through until you love your life again, and you know what you want for your future, and you're creating that. And so I mapped out these four, what we now call the Four Seasons of Grief.
To not diagnose someone, but to give them a blueprint, to give them, call it a roadmap, but to give them the plan that says, here's where you are right now. I know what you struggle [00:23:00] with so well, I might be able to say it better than you can by now. I know how to identify exactly where you are in the four seasons of grief.
I know exactly what to focus on while you're in that season of grief to help you be able to move to the next season of grief and of life and of rebuilding life. And I would have given anything to learn that when I was in deep grief, when I was early on in widowhood. And so the vision for the Academy, when I first started Brave Widow, it was a membership.
And you guys know like subscriptions, memberships, like you have Netflix, Disney, whatever you have. And it was very a la carte. Like it was all kinds of different topics, right? Like I had calls every single week and I would teach a topic typically. So one week we might talk about navigating brain fog.
Another week we might talk [00:24:00] about how to make friends. Another week we might talk about setting up, a will or a trust for your assets. It was just random topics and it is like a whole treasure chest that's like Netflix, right? Like people could just log in and they could say, okay, I wanna learn about building confidence.
I wanna learn about this topic or that topic. And so kinda like pulling a book off the shelf, they would pull the video down and watch the video and they would learn about that. And that was the beginning of Brave Widow. And one of the challenges that I had is that it was, in retrospect, probably a little too a la carte, right?
Because as a widow, we tend to feel lost. We don't know what to focus on. We don't know what our next step is. We want guidance, we want structure, we want a plan. So as I began to coach more and more people one-on-one, and I began to see [00:25:00] the same common things over and over and over and over, I began to create a curriculum, a whole suite, step by step from A to Z.
If you are in deep grief, we start here. Okay? Then we work on calming your nervous system, creating a routine, stabilizing you. You're in survival mode. We need to stabilize. That's like the next step. Then the next step is we need to rebuild your confidence so that you can try new things so that you can go meet people and make friends so that you can make decisions in your life.
And then the next thing is that we're gonna build up relationships and friendships. And so we're gonna learn about boundaries and people pleasing, and we're gonna learn about communication, and we're gonna learn about attachment styles, and we're gonna learn about. How you can go to a place you've never been to and navigate all the anxious thoughts in your head.
And then we're gonna work on discovering your purpose and what lights you up on the inside and what helps [00:26:00] you give you a sense of meaning, like that's the next thing. And then the next thing it's a whole curriculum of step by step to go from A to Z as a widow who's in deep grief all the way through building a life that gives you purpose and peace and meaning.
And sometimes that's hard for people to grasp because the leap is so big, right? Oh, how could I ever be way over there? I'm, I am still, I can't even hardly get outta bed. Like I, I am just anxious about everything. I can't even imagine enjoying my life again. And so I have to dial back what I tell people is achievable so that it feels.
More real and believable because believe it or not, you're capable of so much more, and the potential for your life is so much more than what you even realize right now that if I were to tell you, you probably wouldn't believe me. It would be like me telling you, [00:27:00] oh, I could teach you how to make a million dollars a month.
You wouldn't believe me. But if I said, I can teach you how to make $300 a month, you're like, oh, okay. I believe that. And so sometimes I have to reign myself back in. But in the academy, I teach you what to focus on and how to do these things, and not only teach you, but I'm walking side by side with you so that I know at all times for all of my students where you are.
We focus on one win that you had for the week before. One thing you're gonna implement for this week, and then you also let me know what all's going on. I'm getting ahead of myself here, but I love the way the Academy is built. I love the way that it's built. And so I want you to to know why I've built it the way that I have.
So what is the Brave Widow Academy? It's so many things, but essentially [00:28:00] inside the academy, we meet every week on Mondays, and some of the feedback from my students is they love meeting on Monday because it sets the tone for the rest of the week. In fact, yesterday one of my students just said, she's I can tell if I didn't show up to the call on Monday if I missed the call because I had something going on, or I just, didn't get logged on like it messes with my entire week.
And I was like, wow, that's really powerful for her to say that the academy is like setting the tone. And so we have a two hour call every Monday. The first half of the call, I am teaching and I am giving you tools. So every week you get worksheets. Yeah. Like you're in school. It's called the Academy people.
