BW 209:
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Speaker: [00:00:00] If you're a widow or widower who's wanted more out of life post-loss but then immediately felt guilty, today's episode is for you. This is episode 209 of The Brave Widow Show
By the way, if you're new here, I'm Emily, founder of Brave Widow. I help widows heal their heart and build a life they can love again. If as you listen, you realize you don't wanna do this alone, I run a program called Brave Widow Academy where we walk through this together in a structured way. You can get all the details at bravewidow.com/academy.
Picture this. You're past the heaviest and the hardest days of overwhelming grief. You're functioning on the outside. People tell you you're doing well. They tell you you're doing better, you're doing a good job. And a part of you maybe feels like they're right. But there's another part of you that you might not even wanna say out loud, [00:01:00] that secretly wants more out of life.
It wants more than just okay. It whispers to you, "There has to be something more than this." And then immediately you feel guilty one of the biggest struggles that widows and widowers face that I help them with is wrestling with this sense of dread, this wondering, like, "Is this my life now? This? Is this it? It's just, like, all downhill from here." And it feels, we feel a lot of internal conflict with what's happening because we built up this life with a person that we love deeply.
We built a life that likely revolved around them or them and the kids, and all of a sudden, not because of our own choice, we're in a situation where life feels incredibly empty. And so we want our life to feel more than empty. We [00:02:00] want it to be something worth living, but then somehow it feels wrong.
Feels like we're betraying our person by wanting that. I remember when I would share about a trip that I went on or when I would share about something positive or fun or exciting, sometimes people would make comments and say things like, "Oh, well, you're just living your best life now, huh? Wow, I look at you and you're just having so much fun."
And I'll always feel guilt and shame. Is this wrong? Am I, am I just supposed to be in, in mourning for forever? Because I'm a, a widow or I'm somebody who's grieving, that means my life is just misery now? I was widowed at 37 What, w- was that like the peak of my life and, and now it was just all downhill?
So often we or people around us think that grief and life is just either or. It can't be both. [00:03:00] Either we miss our person and we miss the life that we had, and we care about that, or flip the switch. All we care about we've moved on. We've moved on from our old life. We've forgotten about our person.
We're loving this new life. We're just so excited that we're here now, and all these great things are happening, and life is just perfect and wonderful. And we think it has to be one or the other. People rarely understand or care to learn that life is about expansion. Life is about being able to hold multiple emotions, multiple concepts at the same time.
I can be grieving, and I can laugh for 60 seconds and not be in deep pain for that moment. Doesn't mean I've, quote-unquote, moved on. It doesn't mean I forgot my person. It doesn't mean I don't still have moments that are really hard. It can be [00:04:00] both.
Wanting more out of life doesn't mean that you wanted less with your person this feeling of guilt and shame isn't a sign that you're doing something wrong or that you're not grieving correctly. Sometimes it's a sign that a part of you is waking up. A part of you doesn't wanna give up. A part of you doesn't wanna settle for the fact that life is just empty now, that you have to play the game, that you're fine and life is fine, and go through all these charades.
That you wanna feel something inside of your chest for the first time in a long time. You wanna feel like a normal human. That you wanna have dreams and desires and goals and things that you can actually look forward to. You want a life that is full and vibrant And what's so hard, especially in the beginning, is to wrap our minds around like how would that even be possible?[00:05:00]
How could I enjoy life again when my person isn't here? Because if my person isn't here, that means I can't enjoy life again. It has to be either/or. But I'm gonna challenge your thinking. I'm gonna invite you to stretch your thinking a little bit and to grow your own ability to consider that it might be true that you could miss your person and you could miss your life and you could still have a wonderful, wild, amazing, fulfilling life again
So let's talk about where this guilt actually comes from. One of the best things I learned from the Grief Recovery Institute is that guilt is often a really heavy word that we place on ourselves. We feel guilty about something.
But guilt often implies malicious intent, meaning guilt often implies you did something wrong, therefore you are guilty, and we, like, carry that on our [00:06:00] shoulders. When in reality, what most grievers are experiencing is, as we're looking back at our relationship and the way that, that things happened or didn't happen, we have these desires that we wish something had happened better, more or different.
