Ep #312: The Shock of Widowhood: A Widows Unfiltered Interview with Janet Lea

Welcome to The Widowed Mom Podcast, Episode 312: Widows Unfiltered: An Interview with Janet Lea.

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. I’ve got another interview for you today with my client Janet. And I think it’s so valuable, even if you don’t relate to the circumstances of a widow’s life, right? Even if your loss feels very different than theirs, please listen with the idea that there is something in there for you. There is something there to learn. There is always something there to learn. 

Janet is coming up on not quite the one-year mark, and so her perspective is just a little bit more fresh. And I want you to listen for things that helped her, things that didn’t, and see what there is for you to learn. She’s also whip-smart and super funny, and I really wish I could have met her wife, Mary Lou, because as she describes her, she sounds like a riot to me. She sounds like somebody I would have really liked, which is probably why I like Janet so much. But anyway, I will let you listen and enjoy my interview with Janet.

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Krista St-Germain: Okay, welcome Janet to the podcast. I’m glad you’re here.

Janet Lea: Thank you. Thanks for asking me.

Krista: Listeners don’t know this, but right before I pressed record, you were starting to say all the stuff and I was like, “No, wait! I got to hit record so we can catch all of this.” Okay. So, we’ll back up a little bit and I will let you just introduce yourself, tell listeners how you got to Mom Goes On, how you got to The Widowed Mom Podcast. Give us your backstory.

Janet: My name is Janet Lea. I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and I don’t want to be a member of this club. But my wife died, it’s almost a year now. She died in June of 2024. We’d been together for 43 years. She’d been sick for a long time. She was diagnosed with stage four cancer in 2010. So she went through this vicious complications and terrible cancer treatment, chemo, radiation, major surgery. And it sort of set her off on a decade-long spiral. Cancer doesn’t just affect the body part that is filled with tumors, but it takes out your whole body.

Anyway, I remember, Krista, listening to your podcast. I always knew I would be a widow. And after Mary Lou got sick, I always knew that I would be a widow too. And even though it was inevitable because she was so ill, it was such a surprise when she died. And it’s not that I hadn’t experienced grief before that. My mother had died just a few months before. My father had died, my sister had died. You know, friends die. You get to my age and you know as many dead people as you know living ones. But I just wasn’t ready for the horrible hole I found myself in and I didn’t know how to get out of it.

Krista: Backing up a little bit. You said you always knew you were going to be a widow even before she got cancer?

Janet: No, only after she got the cancer. I mean, the odds of her surviving the cancer that she had were very, very low. But she was so determined to live and I guess it was a couple of years ago when things really got bad. She had a lot of routine surgical procedures that always went well until this one didn’t. And she landed in intensive care with septic shock and she never quite recovered from that. 

And in fact, the intensive care doctors decided that we probably should migrate to hospice. So a hospice nurse came and she was very matter of fact. She was nice. You know, we can get the hospital bed delivered by tomorrow and we’ll set it up in the living room, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And Mary Lou said, “Will I be able to have physical therapy?” Because she was weak and wanted to be able to get to the bathroom by herself. And the hospice nurse said, “No, that’s really not what we provide. You know, we’ll keep you comfortable.” But Mary Lou kept insisting that, well, if she was going to die with dignity, it would be nice if she could go to the bathroom by herself. 

And so, I could tell that she wasn’t really too keen on this idea. And I said, “Well, why don’t you think about it overnight and whatever you decide to do, that’s what we’ll do.” So I went in over to intensive care to see her in the next morning. And I said, “Well, what did you decide?” And she said, “Well, I thought about it all night.” And she said, “You know, I really didn’t like that bitch, so I’m going to live.” And she did.

Krista: Oh my goodness. She sounds very spirited.

Janet: She was. She was quite a fighter and an incredible warrior and absolutely determined. The last thing she said to me the day before she died was, “Leaving is difficult. I’m going to miss stuff.”

Krista: I mean, accurate.

Janet: Accurate. And so her, really. So her. But, you know, she got to die the way that she chose. She wanted to die at home and we made that happen. And I’ve talked to a lot of widows in MGO. And I don’t know how people who deal with sudden loss, like when Hugo died, it’s just boom, it just happens and you don’t see it coming and you’re not ready. And so I was very lucky that I had the opportunity to spend, you know, those last years, days, and hours with my wife. And that was a gift and a privilege.

Krista: Yeah. I mean, I think there’s upsides and downsides to both. You know, one of the things I never had to watch was I never had to watch, other than in that last, you know, few hours post-accident, I never had to watch Hugo suffer. And yes, I didn’t get to say the goodbye, but I also didn’t have to watch him suffer or endure any of that.

