BW 190: Is Year 2 Of Grief Harder? Widow Q&A On Timing, Triggers & “Time Heals” Myths

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MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

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Is the second year of grief really harder?

How long should you wait to go through your spouse’s things, make big decisions, or feel “ready” to rebuild your life?

 

In this power‑hour Q&A, I answer the most common questions widows ask me about grief and timing: “Shouldn’t I feel better by now?”, “Why do grief waves still hit me out of nowhere?”, and “Does time actually heal, or am I just… stuck?”

 

You’ll hear:

• Why I never tell widows “the second year is harder”
• What’s actually happening in your brain and body when grief “waves” slam you
• Why time by itself doesn’t heal your heart (it’s time + action)
• How to know when you’re ready to:
• Go through your spouse’s things
• Make big life decisions (moving, retiring, dating, etc.)
• Start rebuilding friendships, work, travel, and purpose
• What to do when family thinks you “should be further along”
• Why healing is possible even if it’s been 4, 10, or 25+ years

 

If you’ve been waiting on time to fix this… this episode will lovingly challenge that and show you a different way forward.

 

⏱️ Timestamps

00:00 Power Hour intro: grief & timing questions
01:00 “Is the second year of grief harder?”
04:00 The danger of self‑fulfilling grief prophecies
08:00 Why year one and year two feel so different
09:00 The myth that “time heals all wounds”
11:00 Time vs. time plus action in grief
12:00 When is the right time to go through my spouse’s things?
15:00 When is the right time to make big decisions?
17:00 Retiring, work, and not walking away into an empty life
20:00 A widow’s story: “I’m doing great and I’m excited again”
21:00 Why grief hits “out of nowhere” (triggers, seasons, and your nervous system)
26:00 Learning to surf grief waves instead of drowning in them
27:00 How to know if you’re ready to date, work, travel or dream again
29:00 “Why does everyone think I should be further along?”
32:00 Healing even after many years of being stuck
40:00 “I’ve waited 7+ years… should I just keep waiting?”
44:00 Time won’t rebuild your life, but you can
45:00 The Four Seasons of Grief framework & free class
47:00 What we do inside Brave Widow Academy

 

🎁 Free Resources for Widows

• Take the free Four Seasons of Grief quiz: find out which season you’re in and what to do next → bravewidow.com/quiz
• Join the free Brave Widow Community and weekly live calls → bravewidow.com/free
• Register for the next live Four Seasons of Grief class → bravewidow.com/liveyt

 

💛 Ready for deeper support?
Brave Widow Academy is my 6‑month, faith‑based program to help you heal your heart and rebuild a life you can love again. Small group, step‑by‑step roadmap, and weekly support. Learn more and apply here: bravewidow.com/academy

 

Subscribe for more faith‑based, hopeful grief support for widows:
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WHO THIS IS FOR

Brave Widow Academy is for widows (from a few months to 20+ years out) who are:

• Tired of waiting on “time” to magically fix things
• Done just surviving and ready to rebuild intentionally
• Longing for a faith-based, hopeful roadmap and real community
• Ready to take gentle, practical steps toward a life they can love again

 

If that’s you, apply at bravewidow.com/academy. Our next small cohort (under 20 women) starts Thursday, April 2.

 

 

💬 If this episode helped you, please: 

• Hit Subscribe 
• Leave a quick rating & review – it helps more widows find this support
• Share this with a friend who’s facing grief or the holidays without their person

 

If you’re new here, my name is Emily Tanner. I’m the founder of Brave Widow and Brave Widow Academy.

 

I help widows move from barely surviving their loss… to rebuilding a life they can actually love again without feeling like they’re betraying their person.

 

By day (and for 20+ years), I’ve led large teams and complex operations in the corporate world. 

 

After my husband Nathan died in 2021, just shy of our 20-year anniversary, I took everything I knew about leadership, systems, and change — and started applying it to grief.

 

Since then, I’ve:

Shared my story publicly to make widows feel less alone.

Launched the Brave Widow podcast, now with 180+ episodes and listeners around the world.

Coached hundreds of widows 1:1 and in groups, and talked with thousands more through the podcast, communities, and events.

Built Brave Widow Academy, a 6-month coaching program with a clear framework for moving from deep grief to rebuilding a life you can love again.

 

I don’t teach “just think positive” grief tips.

 

I teach widows how to:

Heal their heart.

Stop waiting on “time” to fix everything.

Take small, brave steps toward a life that feels meaningful again.

 

How I Got Here…

 

2021: My husband Nathan dies unexpectedly. I’m 4 kids in, overwhelmed, and drowning in paperwork, decisions, and pain. Therapy helps, but I still feel stuck with no roadmap.

 

2021–2022: I start devouring books, interviewing widows, trying grief groups, and studying coaching — desperate to find something that actually helps me feel different.

 

2022: I start the Brave Widow podcast, recording episodes while terrified and crying between takes — but determined that no widow should feel as alone as I did.

 

Year 1: I begin coaching widows 1:1. Word spreads quietly. The same patterns and problems keep showing up, so I start building frameworks instead of one-off advice.