So maybe that means we had been kinder to our person. Maybe we wish we would have spent more time together. Maybe we wish that we would have done something different in the past and that we might have a, a different outcome. And so we can go around saying, "Well, I feel guilty about this. I should have done this.
I, I should have made a call. I should have spent more time with them. I should have, been nicer to them. I should have not cared about some things so much that really don't matter now. Like, I know what's important now, and that stuff didn't matter. I, I shouldn't have gotten all worked up about it.
I just feel guilty for these things that happened." And really, the reality is that we [00:07:00] don't... We're not attaching guilt to us as our identity because we did something wrong. We're looking back and saying, "Ah, I just wish it would have been different. I wish this would have been more. I wi- I wish it would have been more of this.
I wish there'd been more times together, more adventure, more excitement, more patience, more forgiveness," whatever it is. Or, "I wish that the relationship would have been better. I wish I would have, have grown more as a person." Like, there are so many times where now I can say I love my life and I love who I've become through this horrific, traumatic process of being widowed and fighting and scratching and clawing and trying to figure out how to get through deep grief, how to build a life that felt like it was actually worth living again.
The things I've learned, the ways I've changed, the ways I've grown, I'm so proud of that person. And I also look back and I'm like, "Gah, Nathan's not [00:08:00] gonna know this version of me here on the physical Earth." I wish I handled things differently. I wish I didn't get so worked up about stuff that doesn't matter. I wish I knew then what I know now about life and relationships and communication and what's important. And it can bring up all this guilt, and then it can turn into shame because we can start saying that we are bad, we're lazy, we're impatient, we're all these things, and, and just brings tons of negative emotions.
So let's talk about some specific examples about where guilt actually comes from. Let's talk about three different scenarios,
The first one is what we'll call the loyalty myth if I build a good life that I can enjoy now, that means I'm not being loyal to my person. I hear widows and widowers describe it as "I've walked away. I've moved on. I have left them behind. I've left my old life behind." And if you guys have been around for a while, you know one of the [00:09:00] things I love to remind ourselves is that we're already in our new life now.
We're no longer living our old life. That old life is in ash. You're already in your new life. And so the choice that we have now is whether this new life is going to continue as it's continuing today or if we're gonna build something new. And if we believe we're gonna see our person again in the future, in the afterlife, in heaven, then each day that passes isn't moving us further away from them.
It's actually bringing us closer to the day that we're gonna see them again
Okay? So one of the things that I really work with my clients on in the academy, is growing their capacity that both of these can be true. They can love their person, they can love the life that they had, and they can sit with the [00:10:00] reality that old life doesn't exist anymore And so they are now in this new life they didn't ask for.
It's not like, "Oh, I just really hope this happens so I can live my new best life now." And also, if we're going to live, let's live. I didn't wanna live a life, the rest of my life, that felt hollow and empty and pointless, and, like, my only value was my utility to other people, what I do to serve other people, what I do to take care of other people.
That's just it? I'm just a, a tool? I'm a pawn? I'm a, my value is what I do for other people? Doesn't feel good. Doesn't feel like it's worth doing the hard things for. I want a life where, when I'm, you know, 90, I can look back at my life and be like, "Wow, I really went for it. I stopped caring about what people thought.
I stopped worrying about what people were gonna [00:11:00] say or little comments maybe they were gonna make. I, I stopped worrying about feeling guilty or any of those things. Like, I just really... I, I lived life. I lived it full out. I pulled out all the stops, and I just went for it." I would rather look back and that be my life than to look back at 90 with deep regret, wishing that I had done something with the time I was given.
If you're listening to this thinking, "This is exactly where I am," that's why I created Brave Widow Academy. Inside, we take this from just a YouTube video into a step-by-step plan, live support, and a community of other widows who get it. If that sounds like what you need, go to bravewidow.com/academy right now while you're thinking about it.
Time is such a short and precious gift, and I didn't wanna waste it. I didn't, I don't wanna suffer another 30, 40, [00:12:00] 50 years of my entire life. What was the point? Life's hard. One of my coaches loves to say that life is 50% suffering. Life is hard. And so we can build a life that's worth the hard, or we can spend the rest of our life just surviving it.
