BW 029: Social Circle Changes Post Loss and What to Do

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Commonly widows report having a completely new social circle once their spouse dies.  They may feel abandoned, misunderstood, judged, rejected, forgotten, and lost.

You will be disappointed by people who don’t show up for you the way you wish they would; alternatively you will be delighted by people who show up for you who you never thought would.

When you become a widow, your social circle can change in significant ways. 

In today's episode we talk about 5 reasons why:

We talk about:

~ Loss of shared friends

~ Changed interests and priorities

~ Emotional pain and isolation

~ Communicating your needs

Quotes:

~ "Losing a spouse is like being reborn. You're trying to figure out who you are as a person individually instead of who you are as a couple."

~"The biggest thing that you can do is help communicate your needs, tell your friends and your family what you need from them and let them know."

Things mentioned:

~ BW 024 : How to Network Like an Introvert - and Actually Enjoy it!

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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. Welcome to episode number 29 of The Brave Widow Show. Today I'm gonna talk to you about an interesting phenomenon that happens when someone loses a spouse. Now, when Nathan first died, I felt a big shift in my social circle, a big shift in who were the people that reached out to me, who followed up with me, who invited me to do things, and it wasn't the people that I expected. 

In fact, some of the people I really expected to step up didn't. And people that I never thought would step up actually did. In talking to some of the other widows in the community, this is something that they see happen. So today I wanna share with you five reasons why you may have noticed a change in your social circle. 

And additionally, five things that you can do about it if you need to rebuild, if you need to add to your social circle. I'm gonna share with you [00:01:00] some ways and ideas that you can do that. Now, in a previous episode, I think it was episode 24, we talk about how to meet new people and make new friends, even if you're an introvert and even if you hate small talk. 

So if you haven't seen that episode, but you're wanting to get some good ideas for how to meet new friends, that's really a really good place to start.  

The first reason why your social circle changes is you have a loss of shared friends. Especially if you and your spouse were married for a long time, you have friends that you had together. It was friendships that you maintained between the two of you. It probably wasn't necessarily just friends that you had or your spouse had. And after the loss of your spouse, some of those friends just start to drift away. Maybe they feel uncomfortable being around you. Maybe they don't know how to support [00:02:00] you. They don't know what to say. They feel sad around you. They aren't sure, if they should bring up the person that was gone and it may just feel uncomfortable and awkward for them. You can often find a group of, let's say there's four of you or six of you, or eight of you, and now there's an odd number because one of you no longer has your spouse, and that can sometimes change the whole dynamic of the group. So this is one of the first most frequent reasons why a social circle changes. 

The second reason is as you lose a spouse and as you're trying to establish your new identity and figure out who you wanna be in this next part of life, it's not uncommon for you to have changed interest and priorities. Losing a spouse is like being reborn. You're trying to figure out who you are as a person individually instead of who you are as [00:03:00] a couple. And when Nathan died, I had been married to him for more of my life than I had been alive, not married to him. So losing him was very strange to me because while sure I remember things from my childhood, I definitely don't remember many of the things that happened those first few years. So the great bulk of my life has been being married, having shared visions and plans and goals and dreams of what life looks like and having grandkids and retiring together and growing old together. Now all of a sudden that is gone and I really started reevaluating. Okay, the plans that we had for our future, are those still my plans as an individual person or were those our plans together as a couple and without him here do I still want to do those things? And over time, as I just investigated new [00:04:00] hobbies, I tested out hobbies that I had in the past. I started to learn what were things that I enjoyed doing together because we were doing them together versus different things that I enjoyed doing on my own or maybe I didn't really like doing anymore now that he was no longer with me. 

You may decide that you wanna take a class or learn something new. So even though this may seem smaller and not as big of a priority, this still can affect your social circle because the things that you're doing and the things that you're dedicating your time to are very different than what they were before. 

The third reason why our social circle changes is because of the emotional pain and isolation. Now for some people, when they're in pain and they're hurting, they want other people around. And for me, that's not the case. If I am in pain, if I'm going through something, if I am having a hard time, I get really [00:05:00] quiet, I isolate. 

I really don't want anyone else around. And it was hard for people, especially around the time of the funeral. A lot of people were volunteering to come over, spend time with me, and they were concerned about me because I kept refusing all of their offers. And I would just keep saying like, I just wanna be alone. Like I just, I don't want a bunch of other people around. And so certainly this impacts your social circle and makes it difficult for you to maintain some of those social connections. If you are isolating and you are pushing people away, or you're just emotionally in a lot of pain and not really sure how to communicate to those other people, what exactly it is that you want or need. 

