Ep #272: Finding Strength in Loss: A Widows Unfiltered Interview with Berit Van Neste

Welcome to The Widowed Mom Podcast, episode 272, Widows Unfiltered: An Interview with Berit Van Neste.

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. Two things, one, if you have not applied for Mom Goes On, I highly encourage you to do so now, because if you do it now, we can likely get you in with the September cohort, which means you can be in a completely different place by the holidays if we get you started now, coachingwithkrista.com. Go to the Work With Me tab.

Second. I’m so sorry that in my interview with Berit, you have to listen to my nasally voice because I’m just getting over COVID, so, sorry about that. But I hope you love the interview. Berit is amazing. You’re going to love her. I’m going to stop talking and we’re going to jump into my interview with Berit. Enjoy.

Krista: Alright, welcome, Berit. Before I hit record, I was just saying, “Why did we not have you on the podcast sooner?” And it kind of surprised me when I thought about it. Sometimes I forget, I talk to you a lot, I have over the last few years. Sometimes I forget, have I actually had a conversation with this person on a podcast? And apparently we haven’t, so sorry it took so long and I’m glad that we’re having it.

Berit: No worries, and I’m glad too.

Krista: Well, why don’t you go ahead and just get us started. Introduce yourself, tell people who you are, a little bit about you.

Berit: So, my name is Berit Van Neste and I am a widow, obviously. I’m currently pursuing a PhD in educational leadership. And I live in Florida, so, pray for me. I have two kids from my first marriage. My second husband is the one who passed away. So, my two kids, they’re grown adults now, but they were young when I married my first husband, sorry, my second husband. They were non-existent when I married my first husband.

Krista: As it often is the case, yes.

Berit: Right. Yeah. So yeah, they were quite young and his name was Roy and he was quite a bit older than me. He actually had been a history professor at the university I attended. And he had been my history professor, so a little bit of scandal going on there. And he was nearly 36 years older than me, which I think makes me somewhat different from most of the widows listening. And the marriage really worked because we were able to say, “Okay, yeah, this age thing exists.”

And there were some definite realities to the age difference that we paid attention to, we were very conscious of them. But we spent a lot more time thinking about the things that we had in common. We both loved history. We both loved British television shows, dramas and comedies. And we both loved hard rock, which for a man his age surprised me, but he was a surprising person. And we both loved just sitting and talking. We sat and talked across the dining room table for hours most days and it was a wonderful relationship.

But like I said, we did not shy away from the realities of our age difference and we knew logically that unless an accident happened, that I would outlive him by a large number of years. The women in my family seem to live forever, so we had prepared. We prepared financially for me to be self-sufficient when he was gone. And we prepared in terms of what he wanted, how he wanted to be buried, which I came as close as I could because what he wanted wasn’t actually legal in our county, but I made it as close as possible.

And he was very adamant, I don’t want to die in a nursing home. I want to be at home. And he even talked about things and I think this came up because we were watching TV one day. He said, “When I’m gone, I want you to feel like you can marry again.” And I told him, I said, “I’ve already had two husbands. That’s enough for any woman.” And it was just my flippant response to him.

So yeah, he was very clear in his way that he wanted me to have a life and to be happy after he was gone, which was great just knowing that until the beginning of the end for him was he fell several days before New Year’s Eve in 2021. So, it was the end of the year 2021. And at first we both had thought that he had just hurt his back, the muscles in his back, not his spine. And he was bedridden for about three and a half weeks. And then even though I had asked him multiple times, “Do you want to go to the hospital?” And he was of sound enough mind that I followed his lead when he said, “No, I don’t want to go to the hospital.” Okay, fine.

And then he rolled out of bed one day and he no longer knew where he was. He had stopped eating and drinking. And I was like, “You’re going to go to the hospital or you’re going to die right now, within the next 24 hours.” So, I called 911, which was a little bit of a challenge. Our house was not only in the country, it was very hard to find.

So, I had to meet the emergency, the EMTs at the gate and actually walk them back to the house because you could not see the house from our front gate. And they got him loaded up, taken to the hospital and Roy was in the hospital for four weeks, during which time he was diagnosed with dementia and he nearly died twice from things not related to dementia. And so those four weeks were a real emotional roller-coaster.

