Ep #375: Lessons I’ve Learned from 10 Years of Widowhood

Welcome to The Widowed Mom Podcast, Episode 375: Lessons I’ve Learned from 10 Years of Widowhood.

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. 10 years of widowhood. When you hear this episode, it will have been 10 years and three days of widowhood. And so I thought for this episode of the podcast, it would be helpful to share with you 10 lessons that I have learned in that amount of time. 10 things I wish I had known at the beginning of widowhood or much sooner, but it has taken a long time to learn those things. So I hope you will really benefit from these 10 things. Of course, there’s many more than 10, but I want to give you these 10.

And I also want to say that there’s just something about every time I hit a death anniversary that just makes me pause and reflect. And my goal is that you might benefit from some of what I am pausing and reflecting about. So, let’s get into it. 10 lessons that I have learned in 10 years as a widow. So, the first lesson is that grief touches every part of life. There is no part of life that goes untouched with spousal loss. When you lose your person, it impacts your identity, it impacts your sense of purpose, it impacts your sense of safety, your confidence, everything. So, you are not imagining how hard it is. It is absolutely a full-body, life-altering experience. And I don’t think that most of us appreciate that going into it.

I think we know it’s going to be hard and I think we imagine that we’re going to have a lot of feelings about it, and we know that life is never going to be the same, but I don’t think we fully appreciate or understand that it genuinely touches every part of life. And I think understanding that matters because it makes it easier to swallow. It helps us be less self-critical. It helps us be more self-compassionate when we understand that it’s not an us problem so much as a lot of what we’re experiencing is just, it’s a grief problem, it’s a widowhood problem.

Number two is that emotional literacy is often missing. Many of us show up to widowhood not knowing how to feel emotions, only knowing how to push through or resist them or bury them or eat them or scroll to avoid them. Like we know how to get away from them. We might have a history of knowing how to react to them or respond from them, but very few of us were taught how to actually feel them, make space for them, allow them, let them flow through. And that doesn’t mean we’ve done anything wrong or that there’s anything wrong with us. It’s just that sometimes we don’t come to widowhood with the tools that we need.

So sometimes we’re just in a space where we have to acknowledge that we need tools that we have never had before and it’s not an indication that we’ve done anything wrong, it’s just an indication that there’s a gap in the tools that we have, and we need new tools. And that’s okay. And then we can go about getting them, which is one of the things I love helping people with, is how to change their experience of feelings so that feelings get easier.

Number three is that we are taught to use gratitude as a weapon. And I accidentally did this to myself too. I remember hearing Oprah say that you can’t feel grateful and any other emotion at the same time. And I, that’s not an exact quote, by the way, but that’s kind of what I remember. And I remember thinking, yeah, I don’t really want to feel all these other feelings, so I can just focus on gratitude. And unfortunately, what can happen is that we can intentionally use gratitude in a way that invalidates the pain that we’re experiencing. And when we invalidate the pain that we’re experiencing, we don’t give it the attention that it needs. We don’t figure out how to let it flow through. It just gets buried with gratitude. And we know that. We know what it feels like to invalidate our own experience. We know what it feels like when other people try to use gratitude and how invalidating that feels to our own experience. And so the less we can do of that, the better.

So I’m not anti-gratitude, but I am anti-gratitude in a way that overrides or minimizes or invalidates the pain that we’re feeling that actually does need attention. And beware when we are doing that to ourselves. Beware when we are giving ourselves “at least” statements. At least they’re no longer suffering. At least I still have life left to live, or at least they’re in a better place, or any of these “at least” statements. They might sound kind, and I’m not saying they can never be kind, but notice when they might be something we are using to dismiss something that we feel when we could have great compassion for how it is that we feel and take care of ourselves as we feel it so that feeling can flow through.

And then what might also be true is, yes, I still have a lot of life left to live. And yes, they’re no longer suffering. And there’s some other things there. “And” is one of my favorite uses here. I hate it when people say, you can be sad that they died or happy that they lived. No, you can be both. And when we imply that one emotion is superior to another, such as gratitude, that’s when we end up doing those things that are very binary, black and white, all or nothing, instead of figuring out, how do I make space for all of it? How do I make space for the pain that is so real? And how do I also make space for the possibility that is also real? Because both can coexist, and we don’t need to override the pain with gratitude and use it as a weapon against ourselves.

