BW 022: When Grief Gets Stuck and Time Doesn’t Heal all Wounds: Why We are Not Prepared to Handle Loss and Grief

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 The Transcript is below.

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Today we're gonna talk about why it feels like we get stuck in grief. Why time doesn't magically heal all wounds. Why we're ultimately not prepared to handle grief and loss and what you can actually do about it.

 

We talk about:

~ Power of words.

~ Misconceptions that we have learned about grief and how to process loss.

~ How others are ill prepared to help us navigate grief

~ Who is ultimately responsible

 

Quotes:

~ "..no one else has the ability to influence how you feel, how you feel, and how you respond to something is controlled by you."

~ "Grief is a human response that is normal and natural. There's nothing wrong or defective with you. Loss can cause us to experience all sorts of emotions, sadness, anger, bitterness, denial, frustration, so many different emotions that grief can bring upon us, that is totally normal."

~ "We’re taught how to acquire things; not how to lose them."

 

Resources Mentioned:

~ How to Talk to a Widow (bravewidow.com) - BW episode 011

~ Four Reasons Why Grief is Hard (bravewidow.com) BW episode 016

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

~ The Grief Recovery Handbook by John W. James and Russell Friedman

 

Resources by John W. James and Russell Friedman can be found at:

https://www.griefrecoverymethod.com/

https://www.facebook.com/griefrecoverymethod/

Grief Recovery (@GriefRecovery) · Twitter

https://twitter.com/GriefRecovery

https://www.instagram.com/griefrecoverymethod/

 

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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:

Twitter @brave_widow

Instagram @brave_widow

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/bravewidow

YouTube@bravewidow

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Transcription:

Emily Jones: [00:00:00] Hey, and welcome to episode number 22 of The Brave Widow Show. Today we're gonna talk about why it feels like we get stuck in grief. Why time doesn't magically heal all wounds. Why we're ultimately not prepared to handle grief and loss and what you can actually do about it. Why we're ultimately not prepared to handle grief and loss and what you can actually do about it. So today I'm going to share with you an amazing resource, and this one is going in my toolbox.

This is called the Grief Recovery Handbook by John W. James and Russell Friedman. And if you remember a few episodes back, I did a summary of the Grieving Brain, which is another book by Dr. Mary Frances O'Connor. That book was excellent in understanding why grief is so hard, how our brain works in [00:01:00] grief, and making us feel a little less crazy, okay, with why grief is so difficult and why we think enact to an extent the way that we do.

This book is like the next progression of that. So now that we understand why our brain and why we feel grief is a certain way, this is an excellent book in helping you to move forward. And the nice thing about this book is that it really could be used for any sort of loss or any sort of relationship hangups that you may have. So whether it's, um, grief of losing a loved one, whether that's a spouse, a child, or anyone that you cared about, maybe even a pet. It could also be, um, a divorce. It could be an absent parent. It could be someone for example,

I had someone text me the other day and say, do you ever just wanna write a letter to someone to gain some closure, but you feel like the outcome's gonna [00:02:00] be worse than if you didn't write it? And I said, I have just the book for you, and this is it. So, uh, this is really an awesome book and I'm not gonna give away all the secrets. Okay? So if you wanna know what's in the book, you need to go buy it. I am not an affiliate. I don't get anything for promoting it. I just really thought it was good. So today I'm gonna share with you from the book some power of words that people have in grief, some misconceptions and lessons that we were wrongly taught about how to process loss and grief.

Several of these, I think that you might be able to resonate with. I'm gonna talk about how others are ill-equipped to help you through your grief journey, and ultimately who is responsible. Now, the second half of this book walks you through how to start processing and moving through your grief journey.

So if you feel stuck in grief, this probably second half or so of [00:03:00] this book really gives some great detailed information on how to move forward and some things that you can do, preferably with a partner and someone who can also follow along with these exercises. But I'm not gonna go through that today.

I'm really gonna focus on the first, third to half of this book and some of the gems that are inside. Why is it so hard for us to feel like we are healing in our grief journey? One of the main points that these authors make is that in life we are taught how to acquire things, but we're not taught how to lose them.

