Ep #306: Sad in Spring: If Flowers Are Blooming, Shouldn’t I Be Happy?

Welcome to The Widowed Mom Podcast, Episode 306: Sad in Spring: If Flowers Are Blooming, Shouldn’t I Be Happy?

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. Before we dive in to today’s episode, I want to share something personal. And it actually relates very well to what we’re going to be talking about in this episode of the podcast, which is that my partner and I have legally separated, and he has moved out.

And it’s something that happened rather quickly, and it’s something that I’ve been moving through quietly. And I’m ready to let you know what’s going on because honesty has always been important to me, especially on this podcast.

If you’ve been listening to a lot of this podcast, even if you weren’t listening as the episodes aired when they were originally created, if you’ve gone back and listened, then you have been with me on quite the journey. 

The journey of losing Hugo, the journey of figuring out how to be happy without being in a partnered relationship, then deciding to date again a little bit, gosh, three and a half years after Hugo died. I talked to you about what it was like to date and to get to know myself through the process of dating, going into a COVID bubble with him, eventually buying my dream house and moving in together and all the secondary losses that that brought up for me.

How this big beautiful house brought up all my imposter thoughts and fears and all the highs and lows of combining our families and just life together since then. And as I’ve recorded this podcast every week over the last six years, I have genuinely enjoyed bringing you along for the ride and the support and the encouragement that I’ve received when I’m vulnerable with you just keeps reminding me that while it does feel scary sometimes, and it feels actually a little scary right now if I’m being honest, it is the basis of authentic human connection. That vulnerability.

And so whether we ever work together or not, I really hope that that’s what I can create here with this podcast is a space for vulnerability and for honesty and for transparency. So while I won’t be going into all the painful details of what’s been going on, maybe someday if it feels right, but that’s not today, I want you to know that it’s happening.

And I want you to know that once again, all the tools I teach are helping me in a profoundly important way. It is not just lip service. I want you to know that. And you might not like hearing this, but I do think it’s important that while the grief of losing your person may be the hardest and most difficult loss you’ve experienced to date, it likely won’t be the last loss.

And learning to love life again doesn’t mean that life will just go according to plan, right? It means that we learn to stop fighting the way that life unfolds and that we learn to keep reconnecting with our values and what matters most to us and we keep making choices accordingly.

Right? And that we keep living in this space where we release what we can’t control, and we exercise agency where we know that we have it. And we begin to recognize sovereignty, the sovereignty that we have as women, not just once, but over and over and over again. And it’s like a muscle. And that is where I find myself right now.

Holding the weight of another big loss and feeling grief emerge in a new way, in a different way, in a different form. It’s familiar and yet it’s brand new. And at the same time, there alongside that grief is a hope that I am holding. And it feels a little bit like a quiet knowing. 

I had this quiet knowing when Hugo died too. A part of me knew that life wasn’t over and that something beautiful was still coming. And I’m noticing that same experience now. But it is weird. If I’m being honest, it feels weird to hold all of this. Meanwhile, as I look outside of my window, spring is a springin’. Everything is blooming and green. And the flowers are coming up.

And so maybe you felt that too. That’s why I wanted to record this episode. Maybe spring has arrived where you are. Maybe you’re noticing the birds are singing, and the sun is shining, and the flowers are starting to wake up. And maybe at the same time you notice that on the inside, you don’t feel springy. You feel heavy and sad or flat or stuck. Maybe a great conflict.

Maybe this time of year is stirring something in you. That reminder of what you want that you don’t have or what you miss, or maybe the version of spring that you thought you would be experiencing that doesn’t match what you’re actually experiencing.

And I know so many of us, it’s not just me, are continuing to walk with these multiple layers of grief and these multiple layers of change. And so that’s what I want to talk about today, that contrast about how jarring it can be when the season you see outside isn’t the season you’re experiencing inside. That dissonance that comes with that feeling.

And how to navigate it and how to make space for it and how to remind yourself that nothing has gone wrong if you’re still sad, even when everything around you is blooming.

So, what’s this all about anyway? I think a lot of people assume that spring will just naturally lift our spirits. I have made that assumption before. That when the days get longer and the sun starts shining more, that for some reason we’ll just feel better. And maybe sometimes that happens. But it doesn’t always. And if it’s not for you, then I hope this helps you.