Janet: You know, it was interesting because what Mary Lou would say to me, she would say, “You haven’t had a life for the last 10 years. You’ve been totally focused on taking care of me and that’s not what you signed up for.” And I said, “It is precisely what I signed up for.” And it’s a privilege and an honor. And I feel that way. I mean, what a gift that I was given to look after the person that I loved. Not everybody gets that.

Krista: Yeah, that’s beautiful. Since you said it was so expected but also so surprising, can you talk more about the surprising aspect of it and what it was like for you?

Janet: I think I can. It wasn’t a surprise in that there was so much medically wrong with Mary Lou and there’s a limit to what the human body can endure. But what was shocking about it was my reaction. I knew that I would miss her. I knew my life would be different. I just didn’t know the extent of both. I didn’t know there was sadness at that level. I didn’t know there was all that’s associated when your life is totally turned upside down. One minute you’re we, and the next minute you’re me. And that is a huge, huge transition to make and it’s not easily done. At least it hasn’t been for me. And I think that was the shocking part of it. It was how profound the loss was, how unexpected the depth of it was.

Krista: What are some of the ways that showed up for you? Are there certain things that you experienced physically that are coming to mind? Is it more emotional, both?

Janet: I think it’s a combination, but what’s interesting is that I don’t remember much. Last summer, if you asked me what I did for a million dollars, I would miss out on being wealthy. I couldn’t tell you. I know I went out with friends. I know initially I went through that, I have to start cleaning out things. And that lasted about two weeks and then I just lost interest. 

And the problem that I had was that because Mary Lou was the warrior that she was, she refused to die. And so hospice said she had between five minutes and five days and she didn’t get the memo so she wasn’t cooperating. But all of the family was here and she just, she wasn’t interested in dying. And so there was no rush for her to do so. But everybody was here and it, it was inevitable that the body wouldn’t last forever. 

And so I thought, I have to plan a funeral. I have to do something while everybody’s here from, we have a daughter in Scotland, a son in Washington D. C., a daughter in Austin, relatives in Kentucky. I mean, people were here from all over the place. And so I started calling churches. Well, what day? Well, I don’t know. You know, it’s all of that. And I thought, I have to be able to control this. I’ll just have the funeral in the backyard because we have a really pretty garden and we have mountain views. We live at the foothills of the Rockies. And I thought, that I can control.

So everything was set and her children kept saying, I said, we’re going to have the funeral on Monday. And they said, she’s not dead. Yes, I know, but if she’s still here on Monday, she can go to her own funeral. We’re going to have a memorial living or not. So that’s what we did. So she died in June. Well, it’s the Rocky Mountains. We don’t get summer until, flowers aren’t blooming until later in June and July. So I couldn’t have a funeral in this barren backyard. 

So I went to the farmer’s market to this man that sells us flowers every year. And I said, Mary Lou’s dying and I need flowers. So let’s fill up the back of this SUV with as many blooming things as you can fit in here. So we had this magnificent garden that she would have loved. So after the funeral, all this stuff bloomed and the garden was exquisite. I couldn’t go out there. I could not go in my own backyard because I thought she should be here. This is terrible. You know, this isn’t right. 

I mean, it was that kind of, it doesn’t make any sense. There’s no logic to it. I could barely step foot out into the backyard. And so there was that. And then there was, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t think. I went to the grocery store a couple of weeks after she died and I had a complete meltdown because I wasn’t buying what I usually bought. It was those manifestations that just catch you by surprise. I mean, you call them grief grenades. They probably are more like grief atomic bombs.

Krista: Yes. That’s how they can feel for sure. So, I know you said that you had lost many friends and family members before, and so death wasn’t a new thing to you. Was there a particular experience that you expected to have after she died?

Janet: I never got that far. Intellectually, I knew that she could not live forever. But emotionally, I wasn’t prepared for the loneliness, the sadness. My mother said, when my father died, she said to me, she said, “If this happens to you, what you’ll miss is the ordinary. You’ll miss having somebody to have dinner with, somebody to just have a conversation with.” She said, “It won’t be the big things. It won’t be the big decisions. It will be the little minor things.” 

And so, even though mom had given me that advice, I didn’t know how that would really play out. When I say that’s what was so surprising about it, I just really didn’t know what to expect. And I didn’t expect to be in a hole halfway through the earth. It was just, I felt so dark and just so full of despair. When you’ve been with somebody the bulk of your adult life, you know, you have to pick up where you left off. And I hadn’t lived alone for over 40 years. So there’s that adjustment to life as a solo person. The first few months were just god awful.

Krista: Where did you turn for resources, support? What did you do?

