Still stuck? REPLAY 3 Step Widows Plan to Finally Move Forward
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[00:00:00] Hey, hey, and welcome to a bonus episode of The Brave Widow Show. This podcast episode is a replay of a live event that I did on Monday called, still Stuck in Grief, the Widows Three Step Plan to being able to finally. Get unstuck and move forward. I think you guys will find it really helpful.
I also am doing like a flash offer, something very quick and I wanna make sure that you were aware of that because I only have five spots available. So if you wanna hear the offer, listen until the end or skip ahead to the end. And I would love to see you in our next round of Grief Recovery method and in our next round of the Brave Photo Academy.
So here's the replay. Enjoy.
If you're tired of feeling lost, [00:01:00] lonely, and second guessing every decision, my coaching program is meant for you. I help clients find clarity, create real connection, and build confidence up for good. Inside the Brave Widow Coaching Program, you'll learn real tools that you'll be able to use for a lifetime.
If you're ready for the next step, go to brave widow.com to book a consult. It's free. It's no pressure, and it can be your brave next step to healing your heart and building a life you love again. Go to brave widow.com today to book your consult.
Rachel from Oregon, welcome Zoom, user, New York. Welcome. Welcome everybody. Paula, Becky, Helen. I'd love to know in the chat where you guys are from. [00:02:00] Crystal from Cape Town. Oh, that's amazing. Hi Crystal. Okay. We are right at the top of the hour and we have a lot to go through.
So I'm gonna dive right in and I'm gonna start with a prayer. Um, hopefully this is gonna work.
My zoom's having some my. YouTube's having some issues, but hopefully we'll get going there. Okay. All right. We are gonna go ahead and say a prayer and then we will dive in. So, uh, dear Heavenly Father, thank you for our time together and just the ability to educate and articulate on what has been helpful to me, what has been helpful to other of my clients, and what.
People that are joining us for this, um, training will be able to learn and walk away with, [00:03:00] and we pray for your wisdom and your guidance as they make decisions and navigate challenges. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Okay. All right, so if you are with me in Zoom, um, you will notice that there is a chat button at the bottom of your, uh, screen.
So feel free to put comments, ques comments, not questions, comments, emojis, reactions, like I can't see your faces. So the chat is a really good way. I can kind of read the room and if you have questions on Zoom, just put 'em in the q and A box. And what it does is it creates a whole list. So that your question doesn't accidentally get missed or skipped over.
And Barbara, hi from Long Island. Glad you could make it, uh, on the Zoom. Okay. Go to brave widow.com and sign up on the homepage for this event. It should [00:04:00] be a countdown on there and it will email you the Zoom link and that will be the easiest way to send it to you. Okay, so today what we are gonna go through, so I'm gonna walk through my story, um, briefly, for those of you that don't know me, then I'm gonna talk about the problem and why, um, we feel like we get stuck in grief and what the biggest challenges are that I've seen widows face.
Then I'm going to give you the solution so we have the problem. We got the three step solution. That's why you're here. Right? And then I have some invite and bonuses and as always, I have a fast action bonus for people who take action this week and I'm doing something I've never done before, which is the ability for you to.
Earn back your entire investment by doing [00:05:00] some, some simple steps here. So I'd like to share that with you here in just a few minutes towards the end. So, um, for those of you who don't know me, um, I, if you, if you would've asked me four years ago today, I. Never could have imagined that I would be sitting here talking to you, streaming to you.
This is very out of character for me. Um, and just over four years ago, it was July of 2021, I watched as an ambulance, came and took my best friend and my husband, um, away from our house. We both had been sick with COVID That turned into double pneumonia. And I watched for the last time as, uh, the ambulance took him.
He, he couldn't get outta bed anymore. And I worked, had worked in healthcare for almost 20 years and I told my kids like, [00:06:00] oh, don't worry. The ambulance, they're taking dad to the hospital and he is gonna be fine because that's where people go to get better, right? Um, over the next. 11 days, we would, uh, he would be in ICU about half that time he was placed on a ventilator.
And at some point I would be called into the hospital and called into the family room, and the physician would come in and sit on the other side of the table and there would be no warmth, there would be no kindness, there would not even be a smile. In just a very cold and flat tone, the physician would simply say, we think your husband is brain dead.
