BW 020: Year Two vs. Year One

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The Transcript is below.

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Grief: Is Year Two Harder than Year One? 

For some people, it seems like the second year of grief is harder. For other people, it seems like the first year of grief is harder, and this is often a question that newly widowed folks really want the answer to, because let's be honest, those first few months and probably that first year, you are in full survival mode and you want to know, am I ever going to get out of feeling lost, of feeling overwhelmed, of feeling like I don't know who I am?

We talk about:

-Everyone processes grief on their own unique timeline

-Complicated grief or trauma impacts the time it takes to heal or return to a normal state of functioning

-Some people choose not to heal or process grief; they deflect/avoid or cling onto the pain refusing to let go

Quotes:

“We don't have to live in pain and suffering in order to remember and show that we love our loved one. But for some people, they really just dig into that pain.” 

“Everyone has unique problems, challenges, and traumas that they go through and processing grief, and so that's one reason why this makes it a very difficult question to answer.”

“If you're on the fence or if you feel like everyone says year two is harder and I'm never gonna be happy and I'm never gonna find a life that I enjoy and I'm always gonna be miserable. If you tell yourself those things over and over and over, you are creating that future for yourself. So if you can't work through some of those things, then find a community that will help you.”

Book mentioned:

The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss by Dr. Mary Frances O'Connor

Podcast mentioned:

Four Reasons Why Grief is Hard (bravewidow.com)

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The Brave Widow Community is a place where you can connect with other widows, find hope and healing, and begin to dream again for the future.  Learn more at bravewidow.com.  

Hey guys, I’m Emily Jones

I was widowed at age 37, one month shy of our 20 year wedding anniversary.  Nathan and I have four beautiful children together.  My world was turned completely upside down when I lost him.  With faith, community, and wisdom from others, I’ve been able to find hope, joy, and dream again for the future.  I want to help others do the same, too!

FOLLOW me on SOCIAL:

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Emily Jones: [00:00:00] hey guys. Welcome to episode number 20 of The Brave Widow Show. Today I'm gonna answer the question, is the second year of grief harder? Now, this is a question I see asked a lot in different widow groups. Maybe not daily, but pretty close to daily. Is the second year of grief harder? A lot of people say that it is, and you'll see answers that debate both ways.

For some people, it seems like the second year of grief is harder For other people, it seems like the first year of grief is harder, and this is often a question that newly widowed folks really want the answer to, because let's be honest. Those first few months and probably that first year, you are in full survival mode and you wanna know, am I ever gonna get out of feeling lost, of feeling overwhelmed, of feeling like I don't know who I am?

How could year two possibly [00:01:00] be worse than year one?

So today I'm gonna answer the question for you.

Now I've been widowed just over 18 months, so I'm just over the six month mark into my second year of being widowed. And so while I realize I still have five to six months to go to finish out this second year, I feel like I have a pretty good grasp, at least of my experience and what I frequently see and hear from other individuals who are transitioning from that first year to second year, or who are more fully in their second year of grief.

So I felt like this was really the perfect time to address it. This was actually an email that I had outlined and sent to the folks on my email list, and I got such an incredible response from people and so many comments that this really resonated with them, that I decided to turn it into this podcast episode so that everyone can at least hear my take on this question.

All right, so today I'm gonna share with you why the [00:02:00] answer to this question is so darn complicated. And then I'm gonna share with you ways in which year two is easier for me and ways that it has been harder for me. All right, so let's dive in.

So as a widow, let's say you're in your first year, your first few months, weeks, a year, maybe you're at the 13, 14 month mark, and you have to know, does it get any better? Why can't people just say whether or not the second year is worse or easier than the first year? And here, is why I believe this question is so complicated to answer and why so many people give varying answers in their experience, and I have six reasons here for you.

Okay, so the first one is that everyone processes grief and sadness on their own unique timeline. This is very frustrating as somebody who's going through the grieving process, because you wanna [00:03:00] know, how long am I gonna feel like this? When can I start to feel normal? Is it the six month mark? The 12 month mark?

