BW 193 Stabilize Explore Build Expand
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Speaker: [00:00:00] Hey, hey, and welcome to another episode of The Brave Widow Show, and. Guys, I just gotta tell you, I'm on fire today, so I hope your seat belts are buckled and you are ready to go deep because that's exactly what we're going to do. I have been on so many calls, been doing so much coaching and teaching and just having a blast that I thought I'm just gonna go ahead and record my podcast, which will air the week that I am in Italy.
And I thought, what better way? What better time to give value than a day where I have just been giving value all day long. We have had our Momentum Monday calls, which are totally free. By the way, if you are not in the free community, what are you even doing? Okay. I openly a hundred percent freely. Give [00:01:00] access to membership level quality that you would pay anywhere from $50 a month to $200 a month in other memberships you get for free.
No trial, no credit card. What are you doing? Get in the room if you're not in the room. If you wanna be in the room, go to brave widow.com/free. F. Join the free community. You don't even have to put card in, is your email and your name. And boom, you're in. And we do a weekly educational and coaching call called Momentum Mondays.
We have a monthly prayer call. We have a few mini courses to get you started, and a private community with other widows, myself and other coaches where you can get tons of support from other people. 24 7. So I. I have built something next level for [00:02:00] you for free, and here is my secret agenda. Before I've already gone off the rails, and we haven't even started this podcast episode, but here we go.
My secret agenda with this free community is that I want you to step inside the free community and to start. Changing your life to pick up so much value, to pick up so much connection, to learn things that we're actually teaching and implementing with our one-on-one clients, with our academy clients.
All of those folks we're actually implementing those things. That you can start implementing those things. I want you to fall in love with the people in the room. I want you to form friendships that will last for forever so that you have someone you can message or call whenever you're having a hard day.
I want you to meet up with us live and in [00:03:00] person at the retreats that we're gonna be having and form bonds with widows there and then. If you decide you want more support, you wanna go deeper, you wanna expand further, that then you can opt into Brave Widow Academy or doing some one-on-one coaching with myself or one of our one-on-one coaches.
And that by doing so, you're helping to provide support. For all of these free resources, time, energy, effort, hours that's how we're able to do that is because we have people who choose to go deeper and to invest in themselves and into brave widows. So there you go. That's the secret agenda, of why I want you to be in the free community and there's no pressure and no time limit.
So again, get in the community it's brave widow.com/free. Go get in the room.
The Four Seasons of Grief [00:04:00] Framework is something that I developed after years of working with other widows of my own experience and just observing the patterns of what people experience as they move through grief. This is the Rise Beyond Grief Framework and the Four Seasons of Grief, a rawness, isolation, self-discovery, and empowerment. But today, we're not gonna focus on the Four Seasons. Instead, what we're gonna focus on is what? Essentially you're focused on in each season or how I think about grief. We get so many conflicting messages in grief, right? You should stay busy. You should keep moving forward. Don't get stuck, but also take it easy and just give it time.
Time will heal all the wounds. You'll go back to your old life and sometimes it's hard to know what are you supposed to do? Maybe you feel pressure to go [00:05:00] back. To the old you to go back to the person that you used to be. And on one hand it feels hard to do nothing and to rest and do less. On the other hand, it feels impossible to go out in the world and to do new things and and to try new things.
So what are you actually supposed to do? So as I think about how we support our clients. How our clients actually get results, where they actually start rebuilding their life and enjoying it. Again, I am gonna break it down for you in the most simplified way I can of a four step process. Okay? Number one, we're gonna stabilize, two, we're gonna explore, three, we're gonna build, and four, we're gonna expand.
Are you ready? All right, let's dive in.
All right. Number one, stabilize. In the [00:06:00] beginning of grief, there is this pressure to be strong, to stay strong, to be strong for the kids, to be strong for yourself, to like mount up on eagle's wings and to overcome this grief thing as if it's something, if it's the flu. Or it's something that we could fight, like we just need to get over it and we'll be victorious and we'll go back to the version of us that existed in the past.
