BW 063: Behind the Shadows: The Beautiful Tragedy of a Widow's Love
Nov 24, 2023Watch the video here or on YouTube; listen anywhere podcasts are played (Apple, Spotify, Google…)
The Transcript is below.
Content warning: sobriety, abuse, addiction, death
join us on an emotional journey as we engage in a heartfelt conversation with our guest speaker, Darcy Sober. Together, we explore the complexities of love, resilience, and the indomitable spirit of a family in the face of tragedy. Her late spouse, a devoted father of three, found himself in the grips of addiction, yet his kindness and love for his family shone through even in the darkest times.
Darcy recommends:
- do everything you can to build your child up
- Don’t suppress your emotions
- find support
Quote:
''I'm very transparent with my kids. Don't hide your grief in front of your kids. It's okay to cry in front of them, because I feel like if you hide it, then they try to hide it and suppress it, and can make it worse for them when they're older.''
''And the best piece of grief advice I've ever received was to ride each wave.'Don't try to fight it because it's like if you're in the ocean and you're trying to fight against that wave, that's carrying you out, you're going to go under. But if you ride that wave and let it take you to whatever emotions you are feeling, once you get to the end of that wave and taper off those emotions, the next cycle comes around and it might not be a chaotic one. It can be a calming one.''
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/
YouTube | @bravewidow
how to actually help a widow:
https://www.bravewidow.com/help
Transcript:
===
[00:00:00]
Hey, hey, and welcome to episode number 63 of the Brave Widow show. Today, I talk with Darcy Sober. And before we want to jump into Darcy's story, I just want to mention a free resource that we have out there that's available for you.
So we know the holidays are really knocking down our door, they're here, they're everywhere we go, everything we see is mentioning the holidays.
And especially for widows and people who are grieving, that can really be a difficult time of year and a challenge. And I created a course that you can find for free on ways to honor your loved one.
And this free video course and workbook is chock full of ideas and ways that you can not only honor your loved one, but you can keep their spirit alive with you every single day. There's over 50 ideas of things that you could do to incorporate your loved [00:01:00] one's spirit in the holidays and in your everyday life.
Now don't let that overwhelm you. Over 50 or 60 is a lot. But even if you just walk away with one or two ideas, These are things that you could use to incorporate to feel like you're able to move forward in this new journey that you're walking on without leaving your loved one behind. You can find that resource and so much more at Bravewidow.
com slash free. That's Bravewidow. com slash F R E E. Alright, let's dive in to Darcy's story.
β
Emily Jones: Welcome to The Brave Widow Podcast. I'm your host, Emily Jones. We help young widows heal their heart, find hope, and dream again for the futureβ
hey, and welcome to another episode of the brave widow show today. I have a special guest with me, Darcy [00:02:00] sober, and I'm excited for you to hear from her and, uh, to hear her story and what insights she has to share. So Darcy, welcome to the show. And thank you so much for agreeing to come on today.
Darcy Sober: Thank you for having me.
Emily Jones: Yeah. So if you don't mind, if you would just share with our audience a little bit about you and your background, then we can just jump into your story, wherever you want to start.
Darcy Sober: Absolutely. So my name is Darcy sober. I live in Tennessee, right outside of Nashville. my background,
I lived in the small town for many, many years, moved away a lot during middle school, high school and even after I graduated high school, moved around I met Devin here in this town that we live in when we were in middle school. He was. Like the athletic kid, very popular. And I was like the shy, quiet kid that didn't talk to anybody.
And, we met on the [00:03:00] school bus in this. Weird, unique way. Um, there was this little kid who had a bloody nose and I was leaning over to give him some tissue and Devin was in band and played the drums and took that opportune time to look. Play the drums on me and I'm just not amused. I was like, what is wrong with you?
But it got my attention. And we slowly became friends. We would do crossword or word search puzzles every morning on the school bus. He would save me a seat and we would do our little word searches. And like he always made me feel super special from the very beginning. And then probably about six months after we met, I moved away, but we kept in touch.
