Emily Curtis
===
Introduction to Episode 108
---
[00:00:00] Emily: Hey, and welcome to episode number 108 of the Brave Widow Show.
The Stuck Phase in Grief
---
[00:00:05] Emily: So many times widows come to me and they're at the point where they've done therapy. They've done the groups. They've read the books, they've tried listening to the podcast, but they still feel stuck.
Not necessarily in the devastation of sadness and sorrow, although that is a point where several widows are that I work with, but, Often they feel like they have done some work to heal their heart, but they just feel like they're spinning in place. Like they've tried doing different things and they're not getting any traction.
And so one of the biggest questions they have for me is what's next? How do I decide what direction to go in? How do I know it's the right direction? How do I know I'm even thinking about things correctly? Am I going crazy? Like people have all of the questions.
Announcing the 'What's Next' Webinar
---
[00:01:00] Emily: And so for the first time ever, I'm hosting a special webinar called what's next.
And the purpose of this webinar is to help bring to light for you some of the sneaky little things in grief that cause us to feel stuck that sabotage our ability to move forward and to heal. And. The exact next steps that you, wherever you are in your journey, need to start taking to move
forward.
I have spent hundreds of hours coaching clients, learning about grief, gaining certifications, doing all the work to craft stages of widowhood and to craft a coaching plan that helps support my clients and helps illustrate for them. Their ability to move forward. We even track where they are in their journey.
When we start versus how they progress through the journey and where they ultimately end up. And I am proud to report that 100 percent of my clients make progress. They move forward in grief, and it's just been an amazing experience. So Join me on Monday, August 19th. For the first time, I'll share with you the stages of widowhood.
I'll share with you how I evaluate where someone is in their healing journey, and how I help determine what next steps they need to take forward so that you can leave that workshop knowing some of the steps that you need to take. To move forward as well to join us, just go to BraveWidow.com/next to sign up.
It's next in E X T. And Hey, it's a free event. It's live. It's met for the public. So bring a friend, bring a few friends. But I would love to see you there again. It's BraveWidow. com slash next.
Introducing Emily Curtis
---
[00:02:53] Emily: All right, now let me introduce Emily Curtis. Emily is a widow who lost her husband, June 22nd of 2022. She's learned to move forward in her grief with resiliency and use that resilience to start a grief coaching business to help other widows through their grief.
You can find Emily at awakenrenewcoaching. com. Or awaken and renew grief coaching on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. If you go to the show notes of wherever you're listening to or watching this episode, you will also find all of the links to find Emily. All right, let's dive in.
Welcome to the Brave Widow Show, where we help widows find hope, heal their heart, and dream again for the future. I'm your host, Emily Tanner. After losing my husband of 20 years, I didn't know how I could ever experience true joy and excitement again for the future. I eventually learned how to create a life I love, and I've made it my mission to help other widows do the same.
Join me and the Brave Widow membership community and get started today. Learn more at BraveWidow. com
Emily, welcome to the show and thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:04:10] Emily Curtis: Yeah.
Hi, Emily. Great name. And thanks for having me.
[00:04:15] Emily: Yeah. Fabulous name. I already knew this was going to be an amazing interview. Absolutely. Interviewing another Emily.
Emily's Background and Love Story
---
[00:04:21] Emily: But yeah, why don't you share just introduce yourself, share some of your background, and then we can dive into your story wherever you want to start.
[00:04:32] Emily Curtis: Sure. Yeah. I'm Emily Curtis. I live in Colorado and have been in Colorado for, oh goodness probably 25 years. Was born on the East coast in New Jersey and went to college in New York state and moved out to Colorado immediately after college. And. Did the typical gonna just go be a ski bum for a winter and figure out my next steps.
And I met my late husband a month after I moved to Colorado and spent the winter, we spent the winter skiing together. And at the end of the winter, he was like you might as well stay for summer. And so it's a classic Colorado story. And I'm still here. Despite him not being here, obviously.
So
[00:05:21] Emily: yeah, awesome. So tell us what did you like about him? What was it that drew you to him? And that kept you together?