And the problem is that what our heart needs and what our body needs are actually the opposite of that. Our hearts, our nervous system, our minds, what they need is rest. They need ease, they need safety. So in the beginning we focus on stabilizing, on creating a sense of routine that allows you to heal, to rest, to [00:07:00] accomplish the must dos, the things that have to get done while also.
Allowing time for you to breathe or maybe even do something that you enjoy.
My observation and my belief is that once life starts to feel stable, you'll begin to feel a desire for more, and it may start as a whisper that says. This can't be it, can it? Like surely there's more, surely there's going to be more than this, but a lot of widows feel stuck because they can't see the future.
They don't know what they want in the future. They don't even know who they're gonna be or what life's gonna look like or where they're gonna live or, or what any of those things look like. And the reason that you can't see out in the future is because in the beginning. Of grief, you're in the middle of a hurricane.
How I encourage my clients to think about it, like [00:08:00] you are in the center of a hurricane. There's a storm blowing all around you, and so our goal isn't to be strong and fight the hurricane and try to, tackle it and mold it and what we want it to be. Our goal is to hunker down.
To stabilize, to seek safety, to do the bare minimum necessary to survive. That's our number one goal is to survive. It's to get through the next minute, the next hour, the next day, the next week, to do as little as possible to stay safe while we're in this storm. And then as the storm passes. And the dust settles.
We survey the landscape and we realize everything has changed. Nothing is the same as it used to be. We can see the grocery store, we [00:09:00] see our friends and family going out to eat at restaurants. We see things like going to a doctor's appointment. Everything that we encounter and experience is changed.
It's not the same. It's a constant reminder of what we have lost and how different our lives are. Now,
as our nervous system starts to calm, we start to come down. Out of the chaos, we start to allow. Ourselves to breathe. We get our feet underneath us a little bit. We get into our new routine, and then we realize we don't really like it. We have a new routine. It's not great, it's not wonderful, but we're not in survival mode really anymore.
We're in this weird maintenance mode where maybe we feel hollow, maybe we feel like we're going through the motions. Maybe we feel like [00:10:00] we're floating through life or that we're frozen in time and life is happening around us and to us, but not for us or through us.
And so our second area here is that we begin to explore. And so when I talk with widows. One of the things I really try to reiterate to them is to not beat themselves up, that they don't have the future figured out, but they don't feel up to trying new things, that they're not sure what they want for their future when they're living in that first season of grief, that rawness season of grief, because in that first season, we wanna stabilize.
We wanna allow them to get their feet underneath them. We want them to be able to come out of. Survival mode because when you're in survival mode every day, that that's all you can think about. Like it's you're just trying to survive. You're not [00:11:00] thinking about anything that might be new or different or nice to have new and different.
Feels weird and awkward and unsafe. But there will come a point where once you have some stabilization that it feels like. Surely, hopefully there's more to life than this. What could my life look like? What would I want it to look like? And that can be a really scary place to be. As we move into this next season called isolation and, and we begin to explore, we begin to figure out who you wanna be now, what are the things that you wanna do?
What do you want more of in your life? How can you view these explorations as experiments and adventures and a way that you're just trying different things? So often we think, well, I, I tried to do this and that didn't work out [00:12:00] because then I just felt guilty, or I tried going to a concert and then. I just felt overwhelmed and overstimulated, and that was a failure.
And, and then I tried this over here and, and that worked for a little bit, but then I started to wonder like, uh, I don't know that I really wanna do that. And so widows get caught in this loop. Of, you know, I was trying to explore some new things. I was trying some new things, but then I just felt like I went back to where I started or like I thought I was doing good, but then I had a big grief wave and, and now I'm questioning everything and I thought that I went backwards.
Well, they don't understand. As we are exploring and we're focused on this activity of exploring, is that these are all little experiments. We're doing, we're we're testing things out to see, is this something that I wanna do? Does this fill in alignment with who I've decided I want to be? [00:13:00] What could this relationship of our friendship eventually become?
