Ep #341: Parenting While Grieving

Welcome to The Widowed Mom Podcast, Episode 341: Parenting While Grieving.

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.

Welcome to another episode of the podcast. Today we’re going to talk about something that comes up all the time in my coaching, which is what it means to parent while grieving. And I know it can be a tender and exhausting and sometimes infuriating experience, which is to do the job of two parents in the wake of loss. It can feel like it’s all on your shoulders. It can feel really disheartening when you didn’t want to do this alone. It wasn’t what you signed up for. It wasn’t what you expected. It wasn’t what you would choose for yourself if you could. Yet, here we are.

You might find yourself feeling overwhelmed and angry, deeply tired, and maybe you might even believe that you’re barely holding it together. And what I really want you to get out of this episode, if nothing else, is that you are not alone. You are not doing it wrong. You are not failing. You are simply a human doing something that is incredibly hard.

So in this episode, I want to give you a few helpful ways to think about parenting and grief so you can give yourself the credit, the permission, and hopefully the support that you deserve.

So let me walk you through five things that I want you to hear. The first, and I really do mean this, however you feel is okay. There is no right way to feel. You are not wrong if you don’t want to be a solo mom. If you don’t want to be a solo parent and you are angry about it, maybe you feel numb, maybe you feel overwhelmed, maybe you then judge yourself for all of those feelings. That’s the problem. How you feel is not the problem. Judging yourself for how you feel is the problem, because all of those feelings are completely normal. It doesn’t mean you don’t love your kids. It doesn’t mean you’re not grateful for them. It doesn’t mean the wrong parent died. It doesn’t mean anything other than it’s hard to be a solo mom. It’s hard.

And sometimes your grief and your parenting will collide. How could they not? It makes sense that you would feel stretched too thin. It has nothing to do with the amount of love you have for your kids. It has nothing to do with your capability or the success that you’re creating as a parent. It just means you’re human. So however you feel is okay. You don’t have to love it or want to do it. And here you are doing it. If we could just stop judging ourselves for how we feel, so much of grief and parenting would get easier.

Number two, the dual process model can be really helpful when you’re considering parenting and grieving. It’s one of my favorite grief models, and I use it a lot in my coaching. It basically says that instead of stages, we’re really in healing, moving back and forth between two orientations. So we have one bucket which we would call loss oriented. And loss oriented is when we’re thinking about the loss, feeling the loss, dealing with the logistics of the loss, right? We’re missing them, we’re crying, we’re processing our emotions. It is all things related to the loss. Separately from that, everything else falls into the category of restoration.

And that would be when you’re doing things that aren’t related to the loss, which I realize can be hard because sometimes it feels like nothing is not related. But you’re taking a break, right? Maybe you’re doing a hobby, you’re living life, you are God forbid, laughing, right? You’re doing things that aren’t loss related. So they’re restorative in nature.

And what the dual process model says is that healing is found in the intentional oscillation between the two. So one moment you are crying in the closet and the next moment you are helping with math homework, right? Or maybe you’re enjoying a social media scroll. You’re going back and forth and back and forth. And that is not a problem. It’s actually a part of a healthy way that we can integrate grief. What happens that is problematic is when we spend too much time in one place and too much time in another, or not enough time in another.

So I want you to consider, knowing yourself, are you the kind of person who will spend so much time on your loss that you judge yourself when you’re taking a break from it? And if so, cut yourself some slack. Remind yourself that taking a break, that laughing, that hobbies, self-care are actually helpful in terms of your healing and of course then, by extension, your parenting.

On the other hand, are you the kind of person who does not want to deal with their feelings? And so you spend all the time in restoration. That’s where you naturally default. Okay, well maybe there’s a skill gap here and we need to learn how do I support myself? How do I deal with the logistics of this loss? How do I deal with the feelings of this loss so that I can go back and forth, back and forth? Because that is the dual process model. All right, so know yourself. Most women that I talk to often fall into, they struggle to prioritize the restorative activities. That’s not the case all the time, but know yourself. Which one do you need more of? Do you need to give yourself permission to do one or the other? Do you need to actually prioritize one or the other and put it in your calendar? That will help. This is a marathon and not a sprint, right? Dual process model helps.

Number three, I want you to start thinking of self-care as a minimum baseline. And I am not talking about pedicures and spa days. Okay, those things are nice, but that is not what I’m talking about. I am talking about did you eat something today? Did you drink water today? Did you move your body in a loving way? Did you see the sun? Did you stop and take some deep breaths? Do you set boundaries where boundaries are needed for your own mental well-being? Are you saying no when the answer is no, or are you forcing yourself to say yes out of obligation? These are the kinds of things that we don’t consider to be self-care, but they are. And sometimes self-care is just doing the bare minimum to keep your body and your brain supported.