 

Year 2: I launch Brave Widow Academy — a structured, 6-month coaching program with a step-by-step path: from deep grief, to stability, to rebuilding.

 

Year 3: Brave Widow has listeners around the world. I’ve personally coached hundreds of widows and spoken with thousands more through consults, lives, emails, and DMs. 

 

Today: My work is simple:

 

Help widows stop surviving each day… and start rebuilding a life that makes them genuinely glad to be alive again.

 

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Hey, hey everybody and welcome to the Brave Widow Show. Today is gonna be like a power hour of answering all of your questions around grief and timing, and also gonna have a little fun streaming this live on TikTok while I record this. So what I've done is basically compiled. Some of the most popular questions that people have about grief, is the second year harder?

Shouldn't I feel better for by now? When is the right time to make big decisions? When is the right time to go through my spouse's things? You know, my family thinks that I should be further along. What do you think about that? And so I'm going to answer like a rapid fire. Some of these common questions as quick as I can, and for my folks that are on the live stream with me, if you have a [00:01:00] question about grief and timing and how long it takes and all of those things, put it in the chat and I'll try to answer that as well.

So hope you buckled your seatbelt. We're gonna move a little quickly. So one of the top questions I get, or one of the top debates that I hear is, isn't the second year of grief. Harder. I've thought about this question a lot. I've answered it a lot. I have podcast episodes about it. People love, they love to be right.

They love to say the second year of grief is harder, and they love to tell me if I have a different opinion why I'm wrong. So that's totally fine, because everybody has their own experience with grief, right? So, um, sure for some people the second year might be harder. There are also lots of reasons why people feel the second year of grief is harder.

And so let me just do a quick rundown of why that [00:02:00] is. So, um, first of all, let me explain why I don't love telling people. The second year of grief is harder. If you're on your first year of grief. It's not very helpful for someone to tell you like, oh yeah, well you think the first year is hard. Let me tell you, the second year of grief, so much harder.

So much worse. So, you know, you just like buckle up buttercup because the second year is going to be harder. Like what? Why would we tell someone that? No, no, I'm not gonna tell someone in their first year, the second year. Is harder. First of all, you don't know that you don't have a fortune like crystal ball.

You can't see into the future and know that it's gonna be harder for them. Maybe it was harder for you. That could be true, but you don't know that it's gonna be harder for them, so we shouldn't tell them that it's going to be harder. Also, there are a few fallacies that we [00:03:00] know we can fall into, right?

There's a self-fulfilling prophecy. You guys have heard about that. If I believe something to be true. Then I make it true because I believed it, and so I fulfilled that self-fulfilling prophecy. We also know that our brain works with, um, confirmation bias, which is our brain looks for evidence to confirm our beliefs are true.

So if I build a belief that the second year is harder, and I believe that. And people are telling me that then my brain is gonna look in that second year for all the ways that that's true. And my brain's gonna go, oh yeah. See, I told you the second year was harder. See, I told you this. We knew that this was gonna be harder.

These are all the reasons why. So you can decide to believe if you're not to your second year yet, or you're just coming into the second year, you can believe the second year is harder and you can be right. [00:04:00] Because your brain will point out all the ways that you can be right. You could also believe that the second year will just be different, maybe not harder, maybe just different.

And you could also be right. It's like that old quote. You can think you can, or you can think that you can't. And either way you'll be right. You, you get to choose what to believe with whether or not the second year is harder. Now what do I see? What was my experience? I've been widowed almost five years now, so what is my experience and what have I seen from other widows?

Right? Most widows find me somewhere around the one to two year mark. I have widows as soon as three weeks that find me. I have widows who it's been 25 years before they find me. Okay? So I have a wide spectrum. I would say the average is between year one and somewhere in year four is where most people tend to find me because I am very focused on [00:05:00] helping people rebuild their life.

Right. So yes, we do grief recovery, but we're also very focused on rebuilding life after loss and what that looks like. So after coaching hundreds of people talking with thousands of widows, having hundreds of widows on the podcast, here's what I would say I have observed about the second year, which was also very similar to my own experience.

Okay, so take it for what it's worth. You could argue with me in the comments if you want. It's fine. Um, the second year was very different, but when I reflect on. If I was going to have to relive year one or year two and I had to pick one, there is no amount of money. There is no amount of money where I would relive year one.

I wouldn't wanna relive either of those years, but if I had to pick between reliving year one and reliving year two, it would be year two. Okay. [00:06:00] Does that mean that year two was just so much easier that my life had changed in year two? No. Just means that it was very different. So why does year two often feel harder for people?

Well, in year one you are often in survival mode. You often can't think clearly 'cause your brain is literally not functioning the way it normally would. Okay. This is by design. You may have brain fog, you might just be floating through life. A lot of people say the first year was just kind of a blur. I don't even know how I got through it.

Like somehow I got through it, but I don't even really remember it. It was just kind of a big blur. Okay. I remember year one, it wasn't a blur for me. Okay. So I remember a lot of very painful things in year one. Year two felt different because for me, again, my opinion. Your two could be totally different for you, for me, and for many widows that I work with.