The two year mark? Like when is it that I can feel like a normal human being again, especially when you're coming out of those throws of being newly widowed, grieving, and all the life changes that come your way. And this is a complicated answer because everyone's answer is different. Everyone has unique problems, challenges, and traumas that they go through and processing grief, and so that's one reason why this makes it a very difficult question to answer.

The second reason this answer is complicated is because a complicated grief or trauma can also impact the time it takes to heal or return to a normal state of functioning. And a few episodes ago did brief summary of a book called The Grieving Brain, and that really [00:04:00] digs into why grieving is so hard, why our brain responds and functions the way it does. Why we feel like we go backwards sometimes in our grief, or why we feel like we're getting better, worse, better, worse. And it's not this linear feeling of it's getting better, getting better, getting better. It's up and down and all around and can be very confusing.

But that episode and that book are an amazing resource for you to understand why grief is not such a linear process and why it's so hard to navigate those grieving moments.

The third reason, this is a complicated answer is that previous traumas may be complicating your grief or may be exacerbated by this loss.

So maybe you had a loss earlier in life. Maybe there's some domestic violence, abuse [00:05:00] attachment issues with relatives or family and friends. There can be other traumas and things that happen earlier on in life which really get exacerbated by this grief and loss that we're feeling and can play into that or can kinda reopen that wound of what we've had in the.

The fourth reason is that, a change of your career, your finances, your lifestyle, where you live, all of those things cause additional stress in your life. So let's say you, you move to a new place, a new apartment, or a new house, or maybe you change jobs and careers. Even if those things were positive, like say maybe you lived in an apartment, you've always wanted a house, and you move into a house, finally, even though all things being equal, that may be an exciting and positive experience.

Moving brings on additional stress. Changing jobs brings on [00:06:00] additional stress, and so as people have different experiences, they're going to have different timelines of where they feel they're at in their grief and overall healing.

Reason number five is that, believe it or not, some people choose not to heal or process grief.

Maybe they deflect it, maybe they avoid it, or maybe they really just cling onto the pain because they feel like to let go of that pain and to try to move forward in life, they're leaving their loved one behind or that somehow, pain and suffering are symbols of the love that they had for their person.

And unfortunately that's not true. We don't have to live in pain and suffering in order to remember and show that we love our loved one. But for some people, they really just dig into that pain.

And the sixth [00:07:00] reason why this is a complicated answer is because we can also manifest future outcomes. Now, maybe you call it manifesting destiny.

Maybe you call it a self-fulfilled prophecy. Either way, essentially the concept is that if you believe something, That you will see it come to fruition. So if I believe the second year is gonna be harder, because that's what everyone tells me, then for the most part it probably is going to be harder because I believe that I'm looking for it.

I'm trying to find all of the things why the second year is harder, worse, more difficult, more painful, because it's something that my subconscious, and even at time as my conscious mind believes that that second year is going to be harder. So, All of these things play into this very complex puzzle of how we view whether or not the second year is harder or easier.

So when people ask [00:08:00] me, Hey, is the second year harder than the first year? My answer is yes and no . And look, I know if that's not a political answer, I don't know what. But don't roll your eyes just yet. Let me break it down for you. The answer for me really is that the second year has been very different in a lot of ways, and in some ways the difference has made life easier, and in some ways, that difference has made life a little bit harder.

So let's break down some reasons why I think year two is easier.

When you're in year one of grief. You feel very volatile, hollow. I felt very fragile. Like if someone touched me, I might just shatter. Some days I would be feeling, pretty good and then the next day it could be devastation and I wanted to just curl up on a corner of the bed and just disappear from the world.

So in year two, I don't feel like that [00:09:00] on a normal basis nearly the way that I did in that first year. In year two, I can think much more clearly and make decisions more confidently. I had a lot of brain fog those first few months throughout year one, and for me, it probably took a good six months before I even felt like I kind of had my feet underneath me as a widow.

And what life could be to survive. I was nowhere near looking at ready to look at the future and what those future plans may be. But that first six months, I kind of felt like I was no longer drowning. Like I could start to create some sort of routine and habits and things with the kids and I could breathe again.