Just bunker down storm after storm, problem after problem, challenge after challenge. All those things just bash up against us, and we're just in a constant defensive protection state. Or we can pull out our sword and we can fight for building something that feels like it's worth living, building something that, even when those problems come, those challenges comes, those frustrations come, that we have other things to cling onto, that we can sit and say, "This, this life is worth fighting for.
This, this life is worth building and doing the hard [00:13:00] things," versus feeling like I wake up every day and I just... what's the point? Okay, so we have the loyalty myth. That can create guilt. We also have the comparison trap. Okay? So this is looking at other widows who are just surviving, who tell us, "It never gets better.
Grief never goes away. You're always gonna miss your person, and 10 years out, I feel the same as I did on one year. 20 years out, I feel the same. It's not changed. It's awful. Guys, it's just awful." Really breaks my heart And it is discouraging to me to see widows telling other widows, "It never gets better.
It's always hard. Your life's just always gonna be terrible." Because it, it brings up this comparison trap, right? Where widows are seeing other widows who are only giving messages of despair. There are no messages of hope. [00:14:00] And they start to wonder, like, "This must be true. Why even try to enjoy life?
Why even try to want something more if everyone else is saying, 'Don't waste your time. It's not worth it. It, it's not gonna get better. Just save yourself the energy and the effort.'" And I can start to question, like, who am I to want more? Who am I to wish that I had a life that felt like it was worth living, that it was worth fighting for, that it was worth building?
I'm nobody special. So if they're not doing it, why, why would I? I feel bad. Maybe those people are, are making comments that bring that up
Okay. The third scenario that often brings up guilt is our, is confusion around our identity. One of the most shattering things for widows and widowers is grief is not just about missing your person and being sad and they're no [00:15:00] longer here. It's also reckoning with this lost identity, with the reality that we don't even know who we are, what kind of life we might want, what are the things that we would wanna do.
Our identity was so much we, it was the two of us, that I don't know who I am as a person on my own. I got married when I was 18. All my adulthood identity was as a wife. So at 37, 38, 39, 40, and so on who, who am I? Who am I, who am I without my person? I don't even know. I'd spent more years being married to Nathan and being with Nathan than I had been alive.
What? H- more than half the time of me being alive, and certainly more than half the time that I actually can r- remember with memories. So how am I supposed to figure out who I am [00:16:00] now? And that's just really weird to think about. And so I can feel guilty for trying to find my own feet, trying to figure out who I wanna become.
So I just wanna encourage you that you're not being disloyal to who you were in the past You wanna be honest about who you want to become And that can be scary, and that can be hard, and that can bring up, like, all of the emotions, right? And that's why one of the things I really work with all my clients on is understanding that we can be curious about emotions.
We can identify them. We can wonder like, "Whoa, why am I feeling guilty? What's... Where's that coming from? What are the reasons I feel guilty? Let me get curious about that. Let me figure it out." But we don't follow our feelings. We don't let our feelings drive the car of our life. We let feelings operate as a [00:17:00] check engine light, as a way of saying, "Hey, there's something going on here beneath the surface we might not even consciously be aware of.
Let's check under the hood and figure out what's going on," and then make a decision about what we wanna do in spite of those feelings I might have a feeling I'm afraid to try something for the first time, and it's really scary. And so if I listen to that emotion, I'm never gonna try that new thing because it feels really scary.
So I can get curious about it and go, "Oh why am I feeling so anxious? Why am I scared about this? Oh, it's because I've never done this before. I don't know exactly how it's all gonna work and come together." But then I can, once I've identified that, then I can decide, oh, even though I feel afraid, even though I feel anxious, even though I'm really nervous about how is all this gonna work together, I can still do something in spite of those emotions.
And that's one of the skills that we learn and we practice inside Brave Widow [00:18:00] Academy
Question for you. When was the last time you let yourself want something more out of life without immediately feeling guilty and talking yourself out of it? And it might be hard to think of a specific time in the recent past. So my challenge for you after watching this episode, after listening to this, is essentially to identify when that happens, and then to write down, whether you write it on paper or you write it on a, a notes app on your device, all the thoughts that come up that you have.
Don't judge the thoughts, don't question them, just write them all down. So the next time that you have a thought, you have a spark, you have a curiosity, like, "Oh, what might that be like?" Or, "Oh, that's different. I wanna try that." Or, "Oh, I really... I want friends. I wanna [00:19:00] have a friend that I do something with."