Sometimes spring brings up a very different kind of tension. The kind where everything outside looks light and beautiful and green and new and fresh. But inside, it doesn’t feel that way at all. It feels heavy and maybe tender or off. Maybe even dark.

And when we notice that mismatch, our brain might jump in with a judgment like, why don’t you feel better? Shouldn’t you be doing better by now? It’s spring. Everybody’s – the winter is over.

And so if that’s coming up for you, again, I just want to say you’re not doing it wrong. There’s nothing wrong with you. Your emotional world doesn’t need to match the season. It doesn’t need to match anyone else’s season either.

So it’s totally okay if spring doesn’t feel like a fresh start. I think it’s totally okay if it if it feels like grief, if it feels like change, if it feels like more reminders of what you’ve lost or what you’re longing for. Sometimes that is the way of being human, especially a human in grief.

And spring is just a season. We tend to treat it like some sort of a deadline. We’ve got to feel better. And just because the birds are singing and the flowers are starting to bloom, we act like we have to do that too. Like there’s this binary that we need to fall in line with. And I think it’s nonsense. I can say that as someone who’s kind of been doing it to herself and seeing the ridiculousness of that.

And it’s we’ve got this made-up binary, and somehow stepping out of it is wrong or ill-advised. It’s some sort of internalized should. And I want to offer that spring is just a season, not an assignment. You don’t owe the season anything. You don’t need to bloom on cue. Your emotional life does not need to match the calendar or what you see outside of your window.

And I don’t care what’s going on with everyone else around you because you might sense that everyone else around you seems to be falling right in line, coming alive, reemerging.

Okay. Maybe that’s what’s going on for them. I love that for them. But if that’s not where you are, that’s okay. You are still allowed to be wherever you are. You are still allowed to feel whatever you feel. And it’s not failure, and it’s not weakness. It’s just being human.

And I also want to remind us all. I say this to you, and I say it to me. What people show us often only reflects a very small portion of what’s actually going on for them.

Just like me, this morning in the dentist’s office. My hygienist has been my hygienist for a long time, and when she asked me how I was doing, I just said I was fine. I didn’t really want to go there. And she’s a lovely person.

So just because someone isn’t sharing it with you doesn’t mean it’s not happening for them. Just because I’m sharing it with you doesn’t mean I’m sharing it with everyone.

So consider that the blooming and the happiness that you might be perceiving from other people isn’t always the whole story for them either. It’s just the story they might choose to share. It’s the story they might be comfortable sharing.

And of course, as always, you know that I teach thoughts cause feelings, feelings drive actions. If your brain is telling you that you should feel something other than how you feel, that is a thought. You do not have to listen to that thought. You don’t have to give that thought any weight at all.

Anytime we tell ourselves or our brain offers to us a thought that says we should feel something other than what we feel, it’s not particularly useful because it’s a way of arguing with reality, which is how we feel. So you don’t have to listen.

Here’s an idea that I love about what’s beneath the surface potentially, right now as you’re listening. Just because you can’t see growth doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Not to say that growth is superior, not to say that you should grow. You don’t need to grow.

But think about what’s going on beneath the soil in very early spring. Roots are strengthening, seeds are cracking open, moisture is being drawn in. The surface of the soil might look like winter. It might look brown. It might look lifeless.

But underground, things are happening. Everything is preparing. And that may very well be what’s happening with you. You might be doing the same thing. You might not feel any different yet. You might not feel like you’re changing or growing, but that doesn’t mean nothing’s happening. I know that’s the case with me too.

And grief and growth work that way very often. It doesn’t necessarily need to be loud or something that we can see. It’s quiet. It’s subtle. It can be deep way before anything becomes visible.

So I want to offer that just because you don’t feel like spring, just because you aren’t bursting into bloom, doesn’t mean that important work isn’t happening within you. Doesn’t mean that you aren’t rooting more deeply, getting to know yourself, strengthening, firming up. All of these things can be subtle and quiet and invisible.

And I want to offer to you that they might be happening, and you just haven’t noticed that yet. I also want to encourage you to let go of all-or-nothing thinking. This is the part where we remind ourselves that it doesn’t have to be either/or. You can truly, truly be sad and joyful. It’s possible. You can feel grief and notice beauty. You can miss them and laugh.

There is room for the ‘and’. I think the ‘and’ is incredibly important. And I want to encourage you to let yourself be a complex human being. Let your feelings be complex. Let them contradict each other. Know that you can hold multiple feelings at one time. That’s what it means to be alive.