In that moment, my whole world stopped spinning and I tried to wrap my mind around how we got here, like how was this even possible that [00:07:00] we were here? In this moment, and how was I supposed to go home until our four teenagers that their dad had passed three weeks later. It was supposed to be our 20th wedding anniversary and we were supposed to be celebrating with family and friends.
And I had even if you can see my zoom screen, you can see I'd even bought the t-shirt. 20 years married to my best friend. So. Three weeks later, I still had family and friends over. But instead of that being a beautiful celebration of our marriage and love, I faced that day crushed as a young widow and solo mom.
Now to these four teenagers.
A little over a year later, I had this memorial garden built, um, that you can see here on my screen. [00:08:00] And this, this garden was supposed to be like this beautiful tribute to Nathan and to the life that we shared together. I even bought this little park bench, um, and put it out there, and I was like, oh, it'll be so nice.
I'll, I'll just sit there, listen to the waterfall and it'll be great. And instead of being comforted by this garden, I was tormented. I sat here and was just reminded that Nathan was never coming back. And I remember on one fall day in particular, I was sitting right on this bench and I was like doubled over like holding my chest because my, I had been crying so hard like that.
Guttural from your stomach. Horrible sounding cry that my chest was super tight and I thought my heart was gonna explode. Like I had that thought right then and there. This is it. Like this is it. This [00:09:00] is how it happens. This is how people don't, do not survive a broken heart. And so I cried until the tears just like ran out and I sat back up and I just remember looking around and.
Thinking about our four kids and thinking about like how sad it was that even though I was still alive, I technically didn't feel alive on the inside. I still felt very hollow and empty and like a shell of the person that I was, and I just couldn't figure out like, how do people get. On the other side, like what does it do people get on the other side?
Like what does it take
when, when was I gonna start feeling better? When was it gonna life gonna feel normal again? So I remember sitting there on that bench and thinking about my kids and thinking about how [00:10:00] I didn't want a future. I didn't want anything. It didn't have anything I wanted to look forward to, and it was in that moment that I decided that no matter what it would take, I was going to figure out how to get on the other side of grief.
And so I remember sitting there and closing my eyes and saying out loud, Nathan, I love you and I miss you, and I can't live like this anymore. I have to be able to move forward. So I opened my eyes and I went inside. And I completely dove in to learning every single thing I could about why grief was so hard.
Why did it seem like it was taking forever and nobody had it? Had good advice, and everyone had conflicting advice. I interviewed hundreds. Of other widows to ask them what helped them? How did they get to a point where they felt better, the [00:11:00] ones who didn't? Why? Why didn't you get to a point that you felt better?
I launched The Brave Widow Show and we are over 160 episodes in, which is amazing. I've interviewed tons of widows and industry leaders in the grief space and learned so much. I found the grief recovery method. So if you guys know the Purple book, I love this purple book. I, um, immediately signed up for, um, a class to, to go through the program, the Grief Recovery Method program, and I ended up getting certified by the Grief Recovery Institute to teach that program.
So, um, I went through that and I went through the faith-based, um, faith-based coaching academy as well to learn not only how to. Navigate, grieve, but how to start rebuilding life again. I'm so happy and blessed and humbled to share [00:12:00] that I have done some of the most amazing things since. Nathan has passed.
I've healed so much. I've gone on incredible journeys. I got to meet Dave Ramsey in person and thank him for his work. I, um, started investing in real estate, learning how to do that. I became a public speaker. I've traveled to five new countries like this. Life is more beautiful and amazing than I had ever imagined it even could be, and I'm happy to share that I even.
Was remarried a year and a half ago to the most supportive and amazing and wonderful person, and gained a bonus son in this process. My approach to helping widows and to serving widows, um, primarily comes from embracing both the key components of grief, recovery, and emotional [00:13:00] healing with the principles of psychology counseling.
Spirituality and coaching. Um, the founder of the Faith-Based Coaching Academy is a 20 year practicing therapist and clinical psychologist, and her program was the only one where I got to learn all of those things together. A lot of times you learn about coaching, you learn about counseling and about spirituality.
