Ep #130: Trading Sadness for Regret

Welcome to The Widowed Mom Podcast, episode 130, Trading Sadness For Regret.

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. So, by the time you hear this episode of the celebration event coming up at my house, this weekend will be over, and I will report on it. But, I’m super excited to welcome 11 moms goes on current members and/or graduates to my house. They are coming from all different areas of the country. I am flying in my favorite videographer, Matt, who is Emmy Award-winning videographer. He is amazing. And he is also a life coach, which is really fun.

He’s coming in and going to capture their stories. I’m bringing in a couple of makeup artists and some amazing hair people. I am bringing them in. And Chef Robert is doing a couple of charcuterie spreads in my kitchen. It’s going to be fantastic. Then, we have an 18-passenger Cadillac Escalade taking us to dinner at one of my favorite restaurants, Yaya’s. Which is interestingly enough where Jugo and I got married. How about that, back in the day.

So, they are coming. I know they are nervous. By the time they hear this, it will be over, and they will have all realized that there wasn’t that much to be nervous about. But we are just going to use this opportunity to celebrate them and for them to be able to tell their stories. Because I remember how isolating it was. When I just genuinely didn’t feel like I had anybody to look toward as an example of what was possible. And man, it is such a discouraging place to be in, to not be able to find that. These stories—It was hard to pick from the women who applied to come to this event; it was so hard to pick. But these stories are so inspiring that I think it is going to feel really good to newer widows and maybe to you, right? To hear their stories and to see what’s possible. Not that they’ve all reached a place where they don’t still have things they want to accomplish or work that they still want to do on their own beliefs about themselves or their lives. But they’ve come so far. I am just excited! I am excited!

So, I’ll report back on that. Okay. Also, I want to take this opportunity to remind you that my live private training is coming up on December 2^nd. So, if you have not already filled out an application to attend, go do that right now. CoachingWithKrista.com, click on the work with me tab. You will see the application; it is super short. But not everybody gets to attend this training. Because in this training, I am sharing stuff I have never shared before.

But I’m also sharing how you can work with me. And I don’t offer that everyone can work with me. Not because I don’t want to work with everyone because I really do. But because coaching is not what’s best for everyone. Right, it’s not the next best thing for everyone. And I need to make sure I am not offering to help someone that coaching really wouldn’t be helpful for. Or that the kind of coaching I do really wouldn’t be helpful for.

So, go fill out that application, coachingwithkrista.com. Click on the Work with Me page, you will see it, and then come to the training. All right. We’ll send you all the details assuming your application is accepted and we’re going to talk about my 4-part framework for how to love your life again, even when your spouse dies. So, you know exactly how to break through a grief plateau. What is involved, what you need to do, where the gaps are, and you will have clarity coming out of this training that you have never had before, even if you don’t decide to work with me. Which I hope you will.

Okay, so, trading sadness for regret. Let’s talk about it. I wrote an email, a very similar email, not too long ago. And I wanted to follow it up with a podcast. If you get emails from me, you get an email every Wednesday, called Widow Wednesday. I have been writing them for years. And if you want to get them, and you are not, you can also just register for that at coachingwithkrista.com. You will see a little pop-up. You just put your name and email, and then you will get on my list.

But I wrote this email about my daughter and her volleyball team. And it really hit me; it makes me emotional just thinking about it, actually. So odd. But it really hit me that we’re doing this as widows. We’re doing this, so I want you to see it, and sometimes the easiest way to see it is when it has nothing to do with your life. Because you’re not a volleyball player. So, if I can tell you a story about my daughter and volleyball so you can see this, then you can look for areas in your life where you might be doing it, too.

Here’s what happened. So, this is my daughter’s senior year. And just a little back story, she transferred into a new school this year because we moved, and she could have gone to her old school. But with COVID, she wasn’t really feeling all of that connected to her old school. Because she had been online for so long, she thought maybe this new school would be a good change of pace.