When I say love your life again, I don’t mean you’re never going to feel emotion that we would classify as undesirable. I mean we learn to hold it.

And this is definitely the season that I am in right now. When I went to Italy a little while ago, it was such a strange experience for me because I was feeling simultaneously awestruck and devastated. All at the same time. Grateful and wronged. 

And it really is true that we can hold all of these things. Noticing myself feeling just full of grief and deeply sad, and then also simultaneously relieved that things were progressing and hopeful about what’s to come. All of it was there with me.

I laughed so much with my kids during the day, and then cried at night in my hotel room. And I’m not saying this so you’ll feel sorry for me or that you’ll feel bad for me. That’s not what I’m looking for. I’m saying this because I think this is the way most of our trials and tribulations actually feel, if we’re being honest about it.

The human experience is full of ‘ands’ and contradictions. And we might not post them on social media, and we might not share them with friends or our dental hygienist, but they are there.

And the more honest we can be about that, which is why I’m being honest with you, the more we can figure out how to support ourselves and support each other through it. And that’s what it’s all about. That’s what it is like to be human. That’s what I believe.

So I want to offer you a couple of things that might help you.

First, I want to say, re-emphasize something I already said, which is to question your thoughts. If your brain says you should feel better by now, ask yourself, is this a useful thought for me? Is this thought helping me move toward what I want? Or is it moving me away from what I want? Because if a thought is moving me away from what I want, and I am not my thoughts, I am the thinker of my thoughts, I don’t have to listen. I can choose a new one.

So if your brain is judging you for how you feel or telling you that you should feel some other way than you actually feel and you don’t find that to be particularly useful, it’s okay. Give yourself a reframe. How I feel is exactly fine. I am human. This is how I feel in my human life right now.

I want to encourage you to ground in your senses. Not because we’re trying to force joy or force gratitude or change anything, but to just really connect to what is that maybe might not be in your awareness. And what I mean by that is think of your five senses. What can you do to connect with what’s actually going on for you in your senses?

For me, going outside and being barefoot feels amazing. Can you let your bare feet just feel the grass or even the concrete? Can you spend time noticing how the air smells? Can you sit in the sun and feel the warmth of that on your skin?

Can you just notice whatever it is that you notice? One of my favorite exercises lately, which I’ve been playing around with in meditation, is to softly zoom out on all of my senses and just notice what I notice. And notice how I can expand my capacity to notice all of that at one time.

It feels relaxing. I feel connected to myself. I feel grounded. And if that’s not a practice you’re familiar with or that’s one you haven’t done in a while, maybe this would be a good time for you to try that again.

I also want to offer that you extend grace to yourself. That you allow yourself to move through your own rhythms, not nature’s rhythms or the rhythms we perceive that nature has, not anyone else’s rhythms, your rhythm. What is true for you? What is the rhythm of what is happening in your emotional landscape right now? Can that be good enough? Can you let that be the right rhythm for you? Give yourself grace there.

And then the last suggestion that I have for you is to reconsider what growth looks like. Again, not because growth is superior. It is not. It is a choice. It is not superior.

But growth doesn’t always look like we think it’s going to look, and it doesn’t necessarily feel good. Doesn’t necessarily look like joy. It doesn’t necessarily look like action. Sometimes it looks like resting.

Sometimes it looks like crying. Sometimes it looks like doing the absolute bare minimum and still being proud of yourself. Sometimes it looks like learning to embrace the ‘and’. And for sure, it is about deciding that you will not make yourself wrong for how you feel. Feelings are never wrong. They just are.

So consider, what if you are actually growing and changing in ways that align with what you value? And it maybe doesn’t look or feel like what you thought. I think that could be entirely possible. And also, it’s okay to not grow.

Okay, final thoughts. If you are looking around at the blooming trees and the smiling people and you’re thinking, I just don’t feel that way. I should feel that way. What’s wrong with me because I don’t feel that way?

Please don’t make yourself feel bad about not feeling good. We don’t need to pile it on ourselves. Spring might be showing up around you, but that doesn’t mean that you need to bloom on its schedule.

What if you trusted that something is still happening underneath the surface? What if sadness is part of what softens the soil for what’s next? I want to promise you, you’re not late. You’re not off. You’re not doing it wrong. There’s nothing wrong with you. You are just being human. Okay? And me too.

So 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.