It's all very like, oh, we put those in different buckets. Um, but this, this was very different. So. For me and, and my approach is that we start with grief, recovery and emotional healing, and then we begin to build our life or rebuild our life on top of that. Okay, so. You'll probably wanna know, are you in the right place?
Should you be here? Is this gonna help you? So you are in the right place if you are tired of feeling stuck and lost, and you desperately want clarity and connection and confidence. Maybe [00:14:00] you've tried therapy, you've tried grief groups, you've tried giving it time, but it just feels like you're still hollow on the inside.
Ultimately, you're tired of life happening around you and happening to you, and you want to be able to believe that a beautiful and better future, um, is ahead of you. You are not in the right place, okay? If you do not want to do anything different, if you would rather wait for time alone to heal you. If you're looking for something that's a super fast, quick fix, if you are not willing to invest time and energy, and if you very much live in a mindset of I can't, like, uh, I can't, I can't do that.
And aren't open to trying anything new, then this would not be for you. But I don't think that's any of you guys because you're here. [00:15:00] So how many of you have heard this? Put it in the chat. Oh, I just need to give it more time. I just need to, I just need to give it more time. I just need to keep waiting. I just need to keep praying.
Or people will tell you like, you just need to give it time and you'll feel better. Like time heals all wins, right? And. The, the challenge with time, people are saying yes in the chat. Oh yeah, yeah. The challenge with time is that time compounds more of what, what you're experiencing, right? Like time on its own doesn't heal you.
It's time plus action that heals you. Right? So time is a component. There's no magical pill I can give you today and tomorrow. You're not gonna ever be sad again. It does take time. But on the other hand, if all you do is wait and [00:16:00] try to give it time and don't do anything else, then time can actually complicate the healing process.
Just like if you were to break your arm. If you break your arm and you say, oh, I'm just gonna wait on time, time's gonna heal that arm, right? I mean, most of us wouldn't do that. Most of us, if we break our arm, we're gonna go to the hospital, we're gonna go to the doctor, we're gonna get it set in a cast so that it can heal properly over time.
But if we don't seek attention, if we don't take action and we just wait for time to heal our arm, our bone can actually heal back. Incorrectly. And so then to set it correctly and allow it to heal properly, the bone has to be re broken in many cases and reset to heal. Okay. So same thing, same concept is happening here with time.
So I just wanna quickly share with you a story [00:17:00] about Soia. Uh, Soia is someone who was on. The Brave Widow Show, episode one 10 if you wanna hear her full story. But, um, what I love about her story was she came on the podcast and talked about how, um, she believed like many widows, that she just needed to give it time.
And when her husband passed, her kiddos were five and eight, and so she just was. You've heard people say, oh, just be strong. Just give it time. Just go through the motions. So for three years, that's exactly what she did. And as she shares in her story, three years later when COVID happened and she found herself at home more and more with her kids, they began to have more honest conversations and they would tell her like.
Hey, we're proud of you. You just keep trucking along. You're doing, you know, you're, you're getting things done and, and [00:18:00] you're moving ahead, but we just feel so disconnected from you and this crushed her. So she really began to evaluate. What time had done with her suppressing her feelings with her, distracting herself from her emotions, and she even says like three years later, I realized I actually feel worse now than I did when I lost my husband.
So she began to, um, process her grief. She began to do journaling and meditation and some other things, so I'm happy to share that her story has a beautiful, happy ending to it, where now she also helps other people through grief. But if she had just kept waiting on time, time alone would not have helped her to feel better, and she would've missed out on more time with her kiddos.
I love this quote here from the Grief Recovery [00:19:00] Institute that says, the key to recovery from grief is action, not time.
Okay, so why do we get stuck in grief? Why does it feel like we can't move forward? Or like we take a step forward and we go back? Do you guys ever feel that way? Like you are like, oh, I'm taking a step forward, and then I'm knocked back down, or I think I'm doing better and then I have a sad day and it's like I've started all over again.
I'm back to the beginning and I just can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. Do I need to do to be able to move beyond grief? So after all of my research, after coaching other widows, after my own experiences, I've tried to boil down the main problems that keep us feeling stuck into three main problems.