I didn't feel like, the water I was in was up to my eyeballs and I was about to go under, I felt like I was treading water. But it still took a lot of effort. It was still like treading water. Year two, insomnia. I still have [00:10:00] rare bouts of insomnia that pop up. I had an issue with that again last night.

 But in year one it was very frequent. For many months I was getting maybe two to three hours of sleep on average per night, and I would try to kind of maybe catnap in the evening or try to at least rest on the weekends. But from a sleep perspective, I couldn't really get caught up. So insomnia also feeds into some of that brain fog and your inability to think clearly.

So here in year two, I don't really have the issues with insomnia. I don't sleep as much as I did before. On average, I'm probably sleeping six hours and pre widowhood, I would need at least seven, if not eight, to feel like a normal functioning human. So I'm still not there. But also I feel like six hours I can still feel really good whenever I wake up, I have much less brain fog.

Year two, I don't feel like I'm in crisis mode. So year two is more thinking about the [00:11:00] future, thinking about rediscovering what things I like, what things I might wanna do, what things I wanna do differently. I've made some bigger decisions like purchasing a truck. I live out in the country, so I bought a truck, to help with some chores around there.

I've done some reorganizing of things. I've changed up some of my routines, and so while I'm still not a hundred percent. Really clear on what I want my future to look like. Exactly. I feel like I have a much better grasp on what I want my life to look over the next year, two years, like how I'm trying to create what that new future will be.

Year two, I can laugh and I'm starting to get genuinely excited about things and in year one I might laugh a little bit, but it felt very hollow. I felt very detached, disassociated, maybe, like I was looking at my [00:12:00] life from a third person point of view, I didn't really feel genuine excitement about things.

I didn't know if I would ever be able to again. And now, here in year two, especially since I'm about halfway through, I really feel like I can get genuinely excited about things, excited about doing some things differently in the future. Maybe I wouldn't have ever had that opportunity to before.

 It's also much more, rather, it's a lot less likely that I will just randomly burst into tears. So year one I definitely felt like it could grief and sadness, which is hit me out of nowhere. Like you would just be out walking in a store and hear a song. Maybe you would smell.

That reminded you of your person. Maybe you would catch yourself doing something that two of you always did together. And it always just caused a lot of sadness, to well up inside. And I couldn't stop [00:13:00] the flow of the tears. I wasn't like breaking down, busting out, crying, but there definitely would be a lot of tears.

 That does still happen occasionally. It was Nathan's birthday here recently, and so that was a difficult time, those few days leading up to that. And then on his birthday. But it's something I didn't really apologize for. My kids would hug me or, I would just say I'm just having a sad moment or whatever.

But, it didn't feel as volatile and unexpected as it did in year. Year two, our family is in much more of a routine and schedule that feels normal. And this probably has taken me the first few months of year two to figure out, and I'm constantly tweaking it, constantly thinking about how I can make it better and more efficient, and how I can separate my days where I have days I'm focused on trying to get things done around the house and run errands versus days where I'm working on Brave Widow and doing recordings.

Networking with other people and doing coaching calls [00:14:00] and things in the community versus days that I'm trying to release that aside just for myself to do something. Whether it's something fun or something like self-care, whatever that looks like, I just feel that I have a much better routine and I know more what to expect rather than every day being different every week Being different. Year two has definitely been more routine for me.

Year two, the waves of grief still come and it's still painful, but year one man year one, when you are so overwhelmed with pain and sadness, and I'll put the caveat out there, that not everybody cries with grief, and if you're not a crier, That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. Again, everybody grieves and processes that differently, but if you've ever caught yourself like you were so distraught and crying, and there's like [00:15:00] a guttural sound that comes from the pit of your stomach, that doesn't even sound human at times. It's a horrible feeling of hopelessness and being distraught. And that was definitely a year one category thing that would happen, not routinely, but especially those first few weeks and months. It's just, almost getting teary eyed, just thinking about How painful that was. But that's definitely something in year two. I may still cry, I may still have moments or days where I do feel a lot of pain and sadness, but it's not anything like those first few weeks or months where I just felt so lost and in so much pain.