Janet: The hospice people were very helpful. They still call at least once a month. So I had that. I have a good support network, but what I discovered was that nobody knows what it’s like to lose their spouse unless they’ve lost their spouse. And I think that’s one of the really big advantages of MGO because we’re all in the same awful spot. And so if somebody says, I can’t put one foot in front of the other, you can nod your head and say, yeah, I get it.

Krista: Yeah. Was it ever hard for you to put yourself in a community of widows? Or did it feel like a natural thing to do?

Janet: It felt like an essential thing to do.

Krista: Yeah. I don’t think that’s as common. I mean, I love that it was that way for you, but it’s not what I see often. What I see more often is people who are very hesitant to share, very worried about, you know, letting other people in on what’s going on for them or being dragged down by a group. So I’m glad that wasn’t your experience.

Janet: One of the things that’s happened to me, and this sounds a lot worse than I mean for it to, but I impose this expectation on myself that I should be doing better. I should be making more progress. Whatever all of that means. And so one of the comforts that I’ve found from some of the MGO sessions was, I remember a couple of times thinking, at least I’m not as bad off as that poor woman. 

And I know that sounds awful, but there was, it’s sort of that line of misery loves company, but it loves miserable company best. So that was helpful to see. I could see the progress that some women were making and I could see the lack of progress on the part of others. And I’m not being judgmental, it’s just an observation. And I learned from both.

Krista: Yeah, and it puts things in perspective. When you only have your own experience, you don’t have any context. And I think that the context and perspective can be valuable.

Janet: Yeah. I think so too.

Krista: What were some of the things that like if you could go back and talk to yourself maybe in those early days, what are the kinds of things you might tell yourself, advice you would give?

Janet: I think I would tell myself that it was okay to be broken, to be heartbroken, to just be incapacitated, because I really was. I’m the sort of person that things come easily to me most of the time, and I was so out of my league at that point. I just couldn’t figure out what to do. So I think I was pretty hard on myself like, you should be able to handle this better. And I wasn’t handling it very well at all. 

I also remembered something my grandmother had told me 30 years ago when my grandfather died and she looked at me and she said, now I want you to remember this. She said, now when somebody dies, you have one year and then the mourning is over. You just move on because a year is plenty of time. And so I had that sort of little reminder in my brain that, okay, I’ve only got 365 days because she should know. So there was that. And then a couple of really strange things happened to me. 

My brother-in-law, who’s really a spiritual man, had said to me, shortly after Mary Lou died, he said, “If you can just suspend your belief in what we’re taught is reality, you may be surprised at what happens.” It was something that he said that, I mean, I heard it, but I didn’t know what he was talking about. It was about six weeks after Mary Lou had died, and I heard some noise in the utility room. And I went in and a bird had gotten in the house. I’d left the door ajar for the dog. And I heard this flapping up in the skylight. 

So I left the door open and closed the door so it couldn’t come in the rest of the house. And I went back and I kept checking on this bird. I couldn’t tell what it was, but it was a bird making a lot of noise. A couple of hours later, I went back in and this hummingbird was lying on the ground. And I thought, oh, the little thing has died. I picked it up and I held this hummingbird in my hand, at which point, it was this iridescent green, this bird turns its head and looks up straight at me. That’s when I noticed that hummingbirds have eyelashes. Didn’t know that until then. 

So I’m looking at this little bird. It starts flapping its wings, but it doesn’t leave my hand. It’s just flapping its wings and looking at me. So I thought, this bird has been in here for at least two hours. I know as fast as they flap their wings, this bird is dehydrated. So I went to get a bottle cap to give this bird some water. And I set it down in a box. Well, I went and got the bottle cap and I came back and the hummingbird was gone. Now, this lasted about 10 or 15 minutes, this encounter with this bird. And I thought, that is really strange. So I go to Google, of course, and I said, “Do hummingbirds symbolize anything?” Hummingbirds are messengers from the dead.

So I went, was that really Mary Lou? Ever since then, hummingbirds came and came and came. They came through the biggest snow that we had in 10 years in November. This hummingbird, I had already put the hummingbird feeders away and this bird just hovered until I got the feeder out and fed it some more. So that happened and I thought, okay, I’m really going crazy here. 

One night, I heard Mary Lou’s voice, not in my head, it woke me up. And I thought, okay, is this the reality that I’m supposed to understand? And a number of other things like that have happened which made me think I was really crazy. And then I thought, maybe I’m not. I mean, plenty of people say they have experiences with the departed. And so I’m lucky. I apparently am having them as well. So that has really been a tremendous comfort to me because I know that if I ask for advice, I’m probably going to get it.

Krista: What’s your relationship like with Mary Lou now?

