Ep #324: The Power of Community in Widowhood: A Widows Unfiltered Interview with Jennifer Schroeder

Welcome to The Widowed Mom Podcast, Episode 324: Widows Unfiltered: An Interview with Jennifer Schroeder.

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 this episode. I am delighted to introduce you to Jennifer Schroeder today. I’ve already recorded the episode and I usually go back and record the intro later. And one of the things that after we hit stop, Jennifer and I stayed on and talked a little bit and I just really want you all to know how important I think it is that you find community in grief. It’s so much more than that though, right? It’s also community in life. And I don’t think I fully realized the value of community until so much later in life. Really in the past, since I’ve become a coach, honestly. And I’m realizing it more and more and more.

And my hope is that if you’re a widow, that the community that resonates with you the most is mine, and that you’ll come into my community. But even if it isn’t, I really want you to consider and listen to Jennifer talk about the value of being in a community, the value of having your experience reflected back in the lives of other women, the value of seeing what’s going on with them and learning from them, the value of hearing them articulate the experience that they’re having in a way that makes it make more sense and makes it more useful to you in your life.

And then just even now, of course, I am the coach in my own community, but what a gift it has been to me personally, having been going through a challenging part in my life, to have this whole community of women who are cheering me on, even if we’re not having conversations about it. I’m getting messages from them. They are saying nice things to me. Just the collective energy of knowing that you have a community behind you is something I really want for all of us. And so I hope that you’ll benefit from just all the wise things that Jennifer says, the honest things that Jennifer shares.

But beyond that, I hope that if you’re not in a community already, you will take action to get yourself in the right community and let yourself have the gift of that. I hope it is my community, and you can go to CoachingWithKrista.com and learn more about the programs that I run. 

But even if it isn’t, I really encourage you to give yourself the gift of a community where you can be yourself, where you are surrounded by like-minded women, especially if you’re a widow, right? That people understand the grief experience, that so much of what you have gone through can be understood without needing to be spoken. You will have a more supportive experience. You will make progress faster. And by progress, I mean grow in the ways that you want to grow, have an easier experience of something that is so very difficult.

And I just want that for you. And I just felt really fired up about it after I talked to Jennifer and watched and listened to the impact that it had on her and then was just reminded of the impact that it has on me. And I really want that for you. So, without me blabbering anymore, let’s get into my interview with Jennifer. I hope you enjoy it.

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Krista: Okay, welcome, Jennifer. I’m excited to talk with you.

Jennifer: Thank you so much for having me. I’m looking forward to talking to you.

Krista: We were just talking before I hit record and talking about how I think the best interviews are the ones that are the least polished and the most personal, right? The ones that are, we’re not trying to have some sort of fancy, life was terrible, now it’s amazing and everything’s perfect and I love all of it. Because that’s not, doesn’t really reflect anybody’s reality, no matter how much work we’ve done and no matter how we’re feeling about our grief experience. So, honest conversation forthcoming.

Jennifer: Yeah. I was ready to chat with you feeling pretty good and then about a half an hour ago, just started bawling. I’m a widow. Why am I going on a widow podcast? So it’s just the reality of just the emotions that come over you.

Krista: Yeah. Totally. Because it is a wild rollercoaster sometimes and it’s not always predictable.

Jennifer: Yeah, and you can be on the path of I’m a widow and I’m getting this thing, figuring it out, and then all of a sudden, I’m a widow. What? I don’t want to be a widow. You know, what?

Krista: How did that even happen?

Jennifer: How did that even happen? I get that. Okay. I want to have you just start by telling people a little bit about yourself, your background, how you became a widow, whatever you feel comfortable sharing.

Jennifer: Okay. So, Jerry and I met. I was in eighth grade. He was in ninth grade. We dated all through high school. We got married when we were 20. So, we weren’t even able to legally drink at our own wedding. And then had three awesome children when I was 23 and 25 and 27. So, we started young and now that he’s passed away, I’m so glad my kids had so much time with him. We didn’t have a perfect marriage, but we were in just a really great spot. We were just newly empty nesters, traveling.

We worked together. I worked full-time with him at a company we owned the last eight years before he died. We just loved that. People recommended we not do that, work with your spouse, but we just, we loved it and we enjoyed spending time together. We traveled to Copenhagen, Denmark. Our son was living over there, playing American professional football. And he and his wife were newly pregnant with our first grandbaby. And we thought, maybe this will be the end of his football career. Let’s go over and watch him play a couple games. This might be his last season.