So think about even as a child, or growing up, the different losses you may have had. Maybe it was loss of a pet. Maybe it was loss of the ability to be on a sports team. Maybe it was the loss of anything that was important to you, and think [00:04:00] about the ways that you were told to process or deal with those losses.

For example, if you've been called a crybaby, if you've been told to get over it. If you've been told. Um, you know, whatever other platitude to get over your loss and not to process it. These are little things that culturally we consider normal because we, most of us hear some of these same things over and over, but that doesn't mean that it's the right way to handle and process loss.

So most of us do not know the right way to handle and process grief and loss. And this is something I had a really hard time understanding because death is inevitable, right? So if you think about having lost a loved one, Whether it's a spouse, whether it's a child, or even loss of someone through divorce or other relationship breaks, that happens to everyone.

Like everyone will know [00:05:00] someone ultimately who dies. Everyone will know some sort of loss of a relationship, but they don't teach us this in school. Our parents don't really teach us this. We really are very ignorant to how we can in a healthy way process grief and loss.

The authors mentioned that grief is a human response that is normal and natural. There's nothing wrong or defective with you. Loss can cause us to experience all sorts of emotions, sadness, anger, bitterness, denial, frustration, so many different emotions that grief can bring upon us, that is totally normal. But what do we say? What do a lot of people say when they notice that someone is having a significant emotional response to grief and loss. We say things like, oh, this person broke down, or they lost it, or they went over the edge, or they're having a mental breakdown.[00:06:00]

Those are the things we may say about people who are having these emotional responses. When in reality these responses are very normal. So part of this, again, is just culturally our lack of knowledge of the right ways to process loss and grief, and especially being able to help someone else process some of these things.

So, power of words. Here are some phrases that we often hear and many times have used, and most of these are mentioned by the author.

Get ahold of yourself.

You can't fall apart.

Keep a stiff upper lip.

Need to pull yourself up by the bootstraps.

Oh, I understand how you feel.

Now notice here that it doesn't matter if someone lost someone the same way you lost your person, or if I was [00:07:00] widowed at 37 with four kids and someone else was widowed at 37 with four kids. While the person may understand that grief is painful and hard, they don't understand how you feel, because every relationship is unique, and this is something the authors really reiterate that I think is so important to understand is not to tell people I understand how you feel.

The living must go on.

Well, he's in a better place now.

She lived a full life.

You shouldn't be angry with God.

God will never give you more than you can handle. You must be one of God's toughest soldiers.

Personally, I hate this one, I mean, If you are someone who believes in the Bible, and God, there are many verses to support the fact that God does allow for us to go [00:08:00] through things that are more than we can handle.

That's why having faith is so important and relying on God is such a common theme in the Bible. But people will say so many times, God won't give you anything more than you can handle, and that is just simply wrong. So please, let's not say this one.

You're strong enough to handle it, or one that I heard often is you have to be strong for your kids. What does that even mean? You have to be strong or you have to be strong for someone else. What? What does that mean? Does that mean I shouldn't cry in front of my kids? Does it mean that I shouldn't just lay in bed for weeks at a time? Does it mean I can't show any emotion? Saying you have to be strong for someone else is really vague. It doesn't really work. And it further just emphasizes the fact that [00:09:00] we shouldn't show emotional response to grief and loss. We should pretend to be okay. And honestly, I think a lot of times people say these things because as humans we have a tendency to fix. We have a tendency to sooth to like, we're not comfortable with other people feeling bad. We wanna fix it, we wanna soothe, we wanna make them feel better. If you've done much research into relationships between men and women. You know, a lot of times women, they wanna be able to talk and what they don't want men to fix the problem, and for men, it's in their nature to be problem solvers and fixers.

So a lot of times you hear this very common friction where women wanna be heard and validated and they just want their man to listen. It was a very broad generalization, but it's a very common theme. And the reality of it is it's not just of women and men dynamics. It's a lot of women [00:10:00] do this, even with trying to help soothe someone or help them not feel bad.

We'll talk a little bit more about that later. Some other things that we ourselves may say, well, my heart is broken and I just can't ever get over this.

