BW 148: When It Feels Like Your Best Days Are Over: Finding Purpose After Grief
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Introduction and Episode Overview
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Emily: [00:00:00] Welcome to episode number 148 of the Brave Widow Show. Have you ever caught yourself wondering, are my best days behind me? Maybe you didn't even say it out loud. Maybe it was just a whisper in the back of your mind after another hard day. I've been hearing this fear come up a lot lately in conversations with other widows in my dms, even in those quiet moments with God.
There's this deep ache that exists in many hearts, which is what, if nothing good is left? What if my best years are already over and I'm just surviving? Now? If you've ever felt that way, this episode is for you. Today we're gonna talk about whether your future can truly be better than your past. What better really means after loss?
What God promises us and what He doesn't and why hope isn't [00:01:00] just a feeling. It's a decision you get to make. Starting today your best days. They may not look the way you expected, but I believe with everything in me that they're not behind you. Let's dive in.
Welcome to the Brave Widow Show, where we help widows find hope, heal their heart, and dream again for the future. I'm your host, Emily Tanner. After losing my husband of 20 years, I didn't know how I could ever experience true joy and excitement again for the future. I eventually learned how to create a life I love, and I've made it my mission to help other widows do the same.
Join me and the Brave Widow membership community and get started today. Learn more at BraveWidow. com
Facing the Fear of the Future
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Emily: So recently I've spoken with several widows who were afraid to take a next step. Not because they didn't want to, but because deep down they were afraid. The raw [00:02:00] emotional truth is what if my best days are behind me? What if nothing good is left for me?
And I wanna normalize this fear because it's common and completely human. In fact, when I talk about the seasons of widowhood. And when I am talking about seasons one and two and even sometimes season three, this can be a very much a prevalent fear in the first season or two of widowhood. We often believe that this is completely impossible, that it's impossible to have a life that we enjoy again, to experience joy or happiness.
To have something that we look forward to, and for a long time, even for myself, I didn't know if it was possible to help me through those first few seasons. I would listen to stories of other widows, and this is. [00:03:00] Really rocky territory, to be honest. Someone just posted on one of my episodes recently that they appreciated how my focus is on rebuilding a life that you can love because there are so many widows out there who fuel a belief that your life is essentially over and you're gonna grieve the rest of your life.
And that comment was so spot on because there are many widows out there who have this belief that life isn't going to be any better, that their best days are behind them, and that now they must just spend the rest of their life in suffering, in believing that the best is behind them and that things will never get better.
A few months ago, I actually had a widow reach out to me through email and they were essentially asking me, can I enjoy life again? How can you guarantee [00:04:00] that I will. I. And this widow and I went back and forth several times to the point where I found myself starting to do coaching through email, and I eventually responded and said, Hey, this is really this is what I do in the Brave Widow membership.
This is what I do in my one-on-one coaching. If you wanna continue the conversation, if you would like for me to help walk you through how this is possible, then let's take the, this conversation there. Going back and forth through email is helpful the first few times, especially if someone's trying to build confidence, but ultimately it isn't a.
Great tool for helping to coach someone around some core deep fears that they have. And ultimately, you will get to decide. You get to decide if your future is never gonna be better than the past. And I felt like this is where that person was, like they had already made up their mind [00:05:00] and nothing that I could say was going to convince them otherwise.
Rebuilding Life After Loss
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Emily: So if you are in a place where you have this deep core fear that your best days are behind you, you don't see how it's possible that you could enjoy life again, that you could have a good life in the future, then where I wanna encourage you to start. Is where I started, which is I don't know how it's possible to be at that place.
Like it's hard for me to envision being at that place where I enjoy life again, but I believe that it is possible. I believe that some way, somehow it is possible to rebuild life and to enjoy it again. So as you're out there sorting through different widow stories through different communities or groups, maybe on Facebook, maybe in person, where I really encourage you to focus is on the widows [00:06:00] who stories are inspiring you.