Krista: Did the dementia come on that fast? Had you seen signs of it before?

Berit: No, but, so looking back I can see, okay, there are the signs. But that’s typical for dementia or other mental deficiencies where the deficiencies started happening, I mean, he was over 80. So, it’s really easy to attribute, oh, well, he’s not driving well now because he’s old. It’s just the aging process, not that there was something wrong with him, but that was a normal progression. Looking back now, the last time I rode in a car with him, which I promised myself I would never ride with him again. It was bad and he was never a bad driver.

So, looking back now, I’m like, “Oh, that’s definitely got to be part of this.” Because that was just a few months before all this started. So, with dementia, I’ve heard it called the long goodbye, where for most people, the vast majority of people who get it, it takes them six to 12 years to deteriorate, to decline. And I thought, okay, so this means we have years ahead of us. So, he gets into rehab and all of a sudden he’s better because while he was in the hospital he barely knew who I was. He did know, but I don’t think he fully knew who I was, that I was his wife.

I think he just knew that I was a person who took care of him. And his attitude was terrible, which I’ve never seen, he’s been hospitalized multiple times in our marriage. I’ve never seen him like this in the hospital before. But he gets into the rehab center, and he’s getting the rehab and the exercise, and it’s going really well. He’s able to walk with a walker. He’s able to converse with me for at least an hour at a time about a variety of topics. He was watching CNN all the time, so the invasion of Ukraine happened about that time.

So, he was glued to the news. He was very concerned as if that would help the Ukrainians. He was always convinced that if he worried enough it would help.

Krista: It would help, surely, yes. Sometimes I can relate to that.

Berit: Well, and so his student, a former student of his and this is true, was the spokesperson for the Pentagon at that time.

Krista: Wow.

Berit: His name is John Kirby, if you watch the news for any length of time, you’ll see John Kirby. He’s a former student of my husband’s from back in the early 80s.

Krista: That’s cool.

Berit: So, we always loved, “Oh, Kirby’s on.” We would watch John Kirby talk. And so, he was in rehab for three weeks. He was doing really well. We were preparing to bring him home. He contracted pneumonia, the pneumonia, they knocked it out of him within a day or two. I don’t know exactly what happened there, but after the pneumonia, we took him home. I failed miserably at caring for him at home and I didn’t know why.

Krista: I’m doubting you, but carry on.

Berit: No. Okay, so that’s a thought. What it is, is I struggled with someone who was not only a headstrong individual, which he had always been, but no longer had a reasonable estimation of his own capabilities. And so, I had all kinds of things for him at home, for him to come home. I had a wheelchair for him. We had a walker. We had a variety of items. And so, he was in his wheelchair and I was going to go get him, I think, something to drink. I don’t remember. I was going to go get him something. I left him alone for five minutes in our bedroom and I told him, “Don’t get up until I come back.”

Krista: Of course.

Berit: I come back and he’s mostly on the bed, but can’t figure out how to get the rest of the way on the bed. I know, it breaks my heart. This is a PhD in medieval history and this is what happened to him.

Krista: Such a quick decline.

Berit: It was a really fast decline, which I later found out was because he’d had a history of stroke long before I met him. I knew about it, I just hadn’t put the two together. So, I found out later that the two really do impact each other. So, his decline, we got him back into a rehab facility and he wasn’t even remotely the same person. And he was there for about two or three weeks before I was like, “He’s not going to get better. Let’s put him in a hospice.”

And I talked it over with people who were not going through the same emotional turmoil I was. And that was the hardest choice I had to make. And that includes the fact that I had to choose to get my kid open heart surgery. That was a tough enough choice, but that was a lifesaving choice. This was acknowledging that there’s nothing left we can do. And so, we brought him home and I took care of him. I was a much better caregiver when I knew what I was doing. And he died in our living room, which is exactly what he wanted, maybe not the living room, but he was in the house.

And it was very, very peaceful. I couldn’t have asked for a better passing for him. My kids and I were both there. A friend of mine was there to bring me French toast. I mean, that was just happenstance that he happened to be there. And the nurse tech who came to bathe him twice a week was also there. And she actually, she called the nurse who then took care of calling the Cremation Society and all of that. And as prepared as I was, and this is really the big lesson I took from this, as prepared as I was, I wasn’t even remotely prepared.