I love to nerd out about things like psychology and why things why do our brains work the way they work? Why is grief so hard? Why this, why that? And what we can actually do about [00:29:00] it, and how we can actually use that, leverage, that knowledge to our advantage and how we can carve out time to focus on our healing.
And so the first half I'm teaching, I'm giving you tools, we're going through the worksheets together, and you are pulling out one thing. That is helpful to you. Out of the things that we cover, you just need one thing that is helpful to you. And then the second hour I do coaching and we just have open discussion so people may share what's going on in their life.
They may ask for feedback on something they're struggling with or that they could do differently. I mentioned the workbook, so every week you get worksheets. They're in color and they're beautiful. Okay. Because I'm a nerd and I love to make things in Canva and it looks nice, and that was some of the feedback I got yesterday was people really like the colorful worksheets.
We, I give like an emotions wheel. We have boundaries [00:30:00] work, we have step-by-step processes, all of that we go through together. So you don't have lots of homework, you're not gonna get behind. We make time in class to do all this together. We also have open connections. So I use an app called Telegram.
I dunno if you guys have heard about that, but we use an app called Telegram where people can do group chat and they can also private message me one-on-one. So think about that. Anytime day or night, it'd be Tuesday at 2:00 AM you can't sleep. You can message me and say, Hey, I can't sleep. Do you have tips for how I can sleep better at night?
Now, I won't respond to you at 2:00 AM on Tuesday, but maybe by eight or 9:00 AM on Tuesday, I'll respond back and say, sure, here are some things that I would focus on to help you sleep better at night. So think about how powerful that is. Think about how helpful that is [00:31:00] that you're not having to Google it.
You're not going on YouTube. You're not waiting until your next therapy session to ask a question like real time. You can submit your problems, your questions, your challenges, and get a response. That business day like I've rarely been in a group where that's possible. Okay, so why is the Academy my favorite offer?
It is a structured curriculum. It's not guesswork every week. You know what? We're focusing on what you're gonna do for that week, and you have clear direction on where you are and what you need to focus on. You're not spending hours on YouTube trying to figure it out. You're not feeling like you're fumbling around in the dark, trying to know you're not doubting yourself.
Like that story I shared with you where I was doubting myself like, am I doing this right? Am I supposed to feel like this? Like now I feel like I've gone backwards. I thought I was doing better. I [00:32:00] thought I was feeling better, and then I've just been crying all day what's wrong with me? You will know.
You will know. The Academy is also my favorite off offer because we have coaching plus community. So you have skill building, you have accountability, and you have other people, other friends who get it. It's not a group or event. It's not a group where people don't really understand you, like you are in a group of other widows and widowers who just get it.
And so you don't have to explain why being a widow is so hard or why all of a sudden now you're overwhelmed with projects and tasks or why it's hard to declutter your home. Like people, they just get it. The third reason it's my favorite offer is because there are measured wins that you can actually feel.
So every week we do a progress tracker in the class. Again, there's no homework. The best thing about the academy is [00:33:00] there's no heavy homework in the class. At the beginning, we fill out a very simple progress tracker. I ask you, what was a win that you had that last week? What's something you wanna focus on for this week?
And then we have five areas that we track on a scale of one to 10. So it's things like your routine your confidence, your relationships, your sense of purpose, and how you're processing grief. And so every week you rate those on a scale of one to 10. And every week I'm able to look at that and go, oh wait, Katie, over here, she normally rates things, fives and sixes, and now this week she rated everything like a one or a two.
Something has gone on. I can intervene, I can check on her, I can see what's happening. It also allows us. To measure things that are normally intangible, like how do you measure [00:34:00] confidence? With a progress tracker, so I have clients that started rating their confidence at a two or a three within six months.
Their confidence, maybe an eight or a nine. Think about that for a minute. I have clients who have been widowed for years or maybe struggled with grief for years. Some, maybe it's only been months and some, it's only been a few weeks. But for people who have been with me for six months, whether it's one-on-one coaching or whether it's in the academy, and we are tracking their progress, to be able to sit back six months later and say, wow, look at me.
Look at me. That was what my client Michelle said. She's look at me. She's I don't even recognize myself on this call. I'm a totally different person. She was reading your confidence like a two. Then she was reading her confidence a nine in six months time. That's amazing. So to be able to track that and to see it over time and to see what you're struggling with [00:35:00] or what wins that you had over time is amazing.