And like day 10 of our trip, Jerry just got suddenly ill and just really bad stomach pains by, now you’re in a foreign country trying to get into an ER. By the end of that night, he had been diagnosed with severe pancreatitis with necrosis, meaning part of his pancreas was already dead and some blood clots had been thrown. By the next morning, he had been admitted to ICU as septic and the next night he was intubated and then kidney dialysis and he died four days later. It was shocking. It just doesn’t even describe what happened.

Our adult daughters fortunately were able to get over before he died and my mom was actually visiting over there with us because it was, we laugh about it now, not laugh, but come to Copenhagen. It’ll be fun. It’s not fun. It was not fun. But we were all together and we call it horrifically beautiful. We were able to be there and say goodbye to him. And so yeah, those early days of widowhood were just trying to, what just happened to my life? A nuclear bomb goes off. 

And coming home from a vacation with this person’s suitcase, but not with them, the whole thing was just, was crazy. Those early days of grief were just very anxiety filled for me. I’m not typically an anxious person, but anxiety just like 10 out of 10. Just would wake up at 5:30 in the morning, just revved, where I just couldn’t lay in bed. I had to get up and just walk or move.

A couple months in, I connected those days when he was in the hospital, we made shifts for ourselves. I would go in to see him from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. and then 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. and the kids all had their shifts too. And it was, when I wasn’t with him, I could convince myself that maybe he was going to heal, he was going to recover, he was going to make it through this. But every time I would go in and see him at my next time, I could just see him dying. I could see him deteriorating. Something worse had happened since I had last been in there. And that, the body keeps the score. I think like that 5:30 a.m., I would get ready to go in to see him at 6:00 and I would just start dreading and being so afraid.

For months, I carried that in my body where I woke up at 5:30, like just in dread fear. This is before I knew you, but I would put my hand on my heart and say, he’s okay. My faith tells me that he’s good now. He’s loose from the shackles of this earth and I am going to be okay. I didn’t always feel like I was going to be okay, but I knew I was safe. And within just a couple days that anxiety went way, way down. Just that my body was remembering that 5:30 wake-up call of and just the dread and the fear and then ultimately what happened and it was I don’t know, my body just holding on to that anxiety that just stayed for months.

Krista: Had you had any other major losses before Jerry died?

Jennifer: My dad, it was going to be the 10-year anniversary of my dad passing away unexpectedly that December. Jerry died in September. It’ll be two years this September. And when my mom was going to come to Copenhagen, I was going to talk to her about that. Do you want to do anything special for the 10-year anniversary of dad passing away unexpectedly? And then it just imploded. 

Losing my dad was a big grief and I would say devastated, not that you ever compare grief, but that was nothing in comparison to what I felt when Jerry died. I was able to carry some of my techniques that I had learned or some coping things, but the enormity of it blowing up my own personal life just, I was not prepared for that. I had seen my mom, so I saw my mom as a widow. She got remarried. I saw her do widowhood well, whatever that means. I just saw her laugh again and travel again and have joy again.

But for those first five, six – it wasn’t really until I joined Mom Goes On. I just thought, that’s for other people who lose their husbands. That’s not for me. I won’t feel joy again. I’ll just sit on the periphery of it. Other people will experience joy, but I’ll watch them and maybe I’ll laugh at something funny every so often, but that won’t be for me again where I’ll feel a deep sense of satisfaction or joy. I really believed that.

Krista: Yeah, and so many people do and you can see why when you were with him, married at 20. That’s…

Jennifer: Yeah. We knew each other for 40 years. Yeah, my whole, we grew up together.

Krista: What did help you in the early days? What didn’t help you in the early days?

Jennifer: I think family and friend were a good support. For sure my faith of just believing God does have a good plan for me. I didn’t see it in the moment, but knowing that.

Krista: You knew that there was a plan for you, you believed, but you just couldn’t see what the plan was.

Jennifer: I couldn’t see, and it was, I would joke with the kids, I’m going to be live to be 107 because I’m miserable. I’m just going to live this terrible existence of a life. And my kids for sure, thinking about, I needed to get up in the morning to just love on. My kids were adults, but I just didn’t want to add any stress to what they had already experienced, losing their dad. It was just, but I really would have been happy to go to sleep one night and just not wake up the next morning, for sure.