Janet: I feel her presence in the house. I didn’t at first, but we had someone that was staying downstairs and when that person left, I opened the doors to downstairs and there was this flood of light and I could all but hear her say, “Thank God, we’ve got the house back.” And so she’s sort of kind of been there ever since. There’ll be times when I’m outside in the garden and I’ll feel like she’s saying, pick those weeds, but that’s a flower. I mean, it’s just the most bizarre thing, but it works for me. I feel very lucky to have that and, you know, but I did have to at the beginning convince myself that I really wasn’t crazy.

Krista: Yeah, and it’s something I think that when we realize we can cultivate, you don’t have to, of course, but if you want to, you can.

Janet: Well, I think at least for me, it’s, there’s still a part of her that is still here. And I think probably for everybody who’s been really close to someone who’s passed away, whether it’s a spouse or a mother or a child or a friend, they have a permanent place in your heart. And I think if you’re open to how that might manifest itself, I think that’s helpful. I ran across a quote that really was very helpful to me. It was said in 1856 by the chief for whom Seattle is named. I think it was Chief Seat or something like that. And he said, “There is no death, only a change of worlds.”

Krista: Yes, I love that.

Janet: And I thought that was so, so profound and I think that gives us all comfort. I mean, if people have faith, if they’re Christian or whatever their religion might be, I’ve always thought it must really be nice to have that faith. If you believe that if you live a good life, you end up in heaven and one day you’ll be rejoined with the people that you love. What comfort that is. You know, that’s not a belief that I have, but I’m kind of envious of people who do.

Krista: Yeah, and I understand why they do too. But yeah, I think energy just, you know, it just, it changes forms. And I may not exactly know what form that energy changed into, but I don’t think it goes away.

Janet: Yeah.

Krista: Yeah. So how did you find – did you find the podcast first? Were you looking for a coaching program? How did you end up in my world?

Janet: I’ve been wondering that. I’ve been wondering how I found you. It was online. I had read books. I had reread Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. There were a couple of other books. I particularly liked hers. I read it when it first came out and it didn’t mean anything to me. It meant a lot to me the second time through. But there were lots of things online. I wasn’t necessarily looking, but you know, if you ever do a search for grief, the algorithms will serve you information forever. 

And some of them just seemed not right. And you offered a free training. And I don’t even think it was the podcast. It was something else. And I took that and I thought, this woman knows what she’s doing. I’m a big believer in coaching and self-improvement and all of that. And I thought, maybe this will work for me. And then I called and I think I talked to Jamie and I said, my situation’s a little bit different. I didn’t lose a husband, I lost a wife. Am I going to fit into the program? 

And she said, “Oh, absolutely.” And then I noticed that your materials have been changed so that they don’t always say husband, they say partner, which I think is very respectful because it’s not just married women, it’s fiancés, it’s lesbians, it’s anybody who’s female who’s lost somebody that is really special and important to them, different from a child or a parent or a friend.

Krista: Yeah. What about the fact that you didn’t have young children? Did you worry about not having young children? Because I get a lot of emails from people who say, “Well, I don’t have young children, so I’m not going to fit in.”

Janet: No. I have three adult children. I mean, kids are kids.

Krista: Yeah. And honestly, I don’t even require people have kids anymore because so much of what we teach is not even about parenting or children, but it is something I hear a lot, so.

Janet: Yeah, I know that at some point you’ve talked about maybe a, a name change or rebrand or something which, which might be helpful, but I worked with a man one time and his company was called B&B Farm Implements. And he said his wife kept saying, you should change your name. And he said, why? Everybody knows that B&B Farm Implements is oil.

Krista: Okay then. So, well, I can’t think of anything better at the moment. So what was it, what was it like compared to what you expected it to be like when you came into Mom Goes On?

Janet: I joined in November and I was really dreading the holidays. I was dreading Thanksgiving. Mary Lou’s birthday is in December. There was Christmas. It was such a fraught time. And I remember talking to you in one of the coaching sessions and I said, “I just don’t want to be sad.” And you said, “Well, why not? You have to feel all the feelings.” 

That was a sledgehammer to the side of my head. And it was like, oh, that’s how you do it. You have to feel the stuff to get rid of the stuff or to find a way to manage the stuff. And so that was particularly helpful. The whole thing about, if you want to change your life, change the way you think. You can change your emotions because they’re directed by your thoughts. And then the other advice that I think that really impressed me was feelings are vibrations in your body, they last 90 seconds. And I thought, you know, I’m going to have to live with this for the rest of my life. So I can do this in 90-second intervals.

Krista: What was your relationship with feelings like before this? Were you, did you kind of try to avoid them or they just weren’t something that you paid much attention to?

Janet: Oh yeah. I think I was selective about the feelings I chose to experience. I grew up in a household where anger was not okay. Everybody just needed to get along. So anger was sort of off the charts. I didn’t have any trouble being happy. I didn’t have any trouble being frustrated, but I didn’t know how to manage this depth of sadness. I mean, routine sadness, we all have it, but I didn’t know how to deal with what was much closer to despair.