So there are would be widow stories that I would hear, and I would just get this overwhelming message of doom, right? It's been years, I, it's been 10 years and I don't feel any better. And life is just terrible and it doesn't get better no matter what they tell you. And I would decide to reject those stories.
To decide that was not gonna be me. Instead, I wanted to focus on the stories of other widows who inspired me, who had rebuilt their life, or who were in the process of rebuilding life, who were open about. Yes, there are times when grief does come. There are times when I'm sad and I miss my person, but ultimately, I do enjoy my life now, and I am excited about some things for the future because in the beginning, in this, the first couple of seasons of widowhood that just [00:07:00] seems so far away, it seems so impossible that we could get to a point where we know who we are.
We know what we want for the future, and we're actually creating a future that we're excited about. So if that is you in the beginning, I wanna encourage you to believe that it is possible. You may not have figured out the way of getting there, and you may doubt that it's possible to get there, but you wanna hold on to that tiny little seed of faith that says, okay, other people have done it.
It is possible to enjoy my life again.
Defining 'Better' Days
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Emily: Okay, so let's address this question of are my best days behind me? What we really are wanting to understand or get confirmation of is, can I enjoy? My life now or my life in the future as much as or more than my life in the past, will I like my life better?
And how could that be possible? How can you [00:08:00] say that my life in the future would be better than what my life was in the past? So let's define what we're saying when we're talking about your best days or which days are better. The first thing that I wanna acknowledge is that when we think about our days in the past, we tend to romanticize them.
And some of you may have just felt a sharp resistance to what I'm saying Ugh, how could you say that I'm romanticizing my marriage and the life that I had. It was perfect. It was amazing. It was great. Okay, so one of the things that we learn through the Grief Recovery Institute and what I teach my widows and my clients is that we as human beings tend to look back on things and either.
Romanticize them or demonize them. Now the Grief Recovery Institute calls it enshrinement of a [00:09:00] person, which is like they were a saint. Things were amazing. They were perfect. There was nothing bad or be devilment, which is everything was bad and they were awful, and they were a horrible person. And the reality is often somewhere in the middle.
Think about whether it was a time when you were a kid, a time where you were early on in your career. A time in the recent past that had nothing to do with your person, but where you tend to think oh, those were the good old days. As human beings, we don't tend to look at the time that we're in right now and say, oh, one day I'm gonna look back and these are gonna be the good old days.
We tend to recognize that at some point in the future where we look back and go, oh yeah, those were really some good days. Likely they were also, we tend to romanticize them to be even better than what we remember, or we shrink the things that we don't want to remember. One example of this would be [00:10:00] a house that I recently sold.
As I think about the time that I spent in that house, it's easy for me to romanticize that and to be like, oh, that was such a great house. And the view was beautiful, and it was so roomy and it was easy to host people. And we had a pool and it was just for entertaining friends and family. It was a great, it was a wonderful house.
And then I have to remind myself like, yeah, and it was far outside of town and we spent five to six hours every other weekend, mowing and weed eating, and it was expensive to pay for utilities in a house of that size. There are equally. Difficult and challenging things about those memories and those experiences, but sometimes our minds wanna just romanticize everything and only remember the good things.
So as you think about your past to life, [00:11:00] we'll call it. Where you were married, maybe you are a mom of young children, maybe as you were a teenager and a young adult, whatever that is, and we're thinking about, those were the best days of my life. I challenge you to expand your thoughts to equally acknowledge what you loved and what was great about those things in your life, and what were particular challenges that you had.
So as we address this question of can my future be better, let's really think about what we are asking when we're using the word better. Are we talking materially or financially, emotionally? I. From a purposeful perspective, how are you thinking about the word better or about the phrase, my best days?
What were the things, what were the qualities that really spoke to [00:12:00] you and that you really loved about that time versus what might be in store for you for the future? Better doesn't mean going backwards. It means building something new, different, meaningful, and beautiful. As I reflect on my life with Nathan, and now this future, this life that I've built for myself personally.