There’s no way you can prepare for that feeling of, just loss. I felt like this giant hole opened up underneath me. And I was hovering over the hole and just there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t leave it. I couldn’t do anything. And I didn’t feel anything. My feelings just shut down.

Krista: How long did you experience that shutdown?

Berit: About three months, with the occasional breakthrough of crying and just ugly crying, usually at night in my bed. I have no idea how I made it through those months. I don’t really have much of a memory of it. That widow fog was serious. I somehow managed to take and pass my qualifying exam during that time.

Krista: I have no idea how that is possible.

Berit: I don’t either, but it happened. I apparently also submitted it to a conference and it got accepted.

Krista: Wow. I don’t remember doing that. Congratulations me.

Berit: No, but hooray and yeah, so just apparently I ate during that time because I did not starve to death. My children were grown by then, so I didn’t have to take care. I literally only had myself and I was down to three dogs because I also lost a dog during the time Roy was dying. And that was actually kind of poetic in a way, because it was his dog, and she had been declining for some time. So, I mean, it was expected, but not. And one of those three dogs I lost also during that time, again, she had been declining because my two girl dogs had been about the same age.

But the dogs got fed. I got fed. There was a professional organizer who helped me begin cleaning out the house because he had started hoarding, which is another sign of the pending dementia that I did not recognize. And then every year I fly to Seattle to visit family because for some reason my family has all migrated from Florida to California to Seattle, it’s a thing.

Krista: Southeast to the northwest, why not?

Berit: I know. And I love Seattle. I look forward to going every single year. And that year in particular, because that was 2022, he died in May of 2022. At the end of August, my uncle turned 70 and we all decided to meet the last weekend of August for his birthday. And I was looking forward to that so much because I knew I would be surrounded by people who just loved me. They expected nothing from me. I could just be. And my mom was there, so she made sure I got food to eat and places to sleep and all the things.

And when I got home from that trip, that’s when the floodgates opened and just the weight of that grief was so heavy I could barely get out of bed. I mean, I did get out of bed pretty much every day. Sometimes I changed out of my pajamas. I don’t know how often I showered. It was not often. And it was just, I kept telling myself that whole time, okay, today I’m going to sit down and write. What on Earth was I thinking?

Krista: Yeah, hard to prioritize writing when healthcare is …

Berit: Yeah, I can barely eat.

Krista: Yeah. How long did that last?

Berit: That lasted until I had a conversation with my youngest whose car was in the shop and I was driving them to work and back for a couple of days, not for any great length of time. And one day on the way back to their apartment, they turned to me and very kindly, very gently said, “Mom, I really think that therapy would do you some good.” Just very nice, very gentle and I’m a rebellious snot, so I responded, “You know, I really appreciate that you said that, but I think I’m okay.” I don’t know why I thought it was okay, but just a rebellious snot.

But my kid wasn’t willing to let it get, “No, mom, I really think that you would really benefit from some therapy.” “Yeah, I know you do and I know therapy has helped you but I think I’m okay.” So, my kid gets out of the car and I was like, “Dang you, the kid’s, right.” So, I go home and my kid had given me something of a mission. And my main mission was to avoid going to therapy, but I was a member of another life coaching group.

I was part of Kara Loewentheil’s group, which is great for working with you because you use the same theoretical foundation, a lot of the same tools, at least as far as the baseline tools go. And I was looking on her website because it was very much, part of what I liked about her life coaching community was it was very hands-off, kind of do-it-yourself. Here’s the stuff, but do it yourself, which really appeals to me. I learned to knit that way. I’m really geared towards that.

And so, I look in her community, and I was like, “What does she have for grief?” Oh, there is the grief module and I opened it up and I was so disappointed because there was a PDF document that I don’t even remember if I opened that or not and a video. And I thought, that’s it? Her videos usually were five to ten minutes long and they were usually great videos. I mean, Kara, don’t get me wrong, Kara is an amazing life coach and I still listen to her podcast all the time, but I opened the video and it wasn’t Kara, it was you.