Krista: Full body, all encompassing. Yeah.

Janet: Right. Overwhelming, suffocating, makes you curl up in a ball and get in a dark closet.

Krista: Yep. Yep, yep. I hear that a lot. By the time your interview airs, I think this podcast will have already aired too, but I just interviewed Mary-Frances O’Connor, who’s the author of The Grieving Brain, and she just wrote a book called The Grieving Body. And that’s one of the things that makes me so excited about her work and about having conversations about like this with you because it is so much more all-encompassing than most people expect. And not that it will be less all-encompassing, right? But to better prepare people, I think there’s so much value in that.

Janet: Yeah, I think that would be very helpful. I mean, I know that hospice, for example, takes care of the person who’s dying and supports the family. But what would really be helpful to hear is, you may experience this when your loved one passes away. You won’t be able to sleep. You won’t feel like eating. You won’t remember anything. You’ll drop things. You’ll lose things. You won’t know who was here. You won’t remember anything. Because you’re not ready for that. At least I wasn’t. And the people, the widows that I’ve talked to through MGO said the same thing. Like, God, had I known. It wouldn’t have mattered, but maybe it wouldn’t have been such a surprise.

Krista: Yeah, you just wouldn’t have doubted yourself so much. It’s kind of like, you know, if you go into pregnancy is a good example. If you go into pregnancy, there are books about that. They tell you what kind of what to expect. You know, you kind of have an idea. Not, not with this so much, right? But it is similar in that there’s some pretty consistent things we can expect, like insomnia and, you know, no appetite and.

Janet: Somewhere along the way you’ve heard the expression widow fog, but you don’t know what that means.

Krista: So, you said it was your grandmother that said you only had one year and then you need to be over it. So how did that affect you?

Janet: I thought she was probably right. I remember after my grandfather died, after, you know, the ham and rubber chicken lunch at the church, my mother and her sisters all went over to my grandmother’s house and they cleaned out everything my grandfather had ever touched except his tools out in the garage. I mean, his closet was empty, the drawers were empty, everything of his was out of the bathroom. It was sort of like, that’s what you do. 

That happened when my dad’s parents died. I was a little girl when that happened. And I even thought at the time, I thought, that seems really mean. But I think it was that way of saying, you’ve got to move on. You know. And this is just a reminder. That person’s not going to need this stuff anymore. We’re just going to get it out of here. It’s sort of like, well, you forget that you were married? Will you forget that you had a relationship with somebody for decades? It’s just so bizarre. 

And so even now, I sometimes think, well, I am coming up to the year mark and I’m nowhere near finished with this process. And maybe I never will be. I mean, yes, I’ve made progress over where I was at last year, but, you know, I still have a closet full of clothes to go through. I have things to distribute to the children. It’s really only been in the last maybe month or so that I thought, well, I think I can, I’m getting to the point where I may be able to do that. But to do it the afternoon after the funeral of the person you’ve been married to for 30 or 40 years, more power to people who can do that. That’s not me.

Krista: No. And I mean, I think it’s even interesting when we say something like done with this process. Like what does done even mean? How would we even measure done? Like because we’ve made decisions about belongings?

Janet: Right.

Krista: Okay. But I mean, that’s one of the things I find to be most frustrating about conversations that we have about grief is that people really do buy into the idea that there is some sort of end, that acceptance is something that you do once and once you’ve done it, therefore you’ve reached the end. And that is just not how it really is at all.

Janet: Yes, I think there’s an expectation about schedule that, you know, even the language around grief, I found really obnoxious. Like when people say, I lost my husband. Well, why don’t you go find him then? It is a loss, but a loss is different from the act of losing. So that bothers me. I don’t like, I’m on a grief journey. I don’t know what the terminology is, but those things just put me off so much because they’re just so inaccurate for my experience and for I think most people. It’s not like I’m on a diet and as soon as I lose 20 pounds, then great, it’s over. You know, it’s sort of like, okay, well I’ve been at this for 12 months, I’m over it. I don’t think so.

Krista: Natural human response to a perceived loss. The loss will always be there. We will always have a response and the best we can hope for is to integrate, right? Like choose the response on purpose. But secondary losses will always be there and there’s so many of them and there’s no way to predict them. You just keep normalizing them.

Janet: Well, I think so often, Krista, you say, if you’re human, this will be your experience. And I think it’s helpful to be reminded of that. I’m not unique. I’m not the only person who’s lost a spouse, but it’s a unique experience for me because it’s never happened before. So I don’t have the tools. I don’t have the experience. I don’t have the things that we normally fall back on to deal with the situation that comes up.

