No One's Coming to Save You: a Widow's Guide to Overcoming Loneliness
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Introduction and Event Recap
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Hey, and welcome to episode number 155 of the Brave Widow Show. Today's episode is gonna be a little bit different because yesterday I hosted a public free live event called No One is Coming to Save You, A Widow's Guide to Overcoming Loneliness, and. Wow. Between TikTok, YouTube and the Zoom room, we had over 7,000 people that viewed and participated in this live event, and that is incredible.
We had such great interaction and communication in the chat and people just being engaged and asking questions and giving feedback, and even clients of the Brave Widow Coaching Program giving their feedback of what their experience has been and what they would tell other people. And [00:01:00] I just wanna read a few of those to you.
For many widows, it's really intimidating to put your name out there to be on camera to say what your experience has been like or what change that you have experienced. Which I totally understand, being on camera, putting your name out there, that is not everyone's jam. So when I have the opportunity to see comments that are flying in or see feedback that I'm getting from clients where they feel comfortable sharing that in a way that feels a little more secure, I am very happy to share that with you guys and with the world.
I think it helps hearing from other people what changes that they've noticed or some positives.
Client Testimonials and Feedback
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So here are a few of the comments from yesterday. It's one of the best investments you will make. You'll be surprised at how helpful can it can be. Also, having Emily [00:02:00] walk along your side is a blessing.
Emily is such an amazing coach on so many levels. Starting first with a loving and caring heart, and offering so much in the way of support and tools on the journey forward. This is an awesome community to be a part of. Emily has been my lifeline to not hide in a corner. Yes, Emily will validate your growth and help you see you're moving forward.
It will blow your mind. Amazing. Thank you. And I wanna give a thank you to my brave widow tribe and my peeps that were there and participated and gave that. Awesome feedback and shared that with everyone. It really goes a long way in helping people decide who are on the fence. Can this help me?
Is this worth it? Will this work for me? Just having some of those positive testimonials and feedback comments really go a long way. So thank you and a special shout out to all of you, my brave widow. [00:03:00] Peeps who were there and hyping me up in the chat. It was a lot of fun and helpful based on the comments that we received.
Upcoming Challenges and Membership Details
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So if you are watching or listening to this real time, we are kicking off Wednesday, June 18th within the Brave Widow Membership Community, a 30 day. Make a friend challenge, and in this challenge it's a two hour challenge kickoff where we are going to start taking action. We're not just gonna learn about how to make friends.
I'm not just gonna lecture. It's not just gonna be a conversation. You are actually going to be taking action because in 30 days. We wanna have a goal that you have either strengthened an existing relationship or you have made a new friend, and we're gonna have weekly check-ins over the next 30 days and a final celebration session, like all of it scheduled.
I'm really excited to see what [00:04:00] comes out of this challenge and who knows, we might extend it if people are gaining some really good momentum and just need that extra push to move forward. So that's one of the main things I love about coaching and love about our container is that it's very forward focused.
It's very action based. This is not where we just. Sit and talk about things. We actually get things done and make things happen in our life, which is amazing. That's gonna start on Wednesday, June 18th. And if you're not a current one-on-one Brave Widow coaching client, you can also join the Brave Widow Membership Community.
That might actually be a great place for you to start if you wanna see if that environment is right for you. You can go to brave widow.com/join, and if you're on the fence about whether or not to join the Brave Widow Coaching Program for everyone who [00:05:00] scheduled a consult by the end of this week, and you can schedule it for any time in the future, but go out by the end of this week, schedule your consult so that you can see if.
Coaching is the right fit for you. Then I'm gonna be packing you a very special VIP box with a personal note and shipping some brave widow swag, plus my favorite resources to your home.
Special Offers and Bonuses
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So as you listen to the replay from the webinar. On today's episode, you're gonna hear me talk about some special bonuses that I had just for people who are part of the webinar or people who are on the email list that took action yesterday, and I'm excited to announce that they did.
I had several people who went out yesterday and scheduled consults so that they could be eligible for these bonuses if they decide. To join the coaching program. So I have all of their names written down and I'm excited to be able to offer that to them. And for anyone who needed a [00:06:00] little more time to think about scheduling their consult, I'm gonna honor through the end of the week one of the three bonuses that I offered yesterday.
So one of those is to pack you a VIP Brave Widow Swag. Box plus some of my favorite tools and resources that I use with my one-on-one clients, and I'll mail it to your house if you decide to join. The Brave Widow Coaching Program, as always, on our consult, the goal is for me to learn more about who you are, where you are in your four seasons of Widowhood journey, how the coaching program would support and elevate you, and really create your step by step.
Action plan your game plan for what I would do to help support you through your journey, through grief into rebuilding a life that you love. So you will have the feedback of a coach. You will have a game plan that gets sent to your email. You will have the ability [00:07:00] to really consider. What it is that you would like to see more of in your future, and it's not salesy.
There's no big pressure, there's no obligation. It's a way that I love to serve and give back, and also to help people see. What potential and possibility could be out there for them in their future? So to schedule a consult, you can go to brave widow.com and there'll be a link to schedule a one-on-one coaching consult.
And remember, you can still get one of the bonuses if you do so before. Friday at midnight.
Webinar Replay Introduction
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Alright, so as we dive in today's episode, I am gonna share the replay from Monday's webinar on loneliness and on this three step solution to actually overcoming Loneliness for Good. It was really great content yesterday.
I think you're gonna absolutely love and enjoy it. Let's [00:08:00] dive in.
Emily: Welcome to the Brave Widow Show, where we help widows find hope, heal their heart, and dream again for the future. I'm your host, Emily Tanner. After losing my husband of 20 years, I didn't know how I could ever experience true joy and excitement again for the future. I eventually learned how to create a life I love, and I've made it my mission to help other widows do the same.
Join me and the Brave Widow membership community and get started today. Learn more at BraveWidow. com
Starting the Webinar: Overcoming Loneliness
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Welcome everyone. Who is gonna be watching the replay? For people who are just now joining, welcome. I'm so glad that you're here. Diane, Isabel, Michelle, Roy, and Elene. Debbie, several other people that are here. Rosemary Kate, you guys are amazing. Thank you for being here.
Patty, welcome.
Interactive Session: Audience Engagement
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If you will type in the chat wherever you're connecting from. I've got [00:09:00] YouTube, TikTok, and Zoom going here. Just what your thoughts are about loneliness and whether it's a thought that you have, whether it's an experience, whether it's something that you hope to get out of today's session, just type it in the chat and that'll let me know.
I'm on the right track or if I need to make any pivots there. Hi, Patty. All right. So as we get started a few things for today. So if you are with me, if you're not with me in Zoom it's okay. But if you wanna join me, it's brave widow.com/live. L Ive. You can get those Zoom link and that way we can be a little more interactive.
If you are here with me in Zoom. At the bottom of your screen, there is a chat button and you can click that to chat. You can message everyone or you can change it and just message me. If you want it to be more private, you can put in emojis, you can put in reactions, you [00:10:00] can interact in the chat.
I love seeing what's going on in the chat because that helps me know if I need to slow down, if I need to speed up, if I need to change how I'm presenting information. The chat really helps me know if you're engaged, if I need to pivot what all's happening. Claire says she's lonely with the everyday things, Erin's meals, et cetera.
Yes, I. I can totally relate to that. If you have a question and you're in Zoom at the bottom of your screen, you'll notice a couple of buttons. One is the react button. It should let you react, which is always fun. Another one is the q and a button. So if you have a question type it in the q and a box for me.
What that does is it keeps your question from getting lost in the chat. The q and a allows me to keep track of what questions are coming in, and it's like a checklist of ways that I can check the box and make sure all the questions get answered. So questions go in the q and a regular chat and reactions and emotions can go in [00:11:00] the chat.
Diane says, finding a new daily routine around loneliness. Yes, Patty says weakens are tough. Yes, Isabel, two and a half years. I. Manu hello from Montreal, Canada has been a widow for 16 months. Awesome. Welcome everybody. So today I have 90 minutes set aside, and I know not everyone will be able to hang out for the full 90 minutes.
But for those of you who do I have a special bonus that I'm only offering to people who are here. Live with me real time. So if you hang out to the end, you'll get to find out what that is, especially if you're not already a member. I know I've got some members that are here with me and some new folks.