I wish I would have had so many of the tools that you teach. It really wasn’t until I joined MGO, like nine months later or eight months later, that I just really started learning how to take good care of myself. My sister was super helpful, my kids were great, everybody was great. It’s just felt like survival mode, so many tears and so much pain.

Krista: Yeah, for sure. Knowing that you have a bigger tool belt now, what do you imagine you would have used had you had it back then?

Jennifer: Yeah. Good question. I think I had a lot of fear around the pain that I was feeling. They say grief is like an ocean or a wave. It doesn’t make logical sense, but I really felt like a wave is going to take me out to see and I’m going to drown. And I don’t know what drowning in your grief looked like, but I feared that. So when I would have those really hard days of just crying, your teaching on pain versus suffering, that was so helpful to me.

I was just adding so much fear and judgment of myself and what ifs and what happens to just experiencing the grief. It makes sense. I lost this person that I deeply love. Of course, I’m just going to feel sad and even devastated. I wish I would have had that earlier on to just know, just allowing the feeling, not heaping onto it the fear of drowning in it. It just doesn’t even make sense, but that’s how I felt.

Krista: So you kind of wish you would have had a little more confidence around your ability to let a feeling pass through?

Jennifer: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Yeah. When I first joined Mom Goes On, it was April. So, we owned a business right from after he died, I’m like running this business, meeting with employees, but early on I decided I need to sell this business. I don’t have the passion to run it. We worked together, but he was the CEO. He had the passion for digital advertising. I did not. And so the sale of the business was going to go through on May 31st. I then owed the new owner five weeks of meeting with him and talking about the history of the company and why Jerry did this and why we did that. 

And I knew I would be sitting at my husband’s desk across from this new owner for weeks. That felt so big and so heavy to me. It was my first birthday without Jerry and it was going to be my birthday where I outlived him. He didn’t quite make it to his 53rd birthday. I was turning 53. It would have been our first anniversary that June of 33 years without, it was the first Father’s Day.

So, my daughter-in-law was six months pregnant when Jerry died and we had this new beautiful baby, but for my, my son to be a father for the first year without his dad, it just all felt so. I was sharing that. This is why I joined MGO. You asked why and you said, this is one of the first times that you broke my brain and I say that with all love and respect. It’s a beautiful thing for me when you just, it’s like a record. Wait, what did Krista just say, you know? And you said something, the reason why these big days are hard for us is because we’re not good at just feeling our feelings. Maybe you would have said it differently, but that’s what I took away. And you said by June, you’re going to be good at feeling your feelings. And I was, oh, wow. That’s hopeful. I felt for the first time these huge milestones of just devastation in my heart breaking. I felt, okay, I’m going to gain a tool to be able to make it through these days. That was so exciting to me.

And you were right. I did start learning. The first time I felt sadness, I just sat in sadness. And I think before that, I had run away from it or I had been terrified of it. I for sure felt sadness. I cried buckets of tears, there was just something in me pulling away from it, resisting it. And the first time I was, I’m just going to sit in this and name it and open up to it and witness it. And it was, it did pass and at the end of it I felt super close to Jerry. He felt right there with me, which I had no idea that’s how I would experience it. 

And that was just the first of learning. So then I almost not looked forward to those seasons of really feeling sad, but I just knew, oh, at the end, maybe I’m going to feel really close to him. I just wasn’t afraid of it anymore. It was just, let it come, let me just sit in it and let it pass through me. And it’s incredible what, it seems so simple, but that was just a game changer for me, a huge game changer.

Krista: I’m so glad. I hear it over and over, people very much, we worry it will pull us under, it will take us down. We won’t be able to come out of it. It’ll be too much, it’ll overwhelm us. And it makes a lot of sense that we would have that experience. It’s like saying, hey, I want you, person who has never surfed in your entire life, to go out into the big ocean with scary waves and surf. No, thank you, because I don’t know how. Nobody taught me. But it can be learned. It doesn’t mean necessarily that the waves have to get any easier for you to have a better experience of surfing. It just means you have to learn to surf yet and you need to learn it because it’s a muscle. Yeah, it’s a skill. And if we don’t have it, of course it makes sense that we would be afraid of it.