Krista: Yeah. And that’s where most of us are when we lose a spouse, right? Is we aren’t prepared for it in that way because we have been existing in a culture that did not prepare us.

Janet: Right. Well, I think we just don’t deal with death in general very well. We don’t like to talk about it. People don’t like to make plans for it. I mean, that was an interesting thing about Mary Lou when she had what was expected to be terminal cancer. She would not make a will and she would not discuss end of life arrangements because she said, “That’s giving in and I’m not doing it.”

Krista: So how did that pan out then? Was, did that leave?

Janet: Well, COVID made, made us all vulnerable. And so that’s when we were able to make the arrangements and kind of had the conversation about what would you like? What do you want me to do if you go first? And so what we decided was that she didn’t really like heat and she didn’t like fire. So the idea of being cremated didn’t appeal to her very much, but the idea of spending $25,000 on a plot in the cemetery that she wanted and then $10,000 to get her body there did not appeal to me. 

So the compromise was, what can we do? And so there is a process now where you can take cremains, they’re mixed with a polymer, and then they’re hand formed into river rocks and they’re fired in a kiln. And so she loved geology. She loved collecting rocks. So when she found out she could be a box of rocks, she was all excited.

Krista: She liked that.

Janet: So that’s what I did with her cremains. And so I have had 53 rocks of her and the plan was for me to, as I continue to travel, carry her around the world. So in September, it was really too soon for me to start that process, but I wanted to visit our daughter in Scotland. So I packed up the rocks and she’s in the Thames in London. She’s in Hyde Park. She’s in a Viking cemetery in Glasgow. She’s in the fairy pools on the Isle of Skye. She’s making the rounds and I know that every time I put her somewhere, there’s a smile.

Krista: I love that, Janet. Yeah, a smile and probably some tears as you put her there.

Janet: You know, I thought it would be really difficult. And you know what? It has been joyful every single time that I have done that. It’s sort of like, well, here you go.

Krista: Here’s another view for you.

Janet: Yeah, exactly. So from time to time, I will get these little hints that, you know, I really need to go to Niagara Falls. Okay. Or are you taking me back to Paris?

Krista: She’s telling you, take me there, take me there.

Janet: You hear, take me there. And so her brother, her sister, her children all have stones and so the plan is for people to either hold on to her or take her wherever they go. So it’s a comforting thing to me. I’ve talked to several people who like having the urn of their husband or their partner nearby, but I didn’t know what to do with ashes. So having the rocks is so much nicer for me.

Krista: Yeah, I love that. Do you remember the name of the company that you used for that?

Janet: Yes, it’s Parting Stone.

Krista: Parting Stone. Okay. I love that. I have never heard of that.

Janet: Oh, you should check into it. I mean, they’re beautiful. And they don’t know how the body’s ashes are going to turn out. I remember when I took the ashes, they happened to just be here in Santa Fe and I took her ashes to the facility and the guy that I talked to said, “Did she have any silver in her body?” And I said, she had a heart valve, but I don’t think it was silver. 

And I said, “Why do you ask?” And he said, “Because sometimes silver will leave a blue streak in the stone.” And so they don’t know what color they will be. Sometimes they’re brown, hers are off white. Sometimes they’re completely smooth. Sometimes they have craters in them. They look like little pieces of the moon. They’ve discovered over the years that they’ve been in business that people like them in different sizes. So they give you small, medium and large. And the large are not large. They’re slightly bigger than the silver dollar.

Krista: Okay. I know people are going to love hearing about that because it’s something that I never heard of before.

Janet: Well, let me show you this.

Krista: If anybody wants to see this, remember you can watch it on YouTube. If you’re listening, you can’t see us, but if you want to come to YouTube, you can see it. Oh, there’s, there they are. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that’s just a couple of inches in diameter, inch and a half maybe that one. And little tiny kind of looks like the surface of the moon.

Janet: Yes, they look like little moon craters.

Krista: Yeah. Oh, that’s cool. Well, thank you for sharing that.

Janet: Sure.

Krista: Was there anything you wanted to talk about that I didn’t ask you about, Janet?

Janet: Yes, I want to give a plug to your program.

Krista: Oh.

Janet: And the reason for that is that this whole process is incredibly difficult. And the benefits that you offer is, number one, you’re really good at what you do. You’re a great listener and not everybody is. Some people use other people’s experiences to build theirs on and you never do that. The advice that you give is practical and very useful. Don’t let your brain trick you. Feel all the feelings. 