[00:05:30] Emily Curtis: Yeah great question. , I think it was his sense of adventure. He was the type of person who loved to live in the present. He really hated. What if? Statements and what if scenarios I am a little bit more of a planner and a little bit more just to anticipate the next steps in life.
And he was a little bit more spontaneous. And I think that was really what attracted me to him immediately was just his. His sense of adventure. And he was very kind and a very compassionate person as well. And I think, I met him right out of college, so I was still fairly young and.
It was easy. We just had fun, we just skied and then I stayed for the summer and we hiked and biked and camped and just all the things that we love to do here in Colorado. And it was just it was just a very easy relationship. It was just based on friendship and based on fun.
[00:06:29] Emily: I love that.
And I love when, we can look at another person and think, Oh, this is so awesome about them. I really admire it about them. Sometimes that can become a friction point where Nathan was definitely a free spirited person and I was a planner. And While I love that about him, there were times where it drove me crazy while we were married.
Yeah, the plan, you must follow the plan. But , I think we helped each other kind of meet in the middle of having that good balance. Absolutely. I always think it's funny to think about the opposite character traits that people have and how sometimes that can cause us friction and then we learn how to navigate that down the road.
Yeah. So how long were you and your husband married and what was life like for the two of you?
[00:07:17] Emily Curtis: Yeah so we dated for almost 10 years before we got married. And then we were married for 14 years when he passed. So I had been with Brad for 24 years. And although we were really different, I think I always said we were the yin and the yang, right?
I think he helped me to, Sort of ground and center and not stress about the what ifs. And I think I maybe helped him think more in the future than just being present. But yeah, life for us Was really good. We bought a house in Colorado in 2004 before we were married, and then we were married in 2008.
And and then I was, I had received a job offer in Park City, Utah. So we lived in Park City for three years during Covid and and that was a great adventure. We had been in Colorado for probably 20 years around that time and just moving to a new location and we just got to. Experience all these new things, a new town new mountain biking, skiing, we pretty much skied all of the resorts in Utah and the time we lived there and and then we did through circumstance, we had found ourselves waiting for a home to be built here in Colorado.
We had made the decision to come back to Colorado. And and so we lived in our camper for about a year. And we have two German shepherds, so we were in our camper for a year. We were traveling the southwest waiting for this home to be built. And then we moved to where we are now, or where I am now, back in Colorado, and we were in this house for about six weeks, and and then he passed away.
Like I said earlier, I think our life was really based on Friendship and adventure and just enjoying each other's company. He loved to cook. He was an amazing cook, so we were always planning meals. We love to have friends and family to the house for the holidays, and we always hosted Christmas.
We did not have Children, so we would always Host Christmas with all of our friends who didn't have Children or some of our friends that didn't celebrate Christmas. It was like the catch all holiday party. And yeah, we just, we have an amazing circle of friends. And we just were, we were extremely happy and we had a really wonderful marriage.
[00:09:37] Emily: Oh, that's awesome to hear. I know not everybody gets to have that experience, but it sounds like it was just such a beautiful relationship and a very accepting environment of each other and how you were and how you related together. Yeah.
Life After Loss: Emily's Journey
---
[00:09:53] Emily: So walk us through, when your husband died, what was that whole experience like for you?
And what did you find was helpful or maybe even not helpful as you went through that experience?
[00:10:11] Emily Curtis: Yeah. So my husband passed on June 27th, 2022. So I'm coming up on the two year anniversary. He passed suddenly. He had a he had a massive heart attack. And unfortunately I, I found him. He was doing yard work.
And so I found him face down in our front yard and I called 9 1 1. I did CPR and as did the paramedics when they arrived. And he didn't make it, obviously. That's why we're here. Um, as I said, we had this life filled of adventure. We loved to ski. We loved to mountain bike.
And we had two dogs that we hiked with. We were very active people. He loved to cook. We ate well. And so it was just extremely fun. shocking. It was not at all what I was expecting to have happen. It wasn't something that was a long drawn out illness. It was extremely sudden. So I was completely unprepared for what was gonna lie ahead.