Welcome. So today I'm gonna walk through my story and just share with you who I am, my background, why I'm even here. I'm gonna talk through the problem. So the problem that we [00:12:00] face in loneliness, why we feel lonely, what the solution is to loneliness. And then if it's okay with you, I would like to share an invitation to join me as in part of Brave Widow Coaching, and I like to share what that looks like, what you can expect and experience.
So if that would be okay with you to share that, if you'll just type yes in the chat, then I would love to share that with you. And then of course we have time for some q and a. Before we dive in, Isabelle's from Florida. Joyce says she's been a widow since February, 2023. Hi, Joyce. I'm gonna pray.
I'm a Jesus girl. I love, I'm faith-based in what I do. So it wouldn't be right if we started without praying. So I'm gonna go ahead and pray. Dear heavenly Father, thank you for allowing us to be here today for the opportunity to speak into the lives of the people who have joined me for being able to share [00:13:00] my story and the story of other widows and other folks that I've been able to work with and help in their journey.
We just ask for your wisdom and your guidance as people are navigating the future that you have in store for them, the decisions they have to make, the challenges they have to overcome, that you would just be able to speak into their hearts and minds and pour out your peace and love, which comes to us in a way that's even just difficult to understand.
And your name we pray. Amen. Okay. Nikki from a place I cannot pronounce in South Africa. Amazing widow from November of 2022. Nikki welcome, welcome. Sue is from Highland, Indiana and became a widow in February of 2021. Sue Susan og. Brave Widow. I was gonna say brave widower, but. Widow are not women.
So there we go. [00:14:00] All right, I'm gonna dive in.
Personal Story: Journey Through Grief
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My story. So if today I have a life that is absolutely fulfilling and I love to wake up every day. And if you would've asked me four years ago, I wouldn't have believed that I would be here at the point that I am today. So four years ago I watched as some EMS workers be an ambulance.
Took my best friend and my husband from my home for the last time, never to return. Nathan and I. Had been married just shy of 20 years. We have four amazing teenage who kids who are teenagers at the time. And we both had been sick with COVID. It was complicated by double pneumonia and we'd been better in for a couple of weeks and finally he couldn't get out of bed anymore.[00:15:00]
So I called the ambulance. They came, they picked him up and they took him to the hospital. And I remember just feeling a huge sigh of relief. Like I worked in healthcare for 20 years. I told my kids like, hospitals are where people go to get better. He's gonna be in good hands. So I remember when the ambulance took him, just feeling this big relief and this big weight off of my shoulders.
I. Over the next 11 days, he would spend that time in ICUI was not allowed 'cause I was coming off of COVID and pneumonia and coughing. I wasn't allowed to go see him in the hospital, as many of you weren't allowed to be with your spouse during that time. And I remember I was called into the hospital one day.
They said the attending physician wanted to meet with me and just talk about our next steps and what I assumed were the next steps on the road to recovery. [00:16:00] But there wouldn't be any next steps. In fact, there wouldn't be any warmth, there wouldn't be any kindness, there wouldn't be even a smile.
The attending physician would simply say, in a cold tone, we think your husband is brain dead. And in that moment, I remember like my whole world just stopped. I try to wrap my mind around like, how did we get here? How did we go from the ups and downs, getting 'em to the hospital to all of a sudden now we're here in this moment and how am I supposed to go and tell our four kids that their dad has died?
Three weeks later, we were supposed to have what would've been our 20th wedding anniversary. We were gonna have a big cookout at our house, family and friends over. As you can see on my zoom screen here, I'd already ordered the [00:17:00] T-shirts 20 years. Best friends, Nathan and Emily. Three weeks later though, instead of celebrating as a wife and full of excitement for the day.
I ended up hosting some family and friends over in honor of Nathan's memory and for a celebration of who Nathan was. Instead of that facing that day with excitement and joy, I ended up facing that day, crushed as a widow and now a solo mom to these four teenagers. Several months later, I had this memorial garden built on the side of my yard, pretty much where we were standing in that first picture.
And I thought that having this memorial garden would be a great way to honor Nathan and to remember him, and that it would just be this beautiful environment where I could go sit and be at peace and be grateful [00:18:00] for our time together. But after it was built, I noticed that I, instead of being comforted by it, I was tormented by it.
Every day. It was just a reminder, another reminder that he wasn't there and he wasn't coming back. And so I remember specifically one afternoon I was sitting on this bench that you see in the picture here, and I was bawling my eyes out like I was sobbing, like the kind of cry that comes from that guttural like pit of your stomach.
And in that moment, I, my chest hurt so bad and I thought my heart was going to burst right then and there. Like I wanted to die in that moment. And I remember thinking about my kids and thinking about how even though I was still alive, that I felt like a [00:19:00] shadow of myself. I felt just a hollow version of myself.
And so even though technically I was alive, effectively, it was almost as though they had lost both parents. And I remember just thinking there's gotta be a way to get through this. Some other people, it seems like they've done it. It doesn't really seem clear how, but I remember making a decision and that decision was that some way, somehow I have to figure out how to get on the other side of grief.
I have to decide that I'm going to live for my kids. And so I stood up. I remember before I stood up, I was sitting there, I closed my eyes and I remember saying, Nathan, I love you and I miss you, and I can't live like this anymore. I have to be able to move forward. And I remember standing up and walking inside [00:20:00] and deciding that this was gonna be the time that I learned everything I could about grief.
So over the next few months, I bought all the books. I went through the courses. I went and obtained two coaching certifications, one through Grief Recovery Institute. I launched I talked to hundreds of other widows. I started Brave Widow. And I launched a podcast called The Brave Widow Show, where I would go and interview other widows and I would ask them to tell their story, and I would ask them what helped them.
And I would ask them to share what they would tell other widows who they wanted to know that it can be better. You can enjoy life again. You can love your life again. And together, we laughed, we cried, we healed together, and we as a community grew together. I am so happy to share that now. I can honestly say I do love my life.
I've gone through [00:21:00] so much healing. I've gone on new adventures. I've really done a lot of work in creating a new life for myself. What I often share with people is that our old life is in ash. Our old, we can't go back. We're never going to go back to the version of us that used to exist. But the good news is that we get to decide to build something new and something that we can still love.
So I've gone to five new countries. I started real estate investing. I started public speaking. I launched Brave Widow as a company. I got to meet Dave Ramsey and tell him thank you for all the great work that he's done. Just so many wonderful things. I even just over a year ago, remarried an most amazing man and gained a bonus son in this process.
And my approach and how I serve widows [00:22:00] and how I elevate widows comes from a background of going through the faith-based coaching academy. Which is a rigorous six month process led by a 20 year psychotherapist. She's a psychologist and therapist who's been in the business for 20 years. She's faith-based as well.
I went through Grief Recovery Institute and some other certifications. And so how I view Brave Widow as being different is that what we do in Brave Widow isn't just about grief recovery. It's not just about emotional healing. It that is the foundation. That is where we start. But our focus is to help you build that foundation and then build a life that you can actually be excited about again, that you can actually love again.
Lemme just catch up on some of the comments here. Sue says, awesome community. Be a part of Patty, amazed at your composure during telling your story. Thank you, Vic. Amen [00:23:00] to you. Otherwise, the kids will see that they are not enough for you to go on. Oh, good thought. Good thought there. Okay. So are you in the right place?
Is this information gonna be for you? So today we're here to talk about loneliness. So if you are in the right place, if you want more connection, if you want guidance, if you want to feel seen, and if you wanna stop pretending that you're okay. If you wanna go from feeling lonely and isolated and unseen, to feeling more connected, guided, and seen.
Identifying the Problems of Loneliness
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So let's start with the problem that is creating loneliness. Isabel says yes to all four topics. Awesome. Isabel, you were in the right spot. Amazing. The problem in. With loneliness, the problems that are creating loneliness. I'm gonna go through each of these. We have three things. And so for those of you who can't see my [00:24:00] screen, three things I'm gonna cover in the problem with loneliness.
So we have isolation, we have a lack of guidance, and then we have lost confidence. Confidence that was lost. Okay? So the first one here is isolation. The statistic that I read is that in the first year, widows will lose 75% of their social circle. Does that resonate with you? Type yes. In the chat. If you've experienced the loss of your social circle or if you would give it a different percent, what percent would that be?
Yes to all. Yes. Yes, Joyce. Okay. Anecdotally, people tell me it's more like 90%. But hey, the statistic is 75%. Red wolf says everyone. Yeah. And so how I think about this stage of where we are in widowhood and what happens is we go through this isolation. So why? Why does this happen? Why do we lose our social circle?