And there are times that you feel this way, but what I really liked about what the author said here is they asked a question that said, is your heart always broken? Always, whenever you think of your person, is it always a sad memory and your heart is broken? And you think, okay, well no, not always, not all my memories are sad and my heart isn't broken.

But as we say these types of things to ourselves, it really emphasizes in our subconscious mind that we are broken and this becomes like an identity. I'm broken, I'm suffering from trauma. I'm a survivor. I [00:11:00] have P T S D, I have depression. And while some of those things at times may be true, we have to be very careful that this doesn't become our identity and who we are.

So I wanna read to you one of their suggestions. Instead of saying that you have a permanently broken heart to describe yourself, they recommend instead that we say, sometimes when I'm reminded of the struggles and their death, my heart feels broken. Other times, remembering their wonderful qualities. I feel happy and pleased to share my memories about them, and I think that's really beautiful because there are times when I think about Nathan and I do get sad and I do feel, or especially that first year felt somewhat incomplete, but now there are so many times where I laugh, and [00:12:00] I think about good memories, and I like to point out things like, oh, he really liked this, or he would've thought this was funny, or, you know, this was his favorite thing. And it fills my heart with warmth. And so they're absolutely right. I'm not in a constant state of grief and brokenness and having a broken heart, but it is something very powerful that we need to think about as part of the phrases of what we tell ourselves or what we tell other people.

Another common, phrase or thought is that I feel guilty. And when we think about the definition of guilt, guilt implies intent to harm or to do wrong. Well, in most cases, as we think about, well, I feel guilty because of something that happened in my relationship, or something that didn't happen that I wish I would've done.

But when we think [00:13:00] about, well, I feel guilty. Really, unless there was intent to harm that person or intent to do damage or to do something wrong, there isn't something that you should feel guilty about. However, there might be things that you wished were better in your relationship. That you wished were different or that you wished you experienced more of?

And as the authors explained this concept, that really resonated with me as I thought about the past interactions that I had with Nathan. As I thought about the process of him going to the hospital. Of me helping the EMS folks, get 'him in a wheelchair, get him outside to the ambulance.

As I thought about the last few conversations that we had, there were times that I felt guilty, like I, I really wish I would've done this. I wish I would've done that. Why couldn't I have thought about this or handled it differently? But to [00:14:00] their point, it's not that I felt guilty because I did anything to harm Nathan, or that I wanted him to have a poor outcome.

It's more of the concept that I wish there were things that happened that were better, that were different, or maybe that had happened more. That I wish I had done more of or that he had done more of. And so, this is really a great way to look at things. Again, instead of saying, I feel guilty, or I'm guilty, that really can become part of our identity and that can hold us back from being able to move through grief.

So now let's talk about some of the misconceptions that we have learned about grief and how to process loss. And there are six here that are mentioned in the book that I would like to talk through with you.

The first two misconceptions about grief are don't feel bad. The second one is we'll replace the loss.

And one of the examples that they use in the book, which I thought was great, is, one of the folks had as a, [00:15:00] as a child, as a teenager, had lost a dog. They lost a pet, and they were really sad about having lost the pet. They were grieving that loss and the relationship that they had. And instead of helping that person process the grief and acknowledging that their emotional response was fully normal, you know, what did the parents say?

What do you think? They said, oh, don't feel bad. Don't feel bad about losing them. We'll get you another dog this weekend.

And my goodness, I thought to myself, how many times have I said that to my kids? I mean, not that particular instance, but say, they lost something that meant a lot to them, or they got a new shirt and it got torn or stained first day they wore it and they're really disappointed and sad that they lost it.

What's the first thing we'll say? Oh, we can get you another one. Especially with Amazon, like we can just order you another one. We can just get you another one. [00:16:00] But the message that we're sending to that person when they experience loss and of course is losing an article of clothing or a goldfish or something in our minds that feels small, is that in any way compared to losing a person later in life?

Probably not. But at the end of the day, it is a message that we're teaching people about how to incorrectly handle loss and to process grief.

