BW 156
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Introduction and Episode Teaser
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Hey, and welcome to episode number 156 of the Brave Widow Show. Today I am gonna talk to you about why grief work alone isn't enough and what no one has told you about rebuilding your life. Before we dive in, I just wanna share a little teaser with you. The Brave Widow Academy will be opening its doors on August 11th, and i'm not gonna spill the beans just yet about everything in the Brave Widow Academy. You're gonna get to learn about that over the next few weeks, but I'm super excited about it. It's gonna be a six month program where we meet weekly on Mondays and. I can't wait for you guys to learn more about it and to be able to share that with you.
So stay tuned over the next few weeks as I share more about what the Brave Widow Academy is and how you can [00:01:00] join in if you have thought about one-on-one coaching. Maybe you've even done a consult. Maybe you felt like one-on-one coaching was a little more expensive than you are ready to invest. The Brave Widow Academy is gonna be that perfect hybrid of personalized feedback and attention, and also group learning and coaching through a dedicated curriculum, and I'm super excited to cover that with you.
Personal Updates and Upcoming Events
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At the time of this recording, I am getting ready to go to Miami and Key Largo for a trip that's a little bit full circle for me. Two of my Brave Widow coaching graduates are gonna, are graduating from the same life coaching school that I went to, the Faith-Based Coaching Academy. Their retreat and graduation is happening this week and I am so excited to be able to go, to be able to see my brave Widows graduate to, to watch [00:02:00] them as they're beginning to build their businesses and being able to help serve and support other people.
Out there in the community. It's absolutely amazing and I just feel so much gratitude for being able to go to this event just two years after I graduated and started this journey of being a coach and starting to coach other people.
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. [00:03:00] com
The Reality of Grief and Moving Forward
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If you've done the counseling, journaled the pain and prayed your heart out, but still feel stuck, this episode is for you because grief recovery is only half the story, and I'm gonna share what no one else is teaching widows about what comes next. I.
Now, many of you have reached this point where after their funeral, the casserole stopped coming. You've gone through therapy or counseling and maybe it's helped you some, maybe you didn't go or maybe it didn't help at all and the world around you is just moving on like somehow. It is this impossible feeling of our world has stopped, our life has come to a halt, but everyone and everything is just moving on.
Without us moving forward, just like we're invisible now and everyone has disappeared, so many widows who [00:04:00] find me say things like, I should be doing better now I'm alive, but I'm not really living. I don't know who I am without my person. I don't know if it's even worth trying to have a life again, or I don't even want to have a life without my person.
And here's the thing, grief work is really important. Whether you find a counselor or a therapist, you find a grief coach, you find grief groups, you go to grief share whatever it is that you participate in that is focused on grief, recovery, and emotional healing. All of that is fundamental and foundational.
Two, being able to have a life that you can love and enjoy again. But the challenge is that Grief works helps us survive. It helps us function, but it doesn't show us how to dream, connect, or rebuild our [00:05:00] lives. I kept thinking that I was missing something. What I want you to know is that you are not broken.
You're just missing the other half of this healing process. When I was about a year or a year and a half out from Nathan's death, I was so discouraged. I often prayed to God pretty much every day asking like, how much longer am I gonna feel this way? How long is enough? How much do I have to suffer God, please rescue my heart from despair.
I don't wanna live like this anymore. And it wasn't that things hadn't helped me. I went to counseling right away. I bought all the grief books. I listened to podcasts. I talked with hundreds of other widows. I asked them what helped them, but it was all just so vague and obscure. Oh, just give it time [00:06:00] or you just have to keep living your life.
You can't. You just gotta keep living your life. What does that even mean? I was so discouraged because I felt like I'd done everything right, but I still felt empty and aimless on the inside. I still felt like a hollow version of myself, like a shadow living here, just. Looking at things.
Challenges of Rebuilding Life After Loss
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After Nathan died, I continued to work in my corporate executive role for another year.