So, she moved schools. It was a particularly rough year for her; ovarian cysts ruptured at the beginning of the season. We ended up in the emergency room. That had never happened before, and it was painful for her, and it took her a couple of weeks before she could get back on the court. She had some physical therapy. It was a thing. Plus, she is new to this team. They don’t know her. She knew a couple of players from club. But really, these are new people, new coach. She’s trying to make a good impression. Sprained her ankle shortly after recovering from the ovarian cysts. She landed after a play, you know while playing this sport, and sprained her ankle. That took her out for a little while. So, anyway, just to give you a little background, right? It was a challenging season.

But, here we are to sub-state. Which is kind of a big deal, substate. Because you get to substate, and you advance. You play two matches or at least the potential of two matches, and if you advance, you go to state. It’s a big deal for her, right? But, an even bigger deal because it was either going to be the end of her high school volleyball career, or she would advance to the state tournament. Big deal for all of the team.

So, we travel a couple hours away to another school that is hosting. And, they dominated the first match. I mean, dominated. They advanced to the second match. The second match was against the team who was hosting. So, they had a big student section. They were fired up. They’re home court. They had a fierce front row. This setter—I have never seen a setter in high school ball like that. First of all, she is incredibly tall, which you usually don’t see that, for setters. But she was just a threat all around, not only setting, but she is really good. Anyway, my daughter’s volleyball team gave it everything they had. Everything, they left nothing on the court. Which is how you want to see it, right? You would hate to see a season end on not trying very hard.

They worked together better than we had seen them do all season, right. And, so painful, I think they could have taken them in three. But they lost the second set 25-23, and they lost it on a double contact call. Which is a really painful call to lose on. Right. Because it is just an error. And so they made that call, and they blew the whistle. Almost everyone on the team immediately broke into tears, my daughter included.

To say that it was a painful loss, to go out like that, so close. Because volleyball is the first to 25, and you have to be up by 2, right. So, literally 25-23, and they had lost the first, but they could have taken them in three, I really do believe that. So, they all broke into tears. Okay. Inconsolable, many of them. And if you have never played a sport or haven’t had a child who plays sports, it might be hard to imagine. Like, why do we take this so seriously? Why are we crying about it? Right, it’s just high school volleyball. Who cares?

But this is what I want you to hear. Because I think it’s relevant to us as widowed moms. Those players they left everything they had on the court. They did not hold back, and they lost. But they went down swinging. And because they gave it everything, they had the loss hurt, but it hurt in a way they can feel so proud of. And if they hadn’t tried so hard not only, would they feel the hurt of the loss, the sadness of it. But they would have experienced that hurt, that sadness, and regret. If they had held back if they had played safe. If they had not tried to their fullest ability, they would know it. They would know they played it safe. They would know they held back out of fear. And they would regret it.

And a lot of us are doing this. We have been hurt. We don’t want to be hurt again. So, we’re trying to keep ourselves safe by not giving a dream everything we have. By not allowing ourselves to dream. By not giving ourselves the gift of trying and leaving it all on the court. And we don’t know that we’re doing it, but we are trading the possibility of sadness because we don’t get what we want. Or, because we fail, we have a certainty of regret. I want you to think about that.

Where are you holding yourself back in your life, trying to protect yourself from some potential sadness and virtually guaranteeing regret? If you are going to have a negative emotion, which you are because you are human. That is just a part of our lives. If negative emotion is going to be involved, do we want to play it safe, and hold back, and not do the thing that matters to us or not figure out how to dream again, how to live again, how to love our lives again, or do we want to go all in. I think it is important that we are really honest with ourselves again.

Because it is quite likely that if we go all-in on something, we are going to have some heartbreak. We are going to feel sad. But it is certain that if we don’t go all-in on that thing that our heart calls us to do, we will experience a certainty of regret.

So, what is that negative emotion? That you need to prepare yourself to allow. Because it’s in service of the life that you want. It’s in service of that knowing that you have in your gut, that calling, that thing, that is pulling you, pushing you; negative emotion is just part of being human. Are you willing to trade the possibility of sadness for the certainty of regret?

All right, that is what I have for you this week. Remember, I love you, and you’ve got this. Take care, and I’ll see you next week. Bubye.

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.