Will I Always Feel This Way?
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[00:00:00] welcome to another episode of The Brave Widow Show. Before we dive into today's episode, we are still enrolling for Brave Widow Academy. The first classes have kicked off, and I would love to see you there. The Academy is a six month group coaching program. It is your plan on how to move from deep grief through rebuilding your life and eventually loving your life. I give you the roadmap. I give you the tools, I give you the strategies, everything that I've used with my one-on-one clients you will find in the academy.
And secondly, grief recovery method. Which you may have heard me talk about many times before is an evidence-based program that I facilitate, it's an eight week program. We have five spots available. This will be the last time that we kick off in 2025. We're starting on [00:01:00] December the ninth, and we're gonna go through the middle of February, taking just a couple of weeks off for.
The holidays that are in the middle there. We'll meet on Tuesdays from one to three Central time from December 9th through February 17th, and. I only have five spots available. If you're interested in jumping in, this is a great time to do it's $400 for the eight week program, and to be able to learn all of the tools, to be able to navigate not only grief, but navigate this new life beyond grief.
It'll give you the tools, it'll give you the processes, and. It'll be things that you'll carry with you the rest of your life and that you will be able to use. So if you're interested in joining, go to brave widow.com and the link to join will also be in the show notes. Alright, let's dive in to this week's episode.
Emily: Have you [00:02:00] ever wondered, or maybe you're still wondering will I always feel like this is this the rest of my life?
Like the question that I had for the long felt like eternity, but it was always like, is is this it this is my life now. 40 or 50 more years of this really. And I struggled because I didn't know what to expect, right? Like people just say, give it time and you'll start to feel better. Or time heals all wounds, or you just gotta wait and you'll go back to normal.
But for me, I, time was not really helping me. Time kind of numbed the volatility and the big emotional ups and downs, but it wasn't helping me feel like. Anything else was really changing. Like I just felt like I was still living my day in and day out. And what I'm gonna share with you is an answer to this question, and at the end you might not like the [00:03:00] answer that I have to this question.
You'll have to say too to the end to see what I have to say. But as I thought about how to answer this question, I thought about it through the Rise framework, which is the four seasons of grief that I talk about. And so that's how I'm gonna share how grief and love have changed for me and some of my clients over the past four and a half years that I've been widowed.
So in that first season of grief, we start with the R in rise, which is rawness. And in rawness, like grief is all you can feel unless you just feel completely numb. You're in survival mode, you're in, get things done. Like I just felt like I had been struck by lightning and. I was just stunned. Like you see the cartoon characters of something like hits them or shocks them, like they're just [00:04:00] stunned and they're seeing stars and they're just spinning around.
I also felt like I was just a living zombie where I had an horrible insomnia. I was sleeping maybe two or three hours. Per night max, I was super productive. I put together lots of furniture. I completed a lot of projects, but during the day I just felt like I, my world was now black and white and it was just weird.
It was like time was going past me and around me and it was like my world had stopped. How dare does everybody else's world keep going on? I felt really incomplete. And so in the beginning, grief is what you feel. It's all consuming. And I've heard this said so many times and I didn't really understand what people would mean when they would say grief is love with nowhere to go and you learn [00:05:00] where to put it.
And when I was early in grief, I'm like, what does that even mean? That made no sense for me. To me, grief was suffocating. It was all consuming. It felt impossible, like a boulderer just on my shoulders. And I'm like, how am I supposed to carry this forever? And people would also say grief doesn't go away.
You just learn how to deal with it. I remember that being super depressing. Really this doesn't get any better. This is just always gonna be the same. I'm just gonna learn how to carry the portable packet of tissues with me really. And. I just remember like this, I just felt like I was trying to survive.
I couldn't sleep, I couldn't think. I couldn't remember what day it was like I still to this day rely a lot on post-it notes to remind me of everything, or calendar reminders to remind me because I couldn't remember from one, [00:06:00] one room to the next or one day to the next what I was supposed to be doing or where I was going, or what I was trying to do.
I heard a different metaphor and this one was more recent. This, I actually just heard this in the last couple of weeks, and I don't even remember where I heard it, but I remember hearing someone said, grief is like a bank account that needs to be spent. It's all of the unsaid words. It's all of the future memories and dreams that are just sitting there like frozen.