Krista: Surprise.

Berit: It was Krista. And within about 10 seconds, you started with, I think you started with your story. And I was like, “She gets it. She gets it.” You were the first person I had really heard from in any way that genuinely understood what I was going through. The only other widow I had had any contact with, I’d had contact with two other widows prior to that. One lost her husband about six months before I lost mine, and so she wasn’t very far ahead of me going through the widow journey, the grief journey. And so, I did not feel like it was fair to her to lean on her.

Looking back, I probably could have, but at the time, that’s what I was thinking. And then the other one was my grandmother. And she was not willing to talk about it at all. Now, we had an understanding, there was one thing that she said at one point that indicated that she understood what it was like to lose your husband. But she and my grandfather, who I called Pop, had been married for, I think it was 69 years.

Krista: Gosh, [crosstalk].

Berit: I know, it’s that greatest generation era. I’m actually looking, just to the left I’ve got their wedding photo when she was 18, he was 19. And it’s that he’s in his uniform, she’s in the beige suit. It’s great. And she said, I don’t remember exactly what she said, but she indicated that she knew what I was going through. But that was really the extent of it. And to be honest, I think the age at which I was widowed does make it somewhat different.

Krista: Yeah, I agree.

Berit: And so just hearing you and hearing that, age wise, you were much closer to my age when you were widowed. And Hugo was taken so quickly and I thought, all the things you experienced afterwards. I was like, “She totally understands where I am.” And like I said, that took about 10 seconds and I listened to that. That whole video was, I think it was an hour long video.

Krista: I need to go back and watch that video.

Berit: I don’t even know if it’s still there.

Krista: Well, I received so much positive feedback from people about it. I think it goes to show or it just kind of validates for me that so many people, not just widows, are struggling with outdated information about grief and the isolation of not having someone who understands and just, yeah, we just need to be talking about it more, but anyway, carry on.

Berit: Yeah. No, you’re absolutely right. So that was probably early October, so my inability to get out of bed and everything lasted about six weeks and then that conference came, which was mid-October.

Krista: That you had agreed to present at.

Berit: I had agreed to present, yeah, and it was at Penn State. So, it got me out of bed. I live in Florida, so it got me not just out of bed, but I was in professional clothes for about three days. And visiting Penn State in October was beautiful. Their leaves had changed color a little early so I was just at the tail end of that. But I spent time walking through the town and everything. I did not spend much time at the conference itself because it turns out, I absolutely did not want to be around people.

Krista: Yeah, too peopley.

Berit: I got there and my presentation was fine because I’m a talker and I’ve been on stage since I was two in various capacities, mostly music so it’s easy for me to be in front of people. And this was just at a round table, so there were only seven or eight people anyway, but the rest of the conference I spent in my hotel devouring your podcast.

Krista: Really?

Berit: Yeah, just episode after episode.

Krista: I didn’t know that. Didn’t you join in November or December?

Berit: Yeah.

Krista: Yeah, okay, so it was quick for you then.

Berit: I don’t waste time.

Krista: Let’s go, Berit. I like it.

Berit: Well, I knew it was right for me, every episode I listened to, I was like, “Need more. Need more. Need more.” And then eventually I got to a last episode which is not even remotely the last episode now.

Krista: Now, yeah.

Berit: And I was like, “This is not enough. I need more of this, this is not enough.” And it really was a genuine longing within me saying she’s got what I need. She’s got the tools, the understandings, really the understandings because I’m a very cerebral kind of person. So, I need to understand exactly why things work the way they work. And you were talking about thought work which made sense to me because I’d already done some. And I was like, “I need to do this.”

And I talked to my mom on the phone, and I was like, “This is not going to be cheap but I really think that this will help.” And mom was like, “Well, it sounds great. You’re investing in yourself.” She says, “It’s probably going to be worth it.” So yeah, I signed up and I did not think they would get me in until December, but there was room in the November cohort and so I was like, “Yeah.”

Krista: Let’s go. I love it. What did you hope to get out of it?

