BW 214:
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Speaker: [00:00:00] The holidays are coming, and if you're a widow or widower, you already know what that means. You might already be feeling that sense of dread before the holidays start. So if that's you, this episode's gonna be for you. Welcome to episode 214 of The Brave Widow Show.
Guys, first I have to start with a confession. This is my third time recording this podcast. Third time trying to record it. I'm not exactly sure what all is going on in the technology universe, but I think everything possible, all pieces of my equipment needed updated updates or refreshes or something.
So let's say, let's hope and pray third time's the charm. I've tested it a few times, so hopefully the sound is going to be okay. Doesn't have to be perfect, but I at least want you to understand what I'm saying. So I've been thinking a lot [00:01:00] lately about the last few months of the year and just that shift that we start to notice as widows and widowers as the holidays start creeping in.
If you've noticed, some stores have been putting out Christmas already for the past few weeks. Just a little mind-boggling. We're already setting out... Halloween stuff's already being put on clearance. Here it is September, and Thanksgiving, fall, Christmas, all that stuff is already present. I've even started to see some football and Super Bowl stuff.
What? Yes, it's actually happening. So as widows and widowers, this presents a real challenge. We can start to feel this big sense of dread as the holidays get closer and approach us. And for a lot of people, we tend to start going into this sense of dread, anxiety, and wanting to avoid. [00:02:00] Avoid the Christmas commercials, avoid thinking about the empty chair, avoid the traditions that now feel impossible, avoid the pressure of having to hold it together for everyone else.
That dread that you feel isn't a permanent life sentence. It's just a signal from your body, a signal from your brain that it's trying to protect you from a painful memory or a painful expectation. That's a nervous system that loves someone very deeply. And so what I want to share with you today is not that you need to push through it, is not that you need to try to avoid it, avoid looking at the decorations, avoid hearing the Christmas music, avoid all those interactions.
But that what will actually help you is to have a plan that accounts for it, a plan that allows [00:03:00] the holidays to feel lighter, easier, and gentler. Maybe that dread comes from the anticipation, just the anticipation of the day that's actually worse than the day itself. Maybe it's guilt of wanting the holidays to be over.
One of my clients said this week that they wished it was January 15th already. Just get through all the holidays, the birthdays, skip all that and just get to January. Maybe the dread comes from the pressure to perform, the pressure to make Christmas merry and magical for kids or family or friends. Maybe it's fear of facing these holidays for the first time without your person, or maybe you're like another client of mine who lost a person just before the holidays, so those were a blur, but now it's gonna feel real Maybe the dread is the loneliness that sometimes doesn't come from [00:04:00] being alone.
It comes from being surrounded by people and feeling like you're the background character. You're on the outside looking in, watching everyone have their own experience and fun, and you're just kind of in the background forgotten about what I wanna share with you today are five ways to plan for the holidays to make them easier, lighter, and gentler. And at the end of this episode, I'm gonna share with you how I help my clients, and if you want help with these things, with coming up with your plan, how I can help you too. We have a pop-up group program starting called Brave Through the Holidays.
It's gonna start in October. And we are gonna work through a very structured process to help you plan, to help you decide how you would like the holidays to flow, and to help you [00:05:00] communicate that to family and friends who may be impacted by the decisions that you make. We're gonna do this in advance before emotions get really high, before we get and feel that pressure of, like, the day is coming, the day is coming, we need to decide something.
We're gonna do all that in advance before the emotions are really high, before we spiral out in indecision, and uncertainty, and shaming ourself for not have thinking about this sooner. I'm going to walk you step by step through all of these things. And so here are the things that I would be thinking about, whether you're thinking about them on your own, or you're gonna join us for Brave Through the Holidays in October.
Okay? Number one is family expectations. These are expectations, maybe roles that you've played in the past for years, for maybe decades. Maybe you were the one who always made the Thanksgiving turkey. Maybe you stepped up and you do the [00:06:00] sides at Christmas, or you put stockings together, or you scheduled the Christmas Eve get-together.
Like, whatever it is, there has been a set of expectations or roles that each person in your family or friend group play, and you might be dreading some of those things. You might feel pressure that you need to still do these things, and you might even wonder, like, "Well, if I don't do them, it's not gonna get done.
Who's gonna do it? I have to do it." When I would think about some family get-togethers on my side of the family, those were some of the thoughts I had. Like, well, if I don't do it, who's gonna be able to do it? If we don't do it at my house, then it's more inconvenient. It's a further travel expectation for people to travel, 'cause my house is kind of in the middle and everyone else is located a couple hours away.