So one is that we are lost. We don't know how, like what are we [00:20:00] supposed to do? I know I could go to therapy. I know I could go to a grief group, but at some point, like what do I do after that? You know, a lot of my clients come to me and say, I've tried counseling, it did help me, but now what do I do? Like, is this the rest of my life right here?
The second thing, the second problem that we have is that we're unsure. So we lose our confidence. We second guess a lot of our decisions, and it really keeps us in this place of like not knowing what our next step should be. And then when we go to take that step, we're questioning, oh, should I do this?
Should I not do this? Should I do it? Should I not? And the third one is just crushing loneliness. So I'm gonna walk through each of these.
So the first one is feeling lost. How many of you guys have felt that way that you were lost? I know for me, I felt like a tiny little boat in the middle of the ocean. Untethered. [00:21:00] Unguided and unsure like, which, which way do I even turn this boat? I have no idea. So have you ever thought something like, is this normal?
Is it possible to enjoy my life again? Barbara says, oh yeah. I thought I was doing better until this happened, or am I doing this too soon? Am I doing this? Not enough. Is this what's supposed to be happen? Rachel says directionless. Yes. Like, so directionless. Um, this feeling of being lost is, is difficult.
So most widows have tried therapy. They've read the books or the podcast, listened to the podcast. They've done grief groups and they've tried waiting. 80, 85% of people that I meet are at this point where they're like, okay, I have tried something, but I don't know what I need to do next. I want someone to tell me what am I supposed to do next?
I feel lost. Right? That's kind of the sentiment. So I wanna share with [00:22:00] you a story about one of my clients, Karen, she's been on the podcast. She's been very open. So what I'm sharing with you is nothing that she has kept confidential, but when I first met Karen back in November of last year. She was overwhelmed with solo parenting and she had adult kids that still rely on her, but she felt overwhelmed with their demands, with the demands of what she was expected to do at work.
She really struggled with boundaries and people pleasing and feeling like she was giving everything to everyone else, and she's just running on fumes. And it even got to the point where her workplace sat her down and said, you are gonna have to go to counseling. We are gonna mandate all these things for you because your performance is suffering.
And if you've ever [00:23:00] been in a work environment. Heard about a performance improvement plan, and then, you know what that means. It's like, this is the time you're either gonna shape up or we're gonna help you find something else. Type conversation. This is the point that I found her. This was, I think just over three years since she had lost her husband.
She just on a, on a impulse, signed up to join Brave Widow in um, on a Black Friday. Thing that we were running. And within three months she reached back out and just said, shared with me that her employers had sat down with her and were like, what are you doing that's different? Like she had gone to counseling and her counselor told her she just needed to move on, so she quit that.
She had tried grief groups, but that didn't resonate with her. When she started Brave Widow and we went through grief recovery method, and we also did some one-on-one [00:24:00] coaching, she finally felt that someone had seen her, someone heard her, and she was able to process a lot of that grief that she had kept pent up.
So within three months, she already had not only. Been able to process her grief and feel differently in how she showed up in everyday life. But other people noticed so much so that her employer said, we are gonna keep paying for you to go to this coaching because it is working, and whatever you're doing is working.
We love it. Keep going for it. So she was able to rebuild her confidence, learn how to regulate her emotions and how she responded to people around her and. She also worked on resetting boundaries so that she didn't feel like she was the one constantly giving and not carving out time for herself. So one of the things Karen said about Brave Widow and about, you know, feeling lost is that this has been an answer to a [00:25:00] four year long prayer to have found you and responded to your call.
It really has changed my life and gave me a new outlook on life in an extremely short amount of time that I never expected, but it happened, and here we are. So thank you. So that's an example with Karen.
Our next example here is, I don't know what to do. Okay, so this is where we're talking about having lost your confidence. So tell me in the chat if you've ever thought this, I'm broken. I second guess Every decision. My person used to talk through decisions with me, and now I just don't know what to do.
I'm afraid to try new things. Uh, when we lose our, our person, a lot of times we've lost our Karen's like, yep. Well, a lot of times we've lost our thought par partner. Yeah. Rachel says, I lost my biggest cheerleader. Barbara says, [00:26:00] yes. Yeah. You lose not only your thought partner, but also kind of your safety net.