Jennifer: And those early days I would at night, I would say to myself after 8:00 p.m., 9:00 p.m., I was just tired. I was stressed. Even those early months, I would get in the shower in the evening and that’s where I would start to cry. And sometimes it felt like I couldn’t stop crying. It would just be hours and then I’d wake up with that hangover of having cried for. And so I would and I felt like this was a good skill that I just would tell myself, you can cry again in the morning, but for now, you just have to rest. It’s okay to rest.

I would almost, not allow myself to cry in the evening, but I would just tell myself, you can cry in the morning, now you need to go to sleep. And that was, I felt like that was a good self-care for myself. Now I feel like I can cry at night, I can cry in the morning, I can cry whenever because I know I’m not going to, I’m not going to get pulled under by the wave. But that was one of the coping techniques that I used in those early days and I felt like it was a kindness to myself of just not getting into that crying where you just cannot stop.

Krista: I felt the kindness as you said it. It felt kind.

Jennifer: Yeah, it was a new thing for me. Is this okay for me to tell myself that I can, am I avoiding crying? But it just felt like a little treat of, at night, you can lay in bed, you can cry again in the morning if you want to, but right now, just go to sleep. You need to sleep. The grieving is exhausting. It’s so hard.

Krista: Full body. I know you said your mom was obviously, your mom was a widow. Did you have any other widows in your friend group or any that you knew?

Jennifer: No. No. MGO was really the first. I say that, a crazy thing happened. Jerry died on a Wednesday. He was 52, healthy. A good friend of mine, six days later, her husband passed away of pulmonary embolism, like in our friend group. So our kids all grew up together. And within six days, two of the dads that were young and healthy, bam, gone. It was traumatizing. It was unbelievable. So, she and I did walk through this season together of being newly widowed in our 50s, early 50s. But besides my mom and her, I always thought of widows, even though my mom was younger, I just always thought of widows in their 70s and 80s. It’s just 50-year-old widows aren’t a thing. They are. They are. Yeah, MGO will show that 50 and 40 and 30, yeah, they’re out there. They’re out there for sure.

Krista: So, was there any other resources you were exploring or looking for? Were books helping you? What were you reaching for, searching for, finding?

Jennifer: I think one of the things I was like on Facebook widow groups and that was depressing. Any of the ones that I was in, it was, my husband died 27 years ago and I’m as sad today as I was the day he died. And I’m, oh my. And I believed it. I’m, yeah, that makes sense. That could be. There were some good books. I can’t remember the titles now that you’re asking, but there was some good like Christian lament and grieving that I felt like hit the nerve when I needed them. 

But I didn’t know it, but I was looking for MGO of an overhaul of the way I thought and the way I approached. And I don’t even think it’s necessarily for widows. It’s, gosh, I wish I would have had that 20 years ago, 30 years ago, an approach to your thought work and then also just how to care for your nervous system. Just both of those things in tandem were just so helpful to me. There were so many times that you, I just call it broke my brain, just, you offered me a different thought. It was, oh, that’s an option for me. I didn’t know. 

I just had always been thinking, one of the ones when we were doing first early work, was, I’d said, Jerry’s gone. And you said, that really can’t be the circumstance line because it’s not completely factual. Some people feel like their loved ones are really close to them. And I felt he was a million miles away. It was, oh, that’s optional. I can have a different way that I’m, just thinking of thoughts as options. I get to pick them up and evaluate, is this serving me well or is this not serving me? Is this moving me towards what I want or away from what I want? All of that was incredibly helpful to me.

Krista: Did you set out to look for a coaching program or did you start listening to the podcast? How did you even, how did we cross paths?

Jennifer: My youngest daughter actually knows somebody that you know. So, she had sent me your a link to your website, like early, early days and I’m, I don’t know. And then when I started getting on the Facebook widow groups, I started seeing your advertisements and stuff and I was, oh, that was the face of the lady that my daughter had sent me. So, I hadn’t ever listened to a podcast before I joined MGO. Once I joined, then I started listening, but.

Krista: So you did it the other way around? You joined and then listened. I feel like most people listen to the podcast.