Year two, I've also become more confident in skills. So year one was really hard because I had to learn to do all these things that normally Nathan would [00:16:00] handle. I had to learn how to mow with a zero turn and a lawnmower, and how to use the choke and the throttle when it wouldn't start or when it wouldn't keep running. And that broke down multiple times. And anytime you're learning something new, it's like really requires a lot of brain power, right? Like there's no muscle memory, there's no familiarity. So here you are, you've got brain fog that's happening. Can't really think clearly. You are probably YouTubeing if your me. You're like, YouTubeing how to. Do whatever, right? I don't know how many videos I watched about how to use a zero turn, how to use a Traeger grill, how to use a Blackstone, how to cook steaks, whatever it is, like constantly looking it up. And then because you have that brain fog, can't remember it really well. So you're having to do that multiple times. And like anything else, like any skill, most likely in the beginning, you're not gonna be very good. You'll probably be pretty terrible and it takes a lot of reps, a lot of repetition to [00:17:00] get to a point where you felt pretty confident.

So cooking big dinners, making mashed potatoes and ham and smoking ribs, and doing these things where I really hadn't done a whole lot of that. It took me several iterations and tries to where I could feel much more confident in the kitchen. I could feel more confident mowing. I felt more confident putting furniture together about looking at different investment strategies, about setting boundaries with people. There are so many new skills that I refined and really tried to improve that first year, that now that I'm in year two, I don't consider myself an expert at some of these things, but I definitely have more confidence. I can do them more efficiently, more quickly, and I don't feel so overwhelmed with trying to learn how to improve my skills in those things.

Year two, I'm creating a new future that I can still enjoy and [00:18:00] I am actually looking forward to some things now, whereas in year one, like what? What was there to be excited about? It w wouldn't matter if I had a billion dollars and the best life ever, if Nathan wasn't gonna be a part of it. What was the point.

Now as I look at my future, I think about ways in which I can still have Nathan as part of my life. I can still honor his spirit and who he was as a person and the things that I do in the future, but that doesn't mean that I can't still enjoy and create a future that I look forward to.

Year two, this is really probably two months ago. So I was maybe 14, 15 months out, I started to take myself out to do fun things on my own and just be intentional with hobbies that are mine. So I take myself out on dates. I bought season tickets to see the symphony here. I am going to see Jordan Peterson in a couple of weeks and a couple hours away on my own.[00:19:00]

I took a trip to England. There's just so many things that I'm starting to become more adventurous and do on my own rather than in year one. None of that sounded appealing to me, and it probably would've been very overwhelming.

Year two, I also feel more social. When I was married with Nathan, I traveled a lot. I worked a lot of hours, I talked a lot, a lot in meetings on the calls in Zoom calls, teams calls. And I'm highly introverted from the aspect that, not that I'm necessarily shy, but I really need alot of p ersonal alone time or downtime to feel like a normal functioning human being.

So between working a lot, between having four kids, being married, I didn't really feel super social outside of that. And one of the things I, I realized was, Nathan and I were best friends and we did a lot of things together. And then I also had friends at work, but I really didn't have friends [00:20:00] necessarily outside of work, I didn't really have much of a network, and so this year I've really focused on expanding my friends and my network and especially in things that I'm interested in doing. So for example, I joined a real estate investing group. Now this was in year one actually. Nathan passed in July and I joined this real estate investing group that next May.

So that was about 10 months out. Now I wasn't super bubbly and social and outgoing and it was really scary and intimidating for me to go to these the first couple of times. But I met some great, great, incredible people and a couple of my mentors actually, I had met that first night that I went and so I love learning about real estate and real estate investing.

I love the friendships that I've made and just the things that we have in common, and this really expands into different industries of things that I'm doing. So I no longer have a friend [00:21:00] base that's focused on just soly work, but on varying interests that I have and things that I, I have in common with people.

So year two, I've been much more comfortable about being social, about having, more of a network in people that I can interact with, and I actually like it. Even if you're someone who doesn't like small talk. I hate small talk or it took me a long time to feel like I wasn't horrible at it. You can become more social and have more connection and one of the positives about covid, if anyone can even say that, is it's really broadened our ability to connect remotely and virtually so we can still be location independent. We can meet people from all over the world and interact with them in a way that was, more difficult pre covid.