So even though, um, maybe you were the big decision maker in your relationship, you lost that ability to just bounce off ideas off another person, to, um, talk through it and feel good about carrying the weight of that, that decision and, and the consequences of that. And so it causes us to second guess a lot of things.
So I'm gonna tell you about my client, Michelle. So, when I first met Michelle, this was last summer, she had lost her confidence and her purpose, and you can watch her whole story on my website. Brave widow.com, but she talks about how her husband was her confidence, like he was the person she looked to for validation, for encouragement, for [00:27:00] like, just feeling like she was making the right decisions.
She was completely overwhelmed by grief. She was also raising four teenagers. She questioned her identity and who she was now, and she had a very inconsistent routine. So everyday life was just exhausting. Karen says, yeah, he was my best friend. Yeah. And so when I first started working with her, she was just exhausted every day and felt like she was just on this endless treadmill of getting done that day, what needed to be done that day, but somehow losing herself.
So Michelle and I ended up working together for six months and. I taught her what it takes to truly rebuild up confidence. Okay, con, we don't wait to do things until we're confident. We learn how to do things, afraid how to, to make decisions [00:28:00] even when we're nervous. How to set up a board of advisors and how to build up confidence in your ability to be resourceful.
Your ability to figure it out. It's not about having all the answers. It's not about knowing how everything's gonna turn out and having that control, but we learn how to move forward and surrender and not knowing in knowing that we're just gonna have to figure it out. And so we worked a lot on her confidence and also her ability to have a routine where she could show up for her family.
So I'm also very happy to share. That, um, six months later we did what I call a celebration call. So Michelle got on a call with me and, um, for all my one-on-one clients, we track like we have them rate. Five different areas that they're working on. And one of the areas she was working on was confidence, and I think she went from like a three in the beginning.
She redid her confidence a three and then ultimately ended up being a [00:29:00] nine. And we were just talking about like how far she had come in that period of time. And so Michelle was able to reclaim her voice. Literally she, um, started singing as a hobby. She discovered throughout our time together that this was like a talent God had given her, was singing, and she has a beautiful voice, and she was able to build that time into her routine in a time where when we first met her, she felt guilty for having anything in her routine or her schedule that was for her.
Because dishes were more important, laundry was more important. Taking the care of the kids was more important. Like carving out time for her was not important. But we revamped her routine and she started to do things that she enjoyed. She learned how to establish boundaries. Um, she learned how to build up her confide.
And um, now she, uh, I actually got to go and see her just a couple of months ago in Miami [00:30:00] with one of my other clients, Lily. They both were graduating from the same coaching academy that I graduated from two years ago. And so it was like a full circle moment where I got to be there with them and they were graduating to become coaches in different areas and it was just an awesome.
Experience. And so now she's much more consistent with her routine and she has energy for her kids instead of feeling like her kids are constantly draining her energy. So, um, one of the things Michelle had to say was that you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Our third problem is loneliness.
So the statistic that I read is that in the first year. Widows will lose 75% of their social circle. Have you guys felt that, you know, in the chat? Yes. Yeah. I think mine was more like 95%, but [00:31:00] um, I also didn't want anyone around me. Barbara's like, ain't that right? Yeah, it is. So we often think things like, well, where did everybody go?
Or no one understands how I feel. I don't even feel like the same person. And part of the challenge in this journey is that you actually aren't the same person that you used to be. And so family and friends that you knew, they may be looking for you to go back to the person that you were, Rachel says somewhat, but have support.
Amazing. And so it can be a very lonely road because if someone hasn't experienced this sort of loss and trauma, then their ability to understand is, is limited. And so what we really need is for people to keep showing up when we are very limited in what we can give back. So I wanna share, um, a story about Sue, who is [00:32:00] one of my clients here.
So when I first met Sue, this was almost three years ago, she's a OG brave widow. I almost said brave widower, but that's not the right term. She's an og, brave widow client, amazing person. Um, when I first met her, she hated being called a widow. Do you guys, have you hated that before or felt that maybe even now.
