BW 195
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Speaker: [00:00:00] Check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check.
Check, check, check, check. Hey, hey, and welcome to another episode of the Brave Widow Show. Pizza. Hey, hey, and welcome to episode number 195 of the Brave Widow Show. What would it feel like if your future self six months in the future could tell you today...
Pizza. What if today you opened your email and you got a video message from yourself six months in the future, and that [00:01:00] version of you in the future had the brightest smile on their face, and they said, "Look, I don't have much time to make this message for you, but what I wanna tell you is not to give up hope.
Keep taking one step forward at a time. Hope is coming." And that was the end of the message. What would that do for you and where you are right now? What kind of hope might that give you? What kind of curiosity might you have about what in the world has happened between now and six months from now, which is November, for me to have s- this message back to my past self?
Well, while time traveling isn't a reality just yet, I recently had a group of Brave Widow Academy students graduate this week, and I [00:02:00] asked them this question. If you could go back in time and tell yourself six months ago, back in November when we first started, right before the holidays, right back in the fall, if you could send a message to yourself, what would you say to the person who you were?
And so today, I'm gonna share with you some of the things that these students had to say about their experience in the academy. I'm going to paraphrase it so that it's anonymous, um, whenever I need to from some of their direct quotes. But then I'm also gonna share with you some statistics about who is normally in the academy, what type of people are in there, what do they normally experience.
And then at the end, I'm gonna share with you something that I'm doing that's very special for people who join this next round of academy. Before we dive in, I wanna do a quick reminder. We have our in-person Brave [00:03:00] Widow Retreat that's happening at the end of June. If you, if, if three days of reconnecting with yourself, recentering on where you are in your journey right now, and having hope for the future, and feeling ready to rise to this next season that God has called for you, I would love for you to join us at our Brave Widow Retreat at the Running Y Resort in Klamath Falls, Oregon.
You can learn more and you can join us at bravewidow.com/retreat. We have an early bird sign up for folks who sign up by the end of the month. For the retreat, you're gonna save $200 off the cost of the actual retreat. So go to bravewidow.com/retreat to sign up for that. All right, so let's dive into what some of our academy students have had to say about the academy, and even the bigger [00:04:00] takeaway.
L- right, like, thinking about why I wanna share this with you. And it's not just to tell you how amazing the academy is, although I feel like I can't ever express how life-changing the academy actually is. It's not just for me to help convey that. But what I want your takeaway to be, no matter where you are in your journey, is that it is possible for, a few months from now, you to be able to look back on your life and to feel that you wish you could encourage yourself.
That when you're going through a time of deep grief or overwhelm or uncertainty, that when you start to come out on the other side and you start to come to a place where things are clear, they feel less overwhelming, you're beginning to have more hope, [00:05:00] that you wish you could instill some of that back into your past self of like, "You're gonna get through this.
You're gonna figure it out. You're gonna... Like, it's gonna be okay." You wish you could tell yourself that, um, in the past. But unfortunately, we can't. And so what we do know is that through our widowhood journey, we go through periods of overwhelm, we go through periods of uncertainty, we go through seasons that are really hard.
And so where, if that is you today, I want you to be able to sink into this belief that there is hope coming. That you will get through this and come to a place where you can start to have hope again for the future. You can start to be excited about life again for the future. And as I'm sharing with you some of the things that our graduates have said, I would encourage you to [00:06:00] imagine that your future version, the version of you at the end of this year, is sending you these messages back to you today to encourage you, to give you hope, to give you faith that life a few months from now isn't gonna feel the way that life feels today.
I really wish that I could, and maybe I will. Maybe I will find a group brave enough to let me do this. Maybe I'll see if my July group will let me do this. But I would love to capture pictures or just a small video clip of when people first start joining Brave Widow Academy calls, and contrast and compare that to pictures and video clips when people start coming the last couple months of the Academy calls.
Because there is a stark difference in people who [00:07:00] come. When they first start coming to calls, they're feeling a little hopeless. They are... Their future looks very bleak. They're uncertain about how the academy's gonna go. They don't know about all these strangers they're meeting for the first time, and there's a lot of timid reservation.