Your two felt [00:07:00] felt more real. Okay? Your two was like, oh, this isn't a bad dream. This is really, really real. I really do not have my person. I really am now a solo mom with four kids. I really am looking at. Potentially decades of being a widow. What? How is that possible? It wasn't that. I didn't know that in year one, but year one, you're just trying to get through the day.

You're just trying to get through the week. You're not really thinking about the future a whole lot. You're really thinking about your life today and everything in the past. You're not really thinking about, oh, in five years, what might my life look like? Like the future, just everything is dismal and awful, so you don't really look to that very much.

And the second year it's like, it's like after a tornado is blown through your life and the dust is [00:08:00] starting to settle, you're looking around and you're like, is this it? Like what, how, what, how is this my life now? So the second year can feel harder for that reason. Can also feel harder because in your mind you're like, oh, I've got through all the firsts.

I went through the first Christmas, I went through the first birthday, I went through the first milestone. So I've gotten through all the firsts. So now it should be easier and it can feel hard because that isn't always necessarily true. Other milestones can still be hard. Okay. Uh, next question. I'm waiting on time to help me.

When will time start to help me? Okay. This is one of the biggest myths in grief, and this is one of the biggest myths that we bust in the Grief Recovery Institute, which is an evidence-based 40-year-old program. Okay. It's the only tool that I use with my clients that I did not create because it is so good.

It's so good that I don't need to create anything to take the place of it. Everything else, yes, it's my proprietary [00:09:00] signature system, but grief recovery method is so good. I just use that. Okay, so we learn through this program that the key to recovery and grief is action and not time. Okay. If you are waiting on time to help you feel better, you are going to be eternally waiting.

How do I know this? Because I have clients who have been waiting for four years, for seven years, for 10 years, for 25 years. I want you to think about that. I have a client who waited 25 years. Before she ever processed her grief, before she ever decided she wanted to rebuild her life.

Time on its own does not help you. Time grief can become less volatile because you get numb to it because you distract yourself from it because you stay busy. Then [00:10:00] over time, you kind of get used to doing that. But to me, time is like, um, it, it is part of the, the recipe, right? Is a, is an ingredient in the recipe.

Time is required. Okay. I can't give you something today and tomorrow your grief is magically gone away. It's perfect. So time is a, a component, right? But I think about this like. If I wanna lose 20 pounds and I wanna go to the gym and lift weights and get stronger, right? If I just give it time, if I sit on my couch and I just give it time, am I going to lose the weight?

Am I gonna get stronger? No. What's gonna happen? Well, just more time's gonna go by. But if I go to the gym multiple times a week, if I lift weights three to four times a week. Then over time I get stronger, I get healthier, I get slimmer, I get more fit. [00:11:00] So time is needed, but time is not the key thing that helps us get a different result.

The same is true with grief recovery. The same is true with building a life that you can actually love after loss, rebuilding a life up out of the ash. Building something new. You could give it time, but all that's gonna happen is time is gonna go by, right? If you want to rebuild your social circle, that takes time.

But you can't just sit there and wait. On time. People aren't just gonna show up at your door and be like, Hey, let's be friends now and like, and go do stuff together. You have to take action. You take action and taking that action consistently over time, that is what helps you rebuild the social circle.

That is what helps you figure out what you want your, the rest of your life to look like. But I am telling you, if you are waiting. [00:12:00] On time, and that's all you're doing. You're going to keep waiting. And I wish people knew that. I wish they knew that.

Okay. Um, when is the right time to go through my spouse's things? The right time is when you decide. That's it. Okay. I never coach my clients. That what is holding them back is the fact that they haven't gone through their spouse's things, they haven't made decisions with what to do, and we have a whole process on how to do that that makes it not feel so permanent.

Okay. We have ways, I have a whole process of how I help people go through their spouse's things without feeling like they're having to make all these big decisions that are irreversible. Okay. I never tell my clients, you know what, it's been two years. It's been five years. You really need to go through your spouse's things.

That is not what's holding you back. Okay? I don't care what your family says or your friends say, that is not what's holding you [00:13:00] back. What will happen, because I've seen this happen with all of my clients, is that as you heal your heart. As you start to step forward and rebuild life again, you will decide that you are ready to go through your spouse's things and you will come to that realization on your own.

So when is the right time to go through your spouse's things? When you decide that you wanna go through your spouse's things and then you get to decide to me, going through your spouse's things. Is a, is a, a result of you taking steps forward of you deciding that you're ready to do that? It's not an action step we take in order to help us move forward.

It's a, it's a after effect that we have been taking steps forward, and now because of that, one of our results [00:14:00] is that we feel ready now. To go through our spouse's things, um, which is amazing that people can come to that realization and conclusion on their own. My clients, we never operate from a place of shame.

We don't operate from, I should do this, I should do that. I need to do this. Why can't I do that? I should this, I'm so lazy, I'm so disorganized, I'm so, you know, broken. Whatever it is. We don't ever operate from a place of shame. So going through your spouse's things, the time is when you decide like, okay, yeah, now I'm ready.