Then later on the life with Robert that we are now building together and what my future looks like. I don't compare the two and think, oh this life now is better. Sorry, kids, sorry than my life now is better than my life in the past. I view the two As just very different experiences. I think about this also in how I try to imagine what it will be like to be a grandparent for the first time to hold my [00:13:00] grandchild, my first grandchild, whoever that's gonna be, whoever's gonna come into the world, what might that be like?
People often say that you love your grandkids more than your own kids. Or that you are more involved or that you have more patience or that you have a better relationship with your grandkids. Like it's just a very different relationship than it is in the relationship that you have with your own kids.
And there's a lot of reasons why people say that happens, but how do you look at that and say, oh, my life as a grandparent is better than my life was as a parent. I've never heard anyone say that. I've never thought that. Do I think my life as a grandparent will be just as amazing and meaningful and exciting as my life as a parent of young children?
[00:14:00] Yeah. Does that mean I might like it more? Depends on the day.
I have three teenagers that are living at home, so some days, yes, I hope my life as a grandparent will be. Less stressful and more exciting than my life has been as a direct parent, and especially a parent of teenagers and young adults who are experiencing all of the things about life and who are navigating all of life's challenges.
But ultimately, do I look at that and say, oh my future life is gonna be better than my life was in the past. Let's hurry and leave that behind. No. So as you're considering what your future might look like and as you're thinking about my best days are behind me, or I don't know that I can enjoy my future as much as I did, then I really encourage you to unpack and think about how your life in the future might.
What are the [00:15:00] things that would help you to feel as purposeful, as adventurous, as fulfilling as your life in the past? And if that's hard for you right now. You need to be in the membership. You need to do one-on-one coaching with me or be part of our community because these are the hurdles that we help you overcome so that you can objectively sit back and say, okay I can start to see over time how that would be possible.
For many of the widows and clients that I work with, we feel like we are a different person. I not only teach you how to navigate grief, but I also teach widows how to rebuild their life, not just physically, financially emotionally, but through development of them as a human being. So you will learn how to be a better communicator.
You will learn how to stop [00:16:00] people pleasing and hold boundaries. You will learn how to build your tribe of people around you, your board of advisors, your like the people that are in it with you, your social circle. You will learn how to do all of those things. You'll learn how to become more emotionally intelligent.
I've had widows who have changed. In such a short amount of time, three months, four months, that not only are they feeling completely different, but their employers are commenting or asking them like, what is it that you're doing? I had one widow who was told she was gonna be required to take an emotional intelligence course, and because they had seen her improve so much without needing to go through that course, they said, oh, guess what?
We're not gonna require that for you anymore. You've made such a great change. What has been the difference for you? I. The widows have done the work, but my point is that I will teach you how to develop yourself as a human. And what [00:17:00] often happens is, as we are learning these skills, as we are developing ourselves, there's a bittersweet aspect to that because we sit back and think, Ugh, it took my husband dying for me to become the person I am today.
For me to have a sharper perspective on what's actually important in life for me to stop being the doormat that everybody just walks over and I sit back and let resentment build. For me to prioritize the people and the relationships that are important, like it took all of that for me to wake up and realize that I had to do something different.
And so in many ways, widows feel, I don't wanna say like a better person, but a more elevated, a more developed, a more well-rounded person than the person that they were in the past. And so can I say, now that I [00:18:00] know that I'm a better wife. That I'm a better mom, that I am a better support system than I was in the past.
Yes, I can say that. And yes, there are times where I'm like, Ugh, I wish. I wish I would've had those skills or those priorities before I got to this point. Like I hate it Took going through all of that to get to where I am, but I am grateful that I am the person who I am today. And that I've had this wake up call, like my eyes have been opened.
I can never go back to the person that I was in the past, and that's okay.
God's Promises and Suffering
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Emily: So let's talk about what God promises us. Many times we have this belief, even if it's subconscious, that if we are good, if we do things that are right, if we make God. Happy, then we will be happy and our lives will be easy and things will just naturally flow for us and we won't [00:19:00] have any trials, any challenges like life will just be on Easy Street.
