BW 121: Life Beyond Loss: Ali's Story of Love, Resilience, and Rediscovering Joy as a Widow
Oct 29, 2024[TRANSCRIPT BELOW]
In Episode 121 of The Brave Widow Show, Emily sits down with Ali, a clinical social worker and widow, as she opens up about her deeply personal journey through sudden loss, grief, and ultimately, resilience. Ali shares her love story with her late husband, Jordan—an exceptional engineer and beloved partner—and the life-altering moment of his unexpected death.
Together, Emily and Ali explore what it means to navigate widowhood and solo parenthood while facing the complex emotions of guilt, empathy, and identity shifts that accompany profound loss.
Ali reveals the invaluable role her mother-in-law played in her support system and how finding connection helped her heal. She also discusses her experiences with travel as a pathway to renewal, offering relatable and compassionate insights for those facing similar grief journeys.
Ali’s story is a testament to the power of love, community, and rediscovery. Join us as she shares heartfelt advice for those seeking hope, healing, and purpose. This episode also highlights the Brave Widow Community—a space for widows to rebuild, find peace, and begin again.
00:15 Upcoming Grief to Growth Challenge
00:31 Day 1: Debunking Grief Myths
00:51 Day 2: Overcoming Guilt and Grief
01:16 Day 3: Letting Go and Exploring New Connections
01:33 Invitation to Join the Challenge
02:51 Ali's Story Begins
04:40 Meeting and Life with Jordan
08:03 Jordan's Legacy and Sudden Collapse
14:28 Hospital Ordeal and Genetic Heart Condition
18:01 A Family's Heartbreak
18:53 The Final Moments
19:45 Facing Reality
20:22 Organ Donation Process
21:40 Saying Goodbye
22:29 Life After Loss
23:06 Rediscovering Identity
23:28 Therapist's Perspective
25:11 Navigating Grief and Empathy
30:27 Raising Kids Alone
32:02 Support and Guilt
33:57 Finding Solace in Travel
37:57 Words of Encouragement
39:26 Brave Widow Community
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Hey hey, I’m Emily Tanner. I was widowed at age 37, one month shy of our 20 year wedding anniversary. Nathan and I have four beautiful children together, and my world was turned completely upside down when I lost him.
Now, I love my life again! I’m able to experience joy, achieve goals and dreams I thought I’d lost, and rediscover this next version of me.
I did the work.
I invested in coaching for myself.
I learned what I needed to do to move forward and took the steps.
I implemented the tools and strategies that I use for my clients in my coaching program.
This is for you, if:
- You want a faith-based approach to coaching
- You want to move forward after loss, and aren’t sure how
- You want to enjoy life without feeling weighed down by guilt, sadness, or regret
- You want a guide to help navigate this journey to the next version of you
- You want to rediscover who you are
- Join the Brave Widow Community: https://www.bravewidow.com/join
- Schedule a consult with Emily: https://calendly.com/bravewidow/widow-consult-call?month=2024-08
TRANSCRIPT:
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[00:00:00] Emily: Welcome to episode number 121 of the brave widow show today. I talk with Ali and she shares her incredible story along with. insights and words of encouragement for other widows that are out there.
Upcoming Grief to Growth Challenge
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[00:00:15] Emily: And before we dive into her story, I would like to invite you to join me on a free three day challenge.
Now, this is a grief to growth challenge, and I am only bringing you the good stuff. So let me tell you what we're going to cover in this challenge.
Day 1: Debunking Grief Myths
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[00:00:31] Emily: First day, we're going to talk about debunking grief myths, where you're going to learn why waiting for time to heal your wounds doesn't work, how being strong can actually block your emotional recovery, and the truth about staying busy to avoid pain.
Day 2: Overcoming Guilt and Grief
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[00:00:51] Emily: Day two, we're going to talk about overcoming guilt and grief. We're going to talk about feeling guilty for moving forward, the sneaky ways that grief, guilt, excuse me, shows up in grief. How to distinguish between healthy reflection and destructive guilt and why guilt is often something that we wish was just better, more or different.
Day 3: Letting Go and Exploring New Connections
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[00:01:16] Emily: And day number three, we're going to talk about letting go of guilt and exploring new connections. Yes, including dating. We'll talk about how to release the guilt that's holding you back from developing new relationships, why forming these new connections.
Invitation to Join the Challenge
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[00:01:33] Emily: Doesn't mean you're forgetting the past and how to open yourself up to love companionship and joy again I would love for you to join me for these three days.