We experience over the next six months lots of changes, right? So people are going through, people are having some wins, they're having some challenges. We're walking this season of life together. But it has never failed that at the end of the academy as we have people on those calls, you can physically see and feel the difference.
Smiles are brighter. People have something they're excited about or they're looking forward to. They're reflecting on things they're really proud of that they've accomplished over the last six months. Like, just the energy is so different. [00:08:00] And even this week during our graduation, we had several people that mentioned that, and they would point out different people on the call.
Like, "Oh, I remember when you used to show up. This is how you would come to the calls. And I think about how you show up now, and this is how you show up to the calls." And it's just different. And I even said, like, this program is life-changing not because I have some magic secrets, right? But there's something life-changing about being in close proximity and community with other people who are on a similar journey.
Of learning, of growth, of transformation, of building a new life. There is something life-changing about doing and building life in close community with other people. Okay, one of my favorite quotes is by Jim Rohn, and he says y- [00:09:00] the, "You are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with."
And certainly, I don't know that people are spending the most time in their life in their Brave Widow Academy group because we spend about two hours a week on the call, um, just for that particular call. But I think that quote is so applicable to what we do. Because when you surround yourself with other people who are vulnerably open about the struggle, who are also working on healing and processing, who are also working on learning and implementing what they've learned and actually growing, you can't help but learn and grow and heal too.
Like, it's just a natural momentum that happens when you're in the room. I tell this to people who wanna change careers or people who want to do things like when I started on my real estate investing journey, I went and got in the room with other people who were on the same journey. And it's like, [00:10:00] by default, by being in the room, by being around those people, by hearing the things they talk about, by doing the things that they are doing, you can't help but also be carried by this current of flow, be carried by the momentum.
Like, I have some people that are like, "Emily, I just wanna ride your coattails." Like, "You are going and doing so many things, and I just want you to bring me along." And I'm like, "Grab on, let's go." It happens when you're in close proximity to other people who are doing those things. So if you aren't experiencing that today, if you are struggling with loneliness or overwhelm or feeling like you are stuck, I just encourage you to, to look at who are the people that you're in the room with?
Who are the people you spend the most time with? Is that helping you? And maybe you're feeling incredibly lonely, and maybe you don't have that [00:11:00] community. If nothing else, join the free Brave Widow community. We have a, a community that's forever free. We have weekly calls that happen every week to help encourage and support you and elevate you in your journey.
And you can get to know other people in the room. So even if academy feels a little advanced, even if you're not sure, even if you're not ready for that right now, come be part of the community. Get in the room with other people who are also learning and growing and healing together. It will help you. All right, so let me share some of the things that our graduates have said.
I asked them, "If you could go back in time to when we started the academy back in November, what would you say to yourself? Like, think about, like, just take a minute to think about where you were, things that were top of mind for you." And because we have a system that tracks people's [00:12:00] progress week over week over week, it's easy for them to look at their, what they were writing about, what they were struggling with, what they were working on at that time.
It's a great way to memorialize their journey. So they get to look back at that and go, "Oh, yeah, I kinda forgot I was struggling with this," or, "Oh, yeah, I forgot I did that," and really see where they were in the journey. So here are the things they said that they would go back in time and tell their past selves.
"If I could talk to myself back in November, I would say, in May, you will be less stressed, less anxious, more rested, and brighter. You are not stuck." Wow. Imagine if you got a message from yourself six months in the future that said, "Six months from now you're gonna feel less stressed, less anxious, more rested, brighter.
You are not stuck." How encouraging would that be? All right, another person said, "I would have told myself, you will [00:13:00] have a new sense of life by the end of April or the beginning of May. You're gonna have more clarity and even the start of a new, uh, relationship with your closest friend. There is hope coming."
And I love that quote so much I wanna put it on a T-shirt. There is hope coming. Another person said, "Looking back, I would just remind myself, don't give up hope. Keep taking one step forward after another. Hope is coming." You see the theme here? Hope is coming. Clarity is coming. Less stress is coming. Okay?