I could talk [00:25:00] about that for a whole hour, but what I will share in the amount of time that we have together today is when we experience the trauma of losing our person and we are in deep grief, we isolate, we withdraw, we pull in. Think about it like a bear going into the cave to hibernate, right?
There are a lot of reasons why we do this. Primarily it's because we're trying to function. Because the part of our brain, the amygdala that is responsible for keeping us safe, that's responsible for helping us survive has taken over. So if you guys have experienced brain fog, if you experience a problem thinking clearly, if you experience a problem making decisions, it's typically because your nervous system and your brain do not feel safe because everything you knew about reality now has shattered.
Absolutely, yes. People don't know how to relate. Yes, [00:26:00] absolutely. Okay. So then we start to wonder why are people, why haven't, why aren't they reaching out? If they cared about me, they would contact me. We also know that our relationships with other people are based on friendships that maybe were through our spouse.
So it wasn't even about the relationship with us, it was about the relationship with us as a couple. Or they just may not know how to interact, what to say, what not to say. They don't know if we wanna be alone. But what happens is we go through this period, I call it season one of widow hood or season one of grief, where we have withdrawn, like we're isolated, we're in our cave, we're a little bear, we're hunkering down because all we can think about is functioning and getting through the day.
And this might take six months, this might take a year. It might take even longer. Okay? So what happens is when we start to get our feet underneath us, and we're coming out of season one of widow hood, we're going into season [00:27:00] two, we're starting to step out of the cave a little bit. And we're like looking at the landscape of what has happened.
It's where did everybody go? I'm here. And it's crickets everywhere else. Okay, so that's one of the problems that we have with loneliness is we are isolated or we have isolated, okay? Another problem, the second problem that's driving loneliness is we have a lack of guidance. We don't know what do I do now?
How many of you type yes in the chat if you have felt lost, if you have wondered if what you're going through is normal. If you are like, I, what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to go make friends? Like for me, I was like, is there an app? Is there an app I can go to make friends? Like I live in Arkansas and at the time I lived out [00:28:00] in the country, everybody's yes.
I felt lost. Okay. I. I lived on a 37 wooded acre plot in Arkansas, in a town of 8,000 people. Where was I gonna go to make friends and who would wanna be friends with me? Like I don't just have a stellar friendship resume, right? I didn't have someone to tell me, is this normal? It's not normal. Nikki says, totally lost.
Yeah. What is my experience? Where do I go? How do I make friends? Do people still make friends at my age? Doesn't everybody already have their friends? Like after high school, like everyone has their friends, everyone has their work friends. And then there's like me and all the other widows that I know are like 80.
And if you're 80 and you're watching this, I love you and you're amazing. And someone who's widowed at 30. Is struggling to resonate with people who are widowed in their eighties or nineties. It's a very different experience. [00:29:00] Okay? So that's the second problem, is we don't have guidance. We don't have someone to guide us.
The third problem is that we have lost our confidence. So if this resonates with you, put an emoji in the chat, put yes. But when we have lost our person, our thought partner is gone. Typically, that's the person we bounce ideas off of. That's the person who helps us make decisions. That's the person who sees us, who validates us, who cares about what we do every minute of every day.
Like they're the ones who have boosted us up and now all of a sudden that's gone. And so then we start to have lots of yeses in the chat. Big time, even after two and a half years. Such a sense of loss of confidence. Two years and still lost at 46. Yes. Okay. So we've lost our confidence and now we start to tell ourselves all of these things.
If people [00:30:00] wanted to spend time with me, they would. Who would wanna be my friend? I'm broken. I don't have anything to bring to this relationship. I don't have the bandwidth to be somebody's friend. I shouldn't have to reach out. Nobody cares about me. We start to tell ourselves all of these stories that aren't true, but they feel true in our mind and in our bodies.
Just reading the comments, the same group that does stick around are looking to us to give them direction and we don't even know what the heck is going on Exactly. After 51 years together. A loss of identity too. Yes. That is one of the biggest. Things that widows face other than loneliness is a loss of identity.
You don't even know who you are anymore. You don't know what you like, what you don't like. You're like how am I supposed to tell other people what to do? I don't even know what I'm doing. I don't even know who I am anymore.
Solutions to Overcoming Loneliness
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Okay, so what is the solution to loneliness? These are the [00:31:00] problems. What is the actual solution to loneliness?
Okay, so our solution to overcoming loneliness is to create a life of intentional connection. And I know as I say that you guys are like, what? What does that mean? Intentional connection? I don't know what that means. That sounds really great, but that you make it sound easier than it actually is.
I understand now why widows move and start over. Yes, I can relate. Yes. Yeah. So identity, that can be a whole nother webinar. And maybe actually I will do that as a topic maybe even for next month. That would be a good one to do. Patty is yeah, it means I gotta work. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. So the thing about it is in loneliness, right?
We've withdrawn, we've noticed our family and friends have disappeared. And so we get to decide, remember when I told you my story, how I sat on the bench and I decided that I was [00:32:00] gonna make a change? This is the point where you decide, do you wanna continue a life of loneliness or do you want to do something different?
Do you wanna create a life of connection? I put intentional connection because social media isn't like full blown, full on connection. Being in the discord chat, is nice at times. It's not necessarily intentional connection, just making small talk with people and talking about the weather.
That's not full connection. But I'm gonna teach you some things that you can do.
Steps to Building Intentional Connections
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So how we start to build intentional connection? Then we have three steps. Okay? And I'm gonna walk through each one. We're gonna meet people, and I know my introverts are like, oh, okay, we're gonna meet people, we're gonna make friends, and we're going to build relationships.
So I'm gonna walk through each of these and I'm gonna share with you, I'm a hardcore introvert, [00:33:00] okay? I hate small talk. Hated it. Hated it. Can I say I hated small talk? If you hate small talk, just put yes in the chat. Okay. I don't care about the weather. I don't care about what the sports team did last night.
I don't really know what to say. It's like everybody's oh, what did you do last night? Da. I did this, and I'm like, tell me your deepest and darkest fear. That's what I wanna talk about. I don't wanna talk about the little things. I was also a homebody, so I realized very quickly that most of my social circle were friends at work.
I traveled full-time for work, so most of my friends lived outta state. And also when you're friends with people at work, there's still a separation there, or that most of our friend group, Mo, definitely most of our friend group, if not most of our family group, went through Nathan. Nathan was a social butterfly.
He was the hilarious, comedic person. If [00:34:00] we got invited somewhere, it was always like, oh yeah, Emily, we want you to come, but make sure you bring Nathan. He's the life of the party, right? Okay, if I can do it, you can do it. All right. All right. So we're gonna meet people, we're gonna make friends, and we're gonna build relationships.
Because here's the thing, this was the precursor title. No one is coming to save you.
No one's showing up at your door. Like I literally sat in my house out in the country, rural Arkansas, and was like, maybe I'll just magically get friends. Like maybe someone will show up and knock on my door and be like, I'm here. It's your new bestie. And then I would think wouldn't that be a little creepy?
First of all, I wouldn't answer the door. I would go hide in the other room and wait till they left. Okay? That's just not realistic. That's what we think sometimes. How do we meet people and find other people that we can connect with? We're gonna have to get out of our house. That's one thing, [00:35:00] okay?
And we wanna be very intentional and come up with a plan for how we're gonna meet people, make friends, and build relationships. We're not just gonna throw ourselves out there with no plan. We are gonna come up with a plan. Okay? So when I coach widows, I tell widows, there are three types of people that you wanna find and that you want to build relationships with.
And it's important you choose from each of these three to build like a good support structure here. Okay? The first group that you wanna go and meet, or that you wanna build relationships with are existing family and friends. So think about existing family and friends. That you want to build relationship with, that you wanna nurture a relationship with.
Okay, it's, we don't need 20 people. Let's pick two people. If you only have one person, that's fine. Maybe it's family and friends, maybe they disappeared, but you're like, okay, let's give this another shot. 'cause relationships take work, they take [00:36:00] effort, right? So we wanna look from existing family and friends, and we wanna choose maybe one or two or three people from there that we wanna rebuild relationships with.
The second group that you wanna build a relationship with are other widows and other grievers, okay? And the reason that you wanna choose from this group is because your existing family and friends most likely don't understand. They're not on your journey. They don't know what you've gone through. They don't know the right things to say.