It's absolutely free to sign up. You can go to bravewidow. com Slash challenge now if you're listening to the podcast live meaning that you're listening to it fairly real time The next challenge is going to be November 5th through the 7th. So every day, November 5th through 7th, there will be an hour where I'm going live on Zoom, on Facebook, on Instagram, and I am going to address all of these things.
We are going to be participating in a Facebook group together so you can talk with other people that are participating in this challenge. I want you to come. I want you to bring a friend. I want you to just really Enjoy learning,
enjoy this challenge, and to be able to break away from the weight of guilt and regret and start reclaiming your life. We only have a few months left for the rest of this year, and I want you to be able to start off the new year free from this weight of guilt. So to sign up for the challenge, go to bravewidow.
com slash challenge.
Ali's Story Begins
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[00:02:51] Emily: All right, let's dive in to Ali's story
Ali, welcome. And thank you for agreeing to share your story today.
[00:02:58] Ali: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on. This is a fun and sad little corner of the world that so many of us share.
And it's so nice to share this island with other widows. And it's so nice to hear other stories. It's an island that you don't want to be on, but you're so grateful that other people are on it with you. So thank you for letting me part of, letting me be part of that.
[00:03:22] Emily: Yes, absolutely. And I. It's funny that you talk about it being an island.
I haven't heard that I've heard of being a club or other things, but I think that's such a great way of looking at it because that's very much how it feels. And it is amazing. Some of the people that I've met. Their resilience, their generosity, their desire to give back to help encourage and inspire other people like it's like this whole group of people.
I didn't even know existed really in the widow community. Yeah I know our audience would love to learn more about you and your story. So if you don't mind to just introduce yourself and then we can dive into your story wherever you want to start.
[00:04:04] Ali: Sure. So my name is Ali. I am 32 years old and I am a clinical social worker in San Antonio, Texas.
So I work both for a medical group, working with adults with dementia, and then I'm also a therapist. Which has been an interesting experience because I was practicing as a therapist when my husband passed away. So I feel like I maybe had a few tools already in my back pocket to properly address my grief.
But I'll back up.
Meeting and Life with Jordan
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[00:04:40] Ali: My husband and I met out in Indiana. We were both going to school out in Terre Haute, and we were going to two different schools. He was at Rose Hulman Institute of Technology studying mechanical engineering. And I was studying social work at Indiana State. And we met through some mutual friends.
And later got married and moved to Texas because that's where he got a job as an engineer. And he was incredibly smart. He got his PhD shortly after in mechanical engineering. And I just heard from countless people while he was alive and after he had passed away that he truly was the smartest person.
That they had ever met. He was incredible engineer being able to have the intelligence to design so many different machines and have answers to so many problems that people had been seeking out for years and not only being able to find answers and, Design new machines and make groundbreaking solutions to climate change.
And he was not only able to do that, but he was also a very hard worker with his hands. And he had grown up that way of helping his parents all the time and construction and the garden and cleaning UPS trucks. One summer, he just, he was very much a hard worker. And I had been told by one of the lab technicians out of the company he worked for that.
He had been really appreciated as an engineer because he was. One to design and research in his office on the computer, but then follow that design through the lab and work alongside the technicians to, to help them build it. And it's a rare thing in engineering, I think. And I think
[00:06:29] Emily: It's lovely that you have such a great appreciation for someone who's so technically minded and process oriented and you being such, it seems like a people and heart oriented person.
And sometimes
there could
be challenges, I would guess, and that sort of relationship, but it's awesome that you have such an admiration for, him and his, Talent.
[00:06:54] Ali: Oh my goodness. Yes. We were polar opposites in that way. He was the most analytical, logical, mathematically minded person. I struggled to do basic addition without using my fingers.
But I do consider myself pretty emotionally aware and thinking based on gut. And I'm definitely letting my heart and my emotions guide me, whereas he was one to look at numbers and make an Excel spreadsheet for literally everything and look at the data.
And Yes, he I don't think I had enough appreciation for how smart he was and the type of engineer that he was until after he had passed away. I just thought all engineers were smart. I can't understand the language at all when they speak. But it wasn't until after that he had passed away that I.
So many of his coworkers and some of the other companies that he had been working on for projects of just how much they respected him as an engineer and that and just how smart he was in being able To solve so many problems that, that they've been searching out for years.