And over time what you need to be able to do is to spend like the grief, spend, the grief, the love out of that bank account. And that can be talking about it and processing it. It can be, spending time with your family, it can be doing things that you care about. It can be rebuilding your life, but it's like [00:07:00] grief is all pent up inside.
It's all stored up, and you need a way of being able to spend it. You need a way of being able to process it. David Kessler says, grief demands a witness, meaning grief. Requires for us to process it, a witness, someone else to hear us, to see us, to be able to validate and honor what we have experienced. And so to me, that metaphor, that analogy rang more clearly to me oh, okay, that makes sense in the Grief Recovery Institute.
It taught me that time alone does not heal all wounds. It's time plus action. And so as I start to pull these things together, I learned, started to understand like how do we really think about grief and processing grief and what is required? Because time is a component of what's required, [00:08:00] but time isn't the only thing that is required.
In the early days of grief, so in rawness in this first season, love and grief and all of that is tangled up with trauma. With the last moments we had with our person, with things that we saw or heard in the hospital or as the ambulance was there, or some of my clients as they were performing CPR on their person, it.
Brings on upon us numbness and shock and brain fog and difficulty of just getting through the day. And so in this season, we often have this belief that if I stop hurting, it means that I didn't love them enough, or if I catch myself like laughing at a joke or smiling at something that I thought was humorous.
Our bodies can have this [00:09:00] reaction of oh, how dare you move on? How dare you laugh? How can you laugh or enjoy this moment because your person just died a few months ago? So often in this season of grief, we're like combining grief and love and what that should look like and what it should mean and what we make it mean is that in order to prove or to show that we loved and cared about our person, that means we only experience grief.
We only experience sadness, and we're only allowed like these small little. Moments of joy that we don't wanna tell people about because then they might think that we've moved on and we're over it. I have clients that talk about using their grief shield, using it like a shield. Like I can't let people know.
I can't let people know that the grief isn't as hard as it was, or they'll be expecting more of me. I have to hide behind my shield. So in Uranus. [00:10:00] As you are trying to survive and as you are like in the aftershock, in the aftermath of what has happened to you, I always recommend something that's a little counterintuitive, which is to do less and not to do more.
Your goal in these very early days are to survive. It's not about fixing your whole life. It's not about rebuilding your social circle and doing all of these wonderful, amazing things right at the beginning. And for some people this season might just be a few weeks. For some, it might be a few months.
For some it might have been years, and you're still there. And that's okay. But what we wanna focus on in this season is being able to calm and regulate your nervous system down enough so that you can start to think more clearly so that you can start to do things outside of your comfort zone that don't feel so intimidating.
We also often [00:11:00] believe in rawness that this is the whole story. This is just how it's gonna be the rest of our life. It's just always gonna look this way. And the reality is that doesn't have to be true. Okay? So the first season was rawness. The second season is isolation. And often I think about this as like the people who are around you and supported you.
For most widows, this is when you start to hear crickets. This is when you start to realize that life is still happening, people are still moving forward, they're having birthdays, they're having anniversaries, they're celebrating the holidays, and it still feels like your world has stopped. It's also a season where you're just faced with constant reminders that your person isn't there.
So I can remember so clearly. Sitting out in a my kids were in choir and [00:12:00] band and musical theater, and I remember going and sitting out in the audience and it would, thank goodness, be dark out in the audience and Nathan's parents would be there. And I would just be like clutching my little to-go pack of tissues.
And I remember just. Being so angry at not really God and not how unfair life is, but just angry at can't I just have one nice moment? Can't I just catch a break? Like I can't even sit here. And be a good mom to my kids and smile while they're up there on stage. I have to be over here sobbing my eyes out because all I can think about coming up over my shoulder was just this big reminder of Nathan should be here.
Their dad's not here. Look at those poor kids up there. They don't have their dad. [00:13:00] He's not gonna be here. And guess what? He's not gonna be here for their graduation. He's not gonna be there to walk 'em down the aisle. He's not gonna be there when you meet your grandkids for the first time. And it just felt so cruel.