We kept in contact over the years. And when I'd come back to visit, we'd go on little dates and things. And life brought us to like different avenues in life. I moved back down here after I [00:04:00] graduated high school. And we started dating more permanently than we had when I would travel and come back.
And then when I was 21 we got pregnant with our first child. She is now almost 16. She's planning her sweet 16th birthday party. and we had our middle child a few years after that, she is 12. And then. Life actually we're kind of the story of if you love something set it free and if it comes back it's meant to be we actually got married and then we actually got divorced and I actually went on and married someone else and then that marriage didn't last.
And got divorced rented a home from his mom actually. And then Devin and I got back together after being divorced for five years. And then we had our youngest baby. She is three. She [00:05:00] was a very surprise, a big surprise. I remember coming to him crying because at the time our middle child was, , almost nine.
And I'm like, no, I don't want to start all over. And he just started laughing at me. He was painting. Um, we'd built a playhouse for our kids and he was outside painting and he just stopped what he was doing and started laughing at me. I was like, it's not funny. And it didn't take very long. And he was excited.
He was like the first one, super excited. Me and my daughters, we were. But it didn't take long for us to all be like, super excited and on board for this sweet little baby who through everything now has been like the absolute joy in our life. And I think. If we didn't have her, we would be in a really dark spot, but he's just this
Lights up our life. Devin passed in April of 2022. He had [00:06:00] struggled throughout teenage years into a early adulthood with addiction. And he'd go to many rehabs and he would have longer stints of sobriety And when he passed, he had been in sobriety and recovery for about six months.
He would go like six to eight months and then have a relapse and then longer. His longest stint of recovery was several years. In between the time that we'd gotten divorced and when we had gotten back together and had Mallory and then kind of when COVID shut everything down and work was slow and really unsure and I was pregnant I had a high risk pregnancy I think it just got too much and that's when his, like, first relapse occurred.
After that long stint of several years of sobriety. And then it just kind of [00:07:00] went several months and then sobriety for a while and then several months again and sobriety for a while. So it's definitely been something and when Devin was in sobriety, he was like the absolute. Light of everyone. Like he was like the kid that would just start dancing at birthday parties. He didn't want anything to do with the adults. He would go get the kids, play games, act like the biggest kid there. Um, Jumping off diving boards and kids swimming, like in my friend's swimming pool playing gaga ball with the kids, um, dance party galore.
Him and my middle child would do all the TikTok dances. And he would set the phone up to record himself to do these TikTok dances so he could see what he looked like before he'd post them, you know? And so I have like 20 videos of the same TikTok dance because, oh no, no, I messed up, I gotta do it again.
But he's just full of life. And. Even in [00:08:00] the times where he had relapsed, like he was always involved in everything that we did. He was never the dad that worked 14 hours a day and missed games. Like he always showed up at the games and showed up for everything. Daddy daughter dances, daddy daughter dates like an all around lovable guy.
Emily Jones: It definitely sounds like he was such just a big personality, a big part of your life, and you know, you, you probably had some ups and downs there, obviously, but, um, just seemed like he was a very lovable, likable kind of a person and. I also love how you talked about, um, like with your youngest that at first you were like, Oh no, I don't want to start over.
I don't want to have a baby, but she's really brought such joy to your life because I think a lot of widows, whether they lose their spouse and they're still pregnant or, um, they're, You know, [00:09:00] dealing with a young baby, a lot of times they dread like, Oh, what is this going to be like? I don't want to do this on my own, but then it's good for them to hear that hope and encouragement from you of, you know, this is one of the best things that probably could have happened to you was, was having her.
Darcy Sober: Yes.
Emily Jones: So as Devin was, you know, struggling with sobriety and then relapsing, was that something that you were aware of? Was it something you had to uncover because he kept it from you? Was it something you tried to help him with? What did that look like?
Darcy Sober: Yeah. So early on, um, when we'd gotten pregnant with my oldest, um, that's when I noticed like his occasional drug use was a little bit more than occasional.