I felt like it was a black label, and I thought, I, I understood why she hated it, because I thought widows were like 95 and old and sad and just sat on the couch and I didn't, other than sitting on the couch, didn't feel like any of those things. And, um, she was very unsure about the future and any hope for the future, and she felt very lonely and disconnected so.
In my time with her over these past three years, she's been very faithful and amazing in the brave widow com, uh, community and the things that we do there. [00:33:00] And in Sue's experience, she learned how to venture out, so she started traveling to new places on her own. We think, oh, travelings can be a little bit scary, but then traveling by yourself to a place you've never been that, wow, that's even more scary.
But she's gone on some really amazing adventures. She's written a bestselling book and she's co-authored two other bestselling books. Um, telling her story and just talking about grief and moving beyond that. And she's super active in a lot of communities now, so she no longer struggles with that same loneliness, that same feeling that people don't understand.
She's plugged into, uh, her calendar's probably busier than mine. She loves being involved in several different communities and on personal, um, growth and learning. So I love that for Sue. So Sue says, I used to hate being called a widow until I met Emily. [00:34:00] So our problems again are, we're a lot, we feel lost, we feel unsure, and we feel lonely.
So as I've worked with many of my clients. I've really tried to boil down like what are the things that widows like, it's the same problems, it's the same journey through grief and beyond. Grief over and over. And how do I create a roadmap so that people can know where do I go? What's coming up next? What should I expect?
Like I wanted like a. A blueprint or a roadmap of how, like what should I, what comes after this part? You know, what do I look forward to? So I created a, um, roadmap that's called the Four Seasons of Grief, and each season starts with a different letter of the word rise. So the first season is rawness, where you're just in survival mode and you're [00:35:00] overwhelmed with to-dos and keeping things organized.
Let me know which one sounds like you. You are just super overwhelmed. You have difficulty keeping things organized. You're really just trying to make it through the day, or maybe your grief is very new, and so you're in this first season of grief called rawness. The second season of grief is called isolation, which is you're in maintenance mode, so you have your feet underneath you.
You have a new routine now. Your biggest question is, what's next? Like, what am I supposed to do now? Is this it? Like this is as good as it gets? The third season is self-discovery, so you're trying new things, but you may often feel like you're going backwards or you're getting stuck and you may have even processed some grief, but you just feel like you're not moving forward, like you're just stuck Now in this.
Um, status. Then the fourth season is [00:36:00] empowerment, where you're in manifestation mode, which is like you have a clear vis vision for your future. You know what you want, you love the path that you're on, and you want something to help just propel you forward even more. Isolation and self discovery. Oh, okay.
Good. So as I think about most, Cindy says she's in the third one. Most widows who find me are exactly where our Zoom user said that they were. Step three for me. Wanna move to step four? Perfect. So about 85% of the people that I work with are stuck between season two and three. Cold is says raw. Yeah. Um.
And the reason that we get stuck is because season three, it, Margaret says number two, season three is all about trying new [00:37:00] things and trying to figure out how you rebuild your life. But with that newness comes a lot of awkwardness, um, feeling weird, you know, maybe you're doing some things that you and your person used to do together and that can bring up a lot of grief.
So season three is, can be exciting. But equally it can be as difficult because it is bringing up a lot of those thoughts of like, I shouldn't have to do this by myself. I wish my person was still here, and then I wouldn't have to do this by myself and everyone's gonna be looking at me. And so in the beginning of season three, it feels very volatile because you can be excited about doing something, but then also grief is like coming back up and you're, you're kind of getting hit with these waves of grief.
So a lot of widows kind of get stuck in this loop right here between two and three, where they just feel like giving up. Like, why should I bother trying to do new things? My person's not even here. Why do I keep doing this? [00:38:00] It's still lonely. Yes. Cindy, Deborah, I just joined this conversation to understand my sister's grief.
You're welcome, Deborah. I think it's amazing. You wanna understand her grief. Okay, so the problems we have, we're lost, we're unsure. We've lost our confidence and we're lonely. So if we map that over, then what is the solution? Like, what have all my clients had in common that they needed one? So we're going from lost.
To having guidance, someone to guide you, someone to tell you, here's what to focus on next. Here's what will help you where you are, be able to step forward. We wanna go from feeling unsure to feeling confident, so being able to rebuild up our confidence and making decisions, and a confidence in ourselves.