It also can make it difficult for your friends or your social circle to know how to help you, how to take care of you, what you want. If they invite you to do things and you say no, once or twice, maybe they feel like they should stop asking [00:06:00] you and then you feel like they stop caring about you, and it's just this kind of vicious cycle that can happen, but, for many of us, when we go through this type of loss and pain, we feel very lonely. We're very hurt. There's a lot of strong emotion that really takes over a significant part of our lives, which makes it difficult to maintain some of those relationships and settings that we have in our social circle. 

The fourth reason why your social circle may change is because they feel sad around you, and it may be hard for them to be around you. And I actually did have a couple people tell me that the reason that they didn't really want to be around my family anymore is because it made them too sad. Now, I could say how I feel about that opinion. 

Right or wrong, everyone grieves in a different way, and even though you may think, well, they're my spouse, so it affects me more than it [00:07:00] affects them. For some people, depending on their emotional maturity on how they handle grief and process it, or they suppress it, whether or not they wanna go through therapy or counseling. 

Everyone can handle grief and how they process that in their own way. . It can make it difficult for them to want to be around you if it's also causing them some significant sadness and sorrow and pain. The biggest thing that you can do is help communicate your needs, tell your friends and your family what you need from them and let them know. Yeah. Hey I understand this may be hard for you. I understand that, we're all grieving together, but being isolated and allowing this to break apart the relationships that we have isn't necessarily going to help us heal or continue to serve us over time. 

For some of you, it may be really hard to be clear about what you want and [00:08:00] need from the friends in your social circle, but by being clear and by telling people specifically what you want, it helps set you up for success in the longer term, for example, do you want them to talk about your spouse or does it make you too sad and you don't wanna think about it? 

Do you want them to continue to invite you to events? Even if you say no, you wanna be invited because you wanna feel included, do you want them to come and just sit with you? And just be with you and let you be sad. Whatever it is you want or need, be very clear in telling them. For many of us, it's hard to know until we have gone through it, what to do or say for someone who is hurting and who is grieving. 

I know for me, A lot of times when people experience a loss, I had no idea the depths of how much it would impact them. So I know there were times I could have done a much better job at being supportive for someone, but until you to go through it, you [00:09:00] don't really know. So what we can do is help educate those people around us and be very clear in what we want and need, and not expect them to automatically know or assume what it is that you want and need. 

The other thing is, To just give your friends time. Maybe this was a big loss for them, or maybe it really has them reflecting on their own life, their immortality, and they just need time to process some of those things. While it's good and important for you to communicate your needs and what you want from your friends and family, also give some grace and be patient with them as they heal through some of their own feelings of loss that they have. 

All right. The fifth reason why your social circle changes post loss is because of stigma and misunderstanding. And unfortunately, there's still a lot of stigma attached [00:10:00] to being a widow and what that means Sometimes people see this, especially if they've been given a terminal diagnosis for their spouse. 

People almost treat it like it's contagious, or people ask a lot of questions to know, well, how did they get that diagnosis? What kinds of things did they eat? What did they do? Because in their minds, they wanna not be in your shoes. They wanna not have to lose their spouse or be given that type of a diagnosis. So they're trying to figure out all the pieces and parts that led to that so that they can prevent it. This can make it also really hard to connect with other people that don't have that firsthand experience. There may be questions that they ask that aren't tactful or maybe questions they wanna ask, but they're not sure how. They've never gone through this experience. It may be hard for them to understand why you're doing the things that you're doing. If you have a social circle. And in some cultures this is very prevalent, [00:11:00] where you're highly influenced by your friends or family and they expect you to act a certain way, do certain things to take certain paths, or maybe they're just highly opinionated. 

Then this can be challenging because they're critical of what you're doing or you're not doing. So you hear, a lot of times people will say, well, you need to move on. It's time to move on. Or How could you move on so quickly? Or, you should be doing this, you shouldn't be doing that. How are you laughing? 

How is it possible that you could laugh at anything when you're supposed to be grieving your husband? A lot of just misunderstanding and stigma attached to grief and loss and being a widow, and let's be honest, most of us, if not all of us, were not taught how to appropriately handle loss or grief or these types of things. 

So we have to help educate and empower the people around us because [00:12:00] we can't expect them to know, just like we didn't necessarily know what to do. It's natural for your social circle to change post laws. That doesn't make it easy. It doesn't mean that maybe that's something that you grieve too, is the circle of friends and support that you used to have that now you feel all of that has shifted and you're moving into this new life, this new dimension, this new way of being. What can you do to form a new social circle if you've seen yours deteriorate or just really doesn't feel the same? Well, the first thing is to find new sources of support. Find people who understand what you're grow going through. Maybe it's a grief support group. Maybe it's an online community, maybe it's a Facebook group. 