Like, how many times have you. They told you something like, oh, he's in a better place. Or, oh, she's, she wouldn't want you to be sad. Or all the platitudes that just irritate you. Okay? So you wanna form relationships with other widows and other grievers because they're on a similar journey and they understand, not your exact [00:37:00] situation, but they understand what it means to be widowed.
They understand what it means to have lost someone who's very close to you, how it changes you at your core, how no one else gets it. Like they're on the same journey. Okay. Joyce is yeah, I hear that all the time. I just recently made a new friend at my gym. She works at the front desk. Awesome.
Rosanna. That's amazing. Okay, but it's important that you find people who are on your same journey. And I reiterate same journey because you will find widows and you will find grievers who are not on the journey to rebuilding. They're on the river of misery journey. Have you guys ever met someone who's on the journey to the river of misery?
These are people that are like, it never gets better. You never get over it. Everyone's abandoned me. It's been 10 years. I still feel this way. It's not gonna get any better. Yes, we have. Nikki [00:38:00] says, I have many friends who I can visit, but I just can't get myself to go out. Okay, put a pin in that one.
Nikki, let's come back to it. Okay? So you want people who are on your same journey, but your journey is not the river of misery. You know how I know? Because you're here. And if you're here it is because you're like, I don't want to always be here. I don't wanna always be lonely. I wanna know how to get over loneliness.
I know how to feel connected. Patty says, other widows you meet will only know you as you. They will not be looking for you to go back to normal. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. And so as we look at number three, okay, so we have existing family and friends. We have other widows or grievers who are on your journey. And then we have new connections of people who share your values or your interests.
So this might be people at church, it might be people at the pickleball group, it might be people at the pottery class. In my case, I'm gonna share my story. It was a real estate [00:39:00] investing group, is one of the groups that I rooted myself into. Okay. But you wanna form connections with people who are not from your past.
People who share your values and or your interests. And as Patty so beautifully said, these people will not be comparing you to the past. They're not waiting for you to go back to normal. They're not talking about you and your person. Oh, bringing that up. The only version of you that they know is the version that exists today.
And that could be a really lovely thing to know that you are meeting other people who are like, I see you just as you are, and I wanna be your friend. I wanna get to know you. What an amazing feeling, right? Existing friends and family can be really difficult because they're waiting for you to go back to normal.
We all know we're not going [00:40:00] back to who we were. It's not possible.
Okay. So that's the first part of the solution, is you gotta meet people. Okay. Introverts, it's okay. You can get out and meet people. Okay?
Practical Tips for Making Friends
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The second thing is, as you're meeting these people, you have to make friends. You have to connect with other people. Oh gosh, you, Nikki is I can't even get myself to go out.
Okay. That's the first step. First step. And Nikki, we may have to lean into this second point here that says, we're gonna fear, feel fearful. We're gonna feel overwhelmed, we're gonna feel anxious, we're gonna feel self-conscious, and we're going to do it anyway. So one of the top things that I help Widows navigate is.
Taking action and taking that next step forward. Even though you're afraid, even though your anxiety's through the roof, even though you feel self-conscious oh, I'm self-conscious about how I look and how I'm talking. Am I taking too many [00:41:00] sips of water? That's a real thought I've had.
Okay? Are they gonna think I'm drinking too much on the zoom call? All of the things, right? Like how to navigate the unknown, how to navigate the uncomfortable situations. This is one of the top things that I help coach widows on. How do we make friends? How do we connect with other people? I don't know what to say the best.
I don't have enough time. Actually, this is one of your bonuses for being here with me today. So for anyone who's, if you're already part of Brave Widow, you already have access to the course on how to meet people and make friends. If you're not part of Brave Widow. For my TikTok people, you can DM me.
Otherwise send me, I'm gonna have you send me an email at the end at [email protected] and I'm gonna send you the course on how to meet people and make friends. Okay? So I don't have time to go over it today. So that's your free gift just for being here with me. Because I'm gonna tell you [00:42:00] how to start talking with people, how to get through the small talk.
All of that's gonna be in there. So the number one tip though, that I can tell you today is to be curious about the other person. Okay? People are most comfortable talking about themselves. People also don't get a lot of time to talk about themselves. Think about how many times you've been talking to someone and you're like.
Maybe this is in your past and you're like, oh, I'm gonna go on vacation next week. I get to go to Florida. And the person you're talking to says, oh, yeah I went to Florida once and I went here and it was amazing and it was even more amazing than what you're doing. And you're just like, okay. And they're not being malicious about it.
They're just trying to connect. But think about in life, unless you're talking with your therapist or your coach, how often do you just get to talk about you and all the attention's on you, and the other person is super interested about you? Okay? You are [00:43:00] gonna be that for the other person, okay? You are gonna be curious about them.
You're gonna ask them questions. If as you're talking to someone, they say oh yeah, I just went on a trip. I went skiing. Instead of just being like, oh, that sounds fun. Ask 'em questions about it. You could ask 'em things like, oh what got you into skiing? How did you start that? And then they tell you about that.
And it's what do you love about skiing? I would be terrified. What would you tell someone who's never skied before? What would be your tips on like, how does ski, what would you tell someone new? And if you will, be curious and ask those questions. Just digging a little deeper to get to know the other person.
You are gonna see them light up. You are gonna see them. Just be thrilled at the fact that they get to talk about something that they love and they get to share that with someone else who's actually interested and wants to hear. And guess what? By being curious about the other person, it takes the [00:44:00] spotlight off of you.
It takes the pressure off of you to be like, I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do. Just be curious. Ask questions of the other person. It's a great place to start. And then what will happen naturally most of the time is that after you've talked to that person for a while and you've been asking them a bunch of questions, they're gonna be like, oh, this person is so great to talk to, and oh my gosh, I don't know anything about them.
I should ask them some questions. And then guess what? They're gonna ask you questions and you're gonna know what to say because they're asking you questions. So being curious and creating space for another person to share about themselves and their experiences and all of that will help create this really nice flow of a conversation and allow for deeper connection.
So if you hate small talk, one of the ways I started looking at it as an introvert was like, okay, how fast can I move through this small talk into a [00:45:00] more meaningful conversation? Like the small talk is the necessity of just walking up to someone I don't know. And having a conversation like, you have to start there, but it's okay.
We don't have to stay there. And so I always looked at it like an experiment or a personal challenge, like how fast can I get outta the small talk and go a little deeper and go a little deeper and go a little deeper. And the number one way is to be curious about the other person. Okay.
You're also gonna feel the fear, the anxiety, the self-consciousness, and move through it and do it anyway. And again, this is one of the top things I coach people on because it is hard, it isn't easy. I made some videos about how to make friends and I love when the comments are like, you make this sound so easy and it's not easy.
And it's here's the thing. It. Okay. It's not easy. It is hard. It feels hard. It just feels overwhelming, but it's simple. It doesn't have to be [00:46:00] this big, like complicated thing. So I'm not saying it's easy, but I'm saying it's simple. It's a simple process that you can follow. Okay. And then your goal is to make this a routine practice.
You wanna practice small talk. How do we do that? When I'm standing, when I go to Starbucks and I get a cup of coffee, I'm practicing small talk with the cashier. Or maybe when I talk to the barista, I'm like, I'm curious what's like the best thing about working here at Starbucks? Or maybe I ask a cashier at the grocery store. What's been like the craziest customer? What's the craziest thing you've ever seen a customer do? Now, am I gonna stay in there for 30 minutes and talk to that person? No, but what that practice does is it gets me out of the habit of doing the robotic exchange.
Hi, how are you? Good. How are you? Oh, your total is $45. Okay, thank you. Have a great day. You have a good day too. Like it [00:47:00] gets you out of that and it gets you into observing the other person and being willing to ask something that makes their day. I was a cashier and if someone would ask me a question other than, hi, how are you?
They would comment on something like, oh, I love your shirt, or I love your hair. Or Where did you get those shoes? Whatever it was. I always I just came alive. And so having those little interactions is a great way of practice. You're getting your reps in, you're getting your repetitions in for your routine of connecting with other people.
So the solution, we're meeting people, we're making friends. And lastly, we're gonna build relationships. I'm just gonna catch up on the comments here.
Sue says, I'm also an introvert and felt scared a lot, but meeting new people has changed my life in so many positive ways. Yeah, and I'm gonna share one story of my own experience here. Good morning. [00:48:00] It's afternoon for me, but it's probably maybe morning where you are.
Building Relationships: Effort and Intentionality
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Okay, so how do we build relationships?