I think initially it was getting past the trauma of finding him. And then and then it was moving into the grief and I spent quite a long time feeling just in shock and having a lot of, just a lot of just disbelief that this had happened. I think that sort of moved into guilt.
Did I, how could I have could I have seen this coming? Brad was not great about going to the doctor, so it was like I should have Made him go to the doctor more often. I wish, what if I had found him sooner? I don't know how long he had been there, before I found him.
So I went through a lot of. What ifs of what if I found him sooner? What if I got to the doctor? And then I moved into actually quite a bit of anger. That was probably the hardest part of the grief was just having a lot of anger around around the loss. And I would say really the anger wasn't geared towards, Brad or towards myself.
It was more of just complete irritability and lack of patience for life. I went back to work about a month after Brad passed. I did take a month off, which was amazing. We did the memorial and then I went back to work and I just put my head down and tried to really power through the day to day.
And Looking back on it, I think that I just, I completely exhausted myself and that's likely where that anger came from, right? It was just, I was exhausted. My body was telling me to slow down. My mind was telling me to slow down. And I just kept thinking that I could just, as I had always done in my life, sort of power through bad scenarios and start to feel better.
And I just kept thinking, why am I not feeling better? Like I'm not, it's been months and I'm still just. Very very irritable. Very angry. I had a hard time just dealing with basic life issues that come up. Tell the story to people that I dropped a bowl of dog food on the ground and it was like the worst thing that ever happened to me, so yeah, it was a long journey. As I said, I was really unprepared for it. I had lost my father about 12 years prior. And and obviously that was extremely extremely hard. I agree with that, but this losing my husband in this way was just completely. Next level. And I was not educated on grief as many people aren't.
And I just really had a hard time understanding and accepting that I felt really down and really sad and really angry and all of those feelings for such a long time. And I really wanted to get better and I really wanted to be happy again, and I really wanted to be myself again, and there was just days that I Felt like I was never going to be that person again.
And yeah, it was really hard.
[00:14:10] Emily: I resonate with that so much of just being the person that, as you said, always powers through all it, like whatever it takes, get it done. If you've got to burn yourself on the ground to do it, just do it. And it's just. Feeling frustrated, like it's just never enough.
And how many books do you have to read? How many courses do you have to go through? How many, group activities do you need to do? , when do you reach that finish line of grief? And you can say, I'm done. Yes. It's all behind me now. It's all over. That's. really hard and discouraging when everyone says, Oh, you're going to grieve for forever.
It's never going to just go away.
Finding Hope and Moving Forward
---
[00:14:55] Emily: So I, I resonate a lot with what you shared there, what do you feel was really the turning point for you where you started to feel hopeful or to start to feel like, okay, there is a way out of this or there is a way forward. What was that moment for you?
[00:15:15] Emily Curtis: Oh, I think it was honestly the changing of the seasons. He passed in June. And we went through summer and fall and then November came and in the high country of Colorado, it starts to snow in November and Brad loved the snow and it started snowing that year, probably like right before Thanksgiving, and it just didn't stop.
It ended up being a record snow year and. I had just had this feeling that Brad brought the snow, right? Like he brought the snow to me. And cause he loved it. He knew I loved it. And I just had something click. I really can't say it was, Like you said, it wasn't like, I read this book. I took this course.
I went to therapy. I did all that stuff, right? I did a lot of work. I had gone to a therapist. I had listened to a ton of podcasts. I had read the books. I had heard other stories. But I think I just had this moment of it clicked of, I can I can choose to stay in this grief or I can choose to move forward in my grief.
I think up until that point, I really struggled with a lot of activities that Brad and I have enjoyed together. I didn't feel like I had the stamina or the resilience to. Go for big hikes or go for mountain bike rides and things that we enjoyed together. And for some reason, I just felt like I've got to get on my skis and I've got to get out there and start skiing again.
And through doing that, it just reconnected me to him. I also reached the point where I just didn't want to be alone anymore. I was extremely lonely. And so I spent that winter Just having people to my house every single weekend, or I made plans to go somewhere every weekend. And so I wasn't, I just didn't spend a lot of time alone, and I just reconnected, not reconnected because I had been connected with so many friends, but I I just brought people into my home every weekend and invited people to come ski and I got really into cooking picked that up from Brad.