This is actually a false expectation and something that I invite you to look internally and decide if that's something that you believe even subconsciously.
God doesn't promise ha us happiness
in ourselves and in life. God doesn't promise that. If we do things that are good, then we will just be happy all the time. We won't have any problems. Financially we're gonna be great. We're gonna be so wealthy emotionally, we're gonna be so secure. And nobody's gonna give us any grief that if we just do what God tells us to do and we're good children, that we are gonna have all these amazing and wonderful things.
He doesn't promise that. So what is it that God does promise? God tells [00:20:00] us that we are gonna have trials and we're gonna have suffering, and we're gonna have challenges, and especially if we make the choice to follow him, that we will suffer even as his son suffered. Now, God also promises his presence.
He promises to be a source of strength. He promises to he. He is the comforter and the one who provides us peace, not from a place of avoiding pain, but from a place of knowing that we can have peace in what it is that we're going through. Our joy is found in God, not in our circumstances. Our joy is not found in, oh, I have this much money, or I have this many friends, or I got this title in my job At work, like that is not the place our joy comes from.
Our joy comes from God and being rooted [00:21:00] in God and in what the desires of his heart are. God uses. Suffering at times as a tool. Not that he necessarily brings suffering on us, but at times he allows it. He allowed our spouse to die. He didn't have to allow it, but he did. Doesn't mean he caused our spouse to die, but he allowed that circumstance and that situation to happen, and there are bad things that happen in our lives.
Frequently, whether it's something small and minor, like a stubb toe or a flat tire or something major like losing a spouse through that suffering and through those trials, God promises he is with us, that he will restore us, that he will comfort us and bring us peace, and that he won't abandon us.
Through suffering. We develop [00:22:00] resilience, we develop maturity, we develop a wide range of skills, and we know that because we've gone through hard times that
we are gonna become a much different version of ourselves than had we not.
So when you find yourself caught up in the thought swirl, I call it like the negative thought swirl here of God, I don't understand. He was a good person. We've done everything you've told us to do. I have a widow friend who's husband was literally on his way to feed the homeless when he unexpectedly died.
They have many children together. They have a huge family of small children who needed their dad. How this doesn't make any sense. We did everything right. We were good people. My husband was big in the ministry. There, there are times when people die and for us it just doesn't make sense. But God doesn't [00:23:00] promise us that by being in the ministry or by feeding the homeless or by doing all the right things, that our life is gonna be easy street, or that we're not gonna have some great trials and great sufferings.
And so instead of thinking that our goal in life is to have a happy life with few problems. Is to have a life of peace and a life that glorifies God
Inspiring Story of Resilience
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Emily: So I wanna share an example with you of my good friend. I. Codi and I actually worked together in healthcare. She's been very open about her story, so I'm walking on faith here. She has no idea. I'm gonna be talking about her today.
I'm walking on faith that what I'm gonna share is okay and open with her. She's been fairly open about her journey and just her challenges. So Codi and I worked together in healthcare. The first time that I met her was in Wisconsin at a small [00:24:00] hospital and she was a team lead there, and I just saw so much amazing potential.
In her, and she was walking me around the hospital. She was telling me about her team, about their numbers, their performance. She was just rattling off, like she just knew everything that was going on about her team. And that was pretty impressive because in many cases, leaders were detached from what's actually happening with the team or knowing what their numbers are and all of the things.
And I just remember how much she radiated. This sense of care for people on her team, for serving her leaders, for serving her team, and for just like being all up in her team's business. And I remember then seeing that potential and telling other people like, this person's gonna grow. Like she has amazing career and a future ahead of her.
I see it. And over time. As she [00:25:00] wanted to grow and she was somewhat limited in this small hospital where she worked, I ended up inviting her to join me in more of a corporate team structure and opportunity. That would be just a really great growth opportunity for her. She ultimately ended up taking that leap of faith and growing internally in our, think of it as like a corporate team that served.