Jordan's Legacy and Sudden Collapse
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[00:08:03] Ali: I, there was a weird thing that had happened a couple of months after he had passed away. I had to, I had, I shut off his phone just turned it off. And till I, needed certain things for that, that two step verification to log into some accounts. I'd have to, have them text his phone.
So I'd power up his phone again. And there was a voicemail on there. It was his name escapes me, but he, someone had left a voice small and said, Hey, Jordan haven't talked to you in a couple of months. Just was seeing if you had an update on whatever project they were working on. And I had realized that he hadn't been notified of Jordan's death and Jordan was still mid project with this company.
So that was a hard one to really have to call someone completely cold. Call them. He had answered the phone and said, Hey, Jordan, how's it going? And it was heartbreaking to talk to this complete stranger and say, I don't know what your relationship was with him. And I'm so sorry to tell you that a couple of months ago, he passed away.
And this man immediately was. Just so sweet to me. And he said, can I tell you a little bit about what your husband was working on for us? I want you to know that this was he said, this was Nobel, this is Nobel prize stuff, level stuff. Creating water for third world countries and creating the proper machines and I just didn't even know. He just, my husband was so humble about it. He was so humble. About what he was working on and just the type of work he was doing and he would just play it off, but it was nothing.
So it was great to just story after story to hear people and their experience with him. So it's a little bit about him. It's not enough. I could talk forever about the impact he had made and his legacy is still living on through the patents that he had created and the projects that were his babies that are still in effect right now.
And that's something I'm truly grateful for that he really has a legacy that he left behind. We were married and moved to San Antonio and
Just before our 10 year wedding anniversary just a few months before, he was playing basketball at work. He played pickup basketball most days. Let me share a little bit about Jordan, just who he was as a person. He was the healthiest person you would ever meet. He was an active Mormon, and so he didn't drink, didn't smoke, never put anything in his body.
No tattoos. Blonde hair, blue eyed boy, he played collegiate sports. He played basketball and football and won a lot of awards in football. It's the best athlete everyone knew he, he could pick up a sport for the very first time and be better than most other people. Just, he was so athletic. And he looked at, he was tall and lean and anyway, he did physical activity every day, biking, basketball, running, whatever.
And so he played pick up basketball a lot at his work in their rec center. And I was working out at the gym at the time and at that same gym. And I passed him in the parking lot and exchanged a few words with him and I went on my way and went home and he walked in to go play basketball.
I had gotten home a few minutes later and I had received a call. I was on the phone with another one of my friends and I'd gotten a call and I ignored it because I didn't recognize the number. And then it called again. And so I told my friend, I said, this might be the kid's school or someone's trying to reach me.
Let me call you back. And it was the girl at the gym, the girl who worked the desk. And she said, Hey, Jordan's collapsed on the basketball court. I'm and she's I don't know what's going on and I said, okay, I said, what do you need? What do I need to the hospital? And she said, I don't know. They're doing CPR.
I think they're going to take into the hospital, the ambulances here. And I said, okay. And I just, from that moment, I don't remember too much. I remember leaving the house. I don't remember the drive to the hospital. I remember calling my dad and having a breakdown, but I don't remember what I said.
I honestly do not remember the drive to the hospital. I'm honestly impressed that I made it. I got to the hospital and walked into the ER and was asking for his name and eventually tracked him down and I remember I was crying in the waiting room because I just didn't know I had no idea what was going on.
And then I think one of the social workers or the chaplain came out and said, Hey, I'm going to pull you into this room. And I saw the room and it was a family meeting room. And I said, no, I'm no, I'm not going in there. I've seen enough gray's anatomy to know that's the room that I don't want to go into.
And she said, no, she said, just come in with me. So she sat in there with me and the ER doctor came out and Handed me Jordan's basketball shoes and he said, looks like he suffered some sort of heart attack. We're taking him in, we're taking him in now. He's probably going to need surgery. We don't know he's alive, but he's unconscious.
He said that he was down on the ground. The gym staff performed CPR for 40 minutes until the ambulance arrived. When the ambulance arrived, they did numerous rounds of the shock paddles. So he said if he comes through, we don't know what type of brain damage has occurred from him being down for so long.
Called Jordan's mom right away and I told her to get out here cause I just didn't know what it was going to look like. Either he was going to die or either he was going to pull through and it was going to be a very long recovery road, but either way she needed to be out here. My parents were living in Georgia at the time.