But they will really be able to help you with understanding to an extent some of the things that you're going through. Being able to show compassion that [00:13:00] you need in order to heal. And a lot of times, these communities are less judgmental of the things that you do or the conflicted ways that you may be feeling or thinking about things. 

And so a lot of times it's just really nice to be able to talk to someone else who understands the depths of pain and sorrow that you have as well. And even if they don't feel like they have all the answers and they have it all together and pretty much no one feels like that. It's still is nice to have someone who gets it where you don't have to explain to them why you may be thinking or feeling a certain way about things. 

The second way to, to rebuild your social circle is to pursue interests that you may have. Get involved with activities that help you connect with other like-minded people, or maybe join a class and do something new. Maybe it's a book club. Maybe it's an art [00:14:00] class. Maybe it's an exercise group. 

I joined a real estate investor's group and it can be very intimidating, especially for someone who's more reserved or more introverted to do those types of things. But if I can do it, I promise you that you can do it too, and it really helps bring just a lighter feel to life to have other people that you can connect with on maybe something new that you're learning or something that you've always wanted to get more involved in, that you just haven't. 

I know the first few months and close to a year after Nathan died, I felt like I was living a life that was very gray. Like I could not experience happiness beyond a seven out of 10, or that some of these milestones I would come across, it's just, yay. That was my level of enthusiasm and it really broke my heart because [00:15:00] I just had a hard time thinking like, is this really how the rest of my life is gonna be? So sometimes spending the time in developing new hobbies or interests or pursuing them more maybe than you have in the past can be therapeutic in healing in its own way and give you a new social group of people that you can interact with and especially if you can find someone who's a connector, that's really great because they'll be pulling you into other things. So through my real estate group, I've met all kinds of people that work with nonprofits, that work with women's groups, with children's groups, they have fundraisers, they do activities together, and you just start meeting all these different people and you're not gonna connect with everyone. But you do connect with quite a few and it gives you the opportunity to get out to be more social, to meet more people, and you never know where some of those relationships might lead. It's [00:16:00] been a really great experience. 

The third way you can expand your social circle is to volunteer. So maybe there's a cause or something that you really care about. You could go volunteer and spend time doing that. Maybe it's a church. It's a homeless shelter. It's a women's group. It's the 4H, it's the Boys and Girls Club, whatever it is. 

Volunteering just gets you out with other people, and it may take a few times, but as you start learning their faces and they're learning your face and you're getting to know each other more, it's a great opportunity to kind of expand your social circle, expand the opportunities that you have to go and connect with other people, built on a foundation of a mutually shared interest. 

The fourth way to expand your social circle is to attend events. Maybe there are community events like festivals or concerts or classes or just a variety of events that may be happening in your [00:17:00] local community. You can Google a lot of times for meetups. I think there's a meetup website on Facebook. There are events. A lot of cities or Chamber of Commerce may also have a list of events of things that are happening locally to you, and it's well worth it to attend those things, to meet some new people that are there. And again, you have a good connection of a shared interest because you're both there for the same type of event. So it's a great way to get out and meet new people.  

The fifth way of expanding your social circle is to connect with friends of friends. So you may reach out to your existing family or friends and ask them to introduce you to new people that they may know that you may enjoy connecting with. Or you may say things like, Hey, is there anyone else you know that likes to go do yoga. I would love to go, do yoga with someone that I know. I don't really wanna go by myself, but that can be a really great way is to simply ask to [00:18:00] be introduced to someone else or if they know someone that may connect well with you and share some of the same interests of things that you do. 

We have a whole episode again, dedicated to how you can make new friends and meet new people, even if you hate small talk or you're highly introverted. So again, that's episode number 24 on the podcast or the video channel. So go and check that out. We dive into a lot of different ways you can handle meeting new people and being more social. 

And I even give you some tips of things that you can talk about if you're one of those people that can never think of what to say, you're not sure what to talk about, I help walk you through all of that. 

And lastly, I would say losing your person is extremely difficult. Losing the support that you had with that person in your life. Losing the support and infrastructure of your [00:19:00] social circle is hard. You may grieve that loss. It may take you time to rebuild connections with your family and friends, or to even make connections with new people and create new relationships and bring new friends into your life. 

So give yourself grace. Have some patience, but know that it is possible to still have a strong social circle, even post loss.  

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Emily Jones: 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? [00:20:00] 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.