BW 146 Coaching Program
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Introduction to The Brave Widow Show
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[00:00:00] Hey, and welcome to episode number 146 of The Brave Widow Show.
Understanding the Coaching Program
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Today I wanna share with you about the coaching program, how coaching works, how coaching helped me, and why I'm such an advocate of coaching as part of your journey through grief and as part of your journey to healing.
Now for those of you who have been thinking about coaching and you wanna give it a try or you wanna understand more about specifically how it could help you, I wanna invite you to go to brave widow.com and schedule a consult call with me. A consult call might sound a little bit scary, but it's an hour that you have to talk with me.
I have a very structured process. You are gonna be in good hands. I will guide you through the conversation of the things that I need to know in order to. Propose a plan and a program that's gonna best [00:01:00] support you in your next steps forward. And today I'm gonna talk about generally how I approach coaching.
Generally, how I make decisions on which part of the process to start with and how we focus. And so I'm gonna speak in some generalizations. Everyone is different and unique in their journey of things they've experienced and things that they are working on. So not everyone may experience the same process and journey, but I wanna give you an idea of what that looks like.
So when you have a consult call with me. I walk you through some guided questions. I always get the information I need. Sometimes people are nervous about making sure they just tell me everything or they share with me the things that are most important to them. I. You will have the opportunity to do that.
And then I will clearly show you visually on the screen, I have a process of mapping out where you are [00:02:00] now, where you wanna be in the next six months, and specifically what system or tool or method that I use to help you move forward and accomplish those goals. And if you don't know what your goals are, and sometimes that happens, right?
People say I don't know what I want for my future. I just know it's not this. Like I just know, I just don't wanna feel like this every day. Then I will help create a vision for your future That's exciting. Something that you can really look forward to or even just feel hopeful that you can begin to look forward to that.
So again, if you are thinking about doing a consult call, stop putting it off. Just do it. Go to brave widow.com and sign up for a consult call with me. All right. Let's dive into today's episode.
Emily: 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. [00:03:00] 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
Personal Grief Journey
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Now for those of you who aren't familiar with me yet or aren't familiar with the Brave Widow Program, you may not know that I am an overachiever, like when Nathan died, it was probably within that first week, I immediately started ordering all of the books, like all the grief books I joined. I don't know how many different Facebook widow groups that some of them I'm still part of today.
I immediately signed up everyone for all the counseling, all the therapy. Like I wanted to check all of the boxes and it wasn't [00:04:00] necessarily that I was in just like a big hurry to move forward from grief, but I definitely felt like I wanted to do all the things like. What were all the things that people recommend?
What are all the things that we should be doing? And I'm gonna show myself and the world like, look, check check. I've done all this stuff. Yep, we are doing the best that we can. I'm setting up my kids for success. I didn't know the best way to support them in grief. I didn't wanna mess them up.
I didn't wanna create like a bad dynamic in our family, so I did what I knew to do at the time.
Challenges of Early Grief
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Now, reading through these grief books was very hit and miss. First of all, as many of you may know, reading a book in the early days of grief is really hard. Being able to focus on a podcast or a show or even sometimes one conversation is really difficult, just being able to focus.
I was also [00:05:00] battling a lot of insomnia, and most nights I was getting two or three hours of sleep at most. I distinctly remember one time at 2:00 AM sitting in my bedroom floor with pieces that building an end table thinking to myself I'm not getting very much sleep, but I'm definitely the most productive that I've been in a really long time because I'm getting so many projects done.
And on one hand, okay, that was really nice. But on the other hand, we also know the heaviness that comes with grief, the fog, the difficulty, and just being able to think clearly and logically and just function like it's really hard. The only thing I can compare it to is when you are a mother of a newborn that's just not sleeping, or they're not sleeping well and you're up every hour or every two hours and you just start feeling like a zombie walking through the day, [00:06:00] that's very much what grief felt life only much worse because you're also grieving your other half.
Nathan and I had been married three weeks shy of 20 years, and so of course I was grieving him. I was grieving the life that we had. I was grieving our future hopes and dreams, and even the loss of myself, I didn't know. What no one explained to me is that grief isn't something you're just getting through and people would say oh, there's no finish line in grief.
Which is super depressing, by the way, to tell a widow in the early days of grief yep, this never ends. Like the, just, this is how it is. When that's not even necessarily reality, but that's what people say, right? There's no finish line. You never get over it. You just learn how to deal with it.
Wow.
Realizations and Adjustments
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Terrible things to think about when you're in those early days, what I wish someone would have told [00:07:00] me is that grief will change you as a person. I felt like a different person, but I also felt like I was crazy for thinking that. I felt very strongly like I'm not the same person that I was and my friends, my coworkers, people that I was around frequently, they just looked at me like I grew two heads.