Sometimes we fall into this subconscious belief or thought that relationships are easy or just they're like a given, right? Oh, we're friends and it should just be easy. Why should I have to reach out? Why should I have to plan anything? If somebody cares, they should reach out to me.
But I want you to think about a close relationship that you have had. Maybe it was your marriage, maybe it was your relationship with your person. If you don't put in effort in any relationship, you're going to either move into a very routine state, and maybe for some of you, that's where your relationship was the wake up.
Have breakfast, go to work, come home, watch tv, go to bed. It's the same every day. Every day. And then sometimes what happens, and one client [00:49:00] I'm working with, their kids leave home and they're looking at each other like strangers. Like we don't even know each other as husband and wife. We just know each other as mom and dad to these kids.
Okay? So any relationship requires effort. If you wanna go on a date with your spouse, you had, you needed to plan it. If you wanted to see your BFF, you had to make time for her to come over, for you to go there, to go to the movies or a concert, whatever it is. To have a strong relationship actually requires effort.
So if there's a relationship that you don't wanna hold onto anymore or you wanna get out of, one of the things I'll coach you on is to stop putting in the effort. Stop responding. Allow for distance to naturally happen over time. Because if you're not putting any effort in, there's not gonna be a relationship there.
It's just not. So part of this is the reality that building a relationship requires effort. It's worth the effort [00:50:00] though. So what kind of effort does it take?
Making Specific Invitations
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We have to make specific invitations to people. And I wanna see if one of my brave widow peeps is on, 'cause I'm gonna share, okay. I'm not gonna share her name, but I'm gonna share something that she shared with me.
But we have to make a specific invitation. So put yes in the chat if you've had relationships or friendships with people and you can't even count the number of times that you've said we should get together. Sometime we should go have lunch sometime. We should do dinner sometime. We should go to the movies sometimes.
Put yes in the chat if that is you. Like you even maybe today, you know those people that are always like, we should really get together. And you're like, yeah, we should. And then you never do. Yes. Okay, guess what? There's one solution to that problem. Guess what it is? Oh, making a plan.
Actually inviting them to go do something. So I have several friends that if I wait [00:51:00] like for some day to come, it's never gonna come. But the instant I say, Hey, what do you got going on Friday? Let's go to lunch. How about this time? And maybe they say yes and it works out and that's great. And maybe they say, oh, I can't do Friday.
Can we do Tuesday? But making a specific invitation, planning a specific time is gonna let you know one, if that other person is really serious or they're just saying that to be nice. And some people have examples of that where it's oh, they always say no, they're always busy. Okay, let that person go.
But two, if they can't do it on that specific day, then you'll know another time that you can do it. And when you're out together, like you're having lunch together, instead of leaving that experience going, oh yeah, we should get together again. Oh yeah, totally. Pull up your calendars. Say, Hey, how about next month?
Or, Hey, I noticed that this new movie's coming out. We should go see that together. Make specific invitations.
Patty on [00:52:00] TikTok says, my world was my husband. I was married 45 years. I'm 69 and I have no friends. Oh, Patty, my heart goes out to you. And this is perfect. This is perfect for you. What we're doing today and what I'm gonna be sharing with you today, okay? So we, if you have no friends or you don't have strong relationships, you get to decide if that's what you want.
And if that's what you want, you have to make changes. You have to take action and do something different. Or you're just gonna have more of what you have, which is not having those relationships. Okay? You could also decide to help someone else. Maybe they have a project that's going on, maybe they need a closet that they need to have organized and clean maybe, whatever it is, like the things that we never wanna ask people to do because we're embarrassed, we're shy, we're we think we should be able to do it all.
Be the person that's Hey, I would love to come and [00:53:00] help you with that.
It's easy to make friends, get a hobby. Grace, we just talked about easy versus simple. I would say it's simple. It's not always easy, but by having a hobby, by joining those hobby groups is a great way to meet other people. Yes, Sue says, I did that with a fellow brave widow named Davy Daisy, Debbie, when I was traveling through her area, we had a great conversation over breakfast in person and got to know each other a lot better.
Yes. And Debbie says, I have a friend who will not leave until we get the next meet up until it's on the calendar. Amazing. Amazing. Debbie? Yes. I also had, debbie, I ho I don't think you're gonna mind if I share this, but I remember when Debbie and I were talking about, she's one of my clients, Debbie's awesome.
She was telling me about, meeting people and making friends and making that a priority. And she's this one person at this one event just kept talking to me and kept talking to me and kept talking to me. And I found myself feeling annoyed. And finally I was like, you know what? Maybe this [00:54:00] person actually just was to be my friend.
And so I invited her to lunch. I'm like, yes. Yay. Sometimes we have that thought of like, why is this person talking to me? No. Why would they wanna be my friend? And then it's oh, wait, maybe they actually would like to be my friend. Maybe I will invite 'em to lunch. And guess what the worst they'll say is no, okay.
They're not your, they're not meant to be your friend. Move on to the next person. All right.
Personal Stories and Overcoming Loneliness
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I wanna share a brief story with you about, I. How this has come about. Like, how have I come up with this? How have I seen this work in my life? And when my hu my late husband Nathan, died in July of 2021. That first six months for me especially was just about surviving and getting my feet underneath me.
And I remember just feeling so overwhelmingly isolated and alone. And I remember my reality of realizing [00:55:00] one day that most of my friends that I had, I worked in healthcare as a senior vice president for teams that. Upwards of 4,000 people and over a hundred hospitals across the United States had a very demanding job.
I traveled 75% of the time for work, so I was gone a lot. I didn't have a lot of energy to make friendships with other people, and because I worked such a demanding job, I found it hard to relate to other women that were struggling to do like just daily life, and who just didn't un didn't have my same challenges, didn't have the same things in common, like it was just a struggle.
And so I remember it was probably early 2022 where I was realizing like I, I'm not friends with anyone here. Like hardly. I, people that worked for me lived nearby me and I had a great relationship with those people. But again, when someone reports to you, [00:56:00] you're friends at a little bit of a distance, right?
I can't just tell that person everything. I remember thinking like I just, wow, I've not done a good job of making friendships either outside of Nathan and I or outside of work. And I also was trying to figure out what things I might be interested in the future and what places I could go to meet people.
And I'm a lifelong learner. I love to learn, so I wanted to go to a place where I could actually learn some things.
Joining a Real Estate Group: A Personal Journey
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And I remember seeing, I was searching online, so you can go to meetup.com, you can look on Facebook, there's a tab for events. You can see local events that are happening in your area.
And I saw one that was for a real estate investor group. And I'd always been interested in real estate investing. I didn't know really anything about it. Like the last time I had, I. Researched, it was on those old school forums. I don't know if you guys [00:57:00] remember like when the internet was full of forums and so Reddit basically.
And you would just go read other people's posts and what they said and what advice they gave. And like I like got caught up in that rabbit hole like 10 years earlier, but I hadn't done anything with it. And so I was like, oh, it says the first meeting is free so I'm gonna go try. And I was so anxious and so self-conscious that I'm thinking like, okay, how do I show up at this meeting?
Like an investor. I had a work pickup truck, so I was like, I'm gonna drive my truck. Like investor driving a pickup truck like that seems pretty legit. So I wore like my cowboy boots and my jeans, but also a nice top 'cause I was keeping it classy. Drove my truck and I went early. 'cause I'm like, I gotta figure out where's the building?
Where's the entrance? Yeah. Who loves laughing at me. Where am I gonna go in? So I get there early, I find the building, I park in the truck and I sit there for 20 minutes, 20 [00:58:00] minutes. People, I sat in that parking lot this trying to decide whether or not I should go inside. And so here were all the things swirling around in my mind, right?
I don't know anyone in there. I'm not an investor. People are gonna laugh at me. Are they gonna be nice to me? Is it, are they gonna say, what are you doing here? You don't belong here. Are they gonna be like, friendly? Is there any other women? Because there are a lot of men in real estate investing.
I don't really know a lot of women. One of the thoughts I had that cracks me up was, I don't even know where the bathrooms are. Like that was a legitimate, when I was in that thought spiral, that was a legitimate thought I had, was like, how can I go in there? I don't even know where the bathrooms are. What if I gotta go to the bathroom?
Like people aren't gonna tell me where the bathrooms are. I don't have anyone to sit by. I don't know what to say. I'm gonna be the newbie. This is just weird. I almost turned around and went home. Like my car was already on, 'cause it was blazing hot. This [00:59:00] is like May of 2022. It's blazing hot outside.