I think of another example where this person lived in a very small town. Their daughter was in cheerleading, and that was her life. Like did cheerleading practice every day. They did competitions, they did gymnastics, they did all kinds of stuff. Like her life was cheerleading and that business that taught the kids how to do cheer ended up shutting down, and I think that person had to move somewhere else. And for most people, what would they tell that child?

Oh, don't feel bad. You can find [00:17:00] something else. Maybe you can do gymnastics, maybe you can pick up a new hobby. We're not really comfortable with just letting that person be sad. And so while it's easy for us to compare and to say, well, that child losing their ability to do cheer has nothing to do with me losing my spouse that I was married to for 20. At the end of the day, it's one of those small lessons that we learn in life over and over and over again about loss and about being able to grieve and have an emotional response to that loss, which is, don't feel bad, we're gonna replace it. Now you can do basketball. Now you can do gymnastics. Don't focus on being sad that you can't do this anymore. We're gonna replace it with something else. And the problem is that that doesn't work. It doesn't help that person heal. And when you do lose a person later in life, you realize that [00:18:00] because you do feel bad and there's no way that you can replace that person.

I have never lost a child, especially a young child, and it is so hard for me to fathom that when someone knows a person who has lost a child, whether it's miscarriage or another tragedy of a child, that they feel it's appropriate to tell the parent, well, don't worry, you can still have other kids. What is that? It's that person saying, don't feel bad. You can replace the loss. And that grieving parent knows that even if they have 10 more kids, not one of those children will ever replace the child that they lost. But it's these small lessons that we learned throughout life where we feel the right thing is not to tell that person.

I'm so sorry. I can't even imagine what you're going through. [00:19:00] Instead, it's to tell them not to feel bad because they can have more children. Some great examples.

The third misconception that we learned about grief is that we need to grieve alone. How many times have you heard, or maybe even you've said, well, if you're gonna cry, go cry in your room.

if you're gonna be sad, go be sad over there. Like, it makes us uncomfortable to let people be sad or to cry or to process some sort of emotion. And so what we teach them is they need to go isolate themselves and they need to process grief somewhere else. One of the authors mentioned that, he was told this as a child, if you're gonna cry, go cry in your room.

So then as he grew into an adult and he would have friction with his wife, he would go get in the car and drive around. And what he recognized was that same concept of go grieve alone. Go process your emotion alone as a small child, that meant go to your room as an adult, he processed that as go get in your car and do [00:20:00] it by yourself and work out your emotions by yourself.

It's a really difficult to heal as a person who's isolated and alone. And a lot of times this actually exacerbates the pain and the issue.

 All right, number four, just give it time. Time heals all wounds. Okay. All right. I'm guilty. I probably have said this several times. Not necessarily post widowhood, but before. That's what we all think, like time just heals all wounds. Okay, well, would you say that to somebody who broke their arm? Like, don't worry about healing that. Don't worry about going to the hospital. You broke your arm. Time heals all wounds. It's gonna heal magically on its own. And this is one misconception that prevents people from being able to heal and to feel that they're moving forward in their grief recovery process is because in their minds, they [00:21:00] believe if I just give it enough time, I'll start to feel better.

The problem is that you hear from people five years down the road, 10 years down the road, that are grieving just as heavily as they did that first year. I can't imagine the pain and the suffering of that many years of what I went through those first few months and year. Just give it time.

The reality is that you have to choose to heal, and we're gonna talk about that here in a little bit, but you have to be proactive in your healing and taking care of yourself, in allowing yourself to process these emotions, just like you have to be proactive with healing yourself when you get into an accident or you have an injury or something else happens. You can't just sit back and magically wait for that healing to occur.

The fifth misconception that we learn about grief and how to process loss is to [00:22:00] be strong for others. . What does that mean? Be strong for others. First of all, why? Why? Because that's just reiterating that to process grief and to heal, I need to suppress how I feel. I need to not talk about it. I need to compartmentalize. I need to not cry in front of my kids at the dining room table. I need to go in my room again, isolate myself. I need to cry and be sad in there, but then I need to pull myself up by those bootstraps and get back out there and be strong for my kids. I, I don't even know what that means. And it just perpetuates suspicious cycle about how ill prepared we are to help others in grief.