Jennifer: But I was like, I just was reading about, I used to argue with you in my head. It would say, you know, do you want to love your life again? And I’m, Krista, that’s too much. That is just a bridge too far. Maybe I could buy an inch, not hate my life as much, but love my life again. That’s offensive. You’ve gone too far, Krista. And I think one of my early coaching calls with you, I was like presenting you. I’m, one plus one, Jerry plus Jennifer equals 2. Two minus one is just one. Krista, it’s math. My life is less than it was. You can’t tell me that. I’m arguing with you and you’re just, it seems to me that you think you can’t carry that void and move forward. You have a rule that you can’t have this void in your life that used to be Jerry and still move forward. And I was, I definitely have that rule. That’s for sure a rule that I’ve made for myself. Anyways.

Krista: It’s fun to hear that reflected back from your perspective.

Jennifer: Is that what you would say? I feel like maybe that’s not quite a..

Krista: Who knows? Half the stuff that comes out of my mouth sometimes I don’t even remember what I say or how I would say it. That’s the sentiment of it. It’s just, it’s fun to hear it come back from someone else that benefited and to hear their way of seeing it.

Jennifer: Yeah, and I think the things that you put out there in the coaching group, that’s been shocking to me that I thought me getting coached by you would be the benefit, but me hearing other people getting coached has been just as helpful. I can see myself in each one of those women, even though we have different problems, the logistics are different, our lives are different, but the thought pattern is there. All of that I learn from every coaching session that you do. It’s just incredible kind of these things that you throw out and it’s, oh, oh, I can think about that differently and that moves me in a different direction.

Krista: Yeah, sometimes I think it’s easier in a group coaching container to hear the takeaways and to benefit because your brain isn’t resisting any of the coaching. It’s not quite glitching. You’re not in any sort of defensive posture at all. You can just see somebody else’s brain and somebody else’s whatever’s happening them and in some ways it’s more powerful. Yeah, easier to perceive almost.

Jennifer: Yeah. One of the big things, it was in one of your masterclasses that I listened to last October. And I think you’ve done a podcast on it. For sure, I’ve heard it in your coaching of just this idea of, what happens if it was always going to be this way? What happens if I was always going to be a widow? And I know I had heard you say it before, but somehow in this recording that I was listening to you say that, it just arrested me. I just, I like paused. I’m, I just have to think about that. And so, I talked to my kids about it. I just chewed on it for months of, if I really believed that it was always going to be this way, how would that change the way I move about in the world? And it changed a lot. I think my faith tells me that it’s, our days are appointed for us by God, right? And so I actually looked up, Jerry lived 19,339 days.

And in my chewing on this, it was, I could see it as a tragedy that he died or I could see it as those were the days that he had and what a beauty that I got to be so much a part of it. But then likewise, I have appointed days for me too. I have a set number of days and what do I want them to look like? Do I want to be looking back on this beautiful part of my life and wishing I was back there all the time? Or do I want to say, that was beautiful and now what moving forward? That has been such a game changer for me of, if I really believe it that I was always going to be a widow at 52, I was going to have this other chapter to my life, how would I move forward in my life? 

I would still cry and still have days where I’m sad and I miss this man that I loved so much. And I’m going to look forward to what I can build in my future and what can happen coming up. And I can show up with my kids of, it was always going to be that way that they were going to lose their dad at 25 and 27 and 29. And I hate that for them, but I can be the mom that they need from me, you know, and I’m not less than because their dad’s not here. I can be supportive and caring and walk alongside them with their grief too.

Krista: I don’t think we realize how much energy we spend in resistance too, telling ourselves for such an extended amount of time that it shouldn’t happen and it shouldn’t be this way and it wasn’t supposed to be this way and how.

Jennifer: I would play the game what happens if it would have been me instead of Jerry? The kids would have been better off if their dad was still here and all that’s so much energy draining. And I think just somehow just chewing on that, it was always going to be that way. It just like gently started chipping away at some of that, this was such a tragedy. It still is really sad and it is tragic that he didn’t, but also, he lived a beautiful life and I got to be a part of so much of it. And so then what is Jennifer going to do with these appointed days that she has for her?

Krista: I’m curious to know more about your transition from the point where you were offended by the idea of loving your life again. I remember that too, right? You could be happier than you were before this trauma. I’m, no, thank you very much. I kind of want to throat punch people. So I relate to that and I bet other people do too. So, what was it like to notice that you did make a transition from, I just want to not hate my life to, maybe something more is possible and I can focus on the days I that I have ahead of me.