Like it felt so cruel to just be reminded of this anytime that there was like a moderately happy or. Nice milestone or experience. It was like just somebody twisting the knife, right? Oh, it's not bad enough. I have to be here and feel like I'm alone. But now I also have all these reminders that he is not here, and guess what?
He's never gonna be here. It's never gonna be the way that it was. And on. I call this season isolation because you can feel incredibly lonely. This can feel like almost the lonely middle of the grief experience because people [00:14:00] have moved forward. People are living their lives, and you feel like you can't, like you're being held back.
People stop saying your spouse's name. And you may start to feel like you're almost carrying this secret Ugh, I wanna talk about him, but is that gonna be weird? And people aren't asking, people aren't saying their name and I'm starting to forget what their face looks like. And I'm starting to forget maybe the sound of their voice and, every time I bring up their name, I start crying or I start missing them. And so I don't want people or maybe people, what clients will say to me is I think my friends are just getting tired of me being sad all the time. Do you ever feel like that? I've bawled and squalled and I'm just super sad and I think my friends are just really tired of hearing about it.
Like it's just hard for them to be in it with me. You can have a lot of [00:15:00] guilt about feeling grief too much and being too sad or not enough, like not enough sad. I will hear very conflicting reports from people, right? Where you have the thought of oh, I should be doing better by now. That's probably gotta be one of the most repeated phrases I hear from grieving people.
I thought I would be better by now. I should be doing better by now. I thought I would be further along by now. Why am I still crying? Why is this still hard? Or I wanted to have a good time, or I started to get excited about something and immediately grief shuts it down because of the guilt, right? Oh I am starting to explore something new or try something new.
And instantly it's like, how dare you? How dare you. What are you thinking? What? What are you doing?
This is often why a lot of widows feel like they get stuck because as they're starting to move from season two to three, [00:16:00] they're trying new things. They're going new places, they're getting like these little glimmers of hope or excitement or curiosity, and then it feels like grief pulls 'em back and makes 'em feel like they've gone backwards.
Or guilt really comes in loud and strong.
In isolation. There are also a lot of questions that people wrestle with, like, where is God in all of this? Who am I now? Am I still a wife? Am I still a husband? What is my identity now that I'm not married to this person on earth? Especially if you're an empty nester or you didn't have kids, or you're transitioning to empty nest.
There's a lot of lost identity in, oh, I don't feel like my kids need me. My spouse doesn't need me, nobody needs me, so why am I still here?
So there's this tension that gets created in longing for heaven and longing for being united [00:17:00] with your person. And then there's also the reality of I'm still here. So like, why now? What? What is supposed to be my purpose and what am I supposed to be focusing on? And then there are also thoughts like, if I always feel this way, then what is the point?
And so for me if you've heard my story, I've talked about the moment where I'm sitting out on the park bench out in our backyard, and this was probably 18 months after he had died. And I had left a 20 year career in healthcare just to catch my breath and also to be there for my kids logistically to get them where they needed to go.
I had four teenagers. My life was crazy. And I just remember it had been about six months since I had left my career in healthcare, which very much my identity was tied up in. And I [00:18:00] just remember sitting there and being what's the point? I tried to think about things I might want for the future.
I don't even know who I am anymore. No one can tell me what to do. Like I'd already started interviewing and talking to other widows and grievers, and because that's, I'm a checklist person. I did all the things right? I had gone to counseling, I had read the books. I had listened to the podcast. I had done a lot of those things, and I still felt like I wasn't moving forward.
I felt I was better. I was no longer in those. Really rough days of grief, but I was just at this point where I'm like what now? And why even try to think about the future and what I might wanna do, because what's it gonna matter? He's not gonna be here. I can't even go to my kids' events without being reminded and tortured by the fact that he's not there.
[00:19:00] So things that I would maybe want for the future, what would even be the point? He's not gonna be here, so who cares? What's the point of even trying? And then what am I? Okay. My kids need me. Great. I'll be there for my kids. Of course, I wanna help them. I want them to be successful. But is that just what I'm here for?