It was a very demanding job. We were with a rapidly growing company. My team was rapidly growing, and so were the challenges that we faced. And right or wrong, my work became my priority. Making sure that things were working well there while trying to juggle for teenagers and logistics of getting them where they needed to go, making sure they have dinner every night.
When Nathan used to take care of those things and trying to feel that I could [00:07:00] be everything to everyone at work and everything to everyone at home, and I just had this recurring thought it's not enough. It's not enough. I can't do both. It's difficult to do both and so the energy that I expended at work and with my family at the end of the day left me feeling hollow and empty like everyone else was taking care of except for me.
And I didn't understand like I was doing the work. You've heard people say you have to do the work, right? I was literally. And doing the work and showing up to counseling and learning more about grief and why it was so difficult and everything. I learned, everything I read talked about grief, recovery and emotional healing.
But then it left me with this big question mark what do I do now? What am I supposed to do after this whole grief thing? I didn't feel like I [00:08:00] was over grief. I still had waves of grief. But I also was confused because I'm like, is this really my life now like this 40, 50 more years of this?
Really,
what I didn't know was that I didn't need help to just feel better. I needed help to rebuild my life.
One of the biggest gaps that we have in the grief industry is that we don't teach widows or people how to go from surviving and starting to live their life again into actually loving your life again. And to having things that light you up on the inside and give you a sense of purpose and meaning of recognizing and acknowledging that your old life is over, it's gone, and you get to decide if that means your life is over, or if you're gonna build something completely new.
And [00:09:00] even if we were to tell people that, even if we were to convey that would be so incredibly overwhelming to people. What do you mean I have to rebuild my whole entire life? Like I've already been overwhelmed with grief. I've already been overwhelmed with sorrow and sadness, and now I have to rebuild my entire life.
Like that just seems crazy.
The Purpose of Brave Widow Academy
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So the reason Brave Widow even exists, the reason I am bringing up Brave Widow Academy, the reason Brave Widow coaching exists is because it is a solution designed to close this gap. Yes, we do a component of grief recovery. I teach the grief recovery method. I've been very open about that. Grief, recovery and emotional healing is where I always start.
And it doesn't mean that once you're done with grief recovery, that you're done with grief and it's over. But you are now equipped to navigate grief, equipped to experience a sense [00:10:00] of completeness with things that were left incomplete. So while we do tackle grief, recovery, and emotional healing, that serves as our foundation, on top of which we then began building a life that you can love again.
So Brave Widow is about creating an environment where widows are equipped, they're empowered. They're able to grow, to rebuild their confidence, to make real connections with other people, to rebuild relationships and to rediscover. That was a lot of ours, to rediscover what actually brings them joy.
I think we do such a disservice to people at times when we help them with learning more about grief and understanding grief, and then release them out into the world and say, good luck. Good luck with the tools that you have, because so many widows then step [00:11:00] forward having these tools to navigate grief, having a heart that's on its journey to healing.
But there's something just still in the back of their mind saying, is this it? Is this what my life is gonna be now? And some people are afraid to hope that more out of life is even possible. More joy, the ability to have dreams for the future.
Setting Realistic Goals and Finding Hope
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I. It's actually been something that I've learned how to do.
I've had to learn how to grow my skillset. I've shared about working with coaches and investing in coaching, and one of my coaches, Megan, she's done a lot of work with me in helping to scale down. I'm a visionary, okay? I see potential in people. I see amazing things that could happen in someone's future.
But when your heart is hurting and you're at a point where you don't really care about big dreams, at that [00:12:00] point, you really just wanna wake up and not cry every day. If I say oh, you could do this and you could do that, and you could enjoy life, and you can laugh and you can have friends, and it would be great.
That just feels like impossibly far away. So one of the things that my coach, Megan has helped me with is in shortening up what the goals are. So if you're a widow and today. Your goal is to wake up every day and stop crying, then that is possible for you, and that's what we focus on and where we start, or I share how you can rebuild your confidence so that you're not second guessing every single decision that you have to make.