Berit: What I wanted to get out of it was. I really wanted to be myself again and that was driving me more than anything because I thought I’m young. Because I was 49 when I was widowed. I’m young, I have a lot of time ahead of me. I’ve got this PhD that all I have left at this point is the dissertation, which unfortunately is still true.

Krista: Hey, but you have come so far.

Berit: I have, I really have and I thought that there is more for me. But I need to get back to being myself so I can get it done, whatever that is. And so, I joined the program and doggone it, that first week, that first week was, and this is saying a lot. The first week where all we do is that feelings work, really I think the whole month, but the first week where you really learn to sit with those feelings instead of resisting them. I would be lying if I said that I’m perfect at it now, but at the time I wasn’t facing up to anything at all. I was just trying to be normal again, whatever that meant. I didn’t even know what that meant.

And that first week, the feelings work I did, I was like, “Oh, this is what I need to do, okay, now I get it.” And it just opened up this door for me so that I was not just ignoring the grief. I started thinking of my body as this kind of like, this is going to sound weird, kind of like one of those pasta makers where you turn the handle and you roll the pasta through and it makes the pasta into whatever you want it to be. I started thinking of my body that way with regard to feelings.

I need to let the grief in and be there and my body is designed to process this grief and to reconcile my brain with my body. This is what I need and that is literally, I do it every day, multiple times a day now. If I had learned nothing else, this was the single most helpful thing I learned from you and it was the first week.

Krista: Why did it help you? Tell me why it helped.

Berit: Why it helped, because I still freaking grieve everything. So, I find and I don’t know if this is because of the grief or because I’ve learned to process it, or both, or even if it matters. But I feel much more strongly than I used to. And I’m sitting there, I was at Les Mis a few weeks ago, Les Miserables, the play, which I love. I know the words to all the songs, love it. And there are two songs in there. There was one song I knew I would cry at because I always cry, it’s just such a deep emotional song.

But then there was one, that’s Bring Him Home, which is probably the most famous song from the play. But then there’s the one where Éponine is dying, the little fall of rain and I started bawling. This isn’t even like a major character, and I’m crying because this is so tender and so wonderful. And my boyfriend sitting next to me puts his hand on my shoulders, “It’s okay, it’s okay.” I was like, “I know, it’s just so beautiful.” Everything just, it comes out of me so much more easily than it used to.

And I think I just have a greater awareness that it’s there and I’m not pushing it back down. But so now it means I grieve everything or I feel for every, I mean, I’m not going to get political, but there’s some politic stuff that happened this weekend that I felt grief about. And I’m like, “I don’t even know you people.” What on Earth is going on? Bob Newhart passes away. I’m grieving, really.

Krista: I love that for you because the alternative is just to kind of go through life just kind of noticing, but not really connecting and not really feeling.

Berit: And not even necessarily noticing.

Krista: Yeah?

Berit: Yeah, because I mostly would be like, “No, sadness is not the way to go. Shove it over to the side.”

Krista: Shove it over.

Berit: So definitely an inside out awakening for me.

Krista: Amazing.

Berit: The movie.

Krista: Amazing. So, you did the first six months?

Berit: I did the first six months and the first six months was incredible and difficult and I’m so, so glad I did it.

Krista: Yeah, me too, selfishly.

Berit: Yes, I did the six first months. And then I joined Master’s because at the end of six months I still couldn’t get enough. But it was different because it wasn’t a longing for something, because I had already gotten that something. What I found during those six months beyond the thought work, which I knew I would get, and beyond the coaching, which, despite my aversion to other people, I loved, I love being coached.

I love watching people be coached. It was amazing and that alone was hugely transformative. But when I got to the end, I thought, I don’t want to leave these people. I’ve found my people.

Krista: I was just thinking about it the other day. I really do think one of the best decisions I ever made was to create the Master’s program and then the continuation after that. Because not only what you experience but what you pour back into the community, there’s just no way I can give people what our Master’s members give people, I just can’t like. It’s just magic.

Berit: Yeah, I know when I was going through the first six months, I would watch, the Master’s people would talk. And I would realize not only are they still experiencing challenges, but they’re experiencing them in ways where it’s clear that they are beyond the plateau. I don’t know if that’s really something we get beyond, but I mean, they were definitely beyond the edge of the plateau. And it made me feel like that these are things that I’m not just going to do for six months, but that at the end of the six months, I’m going to take these tools and use them every day in my life.