Not, oh my gosh, it's been five years. I should be able to do this. Why can't I do this? Why is this so hard for me? What's wrong with me? I need to do this. And then it just feels like Mount Everest in front of you versus in Brave Widow with my clients. They come to the place where they're like, okay, I, I know this is gonna be hard going [00:15:00] through my spouse's things, but I feel like it's time.

Like I'm ready. I'm ready to do this hard part of the journey, and to feel a little lighter and freer and to decide how I wanna incorporate some of these things throughout my home, throughout my life. All right, next question. When is the right time to make big decisions? When you decide, okay, um, when you decide it's time to make big decisions.

And there's that old adage, right, of, you know, oh, you shouldn't make big decisions in the first year, and the reason why, um, there's nothing wrong with that advice per se. What I tell people is just, if you are in deep grief, if you are in your first one to two years, if you recognize that your brain feels a little foggy, that it's hard to think clear, it's hard to think about the future [00:16:00] that you just go into those decisions eyes wide open so you can make big decisions.

Let's think about it through multiple lenses, through different angles, and if you have peace about it, step forward. If you don't, and you can, if you have time, you can kind of put that decision off to the side and we'll make that decision later. But you can decide to make big decisions whenever you want and you can sink back down into peace of reminding yourself like, no, I decided to do that.

And so I'm not gonna waffle. I'm not gonna go back. I'm not gonna. Keep second guessing myself, like, I'm ready to make this decision. I'm gonna make it. I want to retire, but then I will be alone with my grief with work and I can avoid it during the day. Oh, that's a good, that's a good, it's a statement, but it's also a question.

Okay, what would I tell someone to do? They wanna retire, but they're avoiding their grief. So what I would say. Without knowing a lot of your situation [00:17:00] is that I would carve out time to process grief intentionally, and for you that might be counseling, it might be grief groups. I personally use grief recovery method.

So many people teach it. You can, like I tell people, whether or not you take it with me doesn't matter. Just go take it. And there's a book that you can do the process through, but I think the group experience is so much better. You can also do it one-on-one. You can do it in a group, you can do it in person, you can do it online.

I do it on Zoom. It's a very small group. If you do a group like eight people. But I recommend grief recovery method. But again, the point is you wanna have times carved out where you're focused on grief. The other thing that I would say with retirement is that we like to operate from a place of. I'm not walking away from something, I'm walking towards [00:18:00] something.

So like you said, okay. Yeah. I need the thing that comes afterwards. Yeah. So, so how do we build a life? How can you start to build a life pre-retirement that you actually enjoy where your calendar isn't going to be empty? Maybe you're okay with it being empty in the beginning because then you'll feel like you have more time to figure out what you wanna do and how busy you wanna be or not be.

What classes you might wanna take, what um, clubs you might wanna join, what volunteer opportunities you might wanna have. Like maybe you want to take a few months and explore that. You can do that. That's not a problem. You could potentially, I don't know about your work situation. You might retire part-time.

You might, um, explore doing things in the evenings and weekends that bring in like that feeling of being alive again. And that feeling of like, I didn't know. I could feel like that. I didn't know I [00:19:00] could be excited about something. Like I have to tell you guys. Um, I met with my, um, brave Widow alumni who graduated from the Brave Widow Academy.

We met on, we meet every week. We met on Monday and one of the widows in there, she was widowed four years when we first started working together, and we started last fall. And, um, she got on the call yesterday and she said, I have to tell you guys what happened. She's like, I ran into somebody at the store who was in town visiting family, and she asked me how I was doing.

For years, when someone asks me how I'm doing, I just always say like, oh, I'm good. How are you? Like, it's just kind of a, you know what I say? And she's like, but I cannot believe the words that came outta my mouth when this person asked me, Hey, how are you doing? I just like blurted it out. I was like, I'm doing great.

I'm so excited about some of the things going on in my [00:20:00] life. And she's like, I couldn't believe I said that. To be able to genuinely feel that and to just not go through my rehearsed, oh, I'm doing good, how are you? But to genuinely feel joy on the inside and to genuinely be able to say like, I'm great.

I'm excited about things in life again, I'm building this new house. I, uh, I, I'm just, I'm enjoying life. I couldn't believe that that was my default response. Like, it's so amazing and I just like that made my day because that's what I want for all of you to be able to not have a rehearsed response, but to have joy and excitement that's just like pouring out of you that it even surprises yourself.

You're like, wow, I, I know I feel this way, but wow, look at that. Like that's a huge change for somebody who had been widowed for four years to and [00:21:00] under a year, be able to tell somebody that.

Okay. Another question that we have here, why does grief hit me all over again at random times? Okay. I just did, um, a, a free class on this. Yes, yes. I see the comments in the chat. Yes. Okay. I just did a free class on this. Um, if you want the replay, just send me a dm, but why does grief hit me all over again at random times?