And so if it's not at my house, then where's it gonna be? My house makes the most sense. Like, if I don't do this, then that means we're not gonna have a get-together. It's [00:07:00] not really true, but that's the expectation that I'd put on myself, and that a lot of widows and widowers put on themselves
And so as we think about family expectations or normal invitations, maybe your church group does something, maybe your work group has a holiday party each year, maybe who knows, it could be a variety of expectations or invitations where normally you would have accepted those, you would have shown up, you would have maybe even participated.
And now we want to start to untangle some of those, and really look at each of them and start deciding, what do I wanna do this year? What do I wanna change? What do I not wanna participate in? And how can I communicate to family and friends who don't understand, right? To family who might say, "But you're the one who always does this.
If you don't do it, no one will. Can't you just do this? Is it really that hard for you to just do this [00:08:00] like you've always done it?" Like, «If we don't do it this way, it's gonna be different," or, "If you don't come, we're all gonna miss you and we're gonna be sad." And then we feel that guilt and pressure of, oh, no, if I don't go, they're gonna be sad and they're gonna miss me, and I'm gonna ruin Christmas.
When actually, what I help my clients do is find peace and be okay that other people are sad and they miss you. What a lovely thought. What a lovely thought that maybe you decide not to participate in something, or you decide to do something different, and people miss you. That's great. You were missed.
They wish that you were there. That's really nice. And it's okay. They get to be sad. They get to be disappointed. They get to be angry. They get to be whatever they feel. It's okay. It's not your job to make everyone else okay at the expense of yourself. It's not your job to emotionally regulate other people.
And I know that's one of the hardest things about dealing with holidays [00:09:00] and family get-togethers and, and friends, events, and all of that, is you feel responsible Or like there's something, an obligation, a duty to make the holidays a wonderful time for everyone else even if that means that you're miserable, and it's not true.
So what I help my clients do, what we're gonna do in Brave Through the Holidays, is we're gonna start looking at all of the normalized expectations and way we've done things in the past, and where we desire to make change. And again, this, this change isn't permanent. It could just be we're gonna do something different this year, and next year maybe it's something else.
But as we're deciding to make changes or not participate the way that we have, how we can communicate that, how we can implement boundaries. What do we do when we say, "This is what I'm planning to do or planning not to do," and people push back? People get upset. People come at you. What can [00:10:00] you do? What can you say?
I have scripts and examples that will help give you ideas of how to say it in your own way, or how to respond if somebody responds very emotionally, how to manage your mind to find peace and be okay with the fact that other people are upset about it. It's okay. They don't have to understand. They don't have to get it.
It's all right. But I can know that up here, but how do I feel it in here in my body, in my chest, and how do I find it from peace and not anxiety and ruminating and ruminating and ruminating? And what if I, I think I'm gonna have a plan A, but then I wake up on that day and I don't wanna do that anymore, now I wanna go with plan B, but I don't have a plan B.
Well, in Brave Through the Holidays, you're gonna have plan A, you're gonna have plan B, and you're even gonna have escape plans, okay? Pull the ejection cord and get out of a situation that's just overwhelming. Yes, I will help you do that. As an introvert, I have [00:11:00] lots of escape plans, so that you don't get trapped in a situation that you need, want to step away from.
All right, so that's the first area that we plan for, that we wanna work on, is just family expectations, what normally you'd participate in, how we wanna communicate that, how we wanna hold firm to our boundaries, and how we wanna do that in advance. Because let's think about this. When we wait, and I'm a, I'm a grade A procrastinator, I have been my whole life.
Not so much anymore, much improved. But I totally align with anyone who's like, "Oh, I always wait till last minute," or, "I just wanna delay the conflict. I just wanna delay, delay, delay." Well, conflict delayed is conflict amplified. It's just gonna get worse. The only... Bad news does not age well. It's not wine.
It's not getting better over time. Okay? And so what can happen when people don't have a plan, when they haven't communicated, [00:12:00] is they wait till the day before or the day of, or they, we start feeling tons of anxiety and freaking out and we just, like, tell our family and friends a couple days before and it's like, "Oh, by the way, I'm not coming.
Oh, by the way, I'm not doing this," and we drop a bomb in their lap and walk away. And the bomb explodes 'cause people are like, "What? What? I'm totally blindsided by this. You never... W- I... We were expecting this. We planned this. We arranged this and n- now, now what are we gonna do? We gotta scramble." We don't wanna drop a grenade in our family and friends' lap, right?
Like, we want to communicate well in advance so that if people are surprised or confused or taken, you know, they're a little, feel a little sideswiped, they have some time to normalize. They have some time to, to stabilize. They go, "Okay. Okay, I'm wrapping my brain around this. I'm getting this.