And I actually began to figure out how that would work for me because I’m really not great with consistency in my scheduling.

Krista: It’s funny that you say that. I mean I’ll take you at your word there, but also it’s just funny how we view other people so differently than we view ourselves because if anybody said, “Is Berit consistent?” Yeah, she is. That’s how I see you.

Berit: Well, I mean, there are things that I’m consistent with. And so, I’m speaking about something specific and that is my ability to plan my day. I will come up with a really great plan for my day and totally blow it out of the water with something else because that’s what I want to do and then I’ll be happy that I did it because I did what I wanted to do.

Krista: Yeah, little rebel.

Berit: And that’s just the kind of person I am. That’s not a thing that I think about myself negatively. It’s actually something I’ve come to appreciate about myself is that I’m a creative, spontaneous kind of person, and that’s the way I like to live my life.

Krista: Yeah. Maybe the word for me is dependable.

Berit: Yeah, I’m pretty dependable. Yeah.

Krista: Yeah, [crosstalk] doesn’t have so much to do with consistency, but dependable.

Berit: Yeah. No, I pride myself on my dependability. And I come back to, I try not to miss a coaching session even now. And I’m past the six months of Master’s. I’m into the whatever you call the hangers on.

Krista: Continuation, we call it.

Berit: Okay, continuation. I like that better.

Krista: The lifers. The never leavers. I love it.

Berit: And the reason I don’t miss it is because I get so much from it. It keeps me grounded in, okay, these are the things I need to do in my life. Not because it’s a should, but because of what I see that it does for me. These are things I want to do. And my mom has told me, I don’t know how many times, just how much this program has done for me, how much of a change she has seen because she was with me through everything.

We talked every single night from the time Roy entered the hospital until at least a year later, which we had never done before. I mean, we’ve always, well, not always, our relationship has been complicated in the past. But we actively improved it and created the mother daughter relationship that we want. So, I was already predisposed towards creating my life and creating my life in the way that I want it. This just made me a lot more mindful, the thought work especially.

And the different activities in the workbooks, the different ways you have us think about things really helped me become more conscious of, okay, here’s why this worked for me in the past. Or okay, I’m having this issue now, with selling the house. Selling my house was a huge, huge issue for me. Anybody who talked to me for any length of time knew that because not only was it my house, but Roy’s.

Krista: Roy built that house.

Berit: . Roy built the house. He bled into the mortar of the house, which, if you know any, okay, so this is …

Krista: Not just paid a contractor to build the house but literally with his own hands, built the house.

Berit: No. Yeah, he literally with his own hands, he built the house. He laid the concrete blocks and he did the, however you do the roofing. He put the beams and all that stuff. I don’t know all the words, but he created the roof. He installed the electricity and the plumbing and just everything. He’d done the basement. I live in Florida, do you know how many houses in Florida have a basement?

Krista: Oh wow, yeah.

Beit: I don’t know of very many. Yeah, no, it’s really unusual in Florida. We were high enough up to where it was not wet, because that’s the primary reason why most Florida houses don’t have basements.

Krista: It’s too wet.

Berit: Yeah. You don’t have to dig very far down, you get to water. But he was from Michigan and he insisted on a basement, so he built it. And it was an amazing house. I went through four or five hurricanes in that house and the house was fine, by the way, it didn’t suffer any damage at all. And so, for me, to leave the house, I couldn’t stay there, partly because it felt like I was getting stuck emotionally and I did not think that was what I needed. And looking back, I know for sure that that was not what I needed.

But then I had that huge amount of guilt, selling the house because it was Roy’s and he wanted me to keep the house and everything. So, I did eventually sell it, but it was the thought work that made that possible, because I was able to really work through the idea that, okay, so Roy wouldn’t have wanted this and he’s not here. And I need to do what I want, what I need to do.

And honestly, if he were here, I would have been able to talk to him and we’d have figured it out. Because when I’d learned that he had dementia, we weren’t going to be able to stay in that house anyway. We were going to have to move. And we were already beginning to talk about it. We were beginning to talk about maybe moving up to Maine, that idea really thrilled him. I don’t know why Maine, we just picked Maine.