All right ways that year two is harder. Year two is more difficult because [00:22:00] it feels more real. Year one was all about survival. It was all about getting my feet underneath me. It was all about like, this is a bad nightmare. And year two, I think because you are thinking more clearly and because you're getting into more of a routine, it's almost like it feels more real. Like the reality is sinking in. That person is not coming back and really can create a strange feeling, right? I have these thoughts like Nathan won't ever walk Natalie down the aisle. He won't see his kids graduate college or the three of them that haven't graduated high school yet, graduate high school.

He won't meet any of his grandchildren, and that's huge as you start to think about those things. He will never experience life in [00:23:00] 22, 23, 24, and like a vampire , his body is memorialized at age 40, so he won't be 60 or 80 or, have to limp along in life, like most likely I will have to do as I get older and, have to go through some of those experiences.

I will be older than Nathan at some point, which is weird. And if you're widowed you probably understand that better than someone who's not. But it's a very strange feeling.

My 40th birthday is coming up this summer and that would've been our 22nd wedding anniversary, and I planned on taking, this big two week excursion around Europe. I've always wanted to travel to different countries there, and I just thought it would be like this huge, big life-changing experience. I don't necessarily wanna do that now for my 40th, I'm making other plans and, that's a weird feeling too.

Year two is [00:24:00] harder because as I organize things around the house, as I change out the decor, as I set things up differently for a flow that works well for our family. It feels less like his presence is here. And sometimes I do notice that. Nathan was a tornado of a presence in the house, so, I could follow his trail from one end to the other. Anytime he passed through a room, because there's a shoe, there's a sock, there's a shirt, there's, a trail of chaos that followed him through the house.

The cabinets are open glass sitting out on the counter. He just, you could tell everywhere that he went. And so as we become more organized and as I don't love clutter and try to keep things somewhat straightened up and in the flow that works well for us. I do notice, like, I don't see his stuff, it doesn't feel like he's here as much and that can create a strange feeling.

In some ways it's easier to feel like the house [00:25:00] isn't full of his presence. Cause then I'm sad and thinking about that all the time. But in other ways it is harder because it feels like he's further away, even though that's not necessarily true.

Year two is harder because while I'm excited about the future, it also feels very vague and undefined. Will I want to stay in my house forever, especially when the kids are gone? Will I ever get remarried? Will I travel a lot? Will I be more of a hermit? Will I, want to do horseback riding?

Will I want to become a beach bum. I don't know. I don't know. There's so many opportunities, and I'm a dreamer and a planner, and so I think about the future every day, multiple times a day. What's my future gonna be? What's my future gonna be? Because I wanna have a vision that I'm marching towards, that I'm working towards every single day so that I can reach that end result. So it's very difficult and strange to have this feeling [00:26:00] of, I know if all things being equal and my kids eventually leave the house and it's just me, I know what that future may look like or I'm kind of working on that. But if I get remarried, I mean there's a whole wild card there. Or if I decide that I wanna travel a lot, Then maybe, yeah, I live out in the country and have a lot of land.

Maybe I live in a small neighborhood and I spend more time on traveling. Who knows? But for someone that thinks a lot about their future, I think this is especially hard because you wanna know, you don't like being in this transitional state or even having that foundation to say, here's what I'm gonna start building my future upon. And so I've had to do a lot of self-work and a lot of planning for my future that says, let's plan on, eventually the kids hopefully will all leave the house and not come back too often. [00:27:00] Just kidding. I'm sure I'd love to see them, but let's plan on eventually the kids grow up and move out of the house, and then it's me at the house.

What do I want? Like what kind of house do I wanna be in? Do I wanna have animals and that responsibility? Do I not? Do I wanna still travel quite a bit, do I not? So that's really how I'm trying to frame up my future, but I also know that there are so many opportunities and possibilities for what that future could look. Which is great. It's exciting. It's better than feeling like you have no options, but that also makes it very difficult when you see a lot of opportunity to pick the one that you feel like is the best for you. And it is something that I pray about pretty much every day.