Margie says, the more I venture out by myself and interact with strangers, the more I did improve. Yeah. And it's scary to do that, right? Widows understand the different stages. Yes. Okay. The fourth reason why this is my favorite offer is because it transforms you as a whole person. So we focus on emotional healing, but that's just the beginning.
We also focus on rebuilding your entire life. So I went through a six month very intensive program called the Faith-Based Coaching Academy, where I learned life building, life coaching skills and tools, right? So everything from building a routine to making decisions without second guessing yourself all the time to meeting people and making friends, to strengthening your faith, [00:36:00] to having fun and feeling like a kid again at times, and to feeling like fully alive.
Those are all the things that we do in the academy. Like it is so much bigger and broader than people imagine. This is really life changing. Okay. I love number. The fifth reason I love the academy is access and affordability versus one-on-one. So one-on-one coaching tends to be the most expensive container and offer and the least accessible from a cost perspective because it's the most time intensive.
Like it's one, one coach serving one client for one hour every week. And there's a capacity, like you can only serve so many people one-on-one in a week. But when you have a group offer like the Academy, it can become much more affordable and accessible because you're able to serve [00:37:00] so many more people at the same time in the class dynamic.
And then. Through one-on-one, whether it's having intermittent calls or the messaging and telegram, you're still able to give direct one-on-one feedback, guidance, and support, but it doesn't have the same time constraint as it does just serving people one-on-one. Okay. The sixth reason I love the academy is because it's aligned to my values, which is it's widows and widowers helping other widows and widowers.
It's faith friendly. We're faith focused. We start or end every session with a prayer. It's judgment free. So even if you are struggling with your faith and you're like, I'm angry at God and this is unfair, and I am afraid to voice my true feelings, 'cause I think I'm gonna get struck by lightning, like I help you work through all of that, I won't tell [00:38:00] you things like.
God is good. And so we just, he has a plan and we just have to follow the plan. No, that's not my approach. I will help you wrestle with all of the things in your faith that maybe you are afraid to say out loud, which is like, God, I thought you were good. I thought you loved me. I thought I could have faith in you, and now I feel like the rug's been pulled out from under me, and I'm just not quite sure I can trust you anymore.
So I have a process to help you navigate and wrestle with your faith, ultimately with the goal of strengthening it in a way that's honest and authentic, not in a way that's rose colored glasses.
We are also from a values perspective, coaching is very action oriented. So a lot of times in therapy we [00:39:00] process the past in coaching, we make decisions and we take action to move towards the future. We can process things from the past and we do, but the majority of what we're focused on is how we build a strong foundation and start to rebuild life and take action.
The seventh reason why I love the academy is that it's repeatable and it's scalable. So I've been coaching widows and widowers for three years, and this container, I love it so much. This is our third round of the academy is because it is repeatable. It's. The same, different people can go through the same curriculum, the same process, and they can all get results.
There's not anyone who's gone through this program that doesn't get results. In fact, in my guarantee, and my promise is that if you show up and participate and you feel like you haven't made any progress in [00:40:00] six months, that I will work with you personally for free until you do feel like you've made progress.
I believe in it that much and I've never had anyone have to take me up on that. Okay. The Academy reliably turns hope into habits and habits into a life that you actually want to live,
and in the beginning, sometimes hope is hard.
Janko says, be careful. It doesn't leave you always in the negative. I knew another support group like that. Yeah, that's a great point. There are a lot of support groups where things are negative. In fact, most people say the reason they're drawn to me is either they like the faith-based approach, they like how I present things, how I teach things, or they like how positive that I am.
And again, it's not positive like rose colored glasses naive, oh, [00:41:00] life is gonna be better. It's fine. No, I'm a realist. I keep it real, y'all. But also I think we get to decide, right? When people tell me life's never gonna get better, and it's you're right. If that's what you believe. You're right.
It isn't gonna get better because that's what you decide. You decide it's not gonna get better. So you choose not to do anything that's gonna make it better, but you also could decide that your life is gonna be different and that you're going to find meaning again. And in the beginning. For some people, it's hard for them to have hope.