I'm not sure, like all of these are little experiments, and so there might be things that. Somewhat work out and you wanna try to do more of, there might be other things that you're like, well, that was an adventure, but I don't wanna do that anymore. That doesn't mean that it was a failure or that it didn't work.
You're exploring, you're trying to figure it out. You're trying to get clarity on what it is that you want. You need more pieces of the puzzle to see the fuller picture, but you can't explore when you're living in survival mode and you're trying to stabilize. I see where I'm going here. So we wanna stabilize, then we wanna explore.
And by exploring, you're gathering clue. You're picking up more pieces of the puzzle. You're starting to put the pieces in and to see the picture more clearly of what you are called for. What you are meant for what, what [00:14:00] speaks to you, what fills in alignment with you and with God.
This part can be really fun, but again, it's where most widows end up getting stuck and giving up. It might be guilt, it might be feeling lost, it might be confusion, whatever the reason is. This stage can feel really hard. You're learning how to live a new life that feels weird and awkward and scary at times, but also this is where the magic can start to happen.
You start to catch glimmers of hope and joy, and then you start to envision a future and a future version of you that at one time felt really impossible.
We had step one, stabilize step two, explore. Step three is now where we built. So when we were in the explorer step, we gained clarity of who you want to be and what you want more of in your life. And so now we do the work of building it. We put [00:15:00] in the reps of building the relationships of becoming more invested in the clubs or the classes or the meetup groups that you wanna be part of doing the things that you want to do in your future.
And we build more of it. We create this life that starts to feel full and vibrant and better than what you could have imagined. You actually start to feel excited about the future. Again, something that maybe at one time you thought was gone forever, this is where we get to start celebrating together.
You walked through some of the darkest days of your life you believed, and something that at one time felt hopeless. You dared to try new things and to intentionally build this new life, and now you're starting to see evidence and this sense of, oh, it's [00:16:00] working. Oh, maybe I can do this. Oh, wow. I never thought I'd be able to feel this way.
Like I had a client who recently shared that when someone asked how she was doing before she even thought of what she was gonna say, she just found herself blurting out, like, I'm doing great. I am doing this and I'm doing that, and I'm excited about this thing that's happening in the future. And she's like, I just couldn't believe it just came right out.
Like I genuinely feel that way and I haven't felt like that in years. Imagine being in this, this time of building, of catching those moments of excitement and being able to see how it's possible that you could be enthusiastic about life. You could have something that is good in your life. Life isn't just all downhill from here.
All right, so we had stabilize. Explore [00:17:00] build. And number four is expand. So expansion is what you might imagine that you have a certain capacity, you have certain skill sets, you have certain beliefs, streams, desires, and we're gonna take that and expand it. This is where people began to accomplish things that they never had imagined.
They hadn't even realized it was something they might wanna do. Maybe they decide to get remarried and rebuild a relationship. Maybe they decide to write a book. Maybe they decide to downsize and move into a home that feels. More simple and more peaceful and at ease. Maybe they decide to plug in to a local widows group and to actually lead some of those get togethers and to start to give back.
Maybe this is where widows raise their hand and [00:18:00] say, Emily, I wanna be a brave widow coach. I wanna help other widows. They're willing to go through. Things that are very uncomfortable, things that are scary, things that are intimidating, things that are hard at times, and they purposely choose to do that because they want to expand, they wanna grow.
They call it growing pains for a reason, right? I joined a group this year to write and publish a book because I wanna expand, I wanna grow. It's not easy to spend hours. Building connection, wishlists. It's not easy. Spending hours outlining book chapters and thinking about really how I wanna communicate things and how every word needs to earn its place.
It's not easy to work in a new project when I have so many other projects that are going on at the same time. But I am choosing to do that 'cause I'm [00:19:00] expanding. I'm growing. I am. I am. Continuing to develop. And so as this fourth step in supporting and elevating widows, this is something that's ever changing. I personally don't ever want to be at a point where I feel like I have nothing left to learn. I have nothing left to change. Like I've made it, I've reached the finish line. Like, yes, we all may want something to work towards, whether it's a relationship, it's a goal, it's a learning a new language.