So there are a lot of reasons why this happens, but this is the power hour, so I'm gonna answer very rapidly. Okay. So, um, one of the reasons could be, well, let me back up and say, the cells in your body and your subconscious remember things that maybe even your conscious brain takes a while to catch up to.

Right? So, for example, when my husband and I were both sick. We were laying in bed for over a week before he went to the hospital and right outside our bedroom [00:22:00] door was our swimming pool and it had like fountains that were on and were going, right? So for this whole week, I'm like listening to the fountains of the pool while we're sick.

I didn't really think much about it. A year later, after he had died, I went out and opened up. We had the pool opened, I turned the fountains on, and the instant. I heard the pool fountain running. I just immediately felt awful inside of my body and I couldn't fig. It took me a while to figure out like, why, like, why am I feeling so sad and so awful?

Like, what? Like looking around like what is happening? What I didn't, what? What took me a few minutes to realize was that my body and my subconscious. Remembered the sound of those pool fountains while we were laying in bed sick and that he [00:23:00] passed just a week and a half later. But I kind of forgot about that momentarily, right?

I didn't associate the sound of the pool and the heat of summer with that until I, I realized that later on. So grief can hit you at random times. If you look at the time of year, if you look at maybe what was going on before your person passed, or um, the time maybe they were in the hospital or the time that they actually passed, um, you could, it could be holidays, birthdays, milestone dates.

You know, it's not uncommon even for people to tell me, like I. I was feeling sad all day long and I didn't realize until the end of the day, like that was the, the date of the anniversary of his death. But I didn't like, it took me all day to realize that yeah, sounds can be triggering. I let it come no matter [00:24:00] where I'm at.

Yeah. And so there could be a lot of things that's triggering us with grief. It could be a sound, it could be a smell. A lot of times for people, maybe it's a song that they hear and our brains are really, really good at time travel, right? So when we have that memory, our brain takes us back in time to that, and our brain starts generating chemicals down into our body.

Our body pushes back up emotions, and so that triggers some of these grief feelings. It also could be. That as you think about a good memory, right? Like, oh, we were here together and we were having so much fun, that immediately you feel sad even though it's a good memory. And that can be because your brain is remembering, oh yeah, he's not here.

Oh yeah, we're not gonna experience that again. Oh, I'm all alone. And I'm always gonna be alone and my life is over and my life is terrible. And, [00:25:00] and this is just, I feel so sad for myself. And the more that you ruminate on that, the more that you go down that path, the more your brain is generating chemicals and the more that your body is responding.

And it's just creating this like wave so many wave, like people call 'em waves of grief, right? Like it just comes back up through your body. So that is what is actually happening. And what I want you to hear me say from this. Is that that makes you a normal human being. Okay? You're not going backwards. You haven't undone all the good work that you did.

You haven't unhealed all the healing that you've done. There's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing broken inside of you. Your body and your brain are actually functioning the way it was designed. Just crazy. Okay. Grief can come at us at at different random times that we don't expect. And so what we learn to do is when those waves come up, is we [00:26:00] learn how to navigate them.

So I, I talk to people about learning how to ride these waves of grief, like learning how to surf. In the beginning you don't, and when you don't know how to surf in the ocean and you try to get up on this big wave, you get knocked around pretty violently. It's really hard. But again, over time, as these waves come and as you recognize them for what they are, you learn how to surf.

You learn how to surf, you learn how to ride the waves better. You learn how to navigate this grief wave better. So over time, the waves may still be the same, but you are more capable and you know what best supports you in coming down off of the wave. Been on fight or flight for the past two years with probate and my toxic in-laws and my toxic job.

Yeah. That also creates a lot of stress and a lot of additional waves of grief, and so there's a lot of work that we can do around healing our nervous [00:27:00] system to come down out of the fight or flight. If that makes it more difficult. Okay, how do I know if I'm ready to date again? Work again, travel again, dream again.

What do you think I wanna say when you decide that you're ready. Okay. And here is, here is what I would say. Like how do I know if I'm ready to do these things? If I were to boil it down very simply, 'cause we could really overcomplicate it, but if we were to make it as simple as possible, it would be that you are ready to step forward from a place of abundance, from a place of I desire to move forward, not from a place of scarcity or fear, or like feeling like there's a big hole in your heart.

Right? So when I started dating again. I was super lonely. I made lots of [00:28:00] mistakes. I just wasted a lot of time. Dating was like an emotional roller coaster, and I would get my feelings hurt and I would get my heart hurt and you know, it was just, it was really hard, but. I had a lot of those emotional rollercoasters because I wa was just lonely.

I was coming from a place of feeling incomplete of, of wanting to share life with someone else 'cause that's what I'd known for 20 years. I got married at 18. I didn't know like who I was without my person. I didn't like doing life on my own. I liked being with someone. I liked being married. And so the same could be said for working, going back to work.

I have several clients who are like, I think I need to go back to work. And I say, why do you need to go to work? And they'll say, well, I don't know. That's just what people do. I'm like, well, do you want to do that? Is that exciting to you? Is that fulfilling to you? [00:29:00] Or you just feel like you need something to.