Another person says, "I would just reiterate how God is so good, and He's working in our lives. Whether you feel it or not, He is working in the background on you." I interpret this as God has not [00:14:00] forgotten about you. You might feel like He has. You might feel invisible. You might feel like there's no more plans, there's no more purpose, that, you know, you kinda reached the peak of your life, and now it's all downhill.
But what this person wanted to convey is whether or not you realize it, God is working for you on your behalf towards something. This person also shared that if they hadn't taken the leap of faith to join the academy, their life would've been very different than if they had. Another person said, "I had to learn patience and silence.
I didn't just sit there and wait. You have to have forward momentum. You do the work with understanding that things will unfold in God's time." So the essence of [00:15:00] that, as I think about it, is we take steps forward, we take action, while also doing our best to be patient and waiting for God's timing.
Recognizing that time is a component of what's needed, but time isn't the only thing. Okay, I asked people to talk about what they were proud of. I asked them to share maybe it was a courageous decision. Maybe it was something they did, looking back they're like, "I can't believe I did that," or, "I'm just so proud that I did this."
What were you proud of that you accomplished while you were in the academy? And here's what people had to say. "I'm most proud that I followed where I felt the Lord leading me. Even when it looked like I was downsizing or moving backwards to other people, I trust that He has things for me there." Another person said, "I'm proud of my determination and willingness to do the hard [00:16:00] things, have hard conversations with friends, boundaries, trying new things that terrified me, like going on a first date, and learning things about myself I thought were impossible."
We call it Brave Widow because we do the hard things. We do the scary things. We do the things that we think, "Ah, that's impossible," and we feel all the uncomfortable feelings, and we do it anyway. We learn how to be brave and do those things. Another person said, "For a long time, I didn't care how I presented myself to the world.
But now I'm dressing differently, I feel better, and I actually care again." Now, to the outside person looking in, oh, I'm dressing better, I feel better, I care again. Maybe that sounds really small. But to you, to the [00:17:00] person who needs to hear that, you recognize how big that actually is. One of my clients who's in a totally different academy group, she shared that the days that we have the academy for a long time were the only days of the week that she would get out of bed- She would fully get ready, put on clothes, do her makeup, look really nice, and she's like, "Just doing that, I feel so much better."
And Academy has given me that, like, structure, that anchor in my week where I know if, if no other day I don't feel like getting up or getting ready or, or trying to look nice or doing any of those things, I know for Academy I wanna show up. I wanna get ready and, and look nice when I come on camera. Now, listen, we're not gonna judge you if you don't, right?
And you can have your camera off. That's totally fine. But for the person who struggles with caring [00:18:00] about wanting to look nice or getting ready or just caring about anything at all in their day, to have something that gives them a reason to feel like, "Oh, I care about this. I want to do this. I want to show up in this way," that's a big deal.
To have something that gives you hope again, to have something that brightens your day or brightens your week or makes you feel alive again in the slightest way, that's a big deal to somebody who's really struggling with that. Okay, we talked about community, the community of the people in the Academy, and so here's what people had to say.
"I've just appreciated the warmth and kindness of everyone and being able to witness the growth. I can see the change." And this person was talking not only about themselves, but the growth and the change in the other people in the room, which is really inspiring to see. Another [00:19:00] person said, "I don't know where I would've been without this program.
The Lord would've found a way, but he has definitely used this in my life in so many ways." Amazing. Another person said, "Even if our love story had never happened, there's no way I would still be as stuck as I was six months ago after going through this program." And another person shared, "We're always talking about your program to everybody from now until forever."
And I'm deeply, deeply grateful for that.
One of the things that I shared at the end of the call is that one thing that I see every round of the Academy that we do is that how people show up to the first few calls is completely different to how they show up at graduation and the last few calls. There is just something [00:20:00] so healing and transformational about walking a journey together with other people on the same path, suffering together, celebrating together, learning together, growing together.