Those feel more tangible, those feel more realistic. But that is just the beginning of what is possible for people and rebuilding their lives. And so it's challenging at times because I want to inspire you and I want you to be educated about [00:13:00] what is actually possible for your life. But I also recognize that some people aren't ready to see that big future yet.
I'm working with a few clients who are actually in the middle or in the beginning stages rather of starting a business or starting a social media presence. And because I've walked that path, I. They like coaching on that area as well, and often ask for feedback on what to do to get started. And sometimes I just get excited and I'm like, oh, you could do this and you could do that.
And in the future I could see this and wouldn't it be amazing if that, and their eyes will get really big. And I could just see the anxiety. Flooding up from the pit of their stomach, and I have to reel myself back in and say, I'm not saying tomorrow. I'm not saying tomorrow that you would have to do all these things.
It's, it doesn't have to be overwhelming. We'll take it one step at a time, but I just want [00:14:00] you to know that I see it like it's there, it's possible. It's waiting for you. And so what I want you to know, you who are watching or who are listening. Is that I can help you see the potential and what's possible for you in your future, which is so much more than you can imagine right now.
And that's okay. And we don't have to set that as our first goal, but it gives us hope and inspiration that more is actually possible. Those are the things that I wish Widows knew about this journey and about healing.
Engaging with the Community and Feedback
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As I've shared with you guys, I've started posting a lot more on TikTok over these past few months, and what I love about TikTok is that people talk, TALK, they talk back to me, they comment, they send me lots of messages, and so I can get a very quick.
Read on what's resonating with people and what isn't. [00:15:00] And there are so many times that people are very quick to jump in the comments and say you make this sound too easy, or you make it seem like you can just get over it and move on, or you just seem like you have it all together. But not all of us are That way, like they're very quick to jump in on my video and tell me all the reasons why I shouldn't be communicating things the way that I am.
It doesn't make me mad. I don't get frustrated. I actually have compassion when people do that because I know that they're at a place where what I'm saying seems impossible. Here's an analogy. In the online business world, if someone were to say, you can start making a million dollars a year in your business.
So many people would be like, yeah, that's not for me. Like that, really? That doesn't even seem true. That seems so impossible. A million dollars a year in [00:16:00] business. No, these people, snake oil, they're selling, they're scammers. They're selling fake stuff. That's just too big. Too much. Now, if someone says, I can help you build a business that makes a hundred thousand a year.
Now you're gonna have a few more people who buy in and they're like, okay, I don't believe I could build a business in 12 months that makes a million dollars a year, but I believe maybe a hundred thousand a year in 12 months. That seems more doable. I buy into that. But just still have a lot of people that'll be like, no, that's not possible.
This person's just trying to sell. You don't believe 'em. But then if you back down even more and you say 10,000 in your first year or a thousand dollars in your first six months, the smaller that you make the claim or the dream or the goal, the more realistic it starts to feel and it starts to sound.
And so while at times I still [00:17:00] am trying to find the best balance in helping people who can't see around the corner, they can't see a future, they don't want to see a future, I. I help them try to focus on the smaller goals. Okay. That's all right. That you can't imagine going out and making new friends like that just seems like number one, why would I want to, I'm just not in a good place.
And number two, I don't even like talking to people. Okay. Okay. I would see that seems like really far down the path. Let's start with building up your confidence to not second guess. Every decision that you make. Or to help supplement the fact that you've lost your thought partner and your safety net.
Let's just start there. That's a good place to start, but I always wanna drop in the possibility, and sometimes what I'll say to clients or even potential clients is I'm just gonna plant a seed, and I'll literally go like this. If you're watching on video, you'll see my hand gesture, but I'm [00:18:00] like, I'm just gonna plant like a little seed and I don't want you to do anything with it.