So the air conditioner's running for 20 minutes and I'm like, on the steering wheel column shifter oh, do I go, do I stay? Do I go, do I stay? And finally I was like, if I don't go inside, it's always gonna be well what if that could have worked out for me? Nikki is laughing as well.
This is great. So I walk inside because I'm like, the meeting's gonna be over in two hours so I can at least say I tried. I. So I go inside and they had the numbers on the name tag, which meant that you had to go sit where, wherever your random number is on your name tag. And I'm like, oh, great.
We gotta do this networking thing. Ugh. Like I could just feel it ugh. But ooh, sorry. My, I have to reverify that I'm still on my live stream on TikTok or it's not gonna let me go. Okay. There we go. We're good now. I'm not a bot. Okay. So I'm, I walk inside, I get assigned to my table.
I'm doing this forced [01:00:00] networking, which is like hell for me as a person. I really met some amazing people and the people there were super friendly, super encouraging. I. And who wants to go to an event like that and be like, yeah, I'm widowed, I'm thinking about being an investor, but I don't know what I'm doing.
Really. I don't even know what I wanna do. And that's what people would ask. What do you wanna do? Do you wanna do single houses? You wanna do duplexes, you wanna do Airbnb, you wanna do hard money lending? I'm like, I don't like half of what you're saying. I don't even know what that means. Okay. But I met some really nice people and people that were happy to share their failures.
They were happy to share what had worked for them. They were like, oh, it's okay that you're new. Like we, we like when new people join. And here's the thing, like everybody's gonna have their opinion on real estate and you have to find what's gonna work for you. I was like, oh, okay. I met some amazing friends [01:01:00] there and some mentors that I still use to this day.
And so I'm just briefly gonna share with you through my experience, what I did. I invited people to lunch to pick their brain, ask them their experience, ask them what they would, why they liked what they did in real estate and why they would tell somebody to pick that and what they thought I should do based on what they know.
Me, not because I was gonna follow everything they said, but I wanted to hear all the opinions so I can make my own opinion. But through these conversations, I started to really build relationships with people.
Building Confidence and Social Circles
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I went to my first meeting in May of 2022. What you're seeing here on my zoom screen is the first house that I bought a little tiny white house right up from the main square in the town that I live right next to my kids' school.
It needed so many, it needed to be gutted every wall, every cabinet, every door, [01:02:00] all the way down to the floor joists and the wall studs. So I bought that property in September, so I'd gone to that meeting for four months in a row, and then in November, so six months after my first meeting, I would buy some duplexes.
And even though I know nothing about construction and remodels and buying investment properties and all of those things. My confidence came from knowing that I had people I could call on. That I had people who knew, oh yeah, that, that's a good quote for plumbing. Yep, that sounds right. Or, oh, that quote sounds really high.
You need to call somebody else. Because I had started to build these relationships and I had started to meet people and build up this network of people and make connections with people. I had people I could call. So my confidence wasn't that I had all the answers, but my confidence was, I know people, I've built up my social circle.
If I need a recommendation for a roofer, I have it. [01:03:00] If I need someone to help me troubleshoot a leaky faucet, I know who to call. And so when you're building relationships, it's not just about overcoming loneliness, but it's also about rebuilding your confidence in navigating life. Who are people that you know that are skilled in different areas that, that then now all of a sudden you can call or people, when they meet me, they're like, oh, Emily's the widow coach.
So now every widow I meet, I'm sending her way. Because I know that she can help them, right? Like they like knowing someone that they can refer people to, like it makes us feel good, right? And so if I had not walked into that meeting that day, if I had not talked to people, if I had not asked them questions, if I had not given it a shot, if I had not allowed people to get to know who I am, I wouldn't have accomplished any of those things.
And even more amazing. Just in [01:04:00] April, the real estate investment group voted me in as vice president of the group to help grow the group locally. So it was amazing, like full circle experience where I joined in May of 22 and May of 23, they actually asked me to speak to their whole group on how to overcome mindset challenges.
So part of my story is guys, a year ago I was sitting in the parking lot, not sure if I could walk in this door, and then my second year now voted in as vice president. That's amazing. So think about how much can change for you when you decide to do something different. You decide to navigate the unknown, you decide that it's worth taking a shot.
Think of how much can change for you too. Building up your board of advisors. Yes, that's a concept I teach. How to build up your board of advisors to help you make decisions and build your confidence. Congratulations to Awesome. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
So here's the thing, a life of intentional connection [01:05:00] is possible for you. So like my folks on TikTok are saying like, I have no friends, or I'm lonely, or I can't make myself get out of the house, or I can't do X, Y, or Z. The reality is what I want to call you to is that this is absolutely possible for you.
Callaway says, sounds like you started out with more confidence than most widows do. I don't know. I tried to tell my story where I had no confidence and I was sweating in my truck for 20 minutes, afraid to walk into a meeting. 'cause I didn't know where the bathroom was. So I don't know that most widows have even less confidence than that, but.
Confidence is something that you build. It's actually an entire module I have inside the Brave Widow community on how to rebuild confidence, because that's one of the biggest problems and challenges that widows face. Yeah.
Invitation to the Brave Widow Community
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I wanna invite you, and if you're not on my Zoom, you're not seeing this, but essentially inside the Brave [01:06:00] Widow membership community we're starting a 30 day challenge on Wednesday, and it's called the 30 Day Make A Friend Challenge.
And I wanna invite you to join me in that. So if you're not part of Brave Widow, if you're not one of my clients I'm actually gonna gift you 30 days free in the membership community you're gonna get, if you've signed up through the link, then I have your email and I will send you a 30 day pass to everything free inside a Brave Widow community.
Okay? So what that means is that you could join and do this whole 30 day challenge with me. So Callaway says. That's what I'm struggling with confidence. Then join me. Send me a dm. Tell me you want the link for the three 30 day pass. No credit card required. Okay. You just put your name and your email and your N Wednesday.
We start the 30 day challenge. We're gonna have weekly check-ins to see where everybody's at with making new friends. And so the workshop, you are so welcome. The [01:07:00] workshop that's happening on Wednesday is very action oriented. So when people ask me the difference between therapy and coaching, there's a few differences, but one is that coaching is very action oriented.
So it's two hour workshop because what we're gonna do is you're gonna actually start taking steps on the challenge on the call. So I'm gonna have you go look up events that you can go to in your area. I'm gonna have you make a list of people you currently know that you wanna build a relationship with, and I'm gonna help you write down things that you're gonna say to invite them to do, to reengage with the confidence.
Joyce, I'm struggling as well. Chief, I have no confidence. Yep. Just send me a dm, I'm gonna send you the link. I can help you with all of that. Okay. And for the next 30 days, my goal is that you at least have one person that you're like, I've made a new friend, or I've [01:08:00] strengthened a relationship with someone that I already knew, like we're, it's on the books.
We went to lunch, we went and did this thing, we did it together, and we're gonna continue to build this relationship. Nikki says, I realized I can phone a friend and set a fixed date that will force me to go out. Hey, sometimes that's what it takes, right? Think about it, Nikki, from the aspect of when you have a gym membership, you're not really like super motivated at the gym.
It doesn't really cost you a lot. Maybe have you guys seen those like $10 a month memberships or $20 a month gym memberships? Has anybody ever tried that, by the way? Yeah, I have a gym membership. Ask me how often I go to the gym. Okay, but when you pay for a personal trainer or you have a workout buddy who's gonna be waiting on you to be there, then how often do you go?
A lot more often because someone else is waiting on you or because you've invested more and you feel more invested. Okay. For those of [01:09:00] you who don't know who are new to Brave Widow, you're not part of Brave Widow. I have some of my peeps here, which is awesome and I'm so glad that they're here.
But for those of you who are interested in coaching, you wanna work on your confidence, you wanna work on rebuilding connection and making friends with other people, and you are ready to decide to build up your life, then I would love for you to consider me to be your coach. And where we start in all of that is through a call.
It's called a consult call, which sounds very official, but it's really where we would spend an hour together. I have a set of questions that I would ask you and I would take you through to learn more about where you are. Learn what your challenges are and help create a plan specifically for you. So help illustrate for you how I'm gonna take you [01:10:00] from point A to point Z of where you wanna be within typically a six month time period.
Okay? We have routine one-on-one coaching sessions. You have the ability to message me, voice message, text message. You have access to everything in Brave Widow, and there's no pressure on a consult call. So if you just want to have a call to understand what I would say your next step should be and what I would recommend for you, and you wanna take that plan and you want to go implement it, or you wanna go work with someone else to do that, you can.