And we were In our very early 20s and so like addiction then isn't what addiction is now like The stigma of it, you know, like it was you kept it quiet. You didn't talk about it And I didn't really fully understand what it was. Like [00:10:00] I grew up. And how like my my mom actually struggled with um addiction to Different types of pills and things and she'd actually overdosed years later down the road Um, but so I knew a little bit about the struggles of that but not really understanding it so when we had gotten married, , very shortly after our marriage, like when we, our wedding I learned the extent of his drug use and how out of control that it was.
And so Devin went to rehab and he, every rehab that Devin's ever been to, people from those rehabs will reach out to me like the other Patients would reach out to me and be like, he was the light. Like he uplifted us so much and he talked about you and the girls and he was just so supportive and like the biggest cheerleader for everyone there.
And still to this day, like the last rehab [00:11:00] that he went to, I have several of the people that he was in there with, like added me on Facebook and. Still to this day will tell me about how Devon changed their lives because he listened to their story and was like, oh, you've got this and a lot of them are still in recovery and they just, I don't know, like there's, there's one woman in particular and I hope that she sees this or hears this but she had reached out to me, She had lost her person due to addiction and she, I think she was pregnant at the time that that person had passed away or like just had given birth, like the baby was brand new.
But she had reached out to me and she just told me like. The things that Devin said to her and how supportive he was of her story. And now she has someone new in her life and she posts things on Facebook all the time. And [00:12:00] knowing that she and others who've added me on Facebook were like, That's the one part of Devin that I never got to see because I wasn't in rehab with him.
And so like she shared that with me and to see Devin through other people's eyes as something other than a person who struggled with addiction is amazing to me. And I don't know where I was going with that, but, um, when he like would come back home, um, very big into therapy, I'm You know, Hey therapy, you know, like he wouldn't do the traditional, like in a meetings and stuff like that.
He like, he struggled with those. Um, he struggled with being around other people who were struggling, who weren't in like the rehab environment. Um, it was harder for him when it's like everyday life. And now you are talking to people who struggle versus like, Oh, we're in this rehab, we're going to do this.
We're going to get it, um, I remember the second to last time that we picked him up from rehab, me and my girls, we all dressed up [00:13:00] as Batman. I had like a full Batman and the little baby had a little Batgirl outfit with a tutu, and I had.. But I made him be Robin. So I got him a Robin and like, we, he comes out of the recap and we're all just standing there and like, everyone's clapping and cheering and they come over and they're like, Oh, you know, Devon was awesome and talk about you guys.
I'm like, this is great. And so he put on his Robin and. People took pictures and stuff. And, um, I think that was like one of the greatest things. Like, I am pretty sure I picked out like the female Robin on purpose. Well, he was a really good sport about it. Yes, there's he have pictures of him where he I was a princess and I made him be a frog for Halloween Like hopped around everywhere um, but when he [00:14:00] had relapsed Back around the time of covid.
I had kind of found that one out Um uncovering some things and talking to people. I actually worked in a rehab at the time. Um, and like I had suspicions and he Was not ready to admit it. But then he, I believe something happened at work that they told him pretty much you go to rehab or you're done.
Um, so he went to the rehab that I worked at. And. He did great. Came home like he struggled a, a lot, like when he very first came home. Um, I think it was just harder now because he'd already made those connections with those people who were doing drugs and bringing it to women stuff. And like he, from 2019 to, I feel like the end of 2020, It [00:15:00] was a week of, he could be somewhere for like a week and then the withdrawals would be too much. Um, and I remember like, there was one time where he had gone to, a doctor or something and he had to take a drug screen for the doctor. And it was some sort of like addiction clinic type thing. And when they done the drug screen, um, he was really surprised because.
The stuff that he was buying never showed up. So like whoever was supplying him was giving him all different kinds of things, except for that, or that drug of choice. And like that really caught his, uh, like he, he was scared of that. And he, that's when he kind of went like headstrong into, I'm going to stop this.
I'm going to do whatever I can. And he would go to different doctors and therapy. He went to like a mental health [00:16:00] professional. And then just like, if there was a bad day, it was, that was his turn to, to get through that bad day. One thing about Devin that I didn't mention in the beginning, um, he had a sister who had also overdosed and died in 2019, , And when they were younger, like they used together.