All right, so just to recap the difference for me in year two, whether it's easier or harder, can really vary depending on how you're looking at it. Right. Year two gets you out of crisis management, most likely. Year two starts to [00:28:00] feel a little less volatile, and year two for me has been more about rediscovering who I am what I wanna do, where I wanna spend the most of my time, who are the people that I wanna be around, and what potentially the beginnings of a new future could look like. Now, again, this isn't gonna be everyone's experience, and it may not be your experience. In the past or your experience coming up if you're still in that first year, but the message I really have for you is not to look forward to the future and fear and to feel discouraged and thinking that, oh man, this first year has been the worst year of my life. How can it get any worse? Cuz I tell you this, regardless of how I feel about year two, there is no amount of money that I would wanna go back to year one for. So even though in some ways year twos more challenging, more real, more difficult in some [00:29:00] ways, there's no way I would trade year two to go back to year one.

And if you feel like you are in year two, year three, or four, or five or more, and you still feel the same way that you do in year one, and you haven't really been able to process your grief. You feel still stuck in where you're at or you're not sure, are you making progress? Are you going backwards? I really encourage you to join a community, to find a coach, or maybe find a therapist or some sort of counseling that really helps you keep a realistic mindset. Well, at the same time, focus on the positives. There are some communities of people out there that it's very depressing and I, I couldn't stay in that environment because people just wallowed in pain all of the time and had a mindset that life could never get better again. And I didn't know.

[00:30:00] Okay, in year one, I didn't know, can my life ever start to feel normal? Can I find joy again? Can I laugh again? Can I dream about the future again? I don't know how that would even be possible, because in that moment it feels very impossible, but I wanted to believe that it could be, and I hung on to the tiniest shred of hope that I had no idea it would be possible to laugh again, to be excited about the future or to create a life I was going to be happy with. But I held onto the belief that some way, somehow it would be possible again. And I believe in year two, that's what is coming forth in my life and what I'm creating for the future. And that's my encouragement to you.

If you're on the fence or if you feel like everyone says year two is harder and I'm never gonna be happy and I'm never gonna find a life that I enjoy and I'm always gonna be miserable. If you tell yourself those things over and over and over, you are creating that [00:31:00] future for yourself. So if you can't work through some of those things, then find a community that will help you.

And even if you can work through some of those things, it's very helpful to have a good, strong community around you and people who encourage you, who can balance sitting in the pain with you and saying, yeah, this sucks. It's not fair. It's bad. There's no reason you should have lost your person and to just let you be versus balanced with telling you, we don't need to wallow in that. So we need to process our feelings. We need to work through that and allow you to be, but also we do it in a way that isn't hopeless. There is going to be hope and there's a fine balance in how we help communicate that to people who are [00:32:00] hurting and who want to be able to move forward in a way that best serves them.

So this is one reason really why I founded the Brave Widow community. And if you're not part of the membership community, I would love for you to be part of that because our community has members in it who, some of them are very newly widowed and they do feel overwhelmed and they're working on rebuilding their life. We have folks in there who have been widowed a little bit longer. Maybe they're one to two or more years out. But we come together and we look forward to the future with a belief that some way, somehow we can rebuild a life and find a positive future for ourselves. And I would love to have you as part of that community if you're not there already.

Emily Jones: Hey guys. Thank you [00:33:00] so much for listening to the Brave Widow Podcast. I would love to help you take your next step, whether that's healing your heart, binding hope, or achieving your dreams for the future.

Do you need a safe space to connect with other like-minded widows? Do you wish you had how-tos for getting through the next steps in your journey, organizing your life or moving through grief? What about live calls where you get answers to your burning questions? The Brave Widow Membership Community is just what you need.

Inside you'll find courses to help guide you, a community of other widows to connect with, live coaching and q and a calls, and small group coaching where you can work on what matters most to you. Learn how to heal your heart, find hope, reclaim joy, and dream again for the future. It is possible. Head on over to brave widow.com to learn more.

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