That's the other thing is that we moved out here to San Antonio. We didn't have any family out here. So for the last 10 years, it's just been us. We have a five year old and a three year old that day in the hospital. And so I called friends. We had a lovely community of friends and co workers.
So my kids were taken care of. People all jumped in to pick up my kids and come meet me at the hospital. So I didn't sit alone until family could fly in. Really had a community rally around us from that moment. Beautiful. Lot of it is a blur. I really wish I had journaled soon after he had passed away because the next few days are such a blur to me.
Hospital Ordeal and Genetic Heart Condition
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[00:14:28] Ali: But that was on a Thursday when he had collapsed. They were running tests, opening his heart, trying to figure out what was going on. Ultimately, we found out that he had a genetic condition where his heart hadn't developed quite the way it should. But you wouldn't have known that because he never showed any symptoms of it, never had chest pain.
He was very athletic and it never became evident that there was anything wrong with his heart until one day it just stopped. He had no reason to go into the doctor and get heart scans or anything like that. Cause you just don't do that unless there's a reason to, and for active and healthy as he was, he just ate so healthy.
His cholesterol levels and sodium, everything was just always perfect. Every time he went in for just a regular checkup, or we had to do regular blood work for our insurance, to get discounts on our premiums, everything always came back so good. So we never had a reason to think anything different.
But he, yeah, he had a genetic heart defect and he had suffered hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. HCM is what they called it. And they were going to do their best to fix his heart. And then we also just had to wait for his brain swelling to come down.
And remember the doctor so well. The main doctor, I called him Dr. Mustache cause he had the most beautiful full mustache. Dr. Mustache stayed with me. Just stayed by my side so much of this time in the hospital. So Thursday night, Jordan's best friend from Houston drove in and his wife.
And they were with me that evening, Thursday night. The doctor told me to go home and sleep because he said this is, he's stable from here on out. We don't know, but he's stable tonight. Go home and sleep. Cause this might be the last night you sleep for a while. Take advantage. He sent me home. I remember just.
Trying to sleep on the couch in the family room with my two best friends, Colby and Talon, Colby was my husband's best friend And I just couldn't sleep, so I think I was only home for an hour or two, and I said, no, I'm going back to the hospital I did, and I just stayed outside the ICU, outside his room Friday, family had arrived, his mom had arrived, my parents were there, I think Jordan's sister had arrived and, it just, Dove in a little bit more and figured out that his heart was stable.
We could get his heart to be stable, but now it was his brain that we were concerned about. We were waiting for his brain to swell. We had to, I didn't know much. I didn't know anything about this, but you have to let it get bigger and peak and then it'll go back down again. And so it was still swelling up.
So we were waiting for that for it to peak. And then it comes back down and then you just start to make sure there were no you see what the effects were as it just continued to stall. Friday afternoon, I felt really optimistic. And I remember calling some friends and saying, I feel optimistic.
I feel like he's going to be okay. And I was sitting in his room with him and his sister, actually. And a little side note about his older sister was also a widow and she had lost her husband about eight years, 2016, three young kids at the time. Her kids were maybe three, four, and five when her husband had passed away.
And I remember that.
A Family's Heartbreak
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[00:18:01] Ali: It just. It was a hard time for our family to watch Jordan's sister become a widow so young and have to navigate that. Yeah, and I just, I don't think it was an accident that she was the one sitting in the room with me when this all happened. But the nurses came in just for their regular check and they check his eyes and they check his vitals and I was just watching while chatting with Allie.
My sister in law is also named Allie. Just chatting with her and I remember the nurse checking his eyes. And I'm looking over at the lead nurse and motioning her to come over. And I just stopped mid conversation and just, something's up. And then the lead nurse looks. And then she says Paige, the doctor, and I just immediately was like what's happening?
The Final Moments
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[00:18:53] Ali: And she said, we're just going to grab the neurosurgeon. It's okay. So Dr. Santa Claus, who is the neuro guy, he really did look just like Santa Claus, very cold stocky man who always had a grumpy look on his face that had a white beard and white hair. And he just, he looked like Santa Claus and they started to take him away.
And he said, Hey, his pupils have blown.
We're going to take him in, but I just want to prepare you that this might be the beginning to the end. And I just
remember sitting, standing with my sister in law and just, that's when it all just goes black and you just begging for him to wake up
and you start to panic because now it's, reality has set in that this might be the beginning to the rest of your life.