Okay, let's, we're gonna come up with a different plan." Or, "I'm gonna, like, I'm gonna get to a [00:13:00] place where I'm okay with it." We wanna give them a little bit of time if we're making major change. Like, that's compassionate. That's doing our due diligence to give them an opportunity to regroup before just telling them the day before.
Okay? So we will help you do all of that. Whether or not you join us, that is something I would encourage you to start thinking about now. And I know, you're like, "This is the end of September." By the... If I have to record this podcast again, it may be October when you're hearing this. But we're... The holidays are rapidly approaching.
Rapidly. And so before you get caught in the grocery store with all the Christmas music, before you start seeing all the Black Friday ads, before all these things happen, let's start working on it now so that we can find peace, we can find calm, we can communicate our plans, we can have time to come up with plans and ideas of what we wanna do, and we can walk forward peacefully, [00:14:00] intentionally, and guided.
Instead of avoid, avoid, avoid delay, delay, drop a grenade in my family's lap and go hide under the, my, my grief shield in my bedroom. Okay? We don't wanna do that. All right. The second area that we wanna think about is our traditions. And so traditions, we can feel this sense of responsibility for maintaining all the traditions because it feels like we're honoring the past, we're honoring our person, we're hon- honoring what we built together.
And there are some traditions that if we continue to do them this year might feel like torture. There might be some traditions that you want to reimagine entirely. There might be some traditions that you just wanna let go of. And so a few things about traditions that we tend to find helpful is in Brave Through the Holidays, [00:15:00] and what I encourage you to do, is to list out all your traditions of things you would normally do.
And then in our worksheet, we have columns that's like, I'm gonna keep this one, I'm gonna change this one, or I'm gonna let it go, and also who do I need to communicate with? Now, there might be traditions that were just you, or you and your person, or you and the kids that, and you wanna keep all those and no one else needs to be communicated with.
That's great. But there might also be some traditions that you're like, "Yeah, I don't wanna sing in the choir at church this year. Yeah, I don't want to go over than- for Thanksgiving dinner." And that's perfectly fine. Someone asked me recently, you know, "Hey, Emily, for the, the holidays this year, I just really want to be alone.
I don't wanna be around people. I don't wanna participate in all this stuff. Is that wrong?" And my response is, "There's no right or wrong answer on what you wanna do." What is helpful is just deciding and having a plan for what you wanna do, and reminding yourself, like this is the plan. This is what I decided to do."
So if you [00:16:00] decide that you wanna be alone for the holidays, then we have to remind ourselves that's what we decided on the holiday when we're feeling alone. And it's like, "Oh, well, I'm not at anyone's house. No one invited me. No one reached out to me. No one checked on me." Okay, and also remember, I decided this is what I wanted.
Now, that being said, you get to change your mind. So you get to wake up on the holiday and go, "Oh my gosh, I don't wanna be alone, so what's my plan B? What's something else that I would like to do?" Maybe I call up my family and be like, "Hey, is it too late? Could I still come over?" And that's what I wanna do, and that's fine, too.
There's no rules about right or wrong about what you should or shouldn't do. I just encourage you to do it from a place of what's healing, what's supportive, what's nurturing to you, and not from a place of I just wanna hide and, and bury my head in the sand
Speaker 2: Having a plan, thinking through what you wanna do is so much [00:17:00] more empowering than avoiding, distracting, trying not to think about it until the point you're actually forced to think about it because those big days are here. All right, the third thing to plan for the holidays are grief triggers. It could be the song in the grocery store, the smell of cologne when you walk past someone else, watching other people open presents or wrapping presents, or just all the commercials on TV.
I remember so many times thinking about that Christmas song, all the Christmas songs and how they were triggering, like especially the one of All I Want for Christmas Is You so many songs that were just like a cruel reminder of what I had lost and the life that I had. What can we do when those triggers come?
It's not about avoiding all the triggers. You're not going to be able to avoid [00:18:00] them. They're going to pop up. They're going to bring up memories. But we can learn ways of navigating what to do when those triggers happen, of making additional and new associations that come along with some of those memories
And again, just having a plan is very empowering and different than feeling like we're able to control what we will or won't be exposed to
Number four, we want to plan for loneliness on the big days. For some people, the loneliness is being in a room full of family and friends and looking around. Everyone else is having fun, everyone else is laughing, everyone is excited, and people may mistakenly ask you, like, "Aren't you excited? Aren't you so glad to be here?"
