Ep #299: Are You Struggling or Are You Sad?

Welcome to The Widowed Mom Podcast, episode 299, Are You Struggling or Are You Sad?

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 am Krista St- Germain. If this is the first time you are listening, and I am so happy that you decided to join me today.

So today I want to talk about the way that we experience struggle and the way that we experience sadness and how we can do one without the other. So if you have ever felt like you’re struggling in your grief or with your sadness, then this episode is for you. And what I want to share with you is a very simple shift that you can make in how you think about struggling. And it’s one that I hope will help you navigate sadness with more ease and more compassion for yourself, and of course, with less suffering.

So before we jump in, I wanna remind you, please subscribe to the podcast so that you don’t miss an episode. And I would be so grateful if you would leave a quick review. It’s one of the best ways to help other widowed moms find this free podcast. And I very much appreciate it when you do that.

So, okay, let’s get into it. Here’s how it all came to be. A couple of weeks ago, I had one of those days that reminded me in real time of how powerful our thoughts are. And it was not my favorite of days as some of the most opportune teaching moments come from, right?

So my daughter and I had scheduled an appointment to say goodbye to her 17-year-old cat, Ella. And the cat was not just a pet, right? The cat was family, especially for my daughter. She was a gift for my daughter on her fourth birthday. So you can imagine all the things that that cat heard, right? This cat was her confidant, her comfort. When her dad and I got divorced, when Hugo died, when COVID happened, right? All the big, especially downs in her life, Ella was there for her. So it was not an easy decision. It was actually quite heartbreaking for both of us to make that decision.

We had an appointment at 4:00 that afternoon, and I was in the kitchen and kind of going about my morning and I was thinking to myself, with almost that kind of pre-cry lump in your throat, I noticed myself thinking, I’m struggling. And at first I really didn’t question it. I’m generally pretty kind to myself, and my response was kind of like, of course you’re struggling, this is hard.

And then I caught myself, and it kind of hit me that that actually was a thought I was telling myself, I’m struggling. And one of the things I teach my clients all the time is to pause and to question their thoughts. Sometimes we have to do that in writing later after the fact. But we want to get good enough that we can do it in the moment. We can pause and we can question our thoughts. We can ask ourselves. Is this moving me toward what I want? Or is this moving me away from what I want? Is this thought helping? Or is this thought taking me away from what it is that I want? Is it making it harder?

And the answer for me was clear. It was not helping me. I’m struggling felt true, but it was actually making things harder for me. Because when I thought I’m struggling, while it felt like a reasonable way to describe what I was experiencing, what I was actually doing was accidentally turning my sadness into something that I had to wrestle with, to fight against. And it was making my experience of sadness heavier and more overwhelming. And it was creating a resistance on top of the sadness that I was already feeling, which is the exact opposite thing of what I was wanting, right?

In that moment, I was wanting my sadness to be easier and more manageable. And so what I want you to hear is that sadness is such a natural emotion, right? All emotions are supposed to be there. They’re all part of our beautiful, messy human experience. But we don’t have to struggle so much with sadness. Struggling with sadness is optional.

And when we label our experience as a struggle, sometimes what that can do is make what we’re feeling seem harder to allow. It can be a way of telling ourselves that this feeling is something to fight, fix, to get rid of. So adding struggling on top of sadness almost always creates more suffering. And of course, it’s the last thing we want to create.

So this is where we have a choice. We can choose a different way of relating to our emotions. And that’s kind of what hit me real-time in my kitchen. So what I decided was that instead of believing the thought I’m struggling, I paused and I took a moment and I thought, no, I’m not struggling. I’m sad. Actually, instantly then the tears came. That’s what needed to happen. And I didn’t magically feel not sad or better. I was still feeling heartbroken and full of dread about going to this appointment. But I stopped adding the label of struggle on top of my sadness. And it was so much easier then for me to just let sadness be with me as I went through the rest of my day.

And so what I really want you to hear is that sadness is just a feeling to allow. It is not a problem to solve. And to remind ourselves that feelings by their very nature are temporary. They come and go like waves. But when we resist them, when we fight against them, and when we’re believing thoughts like I’m struggling or I can’t handle this or it’ll always be like this or it’s too much, sometimes we make those feelings bigger and harder when what we’re looking for is softer and easier.

If you think about it this way and you imagine sadness is like a river, it flows very naturally if we just don’t interfere with it. But when we resist it, it’s like we dam the river and then the pressure builds. So I want to encourage us all to stop resisting. When we let the river flow, that’s when we create space. And we need that space. We need that space to feel. We need that space to breathe. We need that space to let the pain move through us instead of feeling stuck in it.

So let me ask you this. What thoughts does your brain offer you when you’re feeling sad? Do those thoughts help you? Do they take you toward the experience you want or do they make what you’re already feeling harder? And so this week I want to challenge you to just notice those moments when you feel sad or overwhelmed or any other emotion that you might not love. And I want to encourage you to pause and ask yourself, what am I believing about this feeling?

And if you notice thoughts like I’m struggling or I can’t do this, then just try shifting to what is actually the ultimate truth, which is I’m sad, or whatever it is that you’re feeling. And then just let yourself be sad. Let it flow through. See what changes when you stop fighting so much with it and you give sadness a little more room to be felt. It makes sadness so much easier. We can take the struggle off of sadness.

That’s what I have for you this week. Remember, you do not have to make sadness a struggle. All humans sometimes feel sad. It doesn’t mean we’re doing anything wrong. It doesn’t mean anything has gone wrong. It’s okay to feel what you feel. It does not need to be fixed. Sadness just needs to be felt.

If this episode resonated with you, would you share it with a friend or leave a review? It helps the women that I want to reach, those 13 million now widows in the United States alone, find The Widowed Mom Podcast, and I really, really want that.

And of course, don’t forget to apply to Mom Goes On if you want to take this work deeper. As always, 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.