When you are in proximity to other people on a similar path, there is going to be progress some way, somehow. It isn't always perfectly clear, right? I've had people before who've been, you know, midway through the program, and they're like, "Oh, I just feel behind," or, "I feel like other people are moving forward faster," or, "Why do I still feel stuck?"
or, "Why do I still feel like this is so hard?" And, you know, I look at this person and, and we have a little... We have some comparison going on, right? Like, everyone's doing better than me and I'm doing awful. And there are a lot of reasons why we can feel that way, right? 'Cause we tend to compare the lows of our [00:21:00] life to people's highlights.
We tend to compare our progress to the picture in our mind of how it's supposed to be, and that creates a gap, right? And we also tend to dismiss the progress what- that we've made or the challenges that waves of grief can bring, which are totally normal. But we tend to think that that means something's wrong with us because we're going through that.
But what I love about the academy is there's no widow left behind, okay? And so even when midway through the program I talk, I may talk with a student or two who's struggling or feeling frustrated or feeling like they can't participate or they, they can't do as much as they want, right? We level set with where they are, and I let them know, like, there's no pressure.
You have to learn it all and get it all done in six months, right? So if for some reason life [00:22:00] happens and you couldn't come to the calls and you're just feeling really overwhelmed and you feel left out and you feel like, oh, maybe I made a mistake because I invested in this thing and, and I'm not even using it.
I'm so wasteful and, and I'm wasting my money. Like, if that happens, then we work together to place you into an academy group where life has started to calm down, and you can plug in and feel that you're getting everything out of the academy and more that you wanted. Or if you're feeling stuck, that I or one of the coaches jumps in and we meet with you, and we help you get your feet underneath you and help you get unstuck.
Like, take the one next step forward. And the goal of the academy isn't that in six months life is perfect and you're fully healed and you nevel- never struggle with grief. The point of the six months is that you have learned, you have grown, you've healed, you've made [00:23:00] lots of progress, and most importantly, you have been equipped with the tools, with the community of people, with resources so that for the rest of your life- For the rest of your life, you can use the tools that you've learned.
You can use the resources that were given to you. You can coach yourself with the life coaching tools that I teach you how to use and that we practice how to use in the academy. And that's the goal, is not that you're dependent on the program for forever, or that you always have to be in that group, or that you have to have another coach to help you through it, but that you learn the skill of h- learning how to coach yourself, learning how to navigate really tricky and difficult situations.
That's the goal, is to equip you to be able to do that, and to give you the gift of a community of people who are cheering you [00:24:00] on, who are in your corner, who are praying for you when things get really hard, and they're validating you, and they're encouraging you. Like, those are the goals and the outcomes of the academy, so that you can change your life for the rest of your life.
I still coach myself every day in some way with the tools that we use. And it makes my life so much less emotionally volatile, much more manageable, much more peaceful. Not because bad things don't happen, not because thoughts about grief don't ever come up, but I'm able to sink and to be grounded into the peace and into the confidence of, "Okay, I'm gonna figure this out.
Oh, this is, like, a really hard grief moment. Here are the things that I can do to, like, whew,"[00:25:00]
to be able to feel the grief and also still feel joy. To be able to hold both of those things at once. Like, being able to manage through that are the goals of the academy. And so I would love for you to join in our next round of the academy so that these messages, these sentiments, are things that six months from now you could be saying to the version of you today.
Don't give up hope. Keep taking one step forward. Hope is coming. Change is coming. You will start to feel more excited about life again, more interested in living life again, more hopeful that life could be different in the future in just six months. And it doesn't matter how long you've been widowed. If you've been widowed three [00:26:00] months, if you've been widowed 30 years, it doesn't matter.
All right, so let me share just very quickly a little bit about who is typically in the room. Of the academy. These are statistics we've pulled of all of our academy students together, okay, through our last graduating class. So as we have more people added, the statistics may change over time. 30% of our students still have kids at home, whether it's teenagers, young adults, small children.
About a third of our members have kids still at home. About 40% of widows, this is mind-blowing, crazy amazing, okay? 40% of our students, while they're in the academy, in the six-month window, okay, have moved or are moving or are building a house. So we [00:27:00] have people who have bought a home, sold a home, built a house, or are actively in the process of working with a realtor to do those things.