So he had a lot of guilt about his sister's death. Like he felt responsible for that. He felt responsible for a lot of the decisions that she made as an adult. And,, he also had another sister who passed away when they were children. So he'd lost two sisters at this point and he had a, he has a brother who was still alive And so, his, after his sister had passed away, his brother moved back down to Tennessee from Pennsylvania and, , trying to like build a bond, you know, and be the uncle to our children and be around his parents and things and.
Um, Devin looked up to him so much. Like he, when we were younger and [00:17:00] dating and he always talked about his brother, like his brother was a Marines and he was just someone that you looked up to. He is an amazing human. And so being down here, I know it was, it was hard for him watching his brother go through all the things and then having lost a sister for that.
And knowing that this could be the outcome again. And his brother who's alive is the oldest of all of the siblings who have passed away. So there's just something about that that doesn't sit right either, you know, but, um, like everybody myself, his brother, his parents, friends, co workers. All tried so hard to get Devin the help that he needed.
And sometimes he would take it and sometimes he wouldn't. And, but he was, yeah.
Emily Jones: Well, that's just one of the things I, I've had to learn is that, you know, you can't want the help more for the person than they want and you can't. Save someone [00:18:00] from themselves, which, you know, I'm sure was something that you you had to learn to just going through that.
And that was probably very difficult.
Darcy Sober: Yes. Yes. And one of the things like if you came to Devin and was like, Hey, I think you need to, he would listen to you. He'd hear you out. He wouldn't catch you off. He'd just wait till you were done and be like, yeah, okay. I'll think about it, you know, but. Like, he was always good at hearing you out, even if he didn't want to hear it.
Yeah.
Emily Jones: Yeah. Which I'm sure is good, but also equally frustrating because he's open. He listens and maybe even he agrees. He just didn't, wasn't able to follow through or didn't follow through. So what, what ended up happening in April of 22?
Darcy Sober: So he, um, one of the individuals that he met. In the rehab, like they came back and he, the rehab that Devin went to was like four hours away from here and he just [00:19:00] happened to like meet someone who lived here or close to us, who didn't take his sobriety
for what it needed to be and Devin and him started working together and hanging out and, that started his, relapse, and this was, back in august of 21 when Devon and him had
Started hanging out and everything. And he when he realized that it was becoming a problem, he stopped hanging out with that guy. But the individual had a roommate who, dealt drugs or, or whatever, and
it was such a
desirable atmosphere, I guess, because like Devin got to see like the pretty much like money and fast cars. Um, and he would always, he was honest about it. Um, that was one thing that I always [00:20:00] demanded out of Devin was honesty. And respect, even through his struggles, if he did tell a lie, he would come clean after, cause I'm like, I'm, I'm here, like, no matter what, we'll work through anything, but, um, You know, I demand honesty, and respect.
And so in fast forward Devin went back to the same rehab in, what to say, November of 21. Um, so he went back to that rehab and I believe that's where he met, the woman that I had talked about earlier, um, who had lost her person. And I'm pretty sure like she lost her person right into rehab very shortly after, um, because she.
And to my understanding, like she hadn't used before she lost her person. And maybe she, I don't remember. , but I remember like, and Devin told me about, like just the different people that he met there. And he would, he came home with like a little book where they like write their phone numbers and stuff for support.
I don't know if you're supposed to do that, [00:21:00] but they did anyway And, like, the notes and stuff, and, um, I never looked in it until after Devin died, and I felt kind of weird about it, you know, but I'm like, I wanted to reach out to the people, and let them know that he had passed away, the ones who had left, like, encouraging things,
and she had actually sought me out and told me about this, like, I'm pretty sure she sent me like, I don't know, six or seven paragraphs about just how like Devon helped her to get out of this dark spot, um, where she had lost her person and hearing the things that Devon had told her and then her to tell me was almost like a third party to, wow, I didn't expect that, um, like just the, that it's going to be okay.