Do because that's what you're supposed to do. And a lot of times we end up doing something else, whether it's working part-time, or volunteering or coaching or whatever it is that helps provide that fulfilling feeling, but not from a place, not from a place of lack, not from a place of feeling incomplete.

All right. More grief. More grief questions. Why does everyone else seem to think that I should be further along? Okay. Well, if you haven't noticed yet, most people don't know anything about grief. They don't know what it's like. They don't know how to support someone else. They don't know how to hold space for you.

They don't know what to expect. I just had somebody send me a message, uh, send a message in the group earlier today and say, you know, I'm just 10 weeks out for my husband passing. And [00:30:00] my son was like, well, you're not as bubbly as you used to be. You know, for her. She's like, am I supposed to be bubbly again?

And everyone in the group is like, what? No, absolutely not. Of course you're not as bubbly as you used to be. You just lost your person. You're 10 weeks out. That's crazy. Of course you're not gonna be your old self, just like immediately, but people just don't know that, you know, we give people at work, what's the average bereavement leave like three days and then it's like, oh, after three days you should be able to come back to work and you should be like normal.

A normal productive employee again. Well, it's not that grief goes away in three days. It's not like I return back to normal, so people are not going to understand, and what I help my clients do is to find peace with being okay that not everybody has to understand. It's fine. They cannot understand it's okay.

I can, my [00:31:00] family cannot understand. It's, it's good where we balance that, where we counteract that what is needed. Are those places, those people, those spaces of people who do understand. ' cause you don't wanna be surrounded only by people who don't understand. Then you'll feel incredibly isolated and alone and unseen.

What you need also are spaces of other people who, in their own way, in their own experience, they understand. Grief. They understand widowhood, they understand toxic family members. They understand dysfunctional relationships, like whatever it is they understand. And so we lean into those places when we need people to understand, and we love the ones around us who don't understand at a distance and with peace that not everybody has to get it.

My family doesn't even always get what I'm doing with Brave [00:32:00] Widow. Like, wait, what is it? And you like, do you guys just like sit around in meetings and cry all day? Like what? No, we have fun. We learn, we grow. We are doing amazing things, but it's fine. Not everybody has to get it. Everybody has to understand.

All right. Another question. Can healing happen even if it hasn't happened yet? Yes. Yes, I have so many stories, so many clients, it's been multiple years, even most recently, up to 25 years, where she's avoided grief. She's distracted herself. She's stayed busy. So again, what I want you to take away from this power hour.

Waiting on time to heal your heart. Waiting on time to build up a life that you can enjoy again is not going to help you. It's time plus consistent action. [00:33:00] Okay, so. Here's the great news. Here's the most wonderful part about it. It doesn't matter how long it's been, if it's been five years, seven years, 10 years, 15 years, 25 years.

The time that it takes to heal, to soften your heart, to feel hope again for the future is hours, days, weeks, months. A short, short, short amount of time. Compared to the amount of time that you've been waiting, that you've been being strong and powering through grief, that you've been distracting yourself, that you've been staying busy, that you've been like muscling through, because that's what people expect of us.

You know, people would say, you have to be strong for your kids. And I'm like, I just wanna punch you in the face. Like I know that you're not helping me.

I don't want to have to be strong all the time. And the thing is, it's not healthy to pretend to be strong all the time. When you're not, it's not even [00:34:00] possible. It's, it's not human, so it doesn't matter if it's been years. What matters is that you begin the process of healing your heart, of rebuilding a life that you can actually enjoy Again, that's what is important.

Oh guys, somebody reported me for violent criminal behavior. What's, what's up with that? On this live, I'm gonna say pizza 'cause that's my podcast editing words so I can go back and edit this podcast. Who reported me for criminal behavior? What the heck? Um, is something wrong with me because this is taking longer than expected?

No. There's nothing wrong with you. You're not broken, you're not unfixable. It's not a problem. I have clients who have experienced trauma and unsafe situations and difficult things their entire life, their entire life, [00:35:00] and they have this fear that they're broken that. They can't ever get better, that they will never feel like a normal person, and it's just not true.

Will I ever stop comparing my life before and after? Um, that's really interesting. Will I ever stop comparing my life before and after? You know how like in time we say, oh, this was the year of 500 bc or. You know, 2000 ad or whatever, and we're like comparing like the defining event life before losing our spouse life after losing our spouse.

Um, I don't know that you stop, do I stop comparing life before and after? I don't know. I, I think about, for me, I think about my life as a whole. I do think that there comes a point if you have worked on rebuilding life, if you do enjoy life now there comes a point where you like, you just embrace all of your life together.

[00:36:00] And so I do think about how different my life is now, but it's not comparing it like in the aspect of my life is better or worse, right? Because I think we all have this fear. That our life was we, we've reached the peak, we had the peak of the top of our life, and now it's just all downhill. It's like the dark ages after our person died.

We're now in the dark ages and it's just all downhill from here and it never gets better. That is not true. At least it doesn't have to be true. You could decide that and you could be right, but you could also decide to believe that it's possible that life could be different. Life could somehow be better than you can imagine it right now.