It's hard for them to believe it because they don't see it, right? So we talk, the Bible talks about faith comes from things unseen, things that we can't see. And so in the beginning, sometimes I hold belief for that person. Like I'll believe it for you that it's possible. But over time you will see it for yourself in that now all of a sudden [00:42:00] you believe it because you're starting to see glimmers of hope, and you're starting to have those moments where you feel fully alive again.
You see it for yourself.
So in the academy we have weekly group coaching calls. We have implementation, true implementation. You have on demand training and replays. So if you can't come, we have a private podcast you can listen to on the go. You can watch it unlisted on YouTube. You can log in the portal and rewatch the replay so that you're always current.
We have the private community and messaging with the group messaging one-on-one with me. We have worksheets and checklists and challenges that we do throughout our time together so that you can have calmer days, more confident decisions, real connections, and a next chapter that you're actually excited about.
We have enough time, so I'm gonna share with you, I am [00:43:00] going to share with you what some of my students actually said yesterday. Okay. So in my academy group that started in August, we have 15 participants. And yesterday we had what I an inner circle meeting, which is like where they are the founding members of the official academy.
And so I ask them for all of their feedback, good, bad, and ugly. And I said that in this session. I'm like, tell me all the feedback. So I'm gonna share with you some of the things that people shared. Then I'm gonna share with you when I asked them what was working well in the academy, what they would change about the academy and what they would tell someone who's on the fence about joining the academy.
Okay. So what people are actually saying. What did they, what are some of the quotes of things they said about the content and the structure of the academy? So one person said, the module notes alone are gold. I print them, [00:44:00] I keep them, and I go back to them. Another person said, I didn't know any of this about how my brain works in grief, but it just makes so much sense that we're learning that another person said, I love that everything is organized and I have a notebook for every lesson.
What did people say about just the space and the community? They said, this is the first place I can say how I really feel without worrying that it's too much. Someone else said, outside of the academy, people don't wanna hear about death. But here we go deep and it's a relief. Another person said, just knowing that others struggle with the same things gives me so much hope.
I'm not alone. Okay. What did people say about me as the coach? They said, you've been there. You don't just teach. You share your own pluses and minuses and the messy real life behind the scenes. And they actually shared that because yesterday one of [00:45:00] my kiddos totaled a car, and I was sharing with them how I used the coaching dos that I teach on myself because I got a text that was like, oh, I clipped a street sign and there's some minor damage to the car.
And I looked at the car and I'm like, this thing's totaled out. This is not minor damage, right? And yesterday was just a really tough day. So I just shared with them my like, life is messy. Life is full of struggle and suffering, and I don't pretend my life is perfect. Like I share with them in the academy, the messiness of life and how I use the tools that I teach them on myself and how it helps me.
People also said, you're consistent on time and it helps plan my life Around this sacred hour, another person said I was going further and further downhill. I didn't care about living anymore, and you gave me hope and [00:46:00] made me think about life differently. Okay. What did they say about the tools and the accountability?
They said the weekly check-in forms forced me to stop and ask where am I actually growing and what is one thing that I'm going to do this week? Another person said, when I look back at my progress tracking form, I can actually see how far I've come. Another person said, the Telegram app helps us pray for each other, cheer each other on, and stay connected between calls.
Margie says, yeah, that's why we need groups and No, because nobody wants to talk about death. Yeah, exactly. I know lots of people who don't like to talk about death nearly as much as I like to talk about it.
Okay. What do they say about the value or being on the fence? Money was a big concern at first, but a consult helped me see what I would get, and now I know that it's worth it. Another person said, if you feel like you're sliding downhill, you have [00:47:00] nothing to lose by trying the academy. I'm liking the sound of this approach.
I wish I would've had it when I needed it. Thank you, Jenko. You're so welcome. This is why I built it, because I built it exactly how I would have wanted it. So if you are like I was, or you're, if any of this is resonating with you, if you've tried therapy, maybe you've tried grief groups, you've tried podcasts, you've tried books, you've tried everything, and you still feel stuck.
What I want you to hear from me today is that you're not broken. It's just that no one has showed you how to rebuild. Margie says, this is really good. Thank you, Margie. Join us, join the academy. And here's the thing you can keep doing what you're doing and hope that it gets better, or you can decide that you're gonna step into a space, decide specifically for widows and widowers who want more than just survival.