Number four: should thoughts. Should thoughts, big red flag on all the should thoughts. Shouldn’t I be doing better by now? Shouldn’t I be grateful for what I have? Shouldn’t I be focusing on the bright side? Shouldn’t I be whatever? Whatever it is that you are should-ing on yourself, beware of those thoughts. It is okay to feel however you feel to the extent that you feel it.

You shouldn’t be anywhere other than where you are. Anytime we tell ourselves it should be different than it is, we’re arguing with reality. And as the lovely Byron Katie is infamous for saying, when we argue with reality, we lose, but only 100% of the time. Resisting what is, arguing with what is, makes what is harder instead of easier. And that’s what should thoughts do to us. So we want to put a big red Post-It on should thoughts. We’re not wrong for thinking them, and we don’t have to listen to them.

Number five: being alone is not a failure and being partnered is not a requirement to being happy with life. And a lot of us come into widowhood believing that somehow being partnered is superior and that the only way to really be happy again is to eventually find another relationship. And that is just nonsense. I get why we believe that because we’re taught it at every turn as women. We’re taught it at every turn. And it just isn’t the truth.

And not to diminish your person, maybe they were amazing, and by all means, not every relationship or spouse that has been lost was amazing, but maybe yours was amazing and maybe the relationship was amazing. And the reason you felt so good in it was not because of them, it was because of you. You did that for you. It wasn’t the relationship. It’s easy to think it was the relationship. It’s actually not in our best interest to give credit to the relationship. When we give credit to ourselves for the emotional experience that we’re having in life, we’re better able to change the emotional experience, right, create something more in the future that we want.

So I highly recommend before you consider another relationship that you genuinely look at whether you believe that is something you want or something you need. If you believe it’s something you need, I think the work worth doing is figuring out how to love your life without being in a partnered relationship with it. Do you love your own company? Being alone is not what creates loneliness. We can be alone and fulfilled. But if we don’t like our own company, if what we’re thinking in our mind isn’t pleasant to spend time with, it’s going to be really hard to get there. So that’s work worth doing.

Number six: your to-do list is not your worth. Productivity is not where your value comes from. You do not have to look at grief like it is a job or a checklist of things to get through so that you can return to productive or normal or whatever your brain might be telling you. Yes, busyness might help you avoid pain temporarily, and there’s nothing wrong with avoiding pain, by the way. But it’s taken me a long time to learn, and I see it a lot when I coach, that what we produce isn’t what makes us valuable. That we don’t have to earn rest, that we are inherently worthy and valuable and wonderful and lovable as we are, independent of what we get done or what we produce or how much we do.

And especially in widowhood, if we are coming at it from a, I have to do all the things and then I can take care of myself, right? I have to do all the things so I can continue to believe that I’m worthy, and then I’ll rest, then I’ll give myself time off, that’s a really hard way to go through widowhood because remember what I said in point one, grief touches every part of life. It’s a full-body experience. If I am not taking care of my body, if I am making myself earn self-care through productivity, the self-care will never be what it needs to be so that I can have the experience that truly creates the quality of life that I want. So we want to get away from this idea that somehow our to-do list has anything to do with our worthiness or our worth or our value.

Okay, number seven: it is 100% normal for confidence to feel shaky after loss. And there’s something we can do about it. I knew when Hugo died that I would be sad. Most of us, we knew that. We knew that coming into widowhood that we would be sad. We knew that there would be grief. But most of us, many of us were not prepared for a hit to our confidence. We did not expect to second guess ourselves so much. We did not expect decision-making to feel so much harder. We did not expect so much anxiety about the future, so much worry and pressure and just this lack of confidence that perhaps is quite abnormal for what we experienced before they died. And now it’s like, where did it go?

So I just want you to hear from me that if that’s you, you’re not alone. Because losing a partner disrupts everything. It’s so challenging to our entire body and our nervous system. Everything is out of whack. It is possible to rebuild confidence, for sure, but it is so normal if it feels shaky, and I think it’s important to know that. I don’t want you to spend time judging yourself or worrying that there’s a character flaw or that there’s some sort of weakness in you for something that is such a normal experience in widowhood.

Okay, number eight: I did this myself. Trying to do it on your own is not the way I would recommend. It’s not the fastest way, it’s not the highest quality way, it’s not the most supportive way. It is a way. But if I could go back in time and I could find support that actually helped and not believe the hyper-independent, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, solve your own problems, don’t let people into see that, don’t burden them with what’s going on for you emotionally, don’t make it awkward for them, right? And I could really just find people who got it and tools that helped me and know that would create an easier experience of grief for me.

