Ep #229: I Was Always Going to Be a Widow

Welcome to The Widowed Mom Podcast, episode 229, I Was Always Going to Be a Widow.

Welcome to The Widowed Mom Podcast, the only podcast that offers a proven process to help you work through your grief, to grow, evolve, and create a future you can truly look forward to. Here’s your host, Master Certified life coach, grief expert, widow, and mom, Krista St-Germain.

Hey there, welcome to another episode of the podcast. Okay, first, I know that it’s only mid-October and I know that the holidays seem like they are far away, but they are not. So I want to make sure you know that we’re going to do our Happier Holidays for Widowed Moms event again this year. And you can choose, you can do the free version or you can give yourself a gift and do the VIP version. Either way, that event is such a simple way to make your holidays suck a little less. It’s a way to make them easier.

It’s online. You can do it from anywhere. We record the whole thing. You can watch it in your pajamas if you can’t make it live. So go to coachingwithkrista.com/freeholidayevent, coachingwithkrista.com/freeholidayevent. Get yourself signed up and we get started November 6th, which will be here before you know it. So I want to make sure you know about that.

What is bringing me joy right now is reading podcast reviews. I haven’t done that in a while and I opened some up today and I started reading them and they made me cry. So I just want to read a couple. I’m not going to cry, but I’m just going to read a couple. So one is from Orange Curry and they wrote, “Forever grateful, week one into my sudden and tragic widowhood as a mama of four, I found The Widowed Mom Podcast and Krista.

This space and place is my rock and comfort. I yearn for even more episodes and insights for new widowed moms. I’m in awe of Krista in the hope that she presents and represents what is possible while being in this unimaginable grief and broken heartedness.” When I can find someone that early in grief, I’m telling you, that makes me happy. That’s why I do this, so thank you, Orange Curry, I love you. I’m cheering you on and I’m so glad that you found the podcast and it’s helping you. It makes my day.

And then the other one I wanted to read was from Mama T. Hudson and it says, “Lifesaver. I found this podcast only a month or two after losing my husband of 32 years to cancer. I also became an empty nester a month after he died. I was lost and felt so alone even though family and friends were all around and helpful, I listened to Krista every morning for hours. I started at the beginning and just soaked it all in. This podcast was a lifesaver. I felt understood and encouraged.

I felt like I could continue on and that it was possible to rediscover myself without my person and create a life I loved. I’m 18 months out from his death now, I’m better, but still struggling, especially in my new romantic relationship. I still listen weekly and get so much out of it. Thank you, Krista.” Yeah, right. That’s why I do this and reviews like that not only do they help other people find the podcast, but I just want to tell you how much they genuinely mean to me. I said I wasn’t going to cry, anyway, okay. That’s what’s bringing me joy. Thank you for taking time to do that.

If the podcast has helped you and you haven’t yet left a review, I would be so, so grateful. And that is how other people find us is because it just tells the algorithms that I don’t understand that the podcast is valuable and gets it in front of more widows and more people get helped, and that’s the goal.

So okay, this episode is a departure from my normal podcast episodes. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and so I wrote about it and I just want to read it to you. And it’s called, I was always going to be a widow. I used to think I wasn’t supposed to be a widow. I was supposed to live happily ever after with Hugo. We were supposed to travel together. He was supposed to teach me French, teach my daughter to barefoot water ski, help my son with calculus. We were supposed to hike Mount Harvard to make up for how awful it was to hike Mount Yale.

We were supposed to go see all the parts of Canada that he hadn’t shown me yet. We were supposed to finish watching House of Cards. He was supposed to show up in my work chat with his familiar, “There she is, I am missing you” message. Supposed to talk me off the ledge when I get mad at my ex. Supposed to grow old with me. I had it all planned. Widowhood was supposed to happen to other people or was it? I thought I wasn’t supposed to be a widow but then I became one.

I was wrong. I was always going to be a widow, I just didn’t know. It wasn’t my plan. I didn’t ask for it and I definitely didn’t see it coming. I imagined my life would go one way and then it went another but it was always going to happen that way. And when I let go of the story that I wasn’t supposed to be a widow, it helped me create the space to choose what I wanted to make of it. And if you’re listening to this and you’re a widow then the same is true for you.

You were always going to be a widow. And now that you are, you get to choose how you want to think about the fact that you are. You can let it crush you for good. You can let it limit your capacity for joy. You can let it take the color permanently from your days. But I suspect that’s not what you want for yourself or you would have stopped listening already. You and I, we were always going to be widows. I wonder who you’ll choose to be next. That’s what I have for you this week. Remember, I love you and you’ve got this.

If you like what you’ve been hearing on this podcast and want to create a future you can truly get excited about after the loss of your spouse, I invite you to join my Mom Goes On coaching program. It’s small group coaching just for widowed moms like you where I’ll help you figure out what’s holding you back and give you the tools and support you need so you can move forward with confidence.

Please don’t settle for a new normal that’s less than you deserve. Go to coachingwithkrista.com and click work with me for details and the next steps. I can’t wait to meet you.