Facing Reality
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[00:19:45] Ali: And I remember just telling her, I can't. I can't be a single mom. I cannot do this life without him. He was the better parent. He was the more fun parent. The one who always wanted to take my kids out to go on a hike or camping or anything.
Whereas I was not, I'm not the playful parent. He was the one that, he was just better. He was the one that needed to stay. And I just remember telling her, I can't do this. I can't leave. And she said, I know, but you have to do it. You don't have a choice.
Organ Donation Process
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[00:20:22] Ali: He was declared brain dead Friday night.
We had to keep him on the ventilators and keep him alive because we chose organ transplant. And I always thought that was such a quick process after all that Grey's Anatomy on your watch. But it was the longest process trying to find recipients and trying to elevate his organs back to a level where they would be good enough to be donated.
We said goodbye to him late Sunday night as he went into surgery and I received a message Monday morning that it was all done and his organs had been donated and yeah, he'd officially passed away that Monday morning. So it's all a blur that Thursday to Monday, it all feels like one very long day.
A lot of people were in and out. His entire family, he's one of six kids. Everyone came out. We took up the entire waiting room. Our whole party, it was my family, his family, and all of our friends just sat in the waiting room and took shifts being with me, bringing food, going in to visit Jordan, saying their goodbyes.
It was incredible and then it's so weird, just the weird things that you remember and that you forget.
Saying Goodbye
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[00:21:40] Ali: We said goodbye to him on that Sunday. We do the I don't, I'm sure a lot of people know about the like legacy walk when you're going in for surgery and they line the hallways and it's beautiful.
And then we're escorted outside to the front of the hospital and they raise a flag for him. And it's beautiful. And then that was it. They say, okay, here you go the rest of your life. And I remember just standing there and with all of my friends and family and just being like, so now what do we do? You feel like you have to feed everyone.
Of course, that's your first thought. So we picked up pizza and went back to my house and cried and told stories about Jordan. That was it. And so that was, In spring of 2023.
Life After Loss
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[00:22:29] Ali: It has now been quite an adventure navigating widowhood, single motherhood, finding my own identity without him. I got married very young at 21 I think we had kids when I was 28 my whole adult development has been with Jordan by my side.
And now I'm 32 and just trying to figure out who am I without him? What kind of mom do I want to be without him?
[00:22:58] Emily: Yeah, very well said. I definitely felt like I had to rediscover who I was.
Rediscovering Identity
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[00:23:06] Emily: I didn't even know what I liked on my own as a individual. And I'm curious, having a background. As a therapist, if you felt like you held yourself to a different standard or that you should be able to navigate certain things on your own, or, how you thought about that?
[00:23:26] Ali: Yeah, definitely. I think.
Therapist's Perspective
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[00:23:28] Ali: When you are in this profession, maybe not even just therapists, but those who are exposed to this vicarious trauma. So whether you're a therapist or a nurse or a doctor or whatever, someone who just sees the bad that happens to other people. You feel like you should be prepared and when you're not, you feel like is this going to affect my empathy for others?
Now, what does this mean as a, what kind of professional now am I, when I can't even practice the words that I preach? I definitely right when he had passed away. Oh when he was in the hospital, I had some therapy sessions that were on my calendar and I immediately had to reach out to my patients and say, hey, family emergency has come up.
I'm gonna have to reschedule you later. Stand by and then after he had passed away. The more I thought about it, I said, I am in no shape to be a therapist right now. And I don't know when I will be. I said goodbye to all of my patients. And I said, I just, some things have come up. I can no longer do this for a while.
I will let you know when I can practice again. So I took a break from therapy and resumed in January after the new year. That's when I started practicing as a therapist again. But in that time. You do you, you really try to think back and say, okay, if a patient of mine was going through this, what would we be discussing?
What types of things would I be helping them process? I did immediately. Go into therapy myself which I feel like is not what everyone does but that was something that I knew I had to do.
Navigating Grief and Empathy
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[00:25:11] Ali: And I don't know, I think when you have those breakdowns or those periods of depression where you can't get out of bed or the angry outbursts that I had, especially against my kids And the lack of empathy that you have towards anyone else when you're hearing that your friends are going through, I have, I had a friend going through trying to find a surrogate at the same time, all of this was happening because she had just had some emergency hysterectomy, she was going through loss of her own and just, The immediate lack of empathy that I had for everyone around me was alarming.