I tried to do it all on my own. Well, with the help of a therapist as well. But I did not understand the value of being around other widows. If I had understood the value, I think I would have pushed harder to find the right community for me. And maybe I wouldn’t have found it at that time. That was 10 years ago. Pretty much everything I saw was depressing and I couldn’t relate to the people in the group, or it was religious in nature and I didn’t want religious support. And so I, you know, I just tried to just pull myself up by my bootstraps and read the books and do it my own way.

And I want you to know that, yes, you can do that. And also, what you will probably end up doing is spending a lot of time trying to solve problems that aren’t problems you need to solve. You will try to solve problems that if you could just see reflected in other widows, you would see, oh, this is not a me thing, this is not a problem I need to solve, this is a grief thing. And then I would stop putting my energy there and I would start putting it on the things that actually do move the needle that maybe are something going on inside of me. But I’m wasting all this time because I’m trying to do it on my own.

Okay, number nine: there’s no finish line in grief. Surprise. Hopefully you know that. You’ve been listening to me for a while, and maybe this myth is not as pervasive as it used to be and as it was 10 years ago when Hugo died. But all I ever knew was the five stages of grief. So, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, and you get to a place called acceptance and, you know, it’s like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Somehow you’ve reached your objective and there it is and you’re done. And that is just not how it works.

Secondary losses are real. If grief is the natural human response to a perceived loss, we’re always going to have a response to our loss. So, we’re not trying to not have a response. It’s always going to be there. It’s, can I have a more intentional experience of grief? Can I choose that response on purpose? Can I decide who I want to be given that grief will always be a part of my life, that this loss will always be? Can I decide what I want to make of it? Can I decide how I want to integrate this experience into my life? I’m not going to move on from it. I’m going to move forward with it. I’m going to integrate it. I’m going to decide who I want to be now.

And if I’m not thinking about it as a finish line that I have to cross, therefore, I’m not in a rush, it’s easier for me to be present with what I’m feeling. And the more present I am with what I’m feeling and the more present I am with the experience that I’m having, the easier that experience gets. But if I’m chasing a finish line or I’m thinking I should be somewhere other than where I am, or I’m trying to get to something that’s arbitrary and doesn’t actually exist, I’m going to have a much more frustrating experience. So grief doesn’t end, we just figure out how to integrate it. Acceptance isn’t something that we do once. There are many things over time that we make peace with. Secondary losses are very real. Death by a thousand paper cuts, right? It’s going to keep coming, these emotions, this response to loss. So let’s stop trying to get to the finish line.

Okay, lastly, you have the capacity for growth. Post-traumatic growth is possible. It is not reserved for a lucky few. It is possible for all widows to create a life that they love. Not in spite of what has happened in your life, but because of it, right alongside it. Not because we move on from grief or we don’t experience grief anymore, but because we decide what we want to make it all mean and who we want to be in all of it. We do the review that says, am I living the life I want? And what changes do I need to make so that I am living the life that I want? Where am I out of alignment with what matters to me? You have the capacity to do that. It’s not a should. It’s not something you have to do. It may not be something you feel ready to do. It may not be something you want to do. And again, it’s your choice. But you have the capacity for it. It is available to you. If you want it, it is yours.

So I remember hearing early on in my grief, post-traumatic growth and I didn’t really like that idea. Kind of felt like a should, kind of felt like somebody was saying I’m supposed to be growing. Kind of wanted to throw a punch a little bit. So that’s not it. It’s knowing, okay, the future is my property. I’m the one who gets to decide how she wants to show up in the world. They aren’t alive anymore and I still am. And I’m the one who gets to create what it is that I want in the future. And I’m only limited by what I believe is possible for myself. And those beliefs can be changed.

That’s my favorite work to do is helping widows love life again, genuinely love it. And that doesn’t mean everything’s perfect. That doesn’t mean we don’t have pain. We’re still human, but we’re fully alive and we’re taking steps toward what it is that we want. We’re turning up the volume on what is good and creating increased capacity to handle what is hard. That’s my favorite work to do.

Okay, I hope all of those things help you. It has taken me a long time to learn many of these lessons. There’s no reason why you can’t learn them faster from me. You don’t have to go through the school of hard knocks. So I hope it helps you. All right, that’s what I have for you this week. Remember, I love you. You’ve got this. Take care and I’ll see you next week. Bye-bye.

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.