And that she's raising this beautiful child and now I'm raising these three beautiful children and always
Making sure they know who he is, especially the little one. Um, but [00:22:00] I keep going off track
Emily Jones: You're fine. So, so did you feel in that moment as she was telling you what he had said to her, it was kind of passing that message on to you as well?
Darcy Sober: Kind of, like, I'm not, like, I'm a, I'm a Christian by faith, so I don't necessarily believe in like the whole, you know, like, group messages between people and stuff like that.
But it almost felt like, well, I know I needed to hear those words and to know that those words had come out of Devin's mouth, even if they weren't directly to me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and backtracking just a moment, um, one of the rehabs that Devin and I had gone to, they had like a group packet, and he sent it to me, and it was about grief, and because I was grieving the loss of my mom from 2014 when she passed away and I can't remember word for word what it said, but it was like, I, he sent it to me from rehab, and it was like, I I thought you would like this, I wish I was there with you, To [00:23:00] hold you and I'm like, I found that again after he passed away, I was going through stuff and I found it and like, I needed that in that moment as much as I needed those messages from her and Um, but in, uh, April when he had passed away, um, due to some things that went on, like he was living at his parents house while he was trying to get himself straight and sober.
Um, so that our kids weren't exposed to, you know, all the things and, um, there were some things that occurred in October that forced him to go live with his parents with a relapse and things. and my oldest daughter. She was actually in the hospital. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in February of 2022.
So that year was train wreck. And we were actually, she was in the hospital. Um, and he and I had video chatted while we were in the, while I was at the hospital with her,[00:24:00] and we're talking and, I was like, okay, I'm gonna get off and, and video chat with our, our middle child. He was staying at a friend's house.
And talk to her and then Devon and I were texting back and forth and the messages had stopped and it was late. It was like a little after midnight. So my daughter and I are in her hospital.
Darcy Sober: So, we were we had just gotten up to her room for the night, and she was in there for some MS related things. And so, like, we were texting a little after midnight and the text had stopped. And then the next morning they were like, Hey, good news.
You get to go home. And I was like, Oh, awesome. Um, so I was going to take her home and then run by the grandparents house to let them know, which was typically what we would do when she would be released from the hospital. Cause during, from February until April, he'd had several hospitals days, um, from just different MS symptoms and [00:25:00] navigating what we could treat and what we couldn't.
But I mean. I had to go to work that day, um, and I work at a domestic violence shelter. I had a big report that was due and I was like, Hey, I'm going to go run to work and just grab my computer and then I'll take you home. And so we were doing that. Um, and my phone rings and it was his dad and he's screaming in the phone.
And he's like, you know, and, and he said those words and I was like, what do you mean? What do you mean? Devon's dead. Like do CPR, do something. And he was like, maybe it's, it's too late. Like it's not like it just happened and we found him. That happened before he got into bed at night. So I think that's why the texting had stopped.
And I just thought he went to bed because I knew he was getting ready for bed. And well, at that point. We didn't realize [00:26:00] that, like, the timeline, we had just, it was too late, um, and I was like, well, I'm coming over there, he's like, no, no, you're not, you do not come here, you do not go in that room, you do not see this, you do not, and I fought with him, he's like, no, I'm telling you now, no, and I was mad, I was like, can you tell me, But I called both of my friends who had my daughters, and one of them, she had just picked up my middle child from school.
And I was like, hey, I need you to pull over right now. Because I knew she was on Bluetooth. And I was like, I need you to pull over. Trying so hard to be like, hey, you know, hey, Cherry, I'm happy. So she gets out of the car, takes the phone off Bluetooth, and I tell her. And she's like, okay, okay. So she takes my daughter to her house.
How she holds her composure, I'll never know. Because this woman, It was one that never saw Devin for the failure that Devin thought he was. She walked in our girl's Christmas parade with him. [00:27:00] Um, like, she, through all of the times that I had known her, she was never one to ever say anything about, you should leave.
A lot of my other friends were like, you should leave, like, this is too much, this is danger, you know, all these things. But he's like, I understand why you don't like, he knew Devon in recovery. He knew Devon in addiction and there were both of those. He had like the biggest heart, funny, goofy guy, like everybody loved him.