And I think the thing that I’ve taken away as much as anything, Krista, is this notion of give yourself time to work through things. There’s no hurry. It’s going to take as long as it takes. And there is no end destination. And, you know, there’s the belief that you will get to the end of this. And I just think that isn’t true. And I think you’ve reinforced that. And the other thing that is really helpful is that the skill of modeling and that sort of thing, yes, it works for this particular instance, it works for this grief, but it works for everything else too.

Krista: Yeah.

Janet: And so you can call it grief counseling, but you’re a life coach, not just a grief coach. And I think that’s really helpful. I think that one thing that I’ve appreciated is the community, but one thing I would like is more of that community, like when we joined as a cohort of 10 in November, we were together for a couple of months and then we sort of were folded into the overall group. And I think it’s helpful, especially, this is such a delicate subject for so many people. 

Being in a small group where you really get to know the people, I think would be helpful. And so I know that is a management challenge just from the fact that you’ve got people coming into the program all along the way in different stages, so it’s hard to do that. But some of our group has sort of spun off to have its own little offshoot. And I think that’s helpful. But I think the community really also can be uplifting for people because you just, you can’t do this by yourself. You can try, but you’re just not going to get there.

Krista: Thank you for saying all of those things. I really appreciate it.

Janet: Yeah. It’s been really helpful. I know I wouldn’t be where I am right now if I hadn’t had your help and the support of the group. I just wouldn’t be. I would still be flailing and trying to figure out how to put one foot in front of the other.

Krista: Yeah, it’s so much easier when you’re surrounded by people who get it and when you’re in community and when you know you’re not alone. There’s so much less self-doubt that happens because it is an experience for most people that it does kind of make you doubt yourself and make you think that something’s wrong with you or you’re the special one that can’t “handle it.” And it’s that’s just not what it is. It’s just grief is hard and it’s we’re not prepared often.

Janet: It is hard. And I think it’s the aloneness. Two days before I was going to Scotland for three weeks, the dog got out of the yard. I was chasing the dog. I tripped and fell and landed in a pile of boulders and broke my wrist. So traveling one-handed didn’t have much appeal. So I’m in the emergency room where I was with Mary Lou probably more than a hundred times. I can tell you the best rooms to ask for when you go to the hospital in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And it’s really helpful to get the ones that are bigger, that are across from the nurses station and all that kind of stuff. 

I’m in the emergency room, not in one of the premium rooms. I’m in there by myself for hours and hours and hours trying to figure out if I need surgery on my hand and all that kind of thing. And I’m thinking, I’m going to have to cancel this trip. So I’m all alone. I have nobody to talk to about it. And this nurse comes in and he says, we were just talking and I said, you know, I’m supposed to go on this big trip in a couple of days. And I said, I don’t think I’m going to be able to go. 

And he said, “Well, let’s think about this.” He said, “What if you had just had a stroke and you had lost the use of your left arm? Would you just sit around on the sofa and just watch TV and feel sorry for yourself?” And I said, “No.” He said, “Do you have a suitcase that has wheels?” And I said, “Yes.” And he said, “Well, there you go. You’re good to go.” And so I thought, he’s right. 

And so it was interesting, you know, but one of the things I discovered is that people are really helpful. I must have looked really pitiful with my arm and a sling. But, you know, I had a lot of help getting on and off trains. Whatever I needed, people were there. And I thought, that’s the other thing. Most of us don’t know how to ask for help. And so that was a good lesson to learn early on. It was after I came back that I thought, okay, I got to get some help. And that’s, you know, a couple of months after that is when I found you.

Krista: I hope everybody hears that really truly. It is hard to ask for help. And sometimes it’s hard even when you haven’t asked for it, it’s been offered to you, it’s hard to receive help. So if we could get better at asking for and receiving help and giving ourselves that gift, it does make grief so much…

Janet: The other thing that I have found not helpful are the things that people say, like, this is the one that sends me up the wall. “You know, it must really be a comfort that Mary Lou’s not in pain anymore.” No, it is no comfort to me whatsoever. Or, you know, she’s in a better place, which I always say, well, then where the hell is she? People mean well, but that is not helpful. And it’s also not helpful for people to say, what help do you need? How the hell do I know what I need? You know.

Krista: Doctor, I don’t know what planet I’m on.

Janet: You know, come do my laundry, feed the dog, go to the grocery store, or mostly don’t ask me stupid questions.

Krista: I know. I can tell you I was so grateful for the people who just jumped in. I know that maybe not everybody would want people to jump in, but I resonate with a lot of what you said, which is I don’t know what happened. So, so grateful for the people who just bought my kids school supplies and came over and cleaned my house or mowed my lawn and acts of service were so valuable. And yeah, they say stupid things.

Janet: The one other thing I will say because I think that maybe it was payback when people ask me stupid questions because I had done something very similar. I had a client about 20 years ago whose daughter was killed in this horrific drunk driving crash. And Kayla was really young. She was maybe 20, 21. I mean, it was just awful. 