Jennifer: Yeah, that’s a good question. I don’t know that it’s a, Monday you feel one way and Tuesday you wake up and feel the next, you know, that it’s just, I think you even just saying, let’s just normalize that grief does a number on our brain. We have all these neural pathways in our brain that are rewiring. Let’s just normalize that this is the process of grief and not try to make ourselves get to the place of in a false sense of, oh, I love my life now and everything’s great. Just normalizing that grief is a journey. 

You’re going to have ups and downs and I think just chipping away slowly at these, if I believed this thought that I could love my life, what would somebody that believed that, I don’t know, for me it was just a more of a slower process of just accepting that I’m a widow and that I’m going to have grieving day. I’m going to carry the grief of Jerry not being by my side for the rest of my life. And I used to get really mad about that and annoyed, why do I have to carry this grief with me everywhere? And now I’m just, yeah, it just, it comes with me and I can just enjoy a beautiful moment too. And it’s just right there and joy is there. So I don’t know if I’m answering your question. I guess I don’t know how the process happened.

Krista: I kind of love it. I kind of love it. It sounds like it wasn’t really something you had to work really hard to get yourself toward. You just remained open and maybe curious a little bit along the way and it just, it sounds like it was an accumulative effect of the other coaching that you were doing and work that you were doing and life that you were living and then gradually it just felt a little more open and a little more possibility.

Jennifer: Yeah. Yeah, and I think curiosity, I think you’re saying that of just what would it look like? I don’t have to choose to accept it, but what would it look like if I was thinking that way? And just letting my brain get closer to it without adding all the resistance to it. I was just reading back through, so I keep, Jerry, he struggled with anxiety. He was like a very low-risk person, thought through all the eventualities of all the things that could happen and was prepared for all of them, which was wonderful to be married to somebody like that because I literally could just be, I don’t have to worry about anything. He’s got it. And then he dies and I’m, oh my gosh, what’s going to happen? The apocalypse is going to happen and Jen is not prepared.

With him, it came anxiety. If you’re always thinking about the future and so he really developed the last five to seven years before he died, like this true practice of gratitude and not like a fake toxic positivity, but really try, like you talk about, finding the small victories in the day and really like embracing them and being grateful for them. And so, after he died, he had kept that in a Day One, it’s called the Day One app and he had put them in there and it’s been such a gift for us.

Krista: That’s so great that you have access to that, his app of all of his gratitude practice. Wow.

Jennifer: Yes.

Krista: That’s cool.

Jennifer: And so you actually can print them out. So I’ve printed out some of the years for him of, it’s such a gift, right? He would be grateful for me and each one of the kids and on days and it just, it’s such a gift to look back on that. So I was, okay, I want to start doing that. So I really did start after he died and I was just, it just served me up just yesterday. Do you want to relive your memory from last year? And sometimes I’m, ugh, no, I’m good. Who wants that? But yesterday I did and it was actually, so I joined in April. This is now July and I read through, I was going to the house, I was moving at the time and I’m going through the garage and cleaning out stuff that was his and mine. 

And normally I would have been cleaning, I would have been sad, but I would have been adding a bunch of pain, suffocating to it of, what is my future? Where am I going to live? Am I ever going to find a house that I’m so tired of crying this, I’m just trying to clean. Just the mind spinning out. And so last July 22nd, whatever it was, I was like, I just was sad today. And I cried and I didn’t ask myself a million questions about my future. I didn’t try to solve any problems. I just was, this is sad that I’m cleaning out the garage and my husband is gone. That was remarkable. That was such a clean experience of just, I just let myself be sad. And then it was and at the end I was, and I got a lot done, a lot accomplished. It was, I was sad and I cleaned out the car. 

And I almost, who knew, you know, so, anyways, that’s a long way to get around back to that other question of just, I think that was just starting to be the process of just allowing the feelings, not always trying to solve for my future. That was a big one of just, what does the future look like? And now I don’t have him and so I would tangle up so much suffering along with just the pain of just missing him and losing him.

Krista: So then you finished your first six months in Mom Goes On, then you decided to do masters. What made you decide to do that? Why did you do it?

Jennifer: I’m going to be a lifer for sure. Okay. There’s a club, there’s a club of you. We should get shirts. I felt I wasn’t done learning and I think it leapfrogs you, if that’s a word of, I don’t know if I can explain this where it makes sense, but I can be thinking of something and then one of these amazing ladies in the community will post something on Slack or it’ll be in coaching call where they’ll resolve something. An example, you work with us so much on loving ourselves, right? And really having our own backs and the way we talk to ourselves is so important. 