Krista: Why not, I mean why not?

Berit: It’s not Florida, basically is what it comes down to but yeah, so that was such a huge thing. So, my mom asked me, she texted me the other day because I am getting through my dissertation. I’m on chapter three. I’m actually doing the revisions for it. I’ve ended up adding something into it that I really love and I need to add this thing in. And every time I say I need something, I’m always asking myself, is that a should or a want?

Krista: Good, I love it, yes.

Berit: All the time, this is a want. I want this in there. It needs to be in there because it makes sense. It’s good to have it in there. But I’m finishing up chapter three out of six chapters and my mom was asking me what I want for graduation because I should graduate in December. And I laid there after she texted me and my first response was, “I’m not sure, I’ll get back to you.” But I laid there and I thought, I have everything I want, I just, I have. everything.

And then I started thinking, my grandmother, I want my grandmother back. And now I’m going to cry. And I don’t really want her back. I mean, this is my mom’s mother who just passed away in May at the tender young age of 98 and she was ready. She was the model of how we should face death. I think, our own death, but that doesn’t mean I’m happy to see her go. I’m so fortunate I had her for my grandmother. But I thought, that’s not anything my mom can give me. And so, I thought, well, time. I want time because we don’t know. That’s one of the other lessons I’ve learned from Roy’s passing is, do it now.

Krista: Yeah, that’s exactly what I was hoping to ask you next is, what is it that you would love other widows to know or what do you wish you would have known? How can others benefit [crosstalk]?

Berit: Well, the biggest thing I wish I had known is, don’t be an idiot, you can’t write right now.

Krista: Okay, fair, yeah, it’s a lot to demand of yourself.

Berit: It really was. And I just was, it’s not as much as that I was unrealistic, it’s that I was in denial. I felt like needing to recover was a weakness, and it’s not, it’s a strength, allowing myself to recover is a strength.

Krista: Was it a surprise to you of the widow fog, the full body nature of your experience, were you expecting that?

Berit: Yes.

Krista: Yeah, okay.

Berit: No, I wasn’t expecting that at all. And now when I hear people saying and I’ve never had anyone say this to me, but I have heard other widows say that it has been said to them that, “It’s been a year, it’s been two years, why are you still grieving?” And the answer is, I’m still grieving because I will always be grieving.

Krista: Yes. Natural human response to a perceived loss. The loss doesn’t go away. We’re always going to have a response to it. Yes, it will change over time.

Berit: Yeah, because I will never perceive that as anything but a loss.

Krista: Yeah, there’s no finish line. I also, I just want to say thank you for that too, because I think you do such a great job of normalizing that within our community. You’re always willing when there’s a new loss with your grandmother, whatever’s going on, you’re always so willing to bring it up and normalize that. And I think that’s a really important thing that people need to hear. It’s not, let me just ‘get over’ this loss. That’s not a thing.

And instead, how can I use what I’m learning in this new way of moving through the world to support myself so that I have an easier experience of future losses or secondary losses or the grief experience that I am having.

Berit: Although I have to say, I’m still surprised. When my grandmother passed away, I was surprised again by how much I mourned the loss because she’s my grandmother, grandparents are supposed to die. But on the other hand, she’s my grandmother, and I love her very, very much. And my life is better because she was in it and even if she was 98 and her body was already beginning to, well, she actually was in pretty good health until exactly her 98th birthday. It was really weird. And then she ended up with a medical condition and was hospitalized and never came back home.

Krista: I think grief is just like that, though, where it’s so common where we have one grief experience and then we expect other grief experiences might be similar, or somehow maybe less intense. Or we talk ourselves out of why we’re experiencing it in a particular way. And she was 98 and she was just my grandmother and try to make reason of why it shouldn’t be what it is. When it would just be far easier if we just said, “Okay, this is what grief is like for Roy.

This is what grief is like for my grandmother. And this is what grief is like for this next thing.” And it’s a fingerprint, it’s completely unique and I can’t do it wrong and my experience of it is never wrong, it’s just my experience.