Number six is to keep busy and stay active. Well just get out there and start doing new things or just get out there and, and do something else. And I didn't jot these down, but the book actually has several,[00:23:00] they call it short-term energy relieving behaviors. And there's a really fine balance between being active and doing things and using that as a tool in your toolbox to help you through the journey of grief versus participating in behaviors to distract yourself from the grief and from being able to process your emotions. So the grieving brain has some great ideas for different tools in your toolbox and activities and things that you can do to help process. So think about things like gardening and journaling and things that are creative related, and that's really working aside of your brain that processes emotion versus doing things like to shut out the world and to keep you distracted from being able to process those emotions.

And I will run down a list [00:24:00] here of what some of these short-term energy relieving behaviors are.

All right, so the authors say this is a partial list of behaviors that if done for the wrong reason can have a negative impact on people who are grieving.

Food. Okay. Guilty of that one.

Alcohol and drugs.

Anger.

Exercise.

Fantasy, which is movies, TV and books.

Isolation.

Sex.

Shopping, which we humorously call retail therapy

and workaholism.

These are all things that can have damaging consequences if used as distractors and if used as an alternative to processing our grief.

All right, so we've talked about the power of words. We've talked about the misconceptions of grief, and now we'll talk a little bit about how others are ill prepared to help us navigate grief, and there are [00:25:00] five of these.

The first one is they don't know what to say. I actually did a podcast episode on this about how to talk to a widow, where I go through many of the platitudes of what people typically say and actually give recommendations for what people could say instead.

So many times these platitudes are things that are well intended. People don't say them because they're malicious but again, it's just because they're ill prepared and not educated on how to process loss and grief, and especially how to help others process these things. So something they might say we talked about earlier was, I know how you feel.

Okay, well, even if you've gone through a very similar experience. Everyone's relationships are unique and the authors reiterate this throughout sections of the book, and I completely agree because even though I know what it's like to be widowed and I know what it's like to be widowed with young [00:26:00] kids, everyone's relationship is different.

And of course I feel like my relationship with Nathan was completely unique. We weren't like many married couples that we know. We loved being together. We were best friends. We didn't have some of the typical arguments and challenges that you hear generalized or that maybe a lot of your family and friends go through. We've really felt like we were a team and appreciated a lot of unique things about our relationship and other people maybe didn't have that same great relationship. Some people who are widowed, they had an abusive partner, they had someone who was addicted and struggled with that.

They had someone who went through other unique situations. And ultimately, at the end of the day, the relationships are unique and different. So unfortunately, when people make these well-intentioned statements, it can actually backfire and cause the person who's grieving frustration and anger [00:27:00] because they know in their minds what these people are saying just simply isn't true.

And even, especially if you haven't been in any similar situation, that will really get someone fired up. Like if you tell a widow, I am divorced, I know exactly how you feel, I don't wanna be standing anywhere near you when you say that because that will cause a lot of people to have some anger and hostility if you were to say that.

So it doesn't mean that anyone's pain is less or greater than anyone else. We don't compare pain comparisons of thief of joy, right? Pain is pain at the end of the day. Loss is loss. Grief is grief. There are different complexities and components, but it's just best. if you don't say, I know how you feel, or I understand how you feel.

The second reason people are ill [00:28:00] prepared is that they're afraid of our feelings.

And this is something that I knew but I like didn't know. But if you think about it, we wanna soothe, we wanna fix, you don't wanna be around sadness and uncomfortableness. And we don't like uncomfortable silences. We don't like if someone's crying, we feel like we immediately need to hug 'em and sue them and tell 'em it'll be okay.

And ultimately that is not the way to help someone heal and to help them process their grief is not to soothe and comfort them and that feels really counterintuitive. Like if my child is running outside and falls and scrapes their knee, I'm immediately gonna hug 'em, comfort 'em, soothe them, tell 'em it'll be okay.