And I think that really plays into why so many widows lose friends within that first year is because you just You don't care about anyone else and their problems. You just, you don't care about the bad and you don't care about the good. You see the birth announcements and the engagement announcements.
And really all you want to do is just hold up your middle finger to them and say, lucky you, You don't want to celebrate with them. And I think definitely I tried to be aware of all of that and keep myself in check. And although I lacked empathy for everyone, I didn't want to be unkind to everyone.
But I think just giving yourself that grace. I feel as a therapist, I held myself to a very high standard and constantly told myself, you should be able to handle this. You're used to this, right? You're used to hearing other people's trauma and experience of death. You should know what to do and you just never know until you're in it.
[00:27:07] Emily: Yeah. And now I don't know if you ever do work with widows from a therapist perspective, but if you do, or as you do, I'm sure you have a much deeper understanding of even more beyond what you were, you've been taught or what models that you use versus here's reality of what, people I know you might experience.
And that gives you, that then can also give you a deeper. Empathy and experience for that person sitting across the table from you,
[00:27:39] Ali: right? I do not work with widows. Yet something else I was very aware of. Once I started my therapy practice again, was my need to set boundaries. I was very picky on the patients that I slowly started to accept to build my caseload up.
I wasn't too keen on taking patients that were entering therapy for relationship issues. Because again, that lack of empathy, right? I, losing my husband and navigating widowhood. I wasn't really, I knew I wasn't going to be prepped to listen to young adults having quote unquote problems. With their boyfriend or their spouse, which not to invalidate their problems, they were very real, but I didn't have the patience to listen to it with any sort of empathy.
And I was very I was very conscious about the boundaries that I set and the types of patients that I was going to take. Based on what they were presenting in therapy. And so I mostly took on patients that were experiencing anxiety and depression which I feel like I could stand next to them and navigate, but theirs were more coming from a place of individual struggles, right?
And Little by little, I did start to accept more patients that were coming in for relationship issues or even loss. I didn't have anyone come in for loss of a spouse. And I did have a couple that came in for loss of a parent, loss of a child. And those were big. Those were hard.
And although I haven't been as fully transparent with my patients as far as what my own loss is, I have been transparent on showing that empathy of experiencing that same feeling of loss and the feelings of depression and anxiety and paranoia that follows.
[00:29:46] Emily: grief. Yeah, the paranoia is very real.
Yeah. So what is your journey been like being thrust into raising kids and, finding space for your own grief and also trying to, as we do put on our super cape and be everything to our children and Then feel like we can't get a break and we can't ever turn off. And, I know you mentioned you had such a beautiful community of support around you, but I imagine there are times when maybe people weren't always there or you just all feels very overwhelming.
What has that part of your journey been like for you?
Raising Kids Alone
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[00:30:27] Ali: My kids three, they were three and five when Jordan passed. They're now four and seven almost five and seven, but those are very tricky ages and. We were not I was not practicing religion when Jordan had passed away.
I had left the Mormon church a few years prior, and I was a very adamant about my kids not being in attendance of that congregation which Jordan respected. And so my kids didn't really have a foundation for what happens next? Where did dad go? I don't know. So it was a very tricky age to try to explain what had happened, where daddy was, and what this means moving forward, and that he's not coming back.
So trying to balance that while also giving them normalcy while working full time and managing my own grief was It was a very tricky process, which I think brought mostly guilt. I think that was the loudest emotion I felt for the first few months. Feeling guilt that I wasn't a good enough wife and that I'm not a good enough mom.
And that I'm just angry with my kids all the time and putting them in front of their tablets most days. And because getting out of bed was so hard. The most difficult thing
Support and Guilt
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[00:32:02] Ali: I am so grateful for my mother in law, Jordan's mom. And I know that I'm not, everyone has that experience following the death of their spouse. She and I weren't, I wouldn't say best friends while he was alive. We weren't, we did not get, we did not get along, but she wasn't one that I called all the time.
And I can truly say now that she is one of my best friends. And I think, unfortunately, she'd been through this before with her daughter losing a spouse eight years ago. And she had seen her role in it and how my sister in law had grieved and what was needed from my mother in law. And I think she just knew exactly what she needed to do.
And so she stepped in and was just so helpful to me on an emotional level as far as shooting down that guilt. Any time that guilt was present, she was just a constant reminder to me that getting out of bed was the best thing that could happen. Should be the most celebrated thing for me that I need to find so much success in getting out of bed every day.