And I think it was just this, it wasn't something that happened overnight, but it was this slow progression of, okay, I'm actually enjoying things that I did with Brad. I'm I'm socializing in the way that I want to socialize and and I just had this inherent feeling of I've got, I'm going to be okay.
It's always going to be there. I'm never going to get over it. I'm never going to move on from it, right? Like you never just get over it and move on. But I also knew that I could hold that grief with me and build a life around it. And there was a feeling of wanting to almost honor him and live the life that we would be living together.
And doing that, even though he wasn't here as a way to commemorate or honor him. If that makes sense.
[00:18:17] Emily: Yeah, and I think that's such a beautiful way to put it because a lot of widows do struggle with living. Like the same life, doing the same things, engaging in those activities, and just feeling like they're constantly reminded their person isn't there anymore.
And I love the way that you looked at that as like a way to honor him, a way to keep his spirit alive, a way to feel closer and more connected with him. Now in this new life that we have, that was helpful in healing for you. So I love that.
[00:18:52] Emily Curtis: Yeah thanks. Yeah, I. And I don't want to make it sound like it was overnight, it takes time, and that would be my message to other widows that may be listening is this isn't something that I woke up the day after the funeral and said, Oh, I'm going to just move forward.
It took time. And I did a lot of work to get there. But I do feel like that. I do feel. That he would want me to keep living and he would want me to be happy and he would not, he would want me to do all those things that we had planned to do together. And do it by myself, do it with friends or, with other people.
It didn't have to be him, but I had to keep moving forward and. It made me feel better. It made me feel more connected to him in a way of a way to, honor. And I think he would be, I think he would be proud. And I'm proud of myself for continuing to be able to enjoy those things.
Cause it's not always easy for sure.
[00:19:45] Emily: Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure he is looking down at you and just. Feeling so proud and sending you all the love, which is awesome. So what would you say to the widows that are out there that they're in that. Like they haven't reached a place yet where they feel like, Oh, he brought the snow.
. I'm ready. I feel like there's hope they maybe are feeling frustrated that they're trying to move forward and they just feel pushed back all the time. Or some people describe it like being a toddler and you just keep falling down, even though you're trying, what would you say to those widows?
[00:20:27] Emily Curtis: I would say give yourself grace. It certainly wasn't something that I did, right? Like I, we talked about just, I tried to power through. So I would say, give yourself grace, have patience trust that things will get better. And also don't suffer in silence, really try to seek the help that you need and try to ground yourself in what that looks like for you.
Is that wanting to surround yourself with friends and family? Is that, wanting to engage in activities? That you enjoyed prior to your husband dying. Just understanding what you feel like is going to help you feel better and really take it day to day. I'll be honest.
I'm almost two years in. And there's still some days. I'll wake up and just not feel like I want to face the world. And so I don't I think the old Emily would have, she would have powered through and said, you know what, suck it up and get out there. And I'm, I just give myself, I still give myself those days and that grace to just feel it.
It takes time and it takes a commitment to want to be better. And I think my advice is like, be patient give yourself grace in feeling all of the things that go with grief, and Also get help, also ask for help and maybe that's all it is. Maybe you do need to see professional help and see a therapist or go to a bereavement group.
Or, maybe you just need to surround yourself with the right friend group or the right family members that will give you what you need in your grief. Some people like to talk about it. Some people like to, um, just sit with it. And so who are those people that are going to give you that energy that you need?
So I do think there's a level of just tapping into who you are as a person and what you think you, what you think you need and then and then taking that action to do it. But knowing that you're probably going to need some help along the way to do that as well.
[00:22:33] Emily: Yeah, I think it's so helpful to be able to talk to other people who are walking the journey, who maybe are further down the road, than you are, and who can help remind you that it's okay to take a day for yourself.
It's okay to take time and to lower the expectations that you have of yourself, that doesn't make you weak. It doesn't make you less than.