I don't wanna hear 'em crying, I don't wanna hear 'em whining. I, I want 'em to just feel better. And as minor as that is, we have the same mentality and outlook on people who are suffering a much bigger and greater loss. A loss of another person. A loss of [00:29:00] a child, of a spouse, of a divorce. People just really have a hard time sitting in the pain and sitting in the uncomfortableness.

But if you will be the kind of person that can just listen, that can validate and acknowledge, you know, yes, I'm sorry. This is unfair. It sucks and I really feel for you. And just listen to that person and let them process and talk and feel through their emotions. You are gonna do so much more for that person than if you try to comfort them, sooth them, fix things for them. A lot of times people just really want to feel heard.

Number three is they try to change the subject. Well, I know it's hard losing a person, but they're in a better place now, or at least they're no longer in pain or[00:30:00] life goes on, we can't die with the dead. People just, again, they're uncomfortable. They try to change the subject. They just really underestimate the value of sitting. I sometimes say sitting in the suck with people, like it just sucks. And sitting in the sadness, however you wanna say that, is just sitting in the pain and darkness with someone. That would make you just a priceless and valuable friend to someone.

 Number four is they contextualize. People say things that appeal to our intellect and not necessarily to our emotions and how we're processing things. Here's some examples again, well-intentioned of what people say to someone who's lost a child.

Well, be thankful you have another son.

 The living must go on.

He's in a better place.

All things must pass.

She led a [00:31:00] full life.

You'll find somebody else.

God will never give you more than you can handle.

Be grateful you had him for so long.

Again, these are really just based on misinformation. This book states that, according to statistics, if we are to believe those, we will each experience the death of a loved one every nine to 13 years.

And that's one reason why we're just not really well equipped to handle it or to help others because it happens infrequently. Fortunately, we don't have to have this experience very often, but on the flip side, that means we're not really adept at handling those situations.

Number five, people don't hear us.

People want to be heard. They don't want to be fixed. You cannot fix someone's grief. You many times cannot make them feel better. [00:32:00] There's really not much that you can say that's gonna make the pain go away. You can give them social cues and say things to them that trigger that thought of, don't be sad, be strong, and so someone will compose themselves.

But there's really not much that you could say to help someone feel better. On the flip side, the positive is that you don't have to say anything. In fact, it's probably better if you don't. Just listening. Just being there, showing up and listening can do a remarkable thing for people who are going through grief.

People wanna feel heard and validated. They don't want to be fixed.

Then number six, wow, I thought there was. and I actually wanted to mention six. So number six, people don't wanna talk about death, so think about it. We say things like, oh, they've passed [00:33:00] away. They've gone to the other side. You know, daddy's in heaven now.

They've expired. We lost our person. We don't like to say they died. They're dead. We come up with other words that sound a little softer and we just in general don't like talking about death. And the book mentions that, especially for children, this can be really confusing. So if we say things like, oh, dad's in heaven, or Dad's asleep, or, they've drifted to another place, it can be really confusing for children that are trying to grasp and understand the reality of what has happened. So that can cause a lot of challenges when we're using a lot of metaphors.

 So lastly, who is ultimately responsible for your healing and your ability to process and go through grief? And I think you may know who I'm gonna [00:34:00] say, but one of the reasons why, this is a difficult concept to be able to say I'm responsible for my healing, for my journey, for being able to process grief is because culturally we give a lot of blame, credit, whatever you wanna call it, to other people being able to influence how we feel. And this is a concept I actually learned quite a bit about. When I would study emotional intelligence, when I would study leadership, when I would study, just interpersonal relationships is no one else has the ability to influence how you feel, how you feel, and how you respond to something is controlled by you.

This is hard. It's a hard concept, especially if you're not familiar with it, because what do we do? We tell our children, oh, you make me so proud. You make me happy. Don't do that. You make me sad. Don't do that. You're [00:35:00] make your dad mad. We teach children from a very young age that they're responsible for how they make other people feel and vice versa.