Confidence in being able to try new [00:39:00] things. And then we wanna go from feeling lonely. To feeling connection with other people. And so one of the main things that we focus on in Brave Widow is how to meet people and make friends how to, um, navigate small talk and all the awkwardness that comes along with making friends and how to even reignite maybe some relationships that have kind of fizzled out in the past, but ultimately for you to have that connection.
So what does that look like? With Brave Widow or in day-to-day life. So you're lost. You need guidance. And inside of Brave Widow, we have coaching, like direct coaching and feedback. You're unsure. You wanna rebuild confidence, it looks like taking action, and I teach you how to do that and coach you through that.
You're lonely. You want connection and inside of Brave Widow, we [00:40:00] have community. So you get to walk this journey with other people who are on the same path as you with other people who understand in their own way what you've been through. Gina says it's been five weeks since my husband died in an accident.
I'm crushed and feel like I can't breathe. I'm sorry, Gina. It does feel like that in the beginning. It's incredibly overwhelming. My heart goes out to you.
So what I, um, what I have just to share with you today is I wanna tell you a little bit about Brave Widow Academy and how the problems that you're struggling with plus the solutions of what you need and how I have structured Brave Widow Academy for you. So there are a lot of grief recovery groups that are out there.
And to me, we start with grief recovery, which I'm gonna walk you [00:41:00] through, but then we don't stop there. That's really the beginning of our entire curriculum of what I teach you, which is how to rebuild your life in every area. So inside Brave Widow, whether you do coaching or the academy, would take you from feeling lost to feeling clear about what to focus on next, from being unsure to being confident.
From feeling lonely to feeling connected. And through the academy there are six main modules or systems, curriculum, whatever you wanna call, where we start with healing your heart and grief recovery method. We teach you how to escape survival mode. So Gina, you know, you're probably still very much feeling in survival mode with chaos to call 'em blueprint.
Teach you how to rebuild your confidence in the self-trust system, how to meet people and make friends, how to find purpose and [00:42:00] meaning, and then how to create a life that you can love again. Now, in the beginning, that seems super far away, like super impossible. And for many of you, you might be thinking, that's not even what I want.
What I want is to go backwards. What I want is my old life back. And so, um, in the beginning, that is very normal. But the Academy really is created to help someone know how do I go from being an ultimate devastation and feeling overwhelmed and feeling lost, and feeling like I'm in survival mode all the way through.
I can see my, my future very clearly. I know what I want and I'm working towards that. And I know in the beginning that feels like a huge leap, but that's why it's built out. Um, this is actually, this academy is a six month program where we walk you through each of these modules. So I just wanna reiterate that you don't need more time.
[00:43:00] Sometimes widows will come to me and say, oh, I just need more time, or I just need to keep waiting, and I'll feel better. But I've already shared with you that it isn't time alone. That's gonna help you having a plan, having a community of other people, having guidance and coaching, that is what will help you with being able to get unstuck and to stay unstuck.
So. Originally, today I am doing something a little different and so I've kind of teased out that, um, in some of my videos and things that I did in the beginning. So normally I would be inviting you to join the Academy. The six month program we had our first Academy students that started three weeks ago.
We have 15 people in that group, and it's just. Been an amazing experience. So normally I would invite you to the Academy, which is a six month program, a structured curriculum, and I would walk you through that. Um, [00:44:00] but diving into the academy I know might feel like a huge leap and you're like, I don't know, I wanna commit to that.
It's like six months. It's a big leap. It's uh, it sounds like a lot. So today, what I want to invite you to. Is to join me in starting the Grief recovery method. So the Grief recovery method, that's my purple book. If you've been following me for very long, I talk a lot about this. Um, I've shared it many times on my video on the podcast, everywhere else.
It is the only evidence based grief recovery program, or it was the first one in the world, which is awesome, and it's one of the things that. I've said many times has helped change my life and helped really change the life of many of my clients. And so instead of asking you, inviting you to a big six month program, I wanna start by inviting you to join me in grief recovery method.