Emily's Grief Coaching Business
---
[00:22:59] Emily: I know too, Emily, you shared that you get to work with other widows and almost in a way you've created a purpose out of the pain that you've experienced in getting to help people and pay some of that forward.
How did you get you there from, where you were just. Almost two years ago.
[00:23:20] Emily Curtis: Yeah. So my career had been focused on I had done marketing for about 20 years. I worked for a larger publicly traded companies. I worked for smaller startups. And one of the things that I loved most about my career was working with other people.
And leading my team, leading people who reported to me, coaching them, helping them in their career growth. I also had mentored other young women in their career growth. So I had this inherent love of coaching and helping people to identify, where they wanted to be in their career and, then talking about, okay where are we in your career today?
And what are the things we need to do to get you to where you want to be? And so I always had this passion for that. And and as I went through my grief, I have been very, I'm very open about my grief. I talk about Brad all the time. I talk about the experience I went through. And a lot of people, I just had a lot of people say gosh, like you really could help other people.
Just the way you are very open and honest about it. And so it just clicked for me one day. I was feeling like I wanted to also work for myself feeling like I didn't want to be in the, one of the things we go through as widows is taking stock, of what really matters in life.
And I just felt like I was spending a lot of time working and I was like, I really would want it if I want to put that time into work, I want to do it to helping other people and doing it for myself, and so it just clicked one day of taking the taking the love that I have in my career and these life experiences that I have and combining them and starting my own grief coaching business.
So I started that in in early April. So it's still pretty, pretty fresh and pretty new. I did go and get my grief coaching certificate and I'm just, honored and humbled and grateful to be able to hopefully help other widows as they. And taking what I know as a leader and as a coach and combining that with my personal experiences to, to help people to understand that there is a life beyond grief.
And, as we talked about, like helping those people that I was there I was 100 percent there. I do not know how to get past this. And I just wanted someone to say, do these 5 things and you'll be better. And it's not that easy, right? But I just have a passion for trying to help people because nobody should have to be unhappy.
I think everybody deserves to be happy in life. And some of us are dealt a really bad card and our spouse dies. And especially for people like us who, whose spouses die young and we are young widows and there's still so much life left to live. So just trying to help people to say, or to recognize that there is a lot of life left to live.
And how do you want to live it? Do you want to, do you want to live it sad and grieving all the time, or do you want to, still honor and remember your spouse, but also build a life around that grief and a life forward. So that's really where I'm trying to focus my future and my my business is helping other widows and moving forward in their grief.
[00:26:29] Emily: That's perfect. I know. I try to encourage people all the time to find a coach, find somebody who's walked the path before you, like somebody who's been there, who understands you can work with a coach. You can work with a therapist that hasn't experienced those things and still have a good experience.
I just think it's 10 times easier to work with someone who has because you don't. You get to just talk. You don't have to explain, like, why you're feeling this way, how losing your spouse changes every single thing about your day, because if you're working with a coach who's been widowed, that person knows, so you just get to talk about how you feel and what you're thinking and what you want help with, and not try to get someone to understand that's never really experienced that level of loss.
Even though we've all had different unique experiences and relationships, and we've all had a different journey, there's just something about working with another widow, something about just, even when I meet people, We don't even have to say any words really. Once we understand that we've both lost a spouse, it's just like this universal language now that we speak.
And it's so easy to have those conversations. So I
[00:27:57] Emily Curtis: think
[00:27:57] Emily: it's just really great that you've done that. And I know other people have to appreciate. having a guide and having someone to tell them like, okay, for you and where you are, like, this is your next step. This is what you should focus on to get out of this quicksand.
[00:28:14] Emily Curtis: Yeah. And I think that's did go to a therapist the first probably six months after Brad passed. And I did find it helpful. I think the difference between A therapist and a coach and therapists are still very important for some people, right? If they're dealing with clinical depression or there was issues before the death that they still have to resolve.
But I think a coach really focuses on the future, right? Like, where do you want to go? And my goal is to just help empower other women. To get there. My goal is to help guide and coach and recommend and make suggestions. And ultimately, it's up to that widow to empower themselves to do that versus trying to I'm not here to fix people, right?