40%, that's a lot. That's a big percentage of students, which is why I talk about moving houses a lot because that... Think about that, right? Like, when people say, "Oh, I don't know if I have time for academy, I got a lot going on, and I have, you know, just some big things that are happening," like, that might be why you need to join the academy, 'cause we will help you through all of that.
We will help walk you through all of the overwhelm, and the uncertainty, uh, and the emotional volatility, uh, if you want to sell your house, if you need or have to sell your house, sometimes we don't have an option. If you're looking for a new home, if you're wanting to move or relocate or whatever it is, we will help walk the journey with you.
40%, that's [00:28:00] pretty high. Um, 50% of our group have traveled for the first time by themselves or in a small group to, um, do things, which is amazing. 14% have gone to new countries. Exciting if you love travel like me. And, um, 57% of people worked on relationships or had struggled with relationships, or boundaries, or negative family behavior, that sort of thing.
We're, we're close to 60%, they're at 57%. And 63% join the academy within their first two years of loss. So a good portion, but also just a little over half, um, of our folks are within their first two years of widowhood. So- That tells you a little bit about who is often in the room. And in the academy, we keep it to [00:29:00] under 20 people in each group so that you have the opportunity to do life together, to get to know each other, and to share those experiences.
And so our next round of academy is starting on Monday, July 13th. They're gonna meet in the evenings from 5:00 to 7:00 PM Central Time or 6:00 to 8:00 Eastern Time. And we have five people, five widows already signed up and locked in for our academy that starts, um, in July. So I would love to invite you to be part of that room.
And there are a couple different ways that you can learn more or apply, okay? So you can go to bravewidow.com/academy, and you can fill out an academy, um, application. It's just a quick application that helps me make sure that you are, would be a good fit for the academy and that the academy's a good fit for you with where you are right now.
[00:30:00] Sometimes I recommend that people start with something a little bit different that we have, or that they start with our free community so that they're really ready to dive into academy when it will best support them. Or they might be interested in something else, and we go down a different path. But I can help you make sure it's a good fit for you.
If you fill out an application, it just takes a few minutes. It's very short and straightforward. Um, or if you're like, "I don't really know. This feels really overwhelming, Emily. You guys have a lot. I don't know what's right for me. I don't know if this is good for me. What, do you help people like me?"
Sometimes people send me emails like, "Oh, I don't know. Do you help people like me?" Um, especially some of our widowers, we, um, not every group, but I would say most groups we tend to have one widower in the group. So we've got at least one of the guys with us. And so yes, if you are a widower, you're welcome to join academy, um, and be part of that as long as [00:31:00] you don't mind seeing pink a little bit every now and then and you don't mind being with an amazing group of women.
Um, you are definitely welcome to join us. Um, but we keep it to 20 people or less so that we can get to know people in the group. And so if you're not sure whether it would be a good fit for you or you're not sure this is the right time or you just wanna learn a little bit more about what we do and what your expectations should be, you can also schedule a call with me, bravewidow.com/call, C-A-L-L.
And this is not a high-pressure sales call, okay? I have a standard set of questions, and I'll link you to the video, um, where I walk you through what a consult looks like. So if you, like, wanna get ahead of the game and be like, "What's a consult? That sounds scary," um- I'll link you to the episode for that.
But essentially, I walk you through a standard set of questions so that I know more clearly where [00:32:00] you are, and I can recommend for you a right next step, even if it's not academy or even if it's not something I offer or do. I recognize that what we do at Brave Widow isn't for everyone, and not everyone is for Brave Widow.
So I will help you be able to sort that out, and I don't pressure you to make a decision on the call. I don't pressure you to pull out your credit card, right? Like, I want you to join because you feel called to join, even though it might feel a little scary. This is, like, something new and you're like, "I don't know.
This is something different. What will people think? What will they say?" Like, all of those things are normal, right? You're like, "Oh, this feels like a big deal," and I'm, like, taking the leap. And again, that's why we call it Brave Widow, 'cause we do things that are scary, and we are willing to feel the uncertainty and do things anyway.