It's just to finish raising my kids and that's it. So in my story, I share though that there came this moment, and this is important, I want you guys to really get this. I had to decide that this wasn't gonna be my life anymore. And part of the reason I decided that was because as I thought about it, I thought, he wouldn't, he was so proud.
Of his family, of me, of this life that we had built. We had just bought a house less than a year before out on 37 acres. It was beautiful [00:20:00] views, very peaceful out in the middle of nowhere. And so much of our life was like just coming to the point of what we had wanted it to be. And I remember thinking like he wouldn't want his legacy.
To be that I died with him, that my life ended when his did. And I was like, man, he would really be disappointed if him dying. Was the end of both of us essentially. And I also remember my grief was still really it wasn't all consuming, but when I would. Have those moments where I was in deep grief, it really caused, it was causing physical pain in my chest, in my body.
And I just had this moment where I was like, I physically cannot go on living like this. This is going to be the end of me. This is how people have broken heart syndrome. Like they're just down in this [00:21:00] frequently and what I want you to hear from me is that you also get to decide, okay, so will I always feel like this?
Will I always experience grief? Does it ever get better? The answer is you get to decide, and there are people who I talk to or they comment on the videos and they're like, grief never gets better. It's never gonna be better for me, and my heart hurts for that person. And sometimes I respond and sometimes I don't.
When I respond, and I just, the most loving way I try to respond is it doesn't have to be that way. It can be different, but you get to decide. If you decide that your life is never gonna get better and you are just gonna live in deep grief and life is unfair and your life is over, you get to decide that and you will be right.
You'll be right, or you can decide that some way, [00:22:00] somehow it could be different and you don't see the path and you don't know what it looks like in the future, and you can't even imagine, like, how would that be possible? That was where I was in this moment. How would that be possible? How could I even enjoy life again?
Because Nathan's not gonna be here. So my life is always gonna be subpar to the life that I had. Like I've reached the climax, the summit of this journey. It's all downhill from here. It's just never gonna be any better. It's never going to be good again. So how could it be possible that I would enjoy life again?
I just, I don't even see it. But it requires that tiny little seat of faith. Those blind baby steps forward that say, I don't know how it's possible, but I believe because I see other people, it's possible for them. I see other [00:23:00] widows and widowers. I see Emily, I hear that people, and even if they can't articulate it, because that was my struggle.
I would talk to people and they would be loving life again and having a wonderful time. They couldn't explain it to me. What they did to get there, right? They're just like, oh, it gets better after a few years and you move on. And it's how, like, how long? This is not working. So even if people can't articulate it, it's that belief that, okay, I don't see the path, but I'm going to believe that there can be something different and something that I can enjoy about the future.
And I won't be here, I won't be stuck here. So season three, self-discovery. So we've had rawness, isolation, self-discovery. Okay? So this again, is where people tend to get stuck, and also this is where things start to get a little exciting and where grief and love really start [00:24:00] to change, okay? This is where we start to think about okay.
I've come to terms with the fact that my old life is gone and I can't go back. And also I am, have no idea what life could look like. What would I want it to look like? What would be meaningful and fulfilling to me? So I'm gonna start trying some new things. Hi, Dr. Tina. I am going to start trying some new things and exploring that and figuring that out.
So one of the stories that I share here is it, this was right after this point. I think I'd made this decision like in November that. I wanted to build a new life, and in December, I found my way on the way to Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is like two and a half hours from where I live. And I was gonna see Dr.
Jordan Peterson in person. He'd been all over my TikTok feed at the time, [00:25:00] and I liked what he talked about often. And I was like, oh my gosh, he's gonna be in Tulsa. I can go over there. And this was really going to be the first time that I really stepped out. Was like, okay, I wanna be proactive with doing things with figuring out how I could rebuild a life.
What are the types of things that I would like to do? I'm a lifelong learner. I would love to go to conferences. I would love to go to events where I can learn things. And so I thought this would be a very easy one. I can drive over to Tulsa. I can have an afternoon at the mall, and then I can go see.
Jordan Peterson, and yes, I can sit there by myself, but it will be okay. So I get in the car driving down the turnpike to get to Tulsa. I stop about halfway through to get some gas and get a little bit of lunch. And I remember like I got my McDonald's, I got in the car and I shut the [00:26:00] door and it was just instant tears and it was all of these horrible thoughts like, what are you doing?