What do you mean you're not the same person? Of course you're the same person. You just have to wait and you'll start to feel better at some point, or you'll start to feel better. Soon you'll go back to normal. It's fine. They were wrong. You don't ever go back to normal, and if no one has told you that, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry. If no one has explained to you that grief is gonna change you as a person and that you are now going to be required to build a new life, build a [00:08:00] new social circle, figure out who you are in these next few seasons of life. I'm sorry. Allow me to be the first person to tell you that. What I wish someone would have told me is that, Ugh, this is horrible, that this has happened to you, Emily.
And now what we're looking at really is the wreckage, the ashes, a life that you loved and that was wonderful and is now over. I kept waiting to figure out how I was gonna go back to that life. Like obviously I knew Nathan wasn't coming back, but I kept looking backwards to think about how I would feel the same, how life could be the way that it was, and I just wish someone would have said, that's not going to happen and it's okay.
It's gonna be okay.
[00:09:00] That first six months to a year was all focused on getting my feet underneath me, on grieving, on healing, on coming up with a new routine. Nathan used to do all the cooking. He used to coordinate the kids in the house cleaning. He used to pay all the bills. He got the car titles updated every year. So all of those things where I really had been taken care of in that area.
Now all of a sudden I was trying to figure out how to do on my own. How to make sure that I could cook dinner when I wasn't even gonna be home half the time 'cause I was traveling for work or when I was gonna be in meetings during the day all day and not really sure what time I would be off to fix dinner.
So the crockpot and I became like besties those first few months and my poor children had to suffer through me learning how to cook and season and do things well and learn just a variety of things to make for dinner [00:10:00] or say, Hey, it'll be done cooking at this time. Not sure when I'll be off, but I'll come join you, as soon as I can.
So that first six months to a year is really when I started to feel like I had my feet underneath me. I had some sort of routine. I wasn't living off of adrenaline anymore. And then I started to sink into this deep awareness that. This is not just a bad dream, this is really real. This is really happening.
This is really the rest of my life. And I thought that was the most depressing thing possible. Like how is this the next God willing, 40 or 50 years of my life? Really this is it. Like this is it. And while therapy in its way was [00:11:00] helpful and healing for my children, had mixed reviews on their therapy experiences.
So we worked through that. I just still felt so directionless. And for someone who's very driven, ambitious, a high achiever, someone who has lots of goals and dreams, I think about the future all the time. Every day I think about what do I want for my future? What am I working towards? What is the purpose behind what I'm doing?
Why am I doing this? What is this gonna lead to? And so for me, naturally, I just think about the future all the time. And it was earth shattering to me to look out into this future. And it's just a great unknown. It's just I felt like a little tiny boat out in the middle of this vast ocean. I was getting knocked around by waves of grief.
I was getting spun [00:12:00] around. There were times when the waves were calm. There were times when hurricanes blew through. But possibly the most difficult thing for me to grapple with. Was I was untethered. I felt directionless. I didn't even know which way to turn the ship. Who was I now? What did I want for the future?
What did I like? What did I not like? Did I still even care about some of the dreams and the plans that we had together? Will I ever want to be remarried? What if that person doesn't fit well with my family? What if they don't like the things that I like? What if all the what ifs? What if? What if?
What if? What if? It's an endless sea of questions that we fall into, and [00:13:00] I just felt incredibly lost and directionless and yes, I. Therapy help with healing? Yes. Grief groups help. Yes. Facebook groups somewhat help. I would say moderate help depending on which group that you're in. Very good for validation.
These Facebook groups, not always the best for insight and advice, but one thing that was very apparent to me was that culturally we don't really know how to help people through grief and loss. We don't know how to help ourselves. We definitely don't know how to help other people, and it was during this time that I heard the voice of an angel.
Discovering Dr. Betsy Guerra
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The voice of Dr. Betsy Guerra on a [00:14:00] podcast that had nothing to do with grief and had nothing to do with coaching other than on this podcast. She mentioned that she was a psychologist. She mentioned the story of losing her young daughter in a drowning accident in a pool in her own backyard. She talked about her faith and spirituality and how God has played such a big role in her healing journey.
And she talked about this new life coaching program that she was starting up to certify coaches in a faith-based coaching approach that embrace psychology, counseling, coaching, and spirituality, all in one, which I knew was very rare. Having taken some psychology and some counseling classes in my past life, I knew it was somewhat rare to embrace all of those things together.
And just the joy she spoke with, the passion [00:15:00] and her love for God and for people just exuded from her. And I knew on that podcast, I'm like, I don't know anything about her program. I don't know what it cost. I don't even think life coaching is a real job, but I need to be around this person. I need this person in my life.