Sometimes it might look like doing things that you don’t really feel like a good parent would do, like letting your kid have more screen time, going letting yourself take a nap, getting takeout instead of cooking dinner. All of these things count as self-care. Self-care also includes letting yourself matter, letting yourself not be perfect, being kind to yourself, even asking for help or learning to receive help, all count. And again, solo parenting and parenting while grieving is a marathon. It is not a sprint and we need to treat it like that. If we power through, eventually we’re going to collapse.

So I want you to consider how do I resource myself enough to keep going at a sustainable pace for me because my quality of life is worth it, but also because I will not be able to parent effectively for these little people or grown people sometimes, if I don’t take care of myself. And sometimes that conflicts with what we’ve been taught. We’ve been taught that we need to put ourselves lower on the list. When we really play that through, we see, nope, that’s not how that works. If I keep putting myself lower on the list, then my health suffers. And when my health suffers, my parenting suffers.

Number four, give yourself credit. It’s so easy to focus on what you’re not doing or what you wish you were doing or what you think you could do, or what you think a better mom would be doing. It’s so easy to focus on what you perceive as flaws and faults and character defects. And I really want you to hear me on this when I say you are doing something profoundly hard. It is hard. And you could walk away and you could check out and you could just stop trying. You probably never would. You clearly haven’t, but you could. You could. And we don’t give ourselves enough credit for that. We have brains that are so busy focused on the gap, our potential, the way we could be doing it, the way we see other people doing it, that we don’t focus on the gain, which is how we are doing it and how far we’ve already come. And you are getting up every day and you are showing up and you are parenting. And there’s a whole lot of pain that you’re experiencing as you parent. And that deserves your acknowledgment. So I really want you to give yourself credit.

And I’m not talking about deciding that you’re perfect, right? This is not about toxic positivity or lying to yourself. This is about actually acknowledging the truth of your own resilience, which if you look for it, you will find. If you’re having trouble finding it, ask a friend, because they will see it. Again, it’s not about perfection. You might also enjoy the Gap versus Gain podcast episode that I did. I think that’s relevant here.

Number five, last one I have for you. Grieving and parenting are not in conflict. It might feel like you have to choose that you can either be a good parent or that you can let yourself grieve. But the truth is that they can coexist. And the widows who parent the most effectively have figured out a way for their grief and their parenting to coexist. By that I mean, your children do not need you to be whatever you think perfectly strong looks like. They do not need you to be stoic and all together. They actually need you to be human. They need to know that sadness is okay. They need to know that big feelings are okay. They need to know that you’re still here with yourself in those feelings and that you can be there for them in those feelings. They need to know that you can make mistakes. You can fly off the handle and get angry and you can apologize for that and show them what it’s like to learn from your own choices and your own life.

And so maybe you get more in the habit of saying things like, you know, I am feeling sad today and I’m still here for you. Right, both of those things can coexist. You might get in the habit of saying, yes, mommy’s crying and I’m okay. It’s not a sign that we’re not okay because we’re crying. This is what grief looks like. I am sad and it’s okay if you feel sad too. It seems like we have to be one or the other, somehow like robotic to be a good parent or the humanness, the messiness is not allowed. I disagree with that wholeheartedly. I think we want to set realistic examples of what it is like to be a human for our children. That models emotional awareness, that models honesty, that sets an example for them that they can handle hard things and that perfection is not required.

Final thoughts. If you are parenting through grief, you are for sure doing more than most people will ever understand. And there will be days when it feels too much, when it feels too heavy. And of course, there will also be moments of lightness and of laughter and of presence. All of that together is the experience, right? It’s thinking about it and dealing with it. It’s taking a break and finding some laughter and some light and back and forth and back and forth we go. You do not have to be perfect to be powerful. I guarantee you that you already are. You don’t have to do extraordinary things to be an extraordinary parent.

Sometimes people listen to episodes of the podcast where I interview my clients, and they get nervous because they think it’s about perfection. They hear this person come on the podcast and talk about all the improvements that they’ve made and how they’re feeling good. And then they worry that somehow because they aren’t feeling that way or doing something extraordinary that they are doing it wrong. And I just want you to be assured that’s not true. That’s not true.

And even if it feels like you are alone, even if you don’t know any other widowed parents in your life, I promise you, you are not alone. There are so many of us, so many. I want you to tell yourself that you’re allowed to grieve and that you can do that while parenting. I want you to tell yourself that you’re allowed to parent imperfectly. There is no perfect parent, married or widowed. And I really want you to ask your brain to show you how you’re doing so much better than you think. It’s not going to want to do that unless you ask, but you are doing so much better than you think. Go prove that true to yourself. Ask your brain, find it for me. Brain, how did I do better today than I thought I did? Show me.

If you can’t find it, ask a friend. They can find it for you, all right? It is hard. You are doing it. You could quit at any time. You’re not. Give yourself credit for that. You don’t have to want to do it. You don’t have to love doing it, and you are doing it. You are doing it.

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.