And Karen she's gonna come back on the podcast, [00:48:00] but Karen and I met almost a year ago. She'd been deeply grieving for three and a half years. She was really struggling. She has an amazing story. I'm gonna tell more about it tomorrow, but you can hear her on the podcast. And she tells in her story how she just kept thinking or waiting that time would make things better and it didn't.
But when we started working together, within three months, she felt a huge shift in her grief and how she felt. So even if you're a little bit curious, I would love for you guys to check out the [email protected] and you can even schedule a consult with me. I don't, I do a lot of pressure. It's not gonna be a big sales thing.
It's not a timeshare speech. Okay. I have a set of questions I'll ask you, and I even did a podcast episode about what to expect on a consult. So if you're nervous, you could watch that episode and see for yourself, and you can download my consult sheet so you could see what are the things I'm gonna be asking you about [00:49:00] and how I figure out where you are in the four seasons of grief and what I recommend for your next steps.
And just know that you don't have to figure this out alone. All right. So when I ask my academy students what is working well. Here were the things that they said. Some of the themes, they love the structure and the content, the thorough, colorful modules, the boundaries work, the emotions wheel, how organized the notes are, and several of them mentioned that they print and bind the notes as a reference.
They love the consistency. It's the same day, the same time every week. And they even mention they notice a real difference on the Mondays that they miss. Fixed time gives their brain and heart and mental and emotional space to process. They love the space itself, that we go deep, that no one's afraid to say how they really feel, and that it's authentic and faith-based.
We pray together. We share real [00:50:00] life. I share my own experiences as a widow, and the group sharing helps them feel less alone and more hopeful as we go through the process. They also appreciate the practical pieces, the Telegram message app that's easy to use, the progress forms that keep them accountable and being in a cohort with same people, even if they can't participate live.
Okay, so what would they change? What would people in the Academy change about it? Okay, so what they said was they wished, first of all, that we could meet in person. And I get that because I wish we could meet in person as well, but they would love to be in the same room of people who understand. Some of them would love to have a printed book or workbook.
Some people wanted handouts earlier. And some extra help with some of the technology and how to interact in the chat. And these are all things that I'm thinking about actively as we grow, especially how to bring more [00:51:00] in-person connections in. So I'm looking at doing a Brave Widow retreat. Maybe some time in May of next year.
And I, haven't ever really planned a retreat before, but I've been to lots of 'em, and I know some people who are really smart that can help me plan that. But we would love to do an in-person Brave Widow retreat once, maybe twice a year. I think that would be amazing. And in the materials section they're actually going to get a bound and printed workbook once it's fully completed.
So students not the students who join for Monday, but as we have students that join in the future, my goal is the workbook is done, it will be done the next couple of months and we can just, I can order it from Amazon and ship it to people's houses like that would be awesome. Okay. What would you tell someone who's on the fence?
They're not sure whether or not they should join. They're like on the fence. So people said [00:52:00] they would tell someone, no one is coming to save you. You have to decide to change your life. They would say to schedule a consult and just get like a taste of the Brave widow experience. They would say to watch a sample class or to look at some of the testimonials.
Someone mentioned that Karen's personal testimonial was something that helped them decide this was the right space for them. And someone else said to me it's real easy. What have you got to lose? If you feel like you're not getting better, you're just getting worse, what have you got to lose?
So those, that's some of their words and their quotes that they've given to you. And I would love for you to get a taste of Brave Widow. So if you are with me on, okay. Do I have some people on YouTube, I think. Say hi, I'm gonna share my screen. I wanna make sure you guys can see it on TikTok.
I don't know that I can share my screen. If I can flip my camera [00:53:00] around or not. Oh wait, maybe. Oh, look at that. Look at that. Hello, YouTube. Okay, I'm gonna try to do this on TikTok. I've never actually done this before, so we're just all gonna learn together. How about that? So let me share my screen
and let me share my screen on Facebook. I can figure that out.
Y'all are gonna laugh at my technology challenges here. It's normal. It used to be down at the bottom. I'm sorry, Facebookers, maybe I'm not smart enough to figure that out and I don't wanna waste time okay, we're just going over here now. Okay. So let me do this.
All right, so hopefully you guys can see this, okay? Yeah. All right. So what, this is like a behind the scenes of the academy. So when you first log in to Brave Widow, I'm gonna go back just a moment here. Thank you for your amazing [00:54:00] patience.