I just wanna plan it and I wanna let it grow just over the next few weeks, over the next few months. I would just like to give you this little seed. And I've never had anyone say no. They're always like, okay, yeah, what is it? And I'll just drop in like glimmers of possibility, little glimpses of hope.
For a future that they would love and what could be possible for them. I'm not saying it's gonna happen in 30 days. I'm not saying it's gonna happen even in six months, but I want them to know what's waiting on the other side of the work that they may be doing, the things that they're pursuing. 'cause I don't want 'em to give up getting there.
Isn't always easy. Doing the work isn't always [00:19:00] easy. And when I say doing the work this time beyond doing the grief recovery thing, rebuilding your life is hard. It's just hard.
Rebuilding your life isn't always easy, and choosing to think differently than you thought in the past to do things differently than you've done in the past can be really hard. We get to decide if we want to make change and if we wanna create something different. Believing that on the other side of that change is gonna be something great and amazing and worth the effort it takes to actually get there.
If we didn't believe that, we wouldn't do it, but we get to decide and some people. May decide that they wanna stay in their river of misery, that's okay. They get to decide that too. Life's a little more autopilot. It's a little more easy when you're in the current and you're on this river of misery and you're just like floating down.
But typically you're not gonna enjoy [00:20:00] life and you're just gonna feel that you're still going through the motions.
Final Thoughts and How to Get Started
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So over these next few weeks, as I share about Brave Widow Academy, as I share about the opportunity to be part of that, I really want. You to pause and consider what do you want your life to look like in the next few months? And if you're at a point where the next few months seems impossibly far away, think about just the next few weeks.
What do you wish was different about that?
The thing about it is that you get to decide whether or not you want to rebuild your life and whether or not you wanna do that other half of what is really needed from grief recovery. And if you haven't done grief recovery work, perfect. We're starting another group mid-July. Jump on in. You can jump in and move through that program.
And what I would encourage you to think about is if the Brave [00:21:00] Widow coaching program or the Academy is not the right vehicle for you to get to where you're gonna want to be, what is gonna get you there? So I would love for you to join Brave Widow. I'd love for you to be a part of that. And I know it isn't the best, the perfect fit for everyone.
So if it's not the perfect fit for you, then what is,
because you don't wanna be six months down the road here. We're gonna be six months from now, right At Christmas time. At all the big holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, new Year's, a flurry of holiday events here in the next few months, and where I don't want you to be in six months is where you are today.
Whether you're a newer widow and griever and you're struggling, or you've been a widow for years and you're still struggling, or you have started to move forward, but you're still not quite where you [00:22:00] wanna be. Doesn't matter where you are in the journey six months from now here at Christmas time, you shouldn't be in the place that you're in today.
So what is it gonna be for you that takes you to your next level, whatever that is, that helps you to take that exact next step.
All right. To be among the first of people who hear all the juicy details about Brave Widow Academy and what is coming up in the near future, you wanna be on my email list. Those are the people. After my coaching clients and after membership. The community membership folks the email list is the first place where I go to announce upcoming programs and things that I'll be hosting.
So to sign up for my email list, if you haven't already, go to brave widow.com and you will find a free resources tab, or you can go to brave widow.com/free. FEE Sign up for the. Email list [00:23:00] and you will be among one of the first people to hear about when it's gonna be open, how long it's gonna be for what you can expect on the inside, and get some feedback from people who have been through.
The mastermind version of this program. I'm really excited about it. Also, if you are thinking about one-on-one coaching, I only have two one-on-one coaching spots left, and then we go to a wait list and I've got several people on the consult calendar already. I have had in the last week or so, eight.
People schedule their consults. So I am moving through them as my calendar allows, and I would love to be able to have a conversation with you and see if I can outline for you the exact next steps that you could take to move forward in your journey through widowhood and through grief. To schedule your consult call, just go to brave widow.com.
You can find the link to schedule your consult there. [00:24:00] All right guys, that's what I have for you this week. I will see you next week.
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.