And all my life I’ve had a very harsh inner critic and Jerry was like the anecdote to that, right? He would say to me, oh honey, why do you talk to yourself like that? Or why do you even think that about yourself? And instinctively when he died, I knew I’m going to have to talk to myself nicer if I’m going to survive this. I don’t have the person beside me saying nice things to me. I’m going to have to say the nice things about myself. I didn’t know what that meant or what that looked like, but I knew I was going to have to take my inner critic way, she was going to have to get a different voice for me.

So, Mom Goes On was huge in that. And I had been thinking, oh, now that I’m nicer to myself, I find it so much easier to be nicer to other people too. So, one of the awesome ladies in our group posted that as a victory or something of learning to be kinder to myself. And it actually is easier to be kinder to other people. It was, I had that in the back of my head, but her just vocalizing it, it’s now it’s, yep, that’s exactly what’s happening with me and it’s like a solid like a growth point when I can name it and I can see it. Does that make sense?

Krista: That totally makes sense.

Jennifer: Another one just a couple weeks ago, one of the awesome ladies in our group put something, she showed up for a granddaughter’s recital or somebody’s recital. And so often, I think for me as a widow, and I think what she was saying is, we show up where we’re the grandparent or the parent and I feel like my kids are missing their dad. It used to be mom and dad coming to this or both the grandparents coming to it. And so sometimes I show up feeling less than or I’m missing a piece, which I am missing this person, but she said something, I didn’t bring the grief with me today. I just showed up. I’m enough to show up to support this granddaughter. And I was, yes, that’s amazing. That’s beautiful. I had been niggling around with that in my brain, but I didn’t have words for it. And so then this person articulating this growth point for her, I just, I just leapfrogged over the whole thing is, yes, that’s right. And not to say I’m not going to struggle with it again or, but now there’s words around it of a solid growth to it.

Krista: You get some clarity around what you’re experiencing, you grow faster in some ways because of other people and what they’re sharing.

Jennifer: Yeah.

Krista: So what was it like? I don’t remember the timing. Did you come to Coaching on the Couch before you joined Masters or after?

Jennifer: It was in November. So, maybe right at the same time. Yeah. Okay. I probably yeah.

Krista: I always like to know what it was like to be around another group of widows in real life.

Jennifer: Yeah. That was great. It was just, we just had a shorthand, right? We’re all from all around the country, totally different life experiences, but we have this common, we’re all just widows, we’re all in this journey together. That was amazing. We cried, we laughed, we just immediate connection. And I feel that even not getting together in person, although that was wonderful, but it’s just quite the community of amazing, beautiful women, strong, smart.

Krista: It’s been your experience? Yeah.

Jennifer: It’s incredible. And your guys, I know you don’t like for people to give commercials about Mom Goes On, but you guys are incredible. It’s your whole team. It’s just so well run. You guys are so caring. It’s not, the Krista people see, I know there’s another side to you that you know yourself intimately, but the care that you put into the podcast and that just permeates through everything that you do and the program. It’s really, I just thank you so much and I know you like to credit it back to us of we did the work, but you’ve laid such a beautiful plate for us to appetize and snack from and learn from.

Krista: Thank you for that. Thank you for that. I receive that. It means a lot to me and it is sometimes I truly, I look at the women in that I get to work with and it is just mind-blowing to me. What an amazing group. I hope other people who aren’t in that group don’t then feel intimidated of, these are like special unicorns. No, it’s just like this really honest, vulnerable, loving, compassionate, kind group of just where you can see people being themselves and asking for what they need and getting what they need and supporting each other and encouraging other and it’s just magic. 

And I’m so glad I created it in the rolling style that I did because a lot of programs have a start and a stop and you start with the group and then you finish with the group and then you’re done. And I didn’t really realize the full benefit of this at the time that I did it, but I’m just so glad past me did it that way of having that rolling nature where there are people like you who I who are identifying as lifers, there to support the people who are new that come in. And then there are people who have been there way longer than you that are still there. And so there’s just this culture that has been created that is wild.

Jennifer: It’s incredible. And so I can look back on these new ladies and my heart just goes out to them. The ones that come in and you just see the heartbreak and you just want to hug them and say, it’s going to be okay. I know right now it doesn’t feel it is, but you’re going to be okay. It helps me mark my, not that there’s any progress, but just, okay, I’m not in acute grief anymore and we have made it through those days and now I’m in a new season and we’ll continue to.