And so like he held her composure. I tell my friend who has my baby who was, well, like 18 months at the time, I would say like, she was a little over her birthday's in August and this was April. So, yeah, and. I went to, and unfortunately, uh, my fifth, my 15 year old who was in the front seat with me heard it over the phone.
So that's how she, you know, so I didn't, you know, but I'm kind of thankful it happened that way because I don't think I could have looked at her and said that while I'm driving [00:28:00] down the road because that's but so we go to my middle where my middle child is and we pull her in the bedroom and we tell her while I'm telling her, my friend is telling her kids.
Who loved him immensely as well. Like, kids everywhere loved Devin. Like, some of them knew his struggles and some didn't. But, like, whether Devin was sober or Devin was in his addiction, like, he was, like, the, the guy that the kids all wanted to hang out with. Like, Uh, one of my friends, their kids nicknamed him Divine Devon Tortilla for whatever reason.
And he loved it. Like, he absolutely loved it. and they actually did his boards for the funeral. I let all the kids that wanted to do it do them. And they wrote that, like, stickers. But I did make them put his actual name on there, but they wanted, like, they were like, that's not his name. His name is Divine Devon Tortilla.
[00:29:00] But anyway, and like they still refer to him as that and it's, I love it, but anyway, so backtracking back to April. So the conversations are had and then my friend who had my little one brings her to where I'm at. I'm like, I don't know what to say to her, you know, like she doesn't understand any of this.
And like people from. Like friends and stuff and people from the church that we had previously attended all showed up at my friend's house and it was overwhelming like I just wanted to make everyone go away, but I was thankful that they were there. Um, and I was sitting in a chair with my friend and the chair broke and so I'm now on the ground and I'm crying and laughing.
Everyone comes running in there. And, like, my very dear best friend lays on the ground with me because I'm like, I'm not getting up in front of all these people trying to get up off the ground out of a broken chair to begin with, like, there's too many [00:30:00] eyeballs to witness this. Right. I'm just laughing because I'm like, if, if I believed in that.
That could have been, Devin totally would have pulled the chair out from underneath me because I was crying, like not crying, but yeah, so that was like the story of that night. Um, and then, we weren't allowed to tell people right away that he had passed away. The officers were like, we need you to wait.
I know that's awful to ask, but we need you to wait. We need to do, um, some legwork and see what we can, do. So when they gave me the go ahead, like, um, it was like two days before the date that we'd picked for a service. So, but I'm like, that's okay because. I mean, you know, when people die, your services, you know, usually like right there, um, and so it happened that his service was on a good Friday.
It was on Good Friday that year. And so people already had the day off work. So I was like, just do it out of convenience, you [00:31:00] know? Um, and myself and his nephew, nephew who belonged to sister who passed away, stood up along with our pastor and did his eulogy and I remember just telling the stories about Devin from when we met to, you know, Up until he passed away like two weeks before he died.
He went into buckle for the first time the store buckle I'm like, how have you never been in that store? Um and Cheesecake factory he had never been there either. So like he best time, you know before he passed away um, but my uh nephew and I we went to go to the mall to pick out clothes for him to wear because i'm like i'm not getting Rid of any of his clothes.
I will buy him a whole
It's not happening. So we went and, one of our mutual, one of our friends that I've known since I was in middle school also sent me money for funeral clothes to buy clothes for me and the girls and whatever. Um, and so I did that [00:32:00] and we ended up all wearing matching shirts and I put Devin in the same shirt.
Like we had originally bought it for Devin and then we all wore one. And then I went a little crazy and bought all of them off the rack cause I didn't want anyone else wearing them. I went to every buckle that was within like 40 miles of me. And I still have like, and I've given them away to friends.
Like when we go do something in honor of Devon, like everyone's wearing one because I have them in all sizes, every ridiculous size that they made them in. And I still have like a bag in my closet of these shirts that I don't, but grief makes you do really. Brazy things. Yes, it does. Yeah. So, we, we had his service.