When you first log into Brave Widow, you really have a lot of stuff, access to so many things from the very beginning of when I created Brave Widow. Okay, so you've got access to an orientation of how to get around the portal, the community, which I'm gonna go into at later. I'll come back to that.
Our call replays, and these are some courses that I've taught over the years. A mastermind that we did on dating the private podcast. All the mastermind replays, which this was like academy version 1.0. And actually really helpful. So a lot of the curriculum and the content, the first time I taught it is in the Mastermind, but I'm gonna jump ahead here.
To the systems that we teach. Okay, so the curriculum of the academy here. We have the Chaos to Calm blueprint, which helps you escape survival mode, the self-trust system where we work on [00:55:00] confidence, the move forward method, where we learn how to take a step forward in rebuilding our life, the connection protocol, which is all about relationships and discover your purpose plan, which is all about purpose and meaning.
And then all the replays of our live coaching calls. So right now you sign up for the academy, like all of these modules have been recorded in the past because they're coming from an earlier version of the academy, but most of the content will be the same. So like you can say, oh, I need help with making decisions.
So I wanna watch that video so you can watch the video here. And you could see, oh, I was teaching people about neurobiology, how the brain works, how trauma impacts the brain, how we respond, fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. How to build a board of advisors to help you make decisions when you're second guessing everything, the steps to decision making, like we get really deep on some of these [00:56:00] topics and then you can see the next videos that are coming up in this modules.
And all of that is in the self-trust system to help you rebuild confidence. So you can watch all of these or you can say, Nope, I'm just gonna go with the flow of the academy. And here is behind the scenes view of all of our people who are in the academy. That started in August. So every week you can see the calls that we covered.
We started with chaos to calm. Then we went into the self-trust system. Then last week I had a special guest, Michelle, she's a, another coach that was a special guest. And then we had our inner circle meeting where I got feedback from people. These are the calls. You can watch these at any time.
They're also on the private podcast and we put them unlisted on YouTube if YouTube's just like an easier way for you to view that, but then other people can't find it 'cause it's unlisted. So you get all of that, everything there. [00:57:00] And also go back,
To the beginning here of the community. I was gonna show you just real quickly. So in the community itself. That's a lot of the recorded content. So in the actual community this is a, like a Facebook feed. Okay? So when people make posts, when there are updates, there are schedule changes, all that kind of filters into the feed.
We also have meetups that are coming up so you can see some of the next meetups that are happening. But then we have forums, and I'm not gonna click entities just for privacy reasons, but people can introduce themselves. They can share updates of where they are, they can share their wins, ideas they have for the holidays.
All of that can be shared over there. So the community is the heartbeat of the meetups and talking with other people and all that. And then we also have the Telegram app, which I'm not gonna go into the Telegram app just because again privacy. I don't wanna [00:58:00] share specific names and details of what people are dealing with.
But that's there as well. Then let me share, I'm gonna stop sharing for just a minute and I'm going to show you, the workbook, give you an example of what the workbook looks like. So let me go back over here. Share again. Thank you for being patient. You guys are like, amazing. Okay, so this is a, this is our brave Widow Academy textbook, if you will.
And this currently is over a hundred pages, but each week you would get some specific worksheets for that week. So let me find a good example to share with you. This is just a visual of all the different systems and how we have like the building block concept here in the academy. Planning your routine, I guess this would be a good one.
So one of the things that we cover in Chaos to Calm is planning out your routine. And [00:59:00] here are like what some of the worksheets would look like. And then we also have activities that we do in between where you would be like actually doing the work and actually starting to create your routine.
And so you have worksheets that are in there. We carve out time to do that. And then I even give you things to use, if you need ideas for maintaining your home and how often things should be done that you get those actual tools and things that we, use there. So you get all of those tools.
So this is just an example of the worksheets that I share with people that. Will beginning and that will be working through in class together. Yeah, hope that is helpful for you and I'm gonna figure out if I can stop sharing now and go back here and just see if you guys have any questions about that.
And I'm curious how this podcast is going to turn out because I've [01:00:00] never, sometimes I share my lives on the podcast, but I've never done a podcast and done it live at the same time. So we'll see how that goes. But yeah, that is why I started the academy. That's what is in the academy and what you can expect.