Why are you even trying to do something that you might enjoy again? What? What is wrong with you? Like your husband just died a year and a half ago, and you're out here just trying to live your best life. Like these were just really cruel, intrusive thoughts that bombarded me. And so I sat there in my car with like my little McDonald's napkins, right?
Like trying to wipe away my eyes, the tears from my eyes, and just feeling what? What? Why? Why? What is the point? I'm just gonna go and pretend to have a good time. Like just put on my game face and pretend like this is a great day and for what? Who am I gonna tell about this? Like for what?
So I took a deep breath. I waited till the tears stopped, and I was like, Nope, I've [00:27:00] decided. My gosh, if I'm gonna be here a few more decades, my life isn't gonna be a story of me withering away at home. So I've decided I'm gonna do something for myself. I get back in the car and go, I get to the mall, I'm walking around the mall.
This is the afternoon, and one of my kiddos is at school and is having a mental health crisis and the type of mental health crisis that. No mother wants to be getting and. It's very anxiety driven because it's text, right? Like I can't even take a step and it's another text and another text.
And I just remember like I could physically feel the anxiety like climbing up my back and into my neck and I felt my jaw get tight and my face was red and I couldn't see because I was all teary eyed again and again. It was the same thoughts of what are you doing? Your kids need you. You're out at the mall like up, you're a bad mom.
[00:28:00] You left and your kid needs you. You need to go back and get them. This was a waste of time. Like what? What are you doing? All those thoughts came up. I ended up calling my mother-in-law. She went and got my kiddo and everything was okay, but. So then after I go to the mall and I go to dinner with a old colleague that I worked with before, then I go by myself to this convention and I'm, I look nice, I'm dressed up, there's lots of people who are dressed up.
We go to the BOK center is like an event center and I'm standing in line outdoors in the cold and I'm like looking around at everyone else that's standing in line. And I'm like, this is really weird. I am like, I think out of the thousands of people that are here, I am the only one by myself, and it felt like I just had this flashing sign over my head that was like, [00:29:00] everybody look at me.
Look at this weirdo who comes to a conference. All by themselves. That's so weird. And if you have been in those moments, you know how it is when you know you feel like somebody looks at you a little too long, that people are like, oh, that's weird. She's just standing there by herself. That's strange.
And I'm sure nobody was thinking that. But in those moments, you feel very self-conscious. And it was, again, constant reminders. I'm going to the bathroom alone, going to the concession stand alone, no one to help me with juggling the coat and the purse and the like drink and the popcorn, and like making my way to my seat.
And everybody's just chattering excitedly. They're so excited for. For him to come out on stage and I'm just looking around yeah, this is so great, and no one to share that experience with. And so the reason I share that is because when you [00:30:00] are in this third season. Grief. And as you are thinking about how grief changes and how your love for your person is changing during these things, it's really hard and awkward and weird in the beginning of this season, and I want you to hear that's normal.
Okay, so what? Happens oftentimes with clients is they are trying new things. They're trying to put themselves out there. There's a lot of self-consciousness and anxiety around talking to people that you don't know going to a new place. All of those things, there's the guilt of like, why are you doing this?
Why are you trying this? People are gonna think that you're just, I literally would have people say, oh, you're just living your best life now. And I'm like, what have you forgot? Like the past two years of my life, I'm just living my best life now What? All of those fears and doubts and uncertainties, [00:31:00] and then you have ways of grief that make you feel like you have gone back to the beginning, that you're starting from square one.
That are reminders that, oh, you thought you were doing okay, but you are not doing very good. But what I want you to hear is that's very normal, especially at the beginning of this season, okay? Doesn't mean you, you cannot unhealed what you have healed. You cannot go backwards. So this volatility in this season is very normal.
Grief during the season starts to change, and in the beginning you don't trust it. There are firsts that might surprise you. Things like a memory of your loved one that doesn't ruin your whole day. A laugh that comes from the soul. And makes you feel alive again. And for probably at least two [00:32:00] years. I didn't know if that was ever gonna be possible.
No one could actually tell me.