Many hospitals over well over a hundred hospitals and healthcare systems.
And according to her performance, according to what we were seeing that was coming up for the future, like everything looked amazing and bright. And here she a young woman in her, probably late thirties at the time, she has five kids that at the time were pretty much teenagers and below, so she had a very full plate and she had some challenges with a small, local, [00:26:00] regional airport needing to travel frequently, needing to make sure her kids were taken care of, being a mom, being a person, building their career, like all of the things those were challenges that she had.
Shortly after Nathan died. I remember she was very present during the time that he died and trying to be a support for me, even though she lives in Wisconsin and I live in Arkansas and driving distance is 12 to 13 hours. So we're not talking about states that are geographically very close, but she tried to be a very present source and was someone who didn't try to make me feel better.
But just sat in the grief with me, which at the time was very different than a how a lot of people were treating me. Shortly after Nathan died, she actually started to experience some pretty debilitating health conditions. She became [00:27:00] sick with CID at least once, if not twice, and it brought out all of these other just crazy.
Autoimmune type systems where she might be just sitting down and out of nowhere, her heart rate would jump up to 200 and something she would pass out. She was just. Unable, eventually unable to work. She still hasn't been able to return to work, and now she has a life where she has to receive infusions multiple times a week.
She has to go to the hospital routinely. She has physical therapy, she has water therapy. She has a. Just huge variety of medications that her team of physicians are constantly modifying. And if one tiny little thing is different or she eats something different, or she comes down with what we would think of [00:28:00] as a simple cold, it throws everything off and it may require an ER visit, a hospital visit, just all of the things.
So she went from being this vibrant. Like capable of taking on the world person in her late thirties and early forties to this person who now requires a walker and who physically is very limited in what they're able to do. And as I think about my time with her and trying to be there for her through her journey, if she were to ask me.
Are my best days behind me. There's no hope for my future. Like I'm never going to be fixed. I'm never going to be better. That's one of the most defeating, depressing, just overwhelming feelings of unfairness, of sadness, of grief, of sorrow, [00:29:00] of their. After a couple of years of her trying all these treatments and doing different medications and going to all of the different healthcare systems, even Mayo Clinic didn't know how to be able to help her, and she's finally has had to reconcile the fact like, I will never be the person that I was, I will never be able to do the things that I used to be able to do.
I wanna throw a graduation party for my daughter, and I know it's gonna take every ounce of energy I have and more to be able to do this emotionally, physically, like logistically, all of the things. And yet. Through all of these challenges, through all of these unknowns, through not having a regular income coming in and having to scrape by at times and having to ask other people for help [00:30:00] because.
She has kids that need to go places and she has doctor's appointments where she maybe wasn't able to drive herself and having to be so humble and so vulnerable, and walking on just this path of incredible faith. There were several times where I told her, I'm like I don't know how your faith is as strong as it is, because she would always say, but I know God is good and I know I'll be taken care of.
And there were so many times where I would think, I wouldn't say it out loud, but I would think to myself like, I don't know how you're gonna get through this. I don't know how I would have the emotional resilience to get outta bed every day. I don't know how You haven't just thrown your hands up and.
Given up on different things that, that you've had to navigate. Like her road has been a very difficult road over these past two to [00:31:00] three years, to the point where times, there are times I even question God, how much suffering does a person have to go through? Hasn't she suffered enough?
At what point are bad things in life gonna stop happening to this person?
And her story and her journey has been such an incredible testimony of someone who. In all of these impossible situations, how am I gonna feed my family? How am I gonna get to these doctor appointments? How am I not gonna pass out for the third time this week? In all of these situations, that just seems so impossible.
She continues to have faith, and by some miracle, she is provided for. I have told her so many times you've got to write a book, like you've gotta write a book, you've gotta have a movie made about your life. This is just crazy. Some of the things that she has gone through, and God has been able to use that for [00:32:00] his glory to be able to have someone who's just walking in faith like, yeah, God.