That if it's possible for other people, it could be possible for you too. Even if you don't see how, even if it doesn't make sense, like that's where we always start with the belief of, well, it could be possible, and then we move from, it could be possible to, [00:37:00] it is possible to it's probable, to it's inevitable.

That is what I help my clients do to move from deep grief, and I feel like my life is over and I feel like I don't even see how the future could ever be good again to, oh, well maybe, maybe, maybe it could be to, oh, well, I, I see it is for some people, so, so maybe it could be for me too. Maybe, yeah, I, I, I don't know, but I'm willing to explore that to, yeah, like, man, I had a moment where I felt alive and I felt joy and I felt.

Like, wow, this is actually starting to happen. And I had like flickers and glimmers of, of hope and feeling like a real human and not like a hollow zombie of the, the version I used to be like, wow, this, this, this might actually be happening [00:38:00] to, it is inevitable. Like if I could show you pictures and clips of people who start the academy.

The academy is six months. When they first come to the calls in the academy and they show up and it's very somber and serious and people just don't know what to expect. Right. And then if I could show you pictures and clips of people towards the end of the academy and their faces just radiate joy.

They're engaged and they're excited to be there, and it's not because they forgot their person or they've left them in the past. It's not because grief has just magically gone away. It's because they've grown their capacity. To embrace this before and after life, right? To embrace. I loved the life that I had.

I miss my person. And also this, like I'm enjoying my life. I'm starting to love my life Now I could [00:39:00] see that this life is very different. I didn't ask for it. I didn't expect it. Yeah, there are things I'm joyful about. There are things I'm hopeful about. I don't feel like my life is over. Like to see people go through that transformation in six months, it's like the deepest honor of my life to set with people in their darkest, most difficult, most discouraging season, and to watch them literally change how they show up.

On the calls, how they interact with people in life, how they just randomly blurred out, like, I'm doing great. I'm so excited about things. I got stuff going on. And to feel that from the inside out like that is such an honor. All right, last question. Um, how long should I wait before asking for help? Um, well, asking for help, I could interpret a lot of different ways.

I'm gonna choose to interpret this as [00:40:00] how long should I wait before seeking out help, whether it's healing my heart, rebuilding life, whatever that looks like, you get to decide. Here's what I can tell you is giving it time, waiting until you feel ready. Waiting is not going to help you. It's like a physical injury.

Say you break your arm. Healing your arm takes time. Okay? As far as I know, with all of our greatest advance advances in science and technology, we haven't got to the point where we can heal a broken arm in one day and it's perfectly back to normal. Okay? Healing a broken arm takes time, but it also takes you seeking out medical care, right?

Could your arm heal back on its own? Maybe could the bones fuse back together? Sure. But could that also end up being creating a situation where a surgeon has to go in [00:41:00] and break your arm again, to correctly position the bones back and to allow them to heal correctly? Yeah. So in regards to healing, just giving things time.

Isn't often the answer. It's time plus time plus action. Time plus seeking out help, time plus processing the pain time plus rebuilding life and figuring out what that could look like. Time plus doing the work of learning like all the thoughts and the fears and the doubts that you have that hold you back, that make you play small, that cause you to shrink back.

How do you navigate all of that time plus learning and equipping yourself with tools to navigate grief and navigate life after loss? So again, you get to decide how long you wanna wait before asking for help. But I just wanna reiterate, if you walk away with nothing [00:42:00] else from today, that just giving it time is not going to help you.

And lots of people give you the platitude. Oh, just give it time. Time heals all wounds. Time will dull the pain. Hmm. No we say that 'cause that's what people say, but time you just get accustomed to the new normal Right time. It takes the sharp edges off, but I've got many, many, many clients who have waited and waited and waited.

Then realized that years have gone by. In fact, I talked to someone a few months ago and she's like, yeah, I've been waiting for seven years to feel better and I just don't, and I talked about her joining the academy. I talked about some options, um, for, for things that would help her. And my heart broke because at the end of the [00:43:00] call, she's like, you know, I've been waiting seven years and I think maybe I just need to keep waiting.

Every cell in my body wanted to scream out the word. No, don't do it. It's a lie. It's not. You've waited seven years. This lady in my comment, Cheryl, she says 16 years. Okay. If you've been waiting seven years and it hasn't helped you, at what point are you going to stand up and say, I'm done waiting. I am done waiting.

For me, it was a year and a half of processing my grief of healing, of asking people what else can I do? What else can I do, what else can I do? And everybody just kept saying, just give it time. Just give it time. And I'm like, you don't understand. Time is not helping me. Time isn't gonna rebuild my life.

Time isn't going to bring friends and connection back in my life. Time isn't going to help me become more [00:44:00] adventurous and go do things like travel to new places and go to events and join local groups and, and start to build a life that's full and vibrant. Time doesn't do any of that.

It's time plus.

All right, so I hope that today was helpful. I do host a class every week. It's totally free called The Four Seasons of Grief. It's designed to help widows identify regardless of time. Okay. People tell me all the time, well, it's been four years. Is that too long? No, it's been four weeks. Is that too short?

No. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how long it's been. You could be in different seasons of grief. I've, I've created a framework of four of them. I have a free quiz that you can take brave widow.com. See where you are in the grief journey. Learn what mistakes people make in [00:45:00] that season and learn one.

I keep it simple. So I know grief is overwhelming. One thing that you can start to do today to get unstuck and to take steps forward. So if you want to come to my free class, then go to brave widow.com/live. You can sign up for the next free one. I do it every single week. And also we have a free private community.

I do free calls every single week where I'm teaching different topics just like I'm teaching here. This week we did one on, um, the grief waves and whether or not that means you're moving backwards or un healing, we have a private telegram group that you can connect with other widows and I we give away so much.

For free, no credit card, no trial, no limited time. It's a way that we give back to the widow community, [00:46:00] and I would love to see you there and when you are ready to take your next step, when you're ready for a plan, like I created a roadmap and a plan to help you go and rebuild your entire life. I'm gonna teach you how to rebuild relationships.

Communication styles, attachment styles, boundaries, people pleasing. We're gonna teach you how to rebuild confidence and how to make decisions without freaking out. I'm gonna teach you how to come down out of the chaos and start to heal your nervous system. Joyce says you're amazing. I listen to your podcast all the time, Joyce, I'm so glad you're here.

You're amazing. So I teach widows how to come down out of the chaos, come down out of the overwhelm and sink into a place of peace and calm so that you can begin to think about the future. You can stop living in fight or [00:47:00] flight mode and actually start living with intention. I teach you how to rebuild purpose and meaning back into your life.

I teach you how to navigate holidays and milestones and too many commitments and expectations and traditions and all the things everyone else expects you to do, and you feel like you have to to be a good mom, daughter, sister, friend, whatever. Okay? I teach you how to navigate that. I give you example scripts.

I give you things that we do in class together because I know that it's hard to find time to do things in between. A lot of our widows, um, are going through their process or we have helped them go through their process of buying their house and building. Um, selling their house and either buying or building a new house.

Like we have a big percentage of people who actually are going through that process. So I help them with all of that. [00:48:00] Um, yeah, we're just like doing life together and I'm equipping you with all the tools, the strategies, the things that you need to be able to rebuild a life that's a meaningful and fulfilling what podcast it is called The Brave Widow Show.

You can find it on YouTube or on audio podcast. I'm actually recording. This is going to be a podcast episode. So Hey Joyce, you're making it in the podcast that'll come out later this week. Um, so yeah, that's what we do inside Brave Widow Academy. And, um, four people who are ready to invest in themselves and to do that, our next group is starting on Thursday, April the second, and it's an evening class, so we're gonna be from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM Central Time, and it's a very small group.

Our normal size group is 10 to 15 people so that we can make sure that [00:49:00] each one of you knows exactly what to focus on. Exactly what will help you. That we are doing life together. You're not just in a big sea of people and I'm just giving you like general advice I give. Well this is the only group I'm committing to it 'cause it's new.

But, um, I'm gonna try this where, um, each week in class people do a progress tracker so we can monitor your progress around things like your routine, your relationships, your confidence, your purpose, and um, your sense of moving forward. So those are the five things that we track every single week. You rate it on a scale of one to 10.

We track all of your wins that you have every week, and then there's also a place for you to let me know if you are like anything else that's going on that maybe you're struggling with or maybe it's important date that's coming up. And so every week I'm gonna be recording a video for every person who's in the academy and giving them [00:50:00] direct feedback of here's what I would consider doing.

Here's some encouragement, if that's what they need, here's some clarity. Here's some things that I would think about. Here's, here's something that you could do this week that will support you, but I am going to be very closely involved with helping make sure each person moves forward and in the Brave Widow Academy because it is an investment I guarantee.

That during that six months, if you come to at least 80% of the calls, you fill out your progress tracker 80% of the time that you will make progress during that six months, or I work with you for free until you do so there's no risk. Whether or not this is for me, whether or not I will make progress, whether or not this can actually work for me, or I'm just too overwhelmed, I'm too overstimulated, I'm too, whatever it is.

Every widow that I've worked with has made progress [00:51:00] in usually multiple areas, if not all of them, but. For some reason you are like the one unicorn who doesn't make progress. I guarantee that I work with people for free until you do. This is my specialty. I will get you unstuck. I will help you take the next step forward.

You will not remain in the same place, and you will do it in a way. That brings your person with you. It's not about leaving them behind. It's not about leaving your old life. We're building something new and they're, we're weaving in our person into this new life. And here's the thing, you're already in your new life.

Your old life is gone. Your old life is in ash. We cannot go back. So you are already living your new life. So what I help you do is to step up out of the ashes and to build something that is new and [00:52:00] different, but not worse than the life you had, not less than the life you had. It's just going to look very different.

So, all right. Thank you guys for hanging out with me. And, uh, Joyce says, yes, she will. She has helped me move forward. Thank you, Joyce. You're amazing. Listen for the podcast. You're gonna be in the next episode, and also I would love to see you guys in the academy. Bye.