So for over two years when I would smile or laugh, it's like the smile that doesn't reach your eyes. Or it's the laugh where something's a little bit funny. But if I was on the happiness meter, my capacity for happiness was like the most, was like a six out of 10. And I'm like, man, I don't even know if I could get above that, like if it would ever be get better.
But the first time I had a laugh that felt like an eight or a nine or a 10 kind of takes you back. You're like, whoa. I felt alive in that moment. I felt like a human being, not like a zombie anymore, and so you might experience a dream, you might experience something that gets you excited about the future.
Again, like this is the whole goal in this season is to find those things, to tap into those things [00:33:00] that allow you to feel excitement and curiosity and wonder for what could be. What lights you up inside. But as you start to feel, some people call 'em like glimmers of hope. As you start to feel that, then you can also have right behind it this panic that's but what does that mean?
What does it mean that if I am excited about something for the future, that I just like this life better Now, does that mean I don't love my person anymore? So what I teach my clients is how to expand their capacity, how to grow your capacity for both and right, like sometimes I'm remarried now, I've been, I'm married again, almost two years.
And sometimes people will comment and say things like oh you can say you're happy again because you're remarried. And so now you're no longer sad about, having lost your person. And I'm like, [00:34:00] what? Being remarried just has the opportunity to be wonderful and also open up a whole can of worms.
It does not solve. For the grief and the loss of your person, or the fact that you don't love your person and you've moved on. Okay, so I teach my clients how they can feel two really big emotions that are opposite but true. So one could be I love my life that I had. I love the time I had with my person, and gosh, I really still miss them at times.
And also. I'm excited about the life that I'm building now. I love some of the things that I'm doing now, and I'm doing things now that I never would have done without having gone through this experience for a variety of reasons. And does that mean I don't miss Nathan? Nathan and I don't miss the life that I had?
Absolutely [00:35:00] not. I do, but I'm able to hold both of those things true At the same time, you can love the life that you had. You can love the life that you're building or that you have now. You can carry grief and you can carry sadness and sorrow, and you can carry moments of joy and moments of excitement.
Excitement without feeling like you're betraying your person.
A lot of times society, or even we feel like if we move forward that we're leaving our person behind. Okay, it sounds like we're closing the door. That was the end of an era that we're replacing them, we're erasing them, we are leaving them behind. But the reality is that you get to move forward with your person.
You'll always have an emotional relationship with them, whether you realize it or not. So when I experienced things, I think [00:36:00] about oh, would Nathan have liked this? Would he have hated this? What would we have talked about with this? There are still experiences that I have with him. It just looks very different now.
And whether it's their love, it's their values, it's their quirks. It's the things that they would say all the time. It's things that they loved or hated, or whatever it is. You can weave those into your life. You don't have to stop talking about your person. I still to this day talk about Nathan. And be like, oh, he would've loved this.
He would've hated that. Or remember that time he did this? That was so funny. Or man, he made the best Thanksgiving, Turkey. I really missed that. And in the beginning it's, it is hard to talk about that and for it to feel normal, but over time it does become more normal. You can bring them forward with you in your holiday traditions.
In the things that you keep or you tweak or you stop doing [00:37:00] in the habits that you have in your own life or with your kids or into the legacy of what you're doing through a career change, through volunteering or through creative work or a business that you do.
Many widows, I don't even know the exact statistic, but. For many widows who are working at the time their spouse died, I wanna say it was close to 80 or 85% would end up changing jobs or changing careers completely if they were still working at the time their spouse died. And there are a lot of reasons why that happens.
But as they are figuring out their new life and what they want that to look like, it's fairly common that you're also thinking about how you are weaving your relationship into this new life going forward and how that looks different
over during this season. And over time, your relationship with your person [00:38:00] also evolves. So in the beginning, it. You might be focused on the actual death. You might be focused on regrets or things that you should have done or could have done or wish you had done. But over time, that changes. And so over time, that inner voice that we have starts to shift from feeling like they're saying to us, you should have done more.
You should have tried this or that. To feeling oh, I'm so proud of you. Keep going. You're doing great. The voice that you hear of what they would say to you or what you tell yourself changes from regret and longing for the past to, wow, look at you. You're doing so great.