I'm here to help share my experiences and. And listen, where are you and, what are those things that we think we, you can do to move forward? Yeah I agree. I think I know for me, I listened to just a ton of podcasts. I am, I'm still part of a bereavement group here locally with widows.
I find it, extremely, rewarding to sit in those groups. There's some, we unfortunately had some new widows join our group in the last few weeks. And and I think just knowing being able to see other widows that have been through it and understand it and see where they are today and say, wow I can do it.
I can move through this and I can be happy again. I think it brings a lot of hope. And when you're in those deep, dark days of grief. You need hope.
[00:29:47] Emily: Yeah, you do. I remember for me, it was extremely helpful just to not even understand how someone could get to a place where they enjoyed their life again, but just to know that it was even possible.
I felt comfortable. I could figure out like some way to get there, but the first step was really believing That future was even a possibility when I thought there's no way, there's no way I'll be able to ever get there that I'm ever going to feel any different.
[00:30:18] Emily Curtis: And
[00:30:18] Emily: so early on, I felt. A desire to help people that maybe I was only three months out and there was a new person that was only one month out and I could help that person.
I could help the person that wasn't as far as long as me or who was still just lost and struggling. And it does give hope to people who are just coming into this whole new way of life.
[00:30:42] Emily Curtis: Yeah.
[00:30:43] Emily: So
[00:30:44] Emily Curtis: yeah I feel like I, yeah I struggled with. Am I ever going to be happy again? And then I also struggled with, I really felt like I was going to be alone for the rest of my life.
I don't know why I think maybe watching my mom be a widow and just like thinking that was my fate of that's that, like I married Brad and he passed and now I'm going to be alone forever. And I have met somebody else. We are, I am dating. And yeah, just. For those widows, some people don't want that, but some people do.
Some people are, want to have that life partner and that person to go through life with and knowing that, and I remember always thinking Even if I did want to date one day, I'll surely never find anyone as great as Brad. No one can ever compare to him. And it's not about comparing, of course, but it's just feeling like you could never feel that way about another human again.
And and yeah, I think for those widows that are wanting to potentially date again, like just having the hope that it is possible and you can find happiness and you also can find love again.
[00:31:52] Emily: Yes, absolutely. And I think about it too, like for people that have multiple children, you have your first one and you think, Oh, I had never loved another child as much as I love this one.
This is, that's just it. It's just all the love just for this one. And I don't know, I can't love any of my other ones. If I were to have them and then you have your second child and you're like, Oh, wow, I love them both now. And it didn't take away anything from the first the second one, doesn't get none of your love.
Yeah, it is possible. And your heart does expand and ways that we probably don't even fully understand how it happens, but it does happen. So Emily, how, if someone wants to learn.
Final Thoughts and Contact Information
---
[00:32:38] Emily: More about you. They really resonated with your story. They're interested in working with you. What's the best way for people to find you and learn more about you?
[00:32:48] Emily Curtis: Sure. You can visit my website. My coaching business is called awaken and renew grief coaching. My website is awaken, renew coaching. com. I'm also on Facebook. I'm also on Instagram and LinkedIn. I, on my website, I do have resources that are free. I have self guided courses that are priced I think in a way that hopefully most people can participate in those.
And then I also offer one on one grief coaching for people that just want more of a personalized experience. Yeah I try to make my, I'm trying to make my grief coaching as available to everybody as possible. Because as I said, I think everyone deserves the opportunity to be happy regardless of their background.
Yeah, I'd be honored to to help or to speak with anybody that, that might be struggling and are looking and resonating with my story and are looking to to move forward in their grief.
[00:33:43] Emily: Perfect. And we'll have all the links to where you can find Emily in the show notes. So for anyone who's listening or multitasking or doing other things, you'll be able to go back into the show notes and find those as well.
So Emily, thank you so much for coming and sharing your story and your advice for widows that are walking your same footsteps.
[00:34:07] Emily Curtis: Thank you. It was a honor to be here. So thanks for taking the time to chat with me today.
Conclusion and Membership Invitation
---
[00:34:12] 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 started.