Okay? So [00:45:00] what does that look like? So in grief recovery method, what we do. We have weekly group calls over an eight week period, so we're gonna run these on Monday evenings. This is my, one of my first times doing an evening class. So we're gonna start on September 8th and we're gonna go through October 27th and the calls will be in the evening time.
It'll be um, five to seven Eastern, four to six central, three to five mountain time. Two to four Pacific. Oh, I did that with Michelle. Did you like it, Barbara? I hope it was helpful to you. Um, and normally when I do grief recovery method, if I'm doing it one-on-one with somebody, uh, normally the investment there is, um, close to a thousand dollars because it's very deep, deep transformative work.
But what I wanna invite you to is not to invest a thousand dollars. It's not even to invest half of that. I'd like. [00:46:00] $400, but it's 201 time payment for the eight week program and on top of that, okay, if you schedule, if you go to brave widow.com or DM me and I will give you the link if you will schedule your consult call with me anytime between now and Friday.
Then I'm gonna give you a bonus to win back your money. Okay? So basically you'll be able to. I have four things for you to do, and if you do these four things, I will fully refund your money or I will apply it towards future coaching or the academy if you want to continue. Okay. Or you can get your money back.
The book is yours to keep. Either way. I supply it to all my clients. So it doesn't matter if you sign up and then you're like, oh, I'm just gonna go to, to, you know, one class and then I didn't show up the rest of the [00:47:00] time. You don't have to send the book back, it's just, it's yours. Okay. So with, um, winning your money back here are the four things, the only four things that you need to do.
So we have eight group calls. You just need to show up to seven of the eight group calls. So again, that's September 8th through October 27th. On Mondays in the evening, you need to show up to seven other calls. Every week we have a little bit of reading and a little bit of homework, and this is, it's just part of the, the program.
This is how we learn. And you might be thinking, I don't wanna do a lot of reading. I have to tell when people start the program, I have to tell them to not read ahead. Okay. It's literally in my script of what I have to tell people. Like, stop reading ahead. Just only read what you were assigned this week to read, because once you start reading it, it's really good.
Okay. So yeah, reading and homework does not sound great, but I, once you get into it, it'll be hard [00:48:00] to stop because it's very helpful. Then we also set up a one-on-one call halfway through, so we can track your, do like a check-in on your progress and at the end to celebrate that you completed the program.
And then I just ask that you leave an honest review. So basically it would be showing up to seven of the eight calls doing the assignments, which people that go through the program do them anyway, showing up to a couple one-on-one calls so I can help make sure that you're, it's, it's. You're doing well in the program and then leave an honest review online.
Once you've completed that, I will refund your money or you can decide to apply it towards the academy or to future coaching. So if that sounds like something you're interested in, then um, I would love for you to go to brave widow.com and just set up a consult call with me. It's not a big sales call.
There's no pressure. Essentially what I do on a [00:49:00] consult is I have a structured process of asking you, um, some questions and I learn exactly where you are. Remember that roadmap I showed you help you figure out exactly where you are in that roadmap. And I come up with your plan of what I would focus on next to help you be able to move forward.
So whether or not you sign up, you get all the notes, and you get the plan of what you should should focus on to be able to get unstuck and move forward, and to stay unstuck. Um, and then if you decide to join, it's $200. I don't think I've ever offered it at this low of a price or with the ability to win your money back.
Um, and you don't need to have your consult call this week. You just need to have it scheduled sometime this week for the future. Um, and I will make sure that I honor that bonus for you. So, um, again. If you wanna know who this is [00:50:00] for, this is for the person who's feeling lost, who doesn't know what's next, who wants to move beyond survival mode, and who wants like action oriented guidance.
And, um, I would love to have you join me. So if you have any questions, go ahead and drop them in the chat or put them in the q and a box and I'll be happy to answer, um, any questions that you have. Ultimately, if we focus back on our solution, you need guidance, like clarity, guidance. You need a plan. You need the ability to rebuild confidence.
And third, you need a sense of connection and community. Brave widow's not the only option for any of those things. Like you can go learn all that on YouTube, um, if that's what you wanna do, but I think it's the most thought out from a to Z [00:51:00] experience that you can go through to learn how to do all that and to get guidance along the way.