Self discovery is an amazing season of grief because it starts out so hard and awkward and [00:39:00] weird, and you have to be brave and you have to do things that you have a lot of resistance to sometimes in the beginning. And also this is really where you are going to grow, where you are going to realize oh.
I am still here for a reason. I do still have a purpose, and even though I may not perfectly know what that looks like yet, I'm starting to get little glimmers. I'm starting to get an idea of what that's going to look like. I also notice during this time that the waves. People talk about grief coming in waves, like waves of sadness, waves of grief, that those will start to change and they will start to feel like waves of love or waves of gratitude.
And so when I experience things or when I have those moments that in the past I used to be hit with a big wave of [00:40:00] sadness. Now it just feels like a big wave of love, which I know sounds a little cheesy, but this is how it is, and I just have this sense of gratitude of Ugh, I'm so glad we had over 20 years together, right?
At 20 years of being married, just short of hitting that 20 year mark. I'm just so grateful. I'm grateful for the time that we had. I'm grateful that I had a great relationship and that I got to experience that and that we were parents young and all of those things. Like I just get to look back and feel grateful instead of yearning for the past and always feeling like I need to go back.
Okay. So we had. Season one, which is rawness, season two, isolation, season three, self-discovery. And then season four is empowerment. And this is where you are living a life where both of you still matter. Your person is still part of your life. [00:41:00] You still talk about them. You still honor them in whatever way is meaningful to you, and now it just feels more natural.
In season four, this is when you are, you become very clear on who you are and what you want for the future, and you are going after it. This isn't about chasing happiness. I think about happiness on the emotional rollercoaster of oh, I'm so happy, and life is great, is like, happiness is way up here.
Sadness is way down here. And so what we are aiming for is in the middle. We're aiming for a life that is grounded and peaceful and purposeful. A life of intention, a life where you feel driven forward. Some way. And so you have moments of joy and happiness, and you have moments in sadness, but instead of this big volatility up and down, it starts to do a [00:42:00] little bit more like this, and you know how to come back to the middle.
And when you're super happy about something, you know you're gonna come down to the middle. And when you're really sad, you know you're gonna come back up. And so the volatility becomes less and less violent than what it is in the beginning.
When Nathan died, that none of that made sense to me. And in fact, one of my first widow friends that I met over on Instagram, Ms. Wheeler,
she has seven kiddos. Most of them still young, still at home. Her husband had an amazing ministry and he was serving, literally serving homeless. The homeless the day that he died. And I remember her asking me like, how does that make any sense? This person that served God every day and who was literally on his way to feed the homeless.
And he got stopped short of doing that. And I'm like, it doesn't make any sense. It doesn't. We [00:43:00] live in a broken world. We live in a world that's unfair and harsh and cruel. And so even when these tragic things happen, God doesn't expect us to just brush them aside and be like, oh, God is still great and amazing, even though my spirit is crushed.
God isn't asking you to erase the past or to erase the love that you had for your person. He wants to walk beside you and walk beside you as your love for your person expands, and how you show up with your kids, with what you're called to do with your community, and. In a life where your person is still honored, you still may experience waves of grief and happiness and all of the things, joy, connection, purpose, all of those emotions, and you're still walking side by [00:44:00] side with God.
So how I think about now as grief now in where I am and being in the fourth season of grief and what I see in other people is I really still like this idea that grief is like a bank account that we get to spend. Maybe the dollars are, the currency is love and the currency is honor, and the currency is what we want to give back into the world.
Whether it's how you show up for yourself, whether it's how you pursue a dream or a calling that fills much bigger than you. Maybe it's in how you serve and create and love others in a way that honors them. For me. What I found to be very helpful was helping the person behind me. So when I was in the early days of grief, the first few months I was in all the Facebook groups, right?
And I was just a [00:45:00] lurker. Okay. I just lurked in all the Facebook groups and I would see, what people would respond. Like I would read all the comments to what people would say about people who were posting. And the unfortunate thing is, even when I was only three or four months out, that there were people joining these groups, like every day, like my spouse just died.