Okay. The consult call is a way that I give back in a way of helping show you what coaching could be like and what is possible for you, because a lot of people aren't even sure whether or not loving their life again is possible or getting to a better place is possible. So that's what the consult call does.
Kelly, welcome. Kelly is from St. Genevieve, Missouri, widowed September of [01:11:00] 2024. Kelly, you're coming up on a year. Welcome. I'm from Arkansas, so not too far from Missouri, actually, I hope that's right, Mo Missouri. I think I love going up to Missouri. It's pretty up there. So I wanna invite you to schedule a consult call with me and if you schedule your call today, you don't have to have the call today, but if you go out and put the call on the calendar today.
And end up signing up for coaching. Then I have a few bonuses that I'm going to offer that I'm going to give you. So one of them is doing a guided release and reset session. I've never offered these bonuses, so I'm curious to see what the interest is, but doing a release and reset session. So think of it as like a guided meditation session where we'll pull your body into a space of intentional safety.
We're gonna help release some of, whether it's fear or grief, or lack of confidence or [01:12:00] whatever that is. I'm gonna guide you through a process of releasing some of that. Also doing a future design mapping session for you. So really taking the time to map out what you want for your future, even if it feels like, I have no idea what I want.
I don't even know what that could look like. I don't even know if that's possible. And then I have a special like VIP box that I will hand pack and ship to you. But you have to go out today to schedule your console and just get it on the calendar. And you could do that by going to brave widow.com or brave widow.com/fast.
Either one. We'll get you in there so that you can get the bonuses if you decide to sign up for coaching. And I would love to be able to do that for you. So who is coaching for? I'm gonna walk you through some of the people that I am able to help the most. Be five. I'm just reading through some of the comments.
Q&A and Final Thoughts
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Before we have 20 ish minutes [01:13:00] left. If you will comment, if you're on Zoom, comment in the q and a box, ask your questions there. If you're watching me on YouTube or TikTok, put your question in the comments. I wanna make sure if you guys have any questions about what I've covered today, loneliness, confidence, rebuilding relationships, that I answer those.
So put that, put your questions in the comments. If you're on Zoom, put it in the q and a. They'll help me keep track of it a little bit better. Patty says, it's one of the best investments you will make. You'll be surprised at how helpful it can be. Also having Emily walk along your side as a blessing.
Thank you, Patty. I love you. Sue says, Emily is such an amazing coach on so many levels. Started first with a loving and caring hot offering. So much in the way of support and tools on the journey forward. Thank you. Sue. Sue's one of my first brave widow peeps. Can we access replay? Yes. I'm gonna post the re.
So Lily asked, can we access replay? Yes. The replay will be on YouTube, and if you're on my email [01:14:00] list, it'll go out through there. You can go to brave widow.com/live and sign up there to get the replay. Or if you send me a dm, I'll send it to you as well. No problem. Roger says it'll be five years next month.
It does get better. It just takes time. There's lots of dark days. Roger in the most loving and caring way, what I will share about it just takes time. One of the best things that I learned from the Grief Recovery Institute, and one of the quotes that I actually use from them is, the key to recovery and grief is action and not time.
How I think about time as an analogy is that time. Is an ingredient in the recipe to being able to heal and to build a life that you love. But time is not the only ingredient. And one of my favorite examples of this, she's on the podcast, you can [01:15:00] go and watch her whole episode. Her name is Soia.
And what she shared was for three years she just went through the motions and she just waited on time to just magically make things better. And for three years she powered through. She waited for time. She told her kids like kids, we just gotta give it time and mom's gonna feel better. And then COVID happened.
And then she found herself at home with her kids for many more hours of the day than normal, than what we typically did before. We had the lockdowns and the quarantines and all that. And what she realized in the conversations with her kids was that. They watched her power through. They were proud of her for keeping going to work, keeping things going, but they felt very disconnected from her.
And as she started to really think about it, she realized three years after her husband died, she actually felt worse. She's I don't feel any better. [01:16:00] Time isn't helping me. And she decided to actively process and heal her grief. So it was a great comment. I treated it like a question, but time is a component, right?
Like no matter how much I teach you today, tomorrow, you're not gonna feel a hundred percent better and you're just, you're never over it. But also, I know so many widows, it's so heartbreaking. I know so many widows who have waited three years, five years, seven years, 10 years, 20 years, and they still feel like they felt in the beginning.
If you go on Facebook groups, if you go on forums, you're gonna find those people who will tell you it never gets better. Put yes in the chat. If anyone has ever told you that it doesn't get better, there's no finish line, you don't get over it. It doesn't get better. Like again, these are the river of misery people that I talked about.
Thank you. Makes sense. We have to move forward for sure. Yes, and to your point, we move forward with our [01:17:00] person emotionally. We don't leave 'em behind, we move forward with them as a griever. Time is literally just standing still for me. And Callaway, I can help you with that for sure. In the early days of grief, we wanna slow down.
We wanna create intentional safety for ourselves, and we want to process our grief and our hurt. It does feel like time stands still and it feels like everybody else and all the world around us is moving forward and we're stuck standing here going how dare everybody else live their life when my whole world has stopped?
Like, how can people just keep moving on? And for me, time is standing still. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. I know. So there are things that we can do in moving f that things that will help you move forward is to process your grief and your hurt. And you probably have heard people say, the only way out is through, which is [01:18:00] true.
And some days, I'm sure some of my clients who are on Zoom will tell you Some days it doesn't feel like you're moving forward, but I can see it and I can help you see it. The things that you're doing to heal and to be able to move forward. Okay. So any other questions, feel free to type them in the chat.
Do you guys feel like this was helpful for you in knowing how to overcome loneliness? One last thing that I'll share as I'm waiting for some more questions to come in, I'm gonna give everybody just a minute here to get their questions in.
Okay?
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, Sue says.
I've not regretted any step I've taken as a widow, even when I was terrified and even when I failed or made mistakes. As I took those steps, I've learned and grown and found new possibilities that helped me to discover more and more of my identity. Yes, Sue's amazing. Everyone, all my peeps are amazing and have done really amazing [01:19:00] things.
Joe says, knowing there's so many others going through the same is helpful. It is. It's very validating. It's very normalizing. Debbie says, Emily has been my lifeline to not hide in a corner. Awesome. And Debbie, you've done amazing job with just taking action when it feels, when you feel afraid, when you feel over anxious or like going through those uncomfortable emotions, Patty says, Emily will validate your growth and help you see that you are moving forward.
It will blow your mind. Ah, you guys are awesome.
Chief asks, how can you move forward from a toxic marriage? She passed away three years ago. So Chief, I actually I have clients who were in a very toxic marriage or relationship and they feel like kind, not, how do I wanna say this? They don't resonate with other widows, right? Because other widows are like, oh, I miss my husband.
He was [01:20:00] perfect. He was amazing. He was this, he was that. And they're sitting in the corner going yes, I miss that person. Or, yes, I've had feelings of sadness and life is a lot calmer now. Life is simpler now I am not being treated. So negatively as I was in the past. And that can create a lot of, some people call it complicated grief or complex grief.
At the end of the day, grief is grief, but it can bring up feelings of guilt, of regret, of a weird sense of like being relieved, but feeling bad for being able to say that you're relieved and being able to say that life is better or easier now. So I do have clients that are in that situation and I have an amazing tool that we use through grief recovery to help find a sense of completeness with the hurt and the [01:21:00] pain, guilt, regret, yearning, all of those things.
It's really helpful for that. Great question though. When will grief brain go away? I wish I had time to really dig into this more Vicki, but grief brain is happening. If I were to boil it down in the simplest answer, it's because your brain and your body do not feel safe. And I'll ask everyone, do you feel like you're living in fight or flight?
Do you feel like your nerves are on fire? Do you have grief, brain? Is it hard to struggle? What is happening is in those cases, our part of our brain that keeps us alive. If you walked outside and there was a tiger and it was chasing you down the street, your instinct would kick in. You might freeze, you might run away.
You might try to punch the [01:22:00] tiger in the mouth. We all have different ways that we might react. Okay, everybody's a little bit different, but whatever is keying up, like you've heard, oh, a mom's kid was trapped under their car and so she like picked up the car. She was able to like physically lift the car, which is like impossible, right?