It's a variety of things. We all desire to have something to work towards. However you, you want to think about that, but we don't desire as human beings to have fulfilled all of those things and to have nothing else to aim for. One of the top [00:20:00] happiness experts was asked like what truly is happiness?
Like where do we get happiness from, or where do we get meaning from? And one of his responses. Is that human beings desire progress, growth, change. We don't wanna be stagnant, we don't wanna be complacent. We don't want everything to just stay status quo. We desire growth and expansion and progress.
Now you might be saying, not me. Not me, Emily, I'm, I am. I'm earlier on. I don't want any change. I don't want any growth. I don't want expansion. I'm already at my limit. I cannot take on one more thing. That might be some of you, and that's where I would say, okay, let's get you stable. Because until you feel stable, there's nothing about the future that's appealing.
There's nothing about change that's appealing. In fact, most of the time people who [00:21:00] need stabilization desire the past. They wanna go back to what's comfortable, back to what they knew, even when their spouse was difficult or struggled with addiction or wasn't the nicest person in the world. Not always, not a hundred percent of the time, but many times people still wanna go back to the past because it's what they know, it's what's familiar.
So you will have some outliers of people who don't feel that way. But many times most of the clients I work with looking are looking to the past, but. As we work on stabilizing, as we work on getting their feet underneath them, as we work on bringing them down out of the chaos, letting the storm pass, then there is a desire, a desire for what's next.
And often that's one of the top questions that widows ask me is, what am I supposed to do next? [00:22:00] What now? What am I supposed to do? Now there's this, even without a strong desire for the future, there's this just inner question of well, now what do I do? I, I know I can't go back. I'm no longer in survival mode, but is this is really the rest of my life.
This surely not. Surely there's something more like, I don't know how that would be possible, but surely there's something more. Okay, so anytime it doesn't matter, and again, you have probably heard me say it so many times, if you've listened very long, but time alone will not build a life that you love, time alone will not heal your heart.
It doesn't matter how long you've been widowed. Maybe you've been widowed a month, maybe you've been widowed a year, maybe you've been widowed 20 years. It doesn't matter when you're in this earlier season of grief, regardless of [00:23:00] time. If you've never felt stabilized, then that is where we start. And sometimes it's not even about feeling overwhelmed every day.
It could be emotional healing that needs to happen. It could be a spiritual connection that's lacking. It could be needing to make the routine more robust and more full rather than empty. When I say full, I don't mean busy. A routine and a calendar that feels full and more vibrant than just existing.
So within stabilizing, we have several things that we focus on to help someone feel more stable. But until they, if, until they are stabilized. Their ability to work on these future things is pretty limited, and [00:24:00] the great news is that that's normal. And the even better news is that we can reach a point of stabilization, where then you can begin to explore and build and ultimately expand.
Now, how long does stabilization take? There's not a perfect answer for that. Because there are external circumstances that may happen, right? People may get displaced from their home, people may have other relationships that are really difficult. People may have losses back to back. Like there may be things that happen in life that bring on loads of stress.
Loads of grief that reopen old wounds and old traumas that maybe even have never been processed. So there are a lot of things that could happen. That keeps us where we just, we need to rest. We need to heal, we need to be stable, but as we focus on that, we can know that we will then begin [00:25:00] to explore, to build, and ultimately to expand. All right. I hope this was helpful to you. Again, the steps are stabilize, explore. Build and expand. If this sounds like something that would be supportive to you, I would love for you to join us in our free [email protected] slash free. If you want more structure, more guidance.
A curriculum based approach to moving through all four seasons of grief. You can join us in the Brave Widow [email protected] slash academy. Our next group starts July 13th, and we'll meet on Monday evenings. And we've already had some widows who have pre-enrolled so. If you go to brave widow.com/academy, you can learn more about the academy, submit a quick application, and I will meet with you to make sure that this is a great fit for you and I'll be happy to welcome [00:26:00] you to the Academy
go to brave widow.com today to get started.
Emily: 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
Speaker 9: the Brave Widow Academy
Emily: 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.