But I don't want you to do it from a place of [00:33:00] pressure or convincing or me telling you this, these are your only options. Like, obviously, it's not your only option. I was able to f- to figure out how to start rebuilding life again. But I created Brave Widow because I wish this is what I would have had. I wish I would have had more of a streamlined and clear roadmap of how to go from healing my heart to building a life that I could love again, and I wish I would have had someone who could have helped me or guided me or pointed the way forward.
And so I did have people in my life who helped me, but I felt like I had to piecemeal everything together and take something from this person and take something from this person and, like, try to fit all the pieces of the puzzle together. And now we have a very clear roadmap, step by step, with tools and resources that I've learned from a variety of different places, of other programs I've invested in to learn as much about grief [00:34:00] as I could, to learn about life coaching and rebuilding life and creating a life that has purpose and meaning in it when life feels pointless and hopeless.
So that's what Academy is, is a place where you can follow that roadmap and you can be part of this community who's also doing these things with you so that you can learn from each other, you can encourage each other, you can inspire each other, and you can share in the heart and in the struggles along the way.
So again, if you would like to learn more or apply for Academy, go to bravewidow.com/academy. For anyone who applies or schedules a consult by the end of May, I'm also giving as an early enrollment bonus four private one-on-one coaching calls with any of our Brave Widow coaches that we have. So if you would like additional support, and you can schedule them throughout the whole program or you [00:35:00] can schedule them all back to back, whatever works out best for you and your coach.
But we are gifting you, bonusing you four private one-on-one hourly coaching sessions with our Brave Widow coaches to bridge you between where you are now and jumping into the Academy in July. So July is gonna be such a great time to join the Academy because that is going to prepare you, prepare your heart, prepare your mind for the holidays that are coming at the end of the year, for the big dates, the milestones, the things that you may experience by then.
You could be much more hopeful, much more focused by the end of the year having gone through a bulk of the Academy versus going into the holidays feeling the way that you feel right now, going into the holidays [00:36:00] without having the support. We even have a special segment and pop-up classes that we do throughout the year of things like, called like Brave Through the Holidays, which is all around family expectations and traditions and examples of what you could say and boundaries and how do you navigate what people are expecting you to do and all of that.
You will have plenty of time to go through that and learn it and start to implement it before the holidays even get here, right? You could guard your heart and guard your mind and be able to get there. So thank you for hanging out with me, um, for this podcast episode today. This to me is such a beautiful illustration of how God is able to work through our community, our resources, our tools.
But ultimately it's God [00:37:00] Who gives us a peace that surpasses understanding, that gives us hope when life feels hopeless, that has a plan and a purpose for each individual person. And my goal is just to help you navigate that, help you find that, help you become closer to God when maybe your relationship to faith and grief has been really weird and awkward.
And you're like, "I don't even know. I thought God was good and I could trust him, but ... And I just, I don't know." And so we don't use faith or scripture as a way of dismissing your pain or as a way of saying, "Well, you shouldn't feel that way. You know, we ... You know, God is good, and he wants the best for you. We gotta remember that."
Like, we have very open and real conversations. And so my philosophy with faith and grief is that God can handle your grief. He can handle your [00:38:00] pain. He can hang- handle your confusion. He can handle your anger. He can handle all the things that you're feeling. He already knows. And if we will bring those to him, and we will bring to him our desire to work through that to become closer to him, to follow the path that he has for us, and believe that he could still have something good for us when it feels like everything good was taken away, that is how we navigate faith and grief and help people build a relationship with God that's maybe even closer than the one they had before.
Certainly closer than the one they feel like they have today. So we keep it real in Brave Widow in the academy. Would love to help and support you. Go to bravewidow.com/academy. And don't forget about the retreat that is, um, coming up [00:39:00] in June. What an amazing way to be able to kick off your next academy group, is by coming to our in-person retreat.
Meeting people who have graduated from Brave Widow Academy, meet people who are going into the group in July, getting to hug their necks or give them a high five or a fist bump, whatever it is that you're comfortable with. But I would love to see you in person. There is our first in-person retreat. And you guys, you know, the people in the group were threatening to have a meetup without me if I didn't finally put one together.
So I did. And we're gonna meet in person next month. It's gonna be amazing. Come join us. Go to bravewidow.com to learn more. I will see you there