Because that adrenaline has kicked in, that cortisol has kicked in. Like our brain is producing chemicals in our body to create certain things and to allow for those to happen. So what happens, and I'm seeing some yeses in the chat. So what happens is that when you have experienced trauma, like losing your person is one of the most stressful and traumatic things a person can experience.
Your brain has this like underlying message, I'm not safe. It's the same thing that would happen if you're cha being chased by. A crazy person with a knife down the street, [01:23:00] a tiger. If someone is breaking into your house, that same feeling okay, in your body, in your mind is happening. And what we have to set up some things to create a feeling of safety, okay?
And there are a few ways that we can do that. One is when we are in deep grief, when we feel all keyed up, when we feel unsafe, we want to think of it as like we're trying to reprogram our brain that we are safe and reprogram our body, that we're safe. Because what can happen is over our body is not made to live in this fight or flight state for long periods of time.
So what will happen and what we even learn in Grief Recovery Institute is. That you can almost correlate major losses with accidents, illnesses, injuries, [01:24:00] or other ailments in the body. Because when you're living in fight or flight, when you're living in dysregulation for long periods of time, your body is pumping out chemicals like adrenaline and like cortisol.
It's not meant to do long term. It's meant to do it short term to keep you safe. Okay? So tiger's chasing you down the street, your body is meant to like sprint to safety. It's not meant to run for months. So at some point, your body will stop producing those chemicals and or your body gets addicted to filling those, which I know I'm going down a rabbit hole, so I'm gonna pull it back.
Okay. The short answer is you get into a state where living that is normal and it's, it feels unsafe to not live that way anymore because your body just gets used to those chemicals and used to those reactions. So what we wanna do to get out of that is we actually want to do less. [01:25:00] We want to lower our expectations for ourselves.
We want to do less. We want to rest because grief is exhausting. Have you guys ever noticed that? One of my clients that's on this call, she's man, I'm doing a lot of mental work and I'm physically exhausted. And it's yeah, that's how it works. Vicki says, yes. Yeah. So when we're in those modes to get out of it, we wanna rest.
We want to bring our body to intentional safety because what we're trying to reprogram our brain and our heart for is we are safe. I'm safe. I am safe. I'm safe. So you don't feel like you have to be keyed up all the time and be on edge and be hyper alert of everything that's going on. A pen drops on the floor and you jump like it's a gunshot or something, right?
And so that might be meditation, it might be taking a walk, it might be getting a massage. It might be breathing [01:26:00] exercises, it might be drawing or gardening or doing puzzles. There are a lot of things that you can do to bring your body into intentional safety. And so we wanna do that over time. We also wanna work on emotional healing.
Debbie says, I slept for almost a year. Yes. Grief sue. Grief is very exhausting. So many times I didn't wanna get outta my covers in my bed. Yes. Joe said, I thought I was resting, but now I have shingles. It's been almost a year and now my body is reacting to this past year. Yes. Excellent observation, Joe.
And there's also, so Grief Recovery Method is amazing book, an amazing program. I highly recommend it. Also there's a book called The Body Keeps the Score, which helps you tie physical ailments, chronic back pain, all kinds of issues, helps you tie that actually to something that's mentally or emotionally left unprocessed for you.
So by addressing that, [01:27:00] by addressing your heart and your mind, you address the thoughts that you have, you address the chemicals, your brain triggers the body to produce. You address physical changes in your body and in your mind. It's crazy. It's amazing. I. So we've got just a few minutes left. Vicki says, thank you.
You are so welcome. Patty, on TikTok says, do you have recommendations on where to start dating again? Yes. Send me a dm. I have a whole course on that. I'll send it to you. No problem. Okay, so I just wanna talk briefly about the Four Seasons of Widow Hood just because I always think this is super helpful and I'm curious where you guys think that you are.
And I'll even tell you where most people are when they find me. Patty, I signed up for the consult. Amazing. I look forward to talking to you, Jim. I feel good, but my body doesn't. Oh interesting. That would be interesting one to explore for sure. Okay, so the four seasons of widowhood, the first one is in [01:28:00] devastation.
This is in survival mode. So this is when and I know I'm coming up on time, so if people need to go, I. Totally okay with that. But I think for people who are interested, this is helpful. Four seasons of widowhood. So the first one is devastation. This is when you're in survival mode. This is when you are feel overwhelmed.
You can't stay organized. It's hard to function. Again, this is this has just happened. Maybe it's been six months, maybe a year, maybe even potentially longer. I know some people it's lasted years, but you feel like you're drowning is like the best way to describe it. Like you just feel like you're just trying to survive.
Okay? That's what I call season one. Season two desperation is more maintenance mode. So this is where you're starting to get your feet underneath you. You're Joyce says, thank you for this. I'll be signing up. Awesome, Joyce. I look forward to talking with you. So season two, we're in maintenance mode.
We have our feet [01:29:00] underneath us. We have a new routine and we hate it. We hate the new routine. We're like, is this my life now? Thi this. So for most people, season two, maybe you've done counseling, maybe you've done grief groups, and about half the time people feel it's helpful and sometimes they don't feel it's helpful and it's okay, whatever your experience has been.
Either way people feel, even if they feel counseling has been helpful, they're like, okay, yes, it helped me process things. And I'm like, now what do I do? What is next? Is this like this is the next 40 or 50 years of my life really? This. Okay. This is where most widows tend to find me. So then we have season three, which is exploration or discovery mode.
So this is where we start to try new things. Maybe we're going new places, maybe we're trying new [01:30:00] hobbies. We don't, we're trying to figure out who we are and we try to do something positive. And then we have a wave of grief that knocks us back down. And then maybe we try to do something again. And then grief knocks us back down.
And this is where most widows get stuck is this loop right here, because you start to question things like, is this worth it? Am I doing this right? Is this normal? Why am I even trying this? My person's not even gonna be here. Why would I even what's the point? Okay. But in season three, as you start to come out of this loop we start to coach you out of that.
Then you start to get to have a little bit of fun and you start to be like, oh, I went to this new thing and actually I had fun and I didn't feel guilty about it, or I started to feel guilty, but then I remember what you coached me on and I got myself back out of it, right? Season three is like learning how to ride a new a bike for the first time and you're on the bike and it's like [01:31:00] really wobbly and you're like, oh, I'm gonna try this, and the bike falls over, and I'm like, okay, that hurt at you.
Really scraped your knee on that one. That really hurt. And I sit with you and then I say, get back on the bike. We're gonna do it again. Okay. So season three is about learning how to live in this new life and how to build a new life that you're actually going to enjoy. How to get clear on what you want for the future.
How to know what's even possible for your future. And then season four, I call creation or manifestation mode, which is, you know what you want for your future, you're actively working towards it and you are in a season of thriving. Like you know what you want, you're going after it. And this is the moment where you're like peddling the bike and you're like, I'm doing it, I'm doing it.
I've got this. Yes, this is it. This is the moment I was so afraid would never even be possible for me in the past. Okay. I know we're at time. Are there any other questions? For the first chief [01:32:00] says, for the first year and a half my survival mode was to get on my Harley and ride every day. It cut off there, I think it said to and to ride every day.
Yeah. And it's okay to have things that give you a break from grief, right? Give your brain a little bit of a rest. That's okay. All right. So if you are interested in learning more about coaching and learning more about how to build a life you love and learning more about loneliness if you're not on my email list, so you're on YouTube or TikTok can send me a dm, YouTube, I think you'll just have to get on my email list or shoot me an email.
And I will send you the course on how to make friends and meet people. And a three 30 day pass to the Brave Widow Membership Community. If you like to schedule a consult, remember I have the bonuses today that are going to expire today. So if [01:33:00] you think you might wanna do coaching, just get your consult on the books.
You can schedule it a few weeks out. Doesn't need to be this week or next week. I'll be out anyway, most of the week. But get the consult on the books and that way I'll honor some of those bonuses because my goal as a coach is to get you to take action and to make decisions. And when we swirl an indecision, we don't take action.
We don't do things. So try to give you some juicy bonuses to get you to do a consult. Patty, my email. If you already sign up for the consult, you'll be good to go. I'll get the links to you. My email is emily EMIL [email protected]. You can also go to brave widow.com. There's a contact me form. Or there's a schedule to schedule a link to schedule your consult.
So thank you guys for joining me today. It was a long bit of a longer session, but I thought the extra time was needed to go through some of the content here. [01:34:00] And I appreciate you joining me. I will be sending out links to the replay and links to other information for those of you who are interested.
And I will see you next time. Bye.
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.