When something pops up in your mind and you think, "Oh, I would like to look into this more. I'd like to build more to this. I'd like to have more of this," and then you feel guilty or you feel wrong for even wanting that or even allowing yourself to think about it, I want you to write down all of those thoughts that come up.
It might be three thoughts. It might be 30. It might be 15. The first step of what we do when we're learning how to grow capacity and hold and, okay, life is both and, as we're learning to do that, first is just to observe, just to identify what is going on that's triggering that feeling of grief, that's triggering that negative emotion.
Something is happening that... And I have thoughts about it, okay? So I'm gonna jot down all of my [00:20:00] thoughts about it. And often what you'll find is that those thoughts are not helpful, okay? So in the academy when I'm working with clients, they learn how to do this in detail. We practice it throughout the six months together.
They learn how, when the negative emotion happens, how to identify and observe what their thoughts are, how to get curious about those thoughts, like, "Oh, that's interesting. Why did I think that? Where did that come from? Is it something I've always thought? Is it new?" Just to be curious like scientific, like little scientists.
We observe, we get curious about what's going on, and then we decide, "Okay, are these thoughts helping me? Are they not helping me? Are they actually true, or do I just believe they're true?" Okay? And then we figure out how to do what we call reframing, which is taking our thoughts that are not helping us- And deciding that we're gonna lean [00:21:00] into a different thought or a different set of beliefs that are, that still feel true in our body.
Okay, this isn't like rose-colored glasses here. Still feels true, we can feel it in our body, but it's more helpful than the ones that we have now. And so over time, our students learn how to take control, how to take every thought captive, how to manage our mind, how to decide what we're gonna ruminate on.
And through that, we learn how to influence our feelings, how to ride out the negative and the hard and difficult emotions, and to, how to, to come back to a baseline of peace Okay? And so for you, for your, this part of the challenge for you is just to notice when you feel that desire, when you f- have that feeling of like, "Oh, there's gotta be more.
Is this it? Is this just my life now?" I want more, but wanting more feels wrong, is like, [00:22:00] okay, why does it feel wrong? Like list out all the things that come up and just be aware that those are the thoughts that we're carrying around with you, and know that you have the ability and the power ultimately to change that, to change your thoughts, to change your belief, to change your emotion, to change your action, to ultimately change the results that you're getting and the outcome of what you experience
The second part of this challenge is for you to identify one thing, we'll just start with one, one thing that you are giving yourself permission to want without holding guilt. One thing that you can say, "Okay, yeah, I want to do this. I want to experience that. I want more of this in my life." Like, what is the one thing you are gonna give yourself permission to want and desire without holding on to guilt? What's that gonna be?
The goal and my hope for you is to build a life big enough to hold it [00:23:00] all. The grief, the love, what comes next in your future, that you can hold it all. Wanting more is not a sign that you're moving on or that you're being disloyal, you're leaving your person behind. Wanting more is just a sign that grief is not the only thing that's running your life every day And so my, my hope, my desire is to call that out of you, is to speak into the part of you that dares to hope or believe that there could be something more, there might be something more.
You could live a life that's more than just surviving, that actually feels like you're living, actually feels like you're working towards something again. It is possible. I'm living proof of it. Many of my clients are living proof of this as well. And so if you've been toying with this idea, if you've been confused, if you've been frustrated, I [00:24:00] would love to be able to help you take that one next step forward and to start ultimately building a life that feels full and vibrant and worth living again
If any of this has resonated with you, even if it's something very small, that isn't nothing. It isn't something to be ignored. It's the beginning of rebuilding a life that you can love again. Brave Widow Academy is where we do that work together. You can learn more and join the wait list at bravewidow.com/academy.
Can't wait to see you there Hey, thanks for spending this time with me today. If you're listening and thinking, "I don't wanna do this widow thing by myself," I'd love to invite you into the free Brave Widow community. It's a private, faith-based space where you can connect with other widows who really get it, join gentle live calls, and get resources to help you take the next small step forward.
Speaker 13: To join us, [00:25:00] just go to bravewidow.com/free or click the link in the show notes. You don't have to walk this road alone. I'll see you inside