Is good and I have no clue how I'm going to navigate this, but I believe I'm gonna be taken care of
while it's really hard to wrap our mind around why does God allow this to happen, how much suffering does a person have to endure? We also have to find peace with the fact that we will not have all the answers to our questions. We don't. Think about the story of job, there was no good reason why Job needed to suffer the way that he did, why he needed to lose all of his children, his health, his wife, his wealth everything.
He was a good person.
He was a righteous person. There was no good reason that we know of that God would allow that to happen.
And [00:33:00] it appears in reading the story of Job, that God was silent for quite a while.
And so when we experience suffering and we suffer trials and we go through tough challenges, we can't correlate. My circumstances and my experiences are because I did something bad. Because that's what job's friends ended up telling him, right? You have made God mad. You need to repent for your sins.
You have done something wrong to bring all these horrific things on you, on your family, on your wealth. Like everything was decimated. You've done something wrong. Because we have this wrong correlation and this wrong belief internally that if we are good and we do good things, we won't ever suffer. And that's just not the case.
God does not promise us an easy life or a life free from suffering, but we can have peace. We can be comforted. [00:34:00] We can believe that he wants good things for us and he can bring and create good things out of bad things. Our goal and our purpose is not to just be happy in life. And I thought a lot about this, like ultimately our emotions change frequently and like many seasons, right?
Like miniature seasons. We can be happy the in the morning and then things go wrong, and then we're angry. Like our emotions just change a lot. And so ultimately, as I was preparing for this podcast, I was thinking about, is my goal to be happy? Is that just really what I want?
Sure. I like feeling happy and I like feeling joy, but ultimately I want peace. I want to feel grounded. I want to feel that my life has purpose and that it has impact, that it's doing something, [00:35:00] and so God can use our times of suffering and our circumstances to glorify him. And we don't always get to understand why or how that's gonna work or how that's gonna impact other people, but we can believe that God can still bring things to us that are good.
So are my best days behind me. Let's think about my friend Codi here as an example.
If I were to tell my friend, Codi, you know what? Yep, your best days are behind you. I'm sorry. It's all downhill from here. This woman's like early forties. What would that do to her heart and her soul if she had no hope? And she just believed that the rest of her days are just meant to be full of suffering.
And to be subpar to the days that she had experienced in the past, versus if I said, Codi, your life is never gonna be the same. You're not [00:36:00] gonna be able to run, you're probably gonna have to use a walker the rest of your life. You're physically not gonna be able to do the things that you used to do in the past.
That's true. And you can still have a life. That brings you moments of joy, that brings you a sense of fulfillment and purpose. You can still be part of those big milestones. You can see your children graduate high school. You can see them get married. You can hold a grand baby for the first time in your life, and that will be something just almost unimaginable how wonderful and amazing it could be.
I have really over the past couple of years, leaned into the belief and the prayer that God knows better than me what will bring me a life of abundance, a life that is just beautiful and amazing and exciting, that he knows what that [00:37:00] is better than me. And so while I'm very limited in imagining what that might be like, what that might look like, how that might feel, because I don't know, I'm like, I don't know.
Anything I could think of doesn't really seem as great as a life that I used to have. And so over the past couple years, I really have prayed and believe like God give me things better than I could ever imagine.
Through those beliefs and those prayers, God has given me a husband better than I could have imagined experiences and travels better than I could have imagined. Dreams for a home and a farm better than I could have ever imagined. So many wonderful things. Does that mean that my life doesn't still have lots of challenges and lots of trials and moments of suffering?
It absolutely still has those things. And I'm excited about the future and [00:38:00] I wake up and love my life every day. I just love all of it. There are moments I don't like some of it,
but I love my life. I love what I get to do. I love the fact that I get to sit here and share all of this with you. The fact that I'll be coaching some clients later today, the fact that. I am still modifying floor plans to build my house on land that I've dreamed of for years. That's better than I've dreamed of, that I could have imagined.