It's been a day, it's been a week, it's been a month. And within three to four months, I was like, I can help that person. I can provide just validation. I can tell them I'm sorry that they're here, that they're not alone. That the widow community is one of the most like amazing mind blowing communities that I've ever been a part of.
The generosity that people have who have gone through something tragic and horrible, yet have generosity to wanna give back and help others and [00:46:00] make it a better experience for other people is like incredible. I know I can help that person. So in the beginning, it was very helpful to me to be able to help the people who were behind me.
Over time, that became more and more people as now I'm over four years out. From the time that I experienced of I've walked this path, I've had these experiences, I've been able to help some other people along the way, and so to me, this is how I spend out some of that grief and that purpose and that.
Beauty out of the ashes. That purpose from the pain, however you wanna think about it. But that grief is not going to rob me of my life. It's not going to rob me of being someone who makes a positive impact for others. Like I was a leadership coach. I, in my healthcare career, I was a senior vice [00:47:00] president with thousands of employees, and I loved nothing more.
Helping coach people up, helping coach them to the next level. Then looking at someone who believes they're an underdog and telling them like, you are capable of so much more. You have potential. You can do great things. You can step up into this higher calling and to speak life into people. I love that about my job and I miss that for a while after I left, and now I still get to do that.
It just looks very different.
It just looks different when you speak life into someone whose heart feels broken and they're hurting, or they're unsure, or they're doubting, or they feel lost and they feel unclear, and you're like, I can help you. It will be different. You have potential for, you have potential for a life. So amazing that if I told you what it could look like, you wouldn't believe me.
It's just weird to say because in the beginning [00:48:00] you're like I don't want an amazing future. I just want the past. But I'm telling you, you are capable of creating a future, co-creating with God, a future for yourself that is more abundant, more expanded, more. Amazing than you can even imagine right now.
So whatever you can imagine right now, it could be better. And I pray for that even still today. God, there is something that I want. There is something that I would like to have in my life, but I trust that you can. Grant me something even better than what I can imagine. And so in that way, I live in surrender of believing that your will, your plan, your purpose is something way greater than anything that I could imagine.
Alright, so we're coming back to the question of this whole experience [00:49:00] together, which is, will I always feel this way? And do you remember what my answer was? You get to decide. It doesn't always have to feel this way, but you can choose that. Like you can choose to stay where you are in grief and there is a season like that's why I have the four seasons of grief.
This isn't me telling someone who's early on in grief like, you need to go all do all these things and create this great life for yourself. No, there is a season and a time for mourning and for grief, and we need to give that season. Its time, but you don't have to live there for forever. The grief and the love that you have for your person both will change as you move through each of these seasons, and so I want you to know that.
You can come to a point in your life where every happy moment isn't what I experienced at the choir. Concerts, [00:50:00] every happy moment isn't ruined or overshadowed by grief, where every time you try to do something new or you laugh or you get excited about the future, that guilt doesn't squash you back down.
You can come to a place in life where you. Experience those things. You can love your person deeply and still build a life that feels worth living. It doesn't dishonor them or the love that you have had have for them. It just honors the love that you shared and the time that you had together.
Okay, so with that. I just wanna share a couple of reminders with you. Actually. Just one, mostly several of you have heard me talk about Grief Recovery Method. Our evidenced based program here that I facilitate, and we have another group that is starting on December the ninth. They're gonna meet every Tuesday from one to three central [00:51:00] times.
So we have some folks from our academy who are starting the Grief Recovery Group, and we have about four or five spots that we'll still be able to have in grief recovery method. So if you've been thinking about doing this it's an eight week program. We typically meet for up to two hours each week, and we're gonna take a couple of weeks break over the holidays.
So we'll run from December 9th through the middle of February. But I would love to see you there. I would love for you guys to get to meet some of the awesome. Men and women who are part of the Brave Widow Academy, and to be able to help equip you with the tools to navigate grief, not only through the next few weeks and these next season, but for the rest of your life.
Like what you will learn in Grief Recovery Method and the tools that you'll learn to use, you'll be able to use the rest of your life. So if you're interested you can go to brave [00:52:00] widow.com. You can send me an email or depending on where you're watching this, just shoot me a DM and I will let you know more.
If you're tired of feeling lost, 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 Brave Widow
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.