Krista: It’s never done, but there’s definitely progress. It’s never over it. I’m I’ve moved on. No, that’s not a thing, but for sure, progress and progress.

Jennifer: Yeah, growth, for sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Krista: Yeah. I love also, thank you for sharing at the beginning that right before this call, you had a moment of, is this still even my life? What the heck? How am I on a widow podcast? I think that matters for other people to hear because it would be easy to just think, oh, she sounds like she’s got it all together and she doesn’t have any surprise grief grenades or stuff like that.

Jennifer: Yeah, and if that’s in any way what I’ve communicated, that is just not the truth. It just, I just think I will carry it with me for the rest of my life. And now I’m, I just accept that and it almost feels like an honor. He was an incredible man. We had a great marriage. Why would I not want to carry that with me my whole life? But there’s still just times where today I’m, I’m going on a widow’s podcast. What? That just doesn’t make any sense. But I’ve been thinking through, what do I want to talk to Krista about and marking like my progress and my growth and I’m feeling so grateful for all of that and then the grief bomb of just, I don’t want to be a widow. What? Why am I doing on a widow podcast? That’s crazy.

Krista: Yeah. Flashing back to going on my mentor’s podcast, the coach that I learned from. I had started listening to her before Hugo died, a long time ago. And then it just so happened that when I got to a place in therapy where it’s not feeling like it’s doing all that much for me, that she launched a program that I then joined. It wasn’t grief related. It was just like general life coaching, but that’s where I started like really learning a lot of what I now teach, right? 

And then full circle moment of then becoming a coach, quitting my job, learning about grief, and starting to help people with it, and then going on her podcast as a guest, what a wild ride, right? Of like way before Hugo even died listening to her podcast and then going through all that whole thing and then coming back on the podcast just, how did I get here? Who would have ever thought this was not on my 10-year plan?

Jennifer: And that the seeds were planted for you to be a coach for grief and widow before you were even a widow and just yeah.

Krista: Although, I will say, early on, I was, I like the stuff she’s saying, but this whole life coach stuff is weird. I was very skeptical. I think it’s snake oil.

Jennifer: And then, that is what happens in life all the time. Yeah, if you’re critical about something, you’re, oh, and now here I am.

Krista: I’m a midwesterner, just a little, maybe a little bit late to catch up on the things that are trendy, little skeptical of that. And here I am, right? Now I can’t imagine doing anything else. What is it that you wish I would have asked you that I didn’t or anything that you really wanted people to hear that we didn’t cover?

Jennifer: I feel like we covered so much. I just think just having grace and patience with yourself, trying to have a cleaner experience of just allowing yourself to be sad or disappointed or jealous, just letting yourself have a cleaner experience of your feelings is just been, it’s just been so powerful. And find yourself a community of widows that can support you. It’s just, it makes such a difference.

Krista: So, if anybody’s interested in learning more, there is a podcast episode on pain versus suffering, so people can go and listen to that. Maybe that would help them. And I always want to say too, my community may not be the community that somebody joins. That’s okay. But gosh, don’t give up on finding the community that is right for you, if it’s not mine. Had I known what I know now after Hugo died, I would have definitely gotten myself in a community. And I man, I was resistant to that, very much an introvert, did not really want to be in community, did not want to share things. Okay to talk to a therapist one-on-one, but not so much community. And to see how people, and you use the term leapfrog, really do benefit in such powerful ways individually because of the collective, find yourself a community, even if it’s not mine.

Jennifer: Or people that are growing and wanting to move forward. I think that’s the, because there can be communities of we’re just going to sit and how sad it is to be a widow and it is sad and we sit, we sit in that too for sure. We feel all those feelings but that women who are, what’s next for me? What does life mean for me afterwards?

Krista: Some forward focus. Thank you so much for coming onto the podcast and being willing to share your story with people.

Jennifer: Yeah. Thank you for having me. Thanks for all you do for all of us. I appreciate it.

Krista: Best job in the world. All right. We’ll talk soon.

Jennifer: Thank you. Okay, bye. Thank you.

If you like what you’ve been hearing on this podcast and want to create a future you can truly get excited about even 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 what you deserve. Go to coachingwithkrista.com and click Work With Me for details and next steps. I can’t wait to meet you.