So again, as you are trying to imagine a future where you could experience pieces and moments of joy, you could experience excitement, adventure, love, peace, whatever the feelings and the adjectives are, you might also, I invite you. To pray to God and say, God, help me to see unexpected blessings. Help me to see [00:39:00] ways that you love and care about me.
Help me to bring forward a future that is better than I could imagine. I. I love thinking about my future. I love setting a vision for my future, and I help widows do that even when they're in deep grief. We work on how that can work when you have no idea what you want for your future. So I think it's a worthy exercise to say, what do I want more of in my future?
And even when you're on the fence, like I was on the fence for a long time, do I wanna get remarried? Do I not wanna get remarried? Do I wanna date again? Do I not wanna date again? I was on the fence for a long time and I finally said, God, you know what I'm going to love the most and what I'm gonna enjoy the most.
And so I'm gonna step forward. I'm gonna put myself out there and believe that you're gonna bring the right person to me if that is meant for me. And he brought me someone better than I could have ever imagined.
The Importance of Hope
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Emily: Let's talk about the danger of [00:40:00] losing hope and not and finding hope when we believe the lie that our best days are behind us. And that there could be nothing better about our future and nothing more that we can choose to experience. We have no hope. We experience depression, isolation, and survival, or self-protection instead of living life fully.
Hope isn't just a nice to have. It's essential for survival.
And here's the thing about the future, we are guaranteed nothing. I'm not guaranteed to wake up tomorrow. I'm not guaranteed to take my next breath. I may fall out next week. I don't know. But I can choose to live without hope and to live in a state where life is meaningless and there's no purpose left for me.
Or I can choose to have hope and believe that I'm still here [00:41:00] because God has some purpose for me, and God can still use me to glorify him or to make an impact on other people. And I'm gonna live full out each day the best way that I can to create a life that is abundant. In Proverbs 1814, it says, A person's spirit can endure sickness, but who can survive a broken spirit? How many times have you heard about people dying from a broken heart? Typically widows or widowers who lost their spouse. A crushed spirit, a broken heart, a heart with no hope.
People can't survive that.
Again, even if you can't see the path. To how to get to a life that you love or that you enjoy or that is as meaningful and purposeful as the life that you had before. Hold onto the hope that some way, somehow it is possible. The very first [00:42:00] tagline I ever created for Brave Widow was we help widows find hope.
Heal their heart and dream again for the future. But it starts with hope. It starts with having hope, and that was my goal when I first started Brave Widow was like, I've gotta give people hope that this is possible, because if you have no hope, you won't take the next step forward.
Hope is a decision. You don't have to feel hope in order to choose it. We rebuild our life, not because it's easy, but because God is not finished with us yet.
So I invite you to consider that. What if your best days aren't behind you? But what if they're still being written for you?
Conclusion and Call to Action
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Emily: All right guys. If this episode spoke to you, it would mean the world to me if you shared it with another widow, a friend, or a loved one who might need hope today. [00:43:00] I also ask you to go leave us a review. Go leave the Brave Widow, show a review wherever you listen to podcasts on YouTube, like all of the places so that other widows can also find The Brave Widow Show and get the hope and encouragement that they need.
Also, if you are in need of hope, or if you are in need of building a better future for yourself, an amazing abundant, purpose-filled future for yourself, stop sitting on the sidelines. You can join us in the Brave Widow Membership Community. It's $97 a month. Or if you're a bargain shopper, like many people, you can do the quarterly plan.
It's 1 97, which is one free month every quarter. Or if you are interested in something that's more private and deeply transformative. I'm also still offering one-on-one coaching. You can sign up for a consult to get [email protected].[00:44:00]
If you're newly widowed and aren't sure where to start, you need the brave new widow's starter kit inside brave new widow. You'll find a starter guide to help you through your first few months. A quick start guide. You can share with family and friends so they know how to help you. And a collection of some of the frequent topics that widows want to learn more about. To get the brave new widow series.
Just go to brave widow. Dot com slash start it's free and you'll get instant access. That's brave widow.com/start S T a R T. See you there.