Um, he's buried in the cemetery that he wanted to be buried in, which is, and I, like, where our house is, and it's in between the house he grew up in and his father's house. And my house that we live in is like at the point. So, [00:33:00] um, no matter which way you go, you pass by it. And, um, the cemetery. If I would have thought about it and done this there so you could see like his headstone is the most decorated headstone in the whole cemetery and there's like eight led lights so at night time you can see that sucker from like Miles away.
It's so bright, but that's who Devin was when he was live. Like, he was a big ball of energy, a big ball of light, and look at me! Look at me! But, but don't look, but look, you know? So it's only fitting that his penstone is the same way. You can't help but look because it's very, uh...
Emily Jones: Yeah, that's amazing. I love it.
I love that it reflects his personality and who he was, you know, while he was here. Um, so I'm curious, what would you say to other young widows or widows with young children that, you know, they're struggling, uh, [00:34:00] dealing with their, their spouse who passed away due to addiction, or that was a big part of their, their journey together.
What words of encouragement or, or tips would you give
Darcy Sober: to those people? I would say, if it's possible, don't hide it. Don't hide. The way that your person lived, um, takes the shame out of it. Um, I know there's a lot of shame and embarrassment sometimes like, and I know for kids, and I can say this as a kid of a parent who, has overdosed, do everything you can to build your child up because I know I struggle with it.
And I know my oldest ones do too, feeling like they weren't enough of a reason for sobriety. And reminding them that their parents sobriety had nothing to do with them. It was an internal struggle. I'm 37 years old and I still have to tell myself [00:35:00] that. And my friends have to remind me of that when I start feeling like that.
It's human nature to feel like you weren't enough. And why, why wasn't I enough? But I would say like for the surviving spouse. When your child is waking up at 2 a. m. crying because they want their dad or their mom if their mom is when he passed away Just hold them and me too, baby. Me too. I struggle with that with my three year old She is fully aware now that dad isn't coming back and she cries about it And the best piece of grief advice I've ever received was to ride each wave.
Don't try to fight it because it's like if you're in the ocean and you're trying to fight against that wave, that's carrying you out, you're going to go under. But if you ride that wave and let it take you to whatever emotions you are feeling, once you get to the end of that wave and taper off those emotions, the next cycle comes around and it might not [00:36:00] be a chaotic one.
It can be a calming one.
Emily Jones: Oh, I love that right. Each way. Cause you're so right. You know, just feeling those emotions, processing those feelings is so much better than trying to suppress and fight and struggle and cause it, it will come back and it'll become more of a tsunami than, Hey, a normal ocean wave.
So that's, I love that.
Darcy Sober: And another thing I just thought of this, I'm very transparent with my kids. Don't hide your grief in front of your kids. It's okay to cry in front of them, because I feel like if you hide it, then they try to hide it and suppress it, and can make it worse for them when they're older.
So, it's okay to have cry sessions together. Cry, you know, they know if I come out and sit in my car that mommy just needs a minute, and I come in and I'm fine, um, and they're very respectful of that, but I don't try to like, go out to my car and hide,
Emily Jones: so. It makes complete sense and, um, I was talking with someone [00:37:00] yesterday and we were talking about how sometimes it feels like there's this fine balance of being able to grieve with your kids and being open about that, but not letting them feel like you're just living in despair and, you know, Oh no, mom's gone off the deep end now.
So, um, I love that you mentioned there may be times that you need to go to your car or to your room or your closet or wherever, and just really, you know, let things out. But. That doesn't mean that you need to just pretend like everything's fine with your kids either. You know, you, you want to help, help them know that it's perfectly healthy to have those emotions and, and to grieve that way.
All right. Well, thank you so much, Darcy, for coming on the show and being willing to share your story and, um, some of the insights that you have for other widows out there. I really appreciate it.
Darcy Sober: Thank you for having me.
Welcome.
β
Emily Jones: Hey guys. Thank you so much for [00:38:00] listening to the Brave Widow Podcast. I would love to help you take your next step, whether that's healing your heart, finding 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. [00:39:00]