This group they start on Monday and we are gonna meet on Mondays from three to five central time every week. So if you're Eastern, that's four to six. And if you're the other time zones, you can do the math.
I think Pacific is one to three, mountain is two to four. Hopefully I got that right. And if not, you guys are probably better at math than me. Yep, that's when we meet and we're starting again next Monday. So if you wanna learn more, go to brave widow.com/academy. That will tell you all about the academy.
If you wanna do a consult call, you can go to brave widow.com and schedule a consult. It's super easy, and again, it's not high pressure. [01:01:00] My goal on a consult, whether or not you sign up I, from a business perspective shouldn't be like, I do free consults for everyone all the time. Maybe not the best business advice, but it is what I do is as a way of giving back, doing consults to help people figure out like where they are.
Why they're feeling stuck and what their one next step is moving forward. If you're not sure, just schedule a consult. I will help you at least figure that out. And then you'll have the next steps of what you can go and focus on. What I like about the academy and what I like about coaching is it takes a lot of the guesswork out, right?
Like you can Google and you can YouTube how to get through grief like many of you have. That's, how many of you find me, especially on YouTube, the number one place people find me is on YouTube because they googled some kind of challenge or problem that they were having in grief. And the reality is I have hundreds of hours of content that's out there for [01:02:00] free.
I have access to Brave Widow. Some of those first courses that I show showed you it's free on the school app. You just download the school app. You can get it there for free. I can give you free access into the community. But the thing about free is like free is good if you're wanting to learn information, but it's not always helpful when you're wanting structure and accountability and guidance.
And that is where I feel like it's worth investing in a program that is going to help you intentionally move forward. Lots of us have, we sign up for free stuff and i'll sign up for something and I'm like, yeah, I'll get around to it.
Or have you ever saved posts? I'm notorious, I'll save a post on Facebook or Instagram yeah, I'm gonna read this later. I'm gonna make a video about this later. And I just never go back. Or I go back and I'm like, oh my gosh, I've saved 500 posts. I do not have time for this. So free [01:03:00] resources are great for people who need them, and that's why I offer them.
And that's why I've spent hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands at this point of hours of making free stuff to help people. And also there is something about us that changes as a human when we decide to invest in something or to s it, it like, it's like we tell ourselves, I'm gonna take this seriously.
I'm going to do something different. I'm doing this specific program is a very different approach than where a lot of people find me at 2:00 AM. Scrolling on YouTube, trying to find a voice they can fall asleep to, which is totally fine. If that's you, if I can help you go to sleep, I consider that my job complete for that task.
All right I don't see any questions. Some of you have hung out with me for this hour now, so thank you for that. I am [01:04:00] accessible because Brave Widow is still growing, and so I am loving the stage of my business where there are things that I'm still figuring out and I'm learning how to grow, and that's why I love the academy because it's a culmination of.
Three years now of coaching people and figuring out like what is it that's gonna help them? Is it a course, is it a membership, is it one-on-one coaching, is it a mastermind? I've done six week classes, eight week classes. Like when I teach this, it's an eight week class. And it's amazing. And sometimes it's also hard to get people to show up for eight weeks in a row.
Especially if it's the investment is, isn't a lot. Versus people who have invested in the academy or people who invest even in one-on-one coaching, like they're all in. They're there and it's amazing. So yeah. Thanks for hanging out with me. I would love to see you in the academy. We start Monday, November the 10th.
And for those of you who might be thinking like, [01:05:00] oh, I don't know, we got the holidays coming up. I got a lot going on. How I think about it is I would like to go through the holidays, feeling supported, guided. And clear versus hunkering down and avoiding thinking about them and struggling to go through them and not having those support and resources.
If you want to message me privately on Christmas day, you can message me privately on Christmas Day and I don't know how many coaches will sit here and tell you that. So I love you guys. Thank you for hanging out with me. I will see you next time and I will see you in the academy.
widow, widows, widowed mom, grief support, Christian widow, faith based grief coaching, grief recovery method, 4 seasons of grief, Brave Widow Academy, widow coaching, life after loss, loneliness after loss, move forward after grief, grief help for widows
#widow #widowed #widowhood #widowlife #widowsofinstagram #widowshelpingwidows #grief #griefcoach #griefshare #griefsucks #griefquotes #griefsupport #griefjourney #griefandloss #griefrecovery #lifecoaching #lifecoach