And Hurts. Like how could they be so inconsiderate? How could they ask you that? [00:19:00] For other people, being around family and friends might be an invited break from grief. It might be hard, and it also might be wonderful to get caught up in the moment of being with other people, enjoying the holiday, enjoying those times together, and then when everyone leaves and the house is quiet, you feel alone
The New Year's Eve countdown, you're watching it alone. Valentine's Day that's right around the corner two months later, you feel alone there's a difference in being alone and being isolated. There's a difference in feeling alone and feeling invisible. So we want a plan that helps us not only with planning for how we wanna navigate through the holidays, but also having one or two big anchors. It's not about filling up every moment, but it's about having a couple of anchors that can support us through those holiday seasons and a plan for [00:20:00] what we wanna do when we start feeling lonely and isolated.
Who can we reach out to? Who can help connect with us? How do we wanna honor the pain and the loneliness of just missing our person, and also not allowing that to completely consume us?
All right, then the fifth thing that we wanna plan, this is a big one. The fifth one that we wanna plan is how we want to step into the new year without feeling like we're leaving our person behind and we're abandoning them. So as the rush of the holidays come, often our social media feeds are filled with people excited about the new year, excited about all the changes they're gonna make, the resolutions they're gonna make, the new year, new me posts.
And for some people, this is the first time that you will cross into a year where your person has never existed physically on Earth. This is the first time you'll experience [00:21:00] a year in which they didn't exist in the physical sense
And so crossing into this new year feels like being forced into a future where you're stepping away from your person, you're leaving them behind, you're abandoning them in the past. Which isn't true, but it often feels true
And what I teach my clients to do is how to step forward into that new year bringing their person with them, weaving their spirit and their essence into this new life, not leaving them behind
And one of the biggest things we do, even if the holidays don't feel like, oh, maybe, I don't know, the holidays probably won't be that bad. Maybe it's been a few years. But one of the best things that we get to do inside of Brave through the holidays is we take two hours in January, and we walk through different activities to generate ideas for goals and things we may wanna work on in 2027.[00:22:00]
And I already know there's some of you thinking, "I don't want anything in 2027. I have nothing. No goals, nothing." You will walk away with at least one, one thing. You will walk away with at least one thing you wanna focus on in 2027. It doesn't matter if you're in deep grief, it doesn't matter if you're 10 years out, you will walk away with something.
And if you're a widow who's in those further seasons of grief where you are exploring life, you're rebuilding life, you may walk away with five things that you wanna work on in 2027. But also, you may be the person who says, " I- what's most supportive to me is thinking about one thing I want more of in my life right now."
Maybe that's more kindness, it's more gentleness, it's more healing, it's more connection. But we can uncover one thing, even if you just find the one thing for 2027 that [00:23:00] you want to focus on, that you want more of in your life. We will generate more ideas than you can even imagine right now. And when we do this exercise, I often have to remind people many times, like, "Look, we're gonna come up with a lot of ideas of things we could work on, and our goal is to prioritize and narrow them down to what is going to be feasible and supportive to you."
Look, the widows and widowers who navigate the holidays, who navigate this whole next season of these next few months together aren't the people who pretend everything is fine. They're not the ones who still do all the things and jump through all the hoops and make sure everyone else is taken care of.
They're the people who have a plan. They're the people who have a community of other people also navigating this season and walking it together. And they're the people who give themselves permission to do things differently
That's exactly what I provide, teach, and support you with inside of Brave Through the Holidays [00:24:00] So our five things, just recapping them. The five things we wanna plan for that will help make the holidays lighter, gentler, and easier are family expectations, traditions, grief triggers, loneliness, and stepping into the new year.
If any of this has resonated with you and you want help actually building your holiday plan, your plan A, your plan B, your escape plan, how to handle the triggers, how to navigate the family stuff, how to have those conversations, how to step into 2027 with some sense of direction,
and that's exactly what you'll find in Brave Through the Holidays. We will start Wednesday, October 21st. We're gonna meet most Wednesdays from 1:00 to 2:00 PM Central Time. There are a couple we're gonna do on Mondays because it's a holiday week. But if you would like to join us, you can go through to bravewidow.com/holidays.
It's $397. [00:25:00] You're gonna have 12 weeks of direct support and additional time to access all the replays, all the worksheets, all the tools through the end of January. January 31st of 2027. And if you are at a place where you are ready for more support, you're ready to rebuild, you're ready to add more into your life, this is a perfect runway to Academy.
So inside of Academy is going to pick up where we end in Brave Through the Holidays. We end with visioning the future. That's where Academy picks up, and we start actually working on rebuilding a life that we can love again. All right. If you wanna join, bravewidow.com/holidays. I'll see you there
Speaker 13: 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 [00:26:00] connect with other widows who really get it, join gentle live calls, and get resources to help you take the next small step forward.
To join us, 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