Berit: Yeah, now I’m having, well, I have had and I’m beginning to understand that I have to accept that I will feel grief in my other relationships. And I’ve been working on and I think I’m doing a good job of it so far. I’ve been working on thinking about it as enjoying the relationships now and what they bring to me. And counting them as a net positive knowing that grief will eventually come, whether it’s a grief for a friend because we’ve drifted apart, as you do.

Or, I’ve got another grandmother who’s 99, I told you we live forever, but I don’t expect her to live much longer. Her body is also failing her. And then my dad looks like he’s got dementia and he’s 77. So, what does that look like? And that’s more, I think it’s more a question of integrating the idea of grief as a normal life experience rather than making it so that grief makes me hole up and not talk to anybody ever again.

Krista: Yeah. Well, the fact that you obviously completely revolutionized that you approach feelings, I think will serve you no matter what life throws at you going forward. The ability to stay with yourself and in your body and not need to get away is, even if you didn’t have the thought work part, just to have that. I love that. What’s next?

Berit: Who knows? The future is kind of wide open. I’m working on a business and you know well about this. I’m working on a business so that I can work with teachers to help improve their classroom management. And the foundational idea underneath that is to build, actually, the kind of community that you’ve got in MGO. Now, I came up with this idea before I started MGO so, I’m not saying I’m copying you, but I might be copying you a little bit because you’ve helped me see some things in practice that work.

Every time I watch coaching, I’m watching you. I’m watching the other person getting coached and I’m listening to the topics and everything, but I’m also watching you and how you interact with us because that is, we actually have a word for it in the academic study of education, and that is andragogy. It’s the grown up form of pedagogy. It’s how you teach the things that you do to communicate.

And for me, pedagogy has been my central focus in my PhD study and it comes from my own pedagogy, my own classroom management stuff. And that’s, I want to help teachers do that better because I don’t think teachers get a lot of support with that. I may also, and I’m thinking very strongly about this actually, also getting into the teaching of pre-service teachers at a local university.

Krista: Amazing. Do you know, go ahead.

Berit: I was just going to say, and my boyfriend and I are planning on moving in together next summer, so lots on my plate right now.

Krista: I feel like we could have had a whole conversation about that and we didn’t even have time for it.

Berit: Well, you have other podcasts.

Krista: I do and maybe we’ll have you back. I was just thinking. It’s strange to me that Roy died in 2022, which means you didn’t cross my path until the end of 2022, so really it’s only been a year and a half since I’ve known you.

Berit: Yeah. I mean, sometimes knowing me feels like forever.

Krista: I mean in the very best way possible. In the very best way possible. It’s just strange to me as I put numbers to that, wow, it feels like, yeah. I think about some of the women who have been in Mom Goes On since the beginning and you feel like that to me.

Berit: Yeah. And I’ve got to say, so when you invited a number of us out to your place last year to coach, which was as transformative, and I’m using that word a lot, but I really mean it, as transformative as the online coaching is, the Zoom coaching. And thank goodness for Zoom, wow. Boy, has as it opened up my world. But sitting in your living room, coaching knowing that the only people who are going to hear this and there are things that were said in there, I’ve never said to anybody else and I won’t.

But knowing that the only people who are going to hear this are people who love you, support you, completely understand, was incredible and such a hugely bonding experience. You were, before we started recording, you were talking about the flights getting delayed. I’m worried about my flight getting delayed on Saturday because I’m meeting up with some of those women again.

Krista: I know, I’m so jealous that I can’t come.

Berit: I know, and we all want you there. But we also understand, Heather’s Camp is super important. But we’ve met up with each other all over the place and I’m sure we’ll continue to because we just enjoy each other’s company so much. There are things we can say to each other that nobody else will really understand.

Krista: And there’s so many things you don’t have to say to each other that are just understood, which I also think is beautiful.

Berit: Yeah, absolutely.

Krista: Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Berit.

Berit: I was happy to be here.

Krista: So excited to have you. Yeah, thank you so much. I would say, keep in touch, but I’ll see you on the next call.

Berit: Yeah. No, we’ll be in touch, it’s good.

Krista: Alright, thanks, Berit.

Berit: Thank you. Talk to you later.

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.