And if I can't, that's okay too. But anything beyond that is I need to be, I need to recognize how big that is. And she said, it's okay that your kids are being babysat by their tablets right now, because all they need is a mom who is alive. All day. That's all they need right now. And we will take care of the rest.
And she's just, since then, she has been so great as far as. Shooting down that mom guilt.
Finding Solace in Travel
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[00:33:57] Ali: I have found that the biggest way for me to fill my cup since Jordan died is to travel and I like to escape my reality quite a bit and gallivant off somewhere to a new country and have some new experiences.
But the mom guilt really stops me a lot of the time. And there was one day where I was just. bending over backwards to scheme to try and get some flights put together while also having my mother in law come to watch the kids. And I was just really just, like I said, jumping through so many unnecessary hoops because I was so against my kids spending an extra day away from me just because of the logistics of the flights and stuff.
And I was like, no, but I can't have the kids have an extra day away from me than they need to. And my mother in law just cut me off and she said, Ali, it's one day. Your kids are going to be fine. You need an extra day to sleep and recover from jet lag so that you can be your best self when your kids get back.
It is one day. They will be fine. You are still a good mom. And just that constant reminder and reassurance is exactly what I needed for me to fill permission that I could do the things that I needed to fill my cup so that I could show up for my kids every day and showing up only needed to look like getting out of bed and feeding those kids.
[00:35:35] Emily: Yes. What a beautiful relationship that you had with her and what a beautiful gift that should come out of, a bad experience. I love that, that you got.
[00:35:48] Ali: Yeah, it is. It's I talked to another friend about this. I, although I lost a few friends this year just that I think that's normal for widows to lose friends for whatever reasons.
I also gained a lot of new friends. That were actually Jordan's friends that I just, I didn't know of, but not really, just from past life of his, and I connected so well with so many of them at the funeral, or just for them reaching out to me that I've built such great bonds with people that I never would have otherwise, and that's a hard thing to think of too long, but it is, it's a I don't want to call it a silver lining, but it's definitely a moment of gratitude for me on the hard days.
[00:36:34] Emily: , I've been very blessed that Nathan's mom and I have gotten a lot closer, since that. I hate that it took that, for that to happen, but life is busy and you get in your routine and so it's just easy to not spend the time and then sometimes life just forces you to do that or to rely on someone.
Yeah. What I'm curious, travel. I get a lot of people that are interested in traveling or did you decide when you first started traveling to go like as a group? Did you go alone? Did you go with people how did you decide how you wanted to start exploring again?
[00:37:11] Ali: I think that if there's someone who feels like traveling would be the way for them to escape their reality. Find your yes friend. Find your friend that is down to be this adventure buddy with you and to explore new places with you without a plan And it's cool to just sit alongside this grieving process Ali, you up in the sky flying across the Atlantic Backpacking around Europe, whatever it is just find that yes friend that's down for it.
It's an important healing part, I think, of grief.
[00:37:50] Emily: Oh, I love that. Hallie, thank you so much for sharing your story and just being so open and vulnerable with everyone.
Words of Encouragement
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[00:37:57] Emily: Is there any other last words of advice or encouragement that you would give to a widow that finds herself in a situation similar to yours?
Yes.
[00:38:08] Ali: I think I, yeah, I just want to reiterate the words that my mother in law has to tell me every day to those who have been thrust into single motherhood or single parenthood. It's you're a good parent. Just getting out of bed is a huge win. And anything beyond that is. It's incredible and just celebrate yourself for that.
Something I read within the first month was option B. I don't know if that book has been talked about on the podcast already. That was a lifesaver. And anyone who is grieving the loss of anyone, spouse, child, parent, the writer does so well capturing so many of the thoughts that come across and definitely pick that book up.
[00:39:08] Emily: Awesome. I'll link that to the show notes so that people can easily find that as well. So Ali thank you again for sharing your story and all of your insights. I know it's gonna help encourage and inspire everyone who watches or listens to it. Thank you so much for having me.
Brave Widow Community
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[00:39:26] Emily: Are you a widow who feels disconnected? Do you feel like you're stuck or even going backwards in your grief? Widowhood can be lonely and isolating, but it doesn't have to be. Join us in the Brave Widow membership community and connect. We teach widows how to find hope, heal their heart, and dream again for the future.
Find your purpose and create a life you love today. Go to bravewidow. com to get