One of the examples I thought was really great. If we are, let's say a person was sitting at a stoplight and they weren't really paying attention. The stoplight was red, it turns green, they didn't notice. So they're sitting there for a few minutes and the person behind them honked. Well, our first reaction is not to say, oh, I wasn't paying attention. I should have paid attention to the light lights turn green. It's time to go. Our first initial reaction is typically we feel embarrassed. And we place the blame on that other person. We say, oh, they make me so mad, they honked at me. We don't say, oh, I'm mad at myself because I am embarrassed. I wasn't paying attention and someone had to honk at me. So I would know to go, because the light turned green. We initially say, that person made me mad. Or let's say it's raining on a day [00:36:00] that you're gonna have a picnic. Now, that might not be great, right? Like, Couldn't do anything to control the rain. Maybe the rain really is ruining your picnic. But how you respond and how you decide to let your feelings and emotions linger is ultimately up to you. You can either look at that situation and say, Ugh, well, this rain just ruined my whole day. My whole day is ruined now because we were supposed to have a picnic and it rained, and I'm definitely not going to sit outside. I'm not gonna have fun. Now my day is whole ruined. Or you can look at that situation and say, wow, that really sucked. We're supposed to have this nice picnic. Now it's raining. We can't have a picnic. But what can we do instead? Can we do something outside and embrace the rain or can we do something totally different and outside the norm?

Maybe now we wanna go see a movie. Maybe we wanna go to the mall. Maybe we wanna have a picnic in the living room and [00:37:00] have some nice candlelight, like there are a lot of different options of what you could do, but you are in control of how much power you have over that situation and how you process and handle it versus how much you're passive and you let that situation have control over you.

Now, how does that relate to grief and how we feel about losing a person because that really, really, really is hard and bad and difficult. And of course that is going to affect how we feel. And how, what emotions bubble up within us that we don't have control over. When I'm thinking about, my kids and milestones and things that are coming up in the future, and I feel sad that Nathan's not gonna be able to be there and to personally witness those things. I can't help the fact that I initially started feeling sad and bad and depressed about that, but I can control how long I allow myself [00:38:00] to linger there.

Do I live that every day and I just carry that burden every day? Or do I allow myself to feel that for a moment, for several moments, for a part of my day, and then say, all right, now we've got to go down a different path because I can't live my life feeling like this. So even if according to the authors, you take a 1% responsibility in how you can process and handle your grief. That is all you need in order to be able to make progress. And I think this is so spot on because when I first lost Nathan, I told myself I'm not gonna die with him, and I have no idea how I could ever feel like I have a good life again. How I could laugh again. How I could find joy again, but I'm gonna hold on to like the tiniest, tiniest shred in Seed of [00:39:00] Hope knowing that I don't know how I'm gonna get to the other side. I don't know how I'm gonna get to a point where I can feel like a normal human where I can laugh again and I can be excited again. But I'm gonna hold on to this hope that some ways, somehow it is possible and I can already notice a great difference in how I handled that situation versus how I could have handled it, which is poor me. I'm a widow, I have four kids. I have to work, I have to take care of all these responsibilities. My life's never gonna be the same. I'm never gonna be happy again. My life is over. I's just over. It's over. Might as well put me in the ground. Um, it's over. That wasn't the only thing that helped my healing journey, obviously.

Lots of things come into play there, but I looked at a small portion of what I could personally do to help me in my grief journey. And that [00:40:00] is what the authors also reiterate in how you look at your responsibility to move through grief. So again, that takes us to about almost halfway through the book and through the book, there are some recommendations and exercises they actually have of how you can work with a partner and even with a small group to work through your healing and your grief journey.

 I was just really, really pleased with the book and the tools and the recommendations that they have. It helped me identify some of the hangups I had in my relationship with Nathan, even while we were married. Some of the things that I really appreciated about him, some of the things that I resented that happened over the course of our years, whether it was on his part or my part, but this really helped to reconcile some of those things that I wished as they said, were better, different, or more.

So pick up this book. I just kind of brushed the surface with some of the things that were in there. And this will be in [00:41:00] my toolkit to help other people because it really is a great resource and I would recommend that you check it out. And again, it can be beyond just a loss of a person. Could be loss for divorce of a friendship of a family member, of any relationship that you have. It's a really great way to help process some of those things. And, they did a really nice job with that.

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Emily Jones: Hey guys. Thank you 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 [00:42:00] 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.