And so I was in advertising and I was working on a drunk driving prevention campaign and I wanted to use this girl’s story. And so I was talking to her mother. This was three years after Kayla had been killed. And I said to her mother, I said, “Well, are you pretty much over, you know, the worst of it?” She should have just decked me right then. And she just, she was probably at that point maybe in her mid to late 60s. And she just kind of leaned over to me and she said, “Oh, honey, you don’t ever get over it. You’re just grateful when you don’t cry every day.” 

And that stuck with me in such a profound way for not understanding what it’s like when you lose somebody as if you are going to ever get over it. You’re not. You’re going to be able to manage better. Maybe you will have occasional grief grenades instead of daily ones. But how can you get over the passing of somebody that was such a vital part of your life? So that would be the other thing as a culture that would be nice for us to have is some sensitivity training.

Krista: Yeah. And to your point earlier, until you’ve been through it, it’s just hard to know that you’re even being as insensitive as it comes off because you don’t mean it. You don’t mean to be insensitive.

Janet: No, but the net effect is there and it’s and it’s hurtful and it makes people angry.

Krista: What did you like hearing? What was helpful for you when other people said it?

Janet: I’m sorry. I like it when people talk about Mary Lou. I mean, somebody said, “I just don’t want to, I don’t want to make you feel sad.” It’s not like I forgot that she died, really.

Krista: Newsflash, I’m already sad.

Janet: So I think that’s helpful and I think people just don’t know what to say, but I’m sorry, works for me.

Krista: Yeah, I appreciated that too. I’m sorry, this sucks. I love you. I’m here.

Janet: Right. This must be terrible. I can’t imagine what you feel like. No, you can’t.

Krista: Yeah.

Janet: But, you know, the acknowledgement of that is helpful. But I think people are well-intentioned and I think that just as I didn’t mean to be so insensitive, I don’t think other people do either. But it doesn’t make it feel any better. Even when it’s unintentional or accidental.

Krista: Yep. Fair enough. Well, thank you so much for being willing to come and tell your story and talk about Mary Lou and I’m glad to have you.

Janet: Thanks. Thank you. Thanks for inviting me.

Krista: Yeah. I hope you’ll keep in touch. I know it might not seem like a very big deal to you, but over the course of your time in the program, you’ve sent me a couple of really thoughtful emails and I just want to tell you those meant a lot to me.

Janet: I will.

Krista: Yeah, I like hearing what’s going on and how you’re doing.

Janet: Well, if I can help you also with any sort of outreach to the lesbian community, I don’t know what it would be, but I have a friend in New York who is pretty well connected and Pat may have some ideas. I mean.

Krista: Oh, I’m all in.

Janet: That group has been very supportive of me. And in fact, one of the women that I met through writing my book lives in London and here I am one-armed, you know, trying to find my way on subways and everything else all over London. And she just said, “I’m in charge.” So I meet her at the train station and she just takes me everywhere. No, no, we change here, get off here, we’re going to walk down here, we’re going to go here. She was fantastic. I mean, to have a grief guide, awesome.

Krista: Bring it on. Yeah, we all need one of those.

Janet: Yeah. So I’ve gotten amazing support. I think that’s another thing that happens. You get support from people that surprise you and you don’t get support from other people that you thought would be right there.

Krista: Yes. Yes. I mean, not that you have to tell the details about that, but yes, I think it’s very validating for people to hear that is super common. It’s strange, isn’t it?

Janet: Yeah. It is just strange and surprising. It’s not necessarily hurtful, but it’s just like, wow, I certainly didn’t expect that person to be the one I could count on.

Krista: Right. Yeah. And then where did that other person go that I thought would be right by my side and they couldn’t handle it or didn’t want anything to do with it.

Janet: Well, maybe the next phase of your work can be to write the book for other people about how to deal with the grieving widow.

Krista: Yeah, that’s a great idea actually. It feels like what I talk a lot about when I guest, you know, I go on a lot of podcasts and talk about that of what is helpful and what is not helpful. And sometimes why we say the unhelpful things, you know, when we don’t have the capacity to be uncomfortable, when we don’t have the capacity to feel difficult feelings, we want them to go away in other people. You know, we want other people to feel better because we don’t know how to feel good when they don’t feel good.

Janet: Well, yeah, that’s the thing. The last thing a widow wants to do is to try to console you who are trying to console her.

Krista: Right. It’s icky. It’s icky stuff. So, time out. I love it. Well, thank you again for coming on the podcast. I know people are going to resonate with your story and I, I would love to keep in touch. Okay. We’ll talk later, Janet. Thank you.

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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.