Joining the Coaching Program
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And so over a weekend, I sent her an email and applied for her coaching program. Again, just like a leap of faith, putting myself out there. And on a Sunday afternoon, she just emailed me back and said, Hey, can I call you? I'm like, whoa. This person's calling me on the Sunday afternoon. Okay. We had an amazing conversation and she's I just, I hate to tell you this, that podcast was recorded a while back.
We're already five weeks in to our coaching program, so you're already would be behind five weeks. And we've already got the dynamic of our group. We've already got people paired up as mentor coaches. This was an intense six month certification [00:16:00] program where we would meet three days a week for two to three hours each day.
Plus you had hours you had to commit to coaching each other in a peer coaching format. So this is intense program. We're already five weeks deep and I just told her, look, you pray about it, I'll pray about it. If it doesn't work out for me this time, then I'll be happy to join the program at another time.
I just believe you are the person I. To help me and I know what has helped me so far in my journey, but I have really no idea what I'm doing. I have no idea how to get through this whole grief thing, and I certainly don't know how to help other people. Even though I was receiving many requests from people even people who knew someone who was widowed.
I had two employees who were widowed shortly after I was, who reached out to me having lost their spouse. I had another coworker whose [00:17:00] 20 mid twenties daughter was widowed, and so I was just getting a lot of requests from people of. How do I help? What do I do? What you know, what do I do now? And I would help the best I could.
This is where the Brave New Widow checklist that ultimately the workbook would come from was me rapidly putting things together that I thought would help, but I really was just blind leading the blind here, just being a few months even ahead of some of these other widows. Dr. Betsy talked with her group, they amazingly voted to let me join, and I committed to getting caught up on the content to getting caught up on the work that was required, and I would end up graduating just less than six months later as part of that initial first cohort.
The Grief Recovery Institute
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Also, during that time, I had signed up with the Grief Recovery Institute, and for the first time ever, I felt like someone got grief. [00:18:00] Someone got this whole thing. That everyone else seemed to miss, which was time alone isn't going to make your grief better.
The Grief Recovery Institute helped me in so many ways with allowing me to not feel crazy with understanding really how grief works, how we navigate this whole guilt, these feelings of guilt and grief, and things that tend to hang over our head for a long time.
How to find freedom from the burden that I had of guilt, of regret, of disappointment in myself and all of the things that had happened in my relationship that I wish were better, more, or different like this, actually gave me the tools and the strategy and the knowledge of what I needed, not only to help myself, but to be able to help for other people.
So I was all in, I was all in [00:19:00] on that. Between that and Dr. Betsy's Faith-based Coaching Academy, I finally felt like there was a light at the end of the tunnel and there was a path and, it was some point during this process that it finally dawned on me, no one is coming to save me. My life is never going back to the way that it was. I am not the same person that I was before. How could I be? Of all the years I had been alive, I had been married for many years more than I had been alive, certainly more years than I remember.
I don't remember a whole lot about being a baby or being a child, but I remember a lot about being 17 and on a lot more memories. So the majority of what I've known about my life was being married to this other person. And so of course, I'm not gonna be the same person that I was because overnight that changed.[00:20:00]
Overnight that was gone. But no one told me. And most likely no one has told you either. Your old life is gone. That doesn't mean that you can't build something new. It doesn't mean that you can't love a life that actually you love as much as the life you had before. For some people, it's really hard to believe that, especially in the beginning, but there has to be an acknowledgement that we can't go back, can't go back to the life that we had.
It's not possible.
Your social circle isn't going to come back magically on its own. Most likely. After a few weeks, your family, your friends, most of the people in your life have stopped showing up, have stopped reaching out, have stopped inviting you. No one told me, Hey, [00:21:00] guess what? This is gonna happen. Guess what? It's normal and you have the option to rebuild your social circle.
If you don't wanna feel alone, if you wanna feel that people accept you, that they're on a similar path as you, or they enjoy the same things as you, or they truly wanna connect with you as a person, you have to do the work of rebuilding this social circle. We don't sit down with widows and just explain this is what it takes in order to get to a place where you can love your life again.
So most widows who find me, most widows who work with me, most of my clients are typically somewhere around the one year mark or the one to two year mark. They have gone to therapy or they're still in therapy. Several of my clients work with therapist can in a parallel way with me. I've even met with some other therapist and just made sure that we're aligned on how we're working with the client.[00:22:00]
But most of my clients have tried therapy. Now, some of them may have tried one or two sessions and said, absolutely not. I cannot do this. I don't wanna do this. Some of them have tried grief groups or support groups which are helpful in their own way. Sometimes people think that I'm speaking negatively about therapy or grief groups, and I'm absolutely not, and I believe it takes more than that to be able to move forward, to truly rebuild their life.
If I had stayed in therapy for years, I think it would've helped me to unpack a lot of things, but it wouldn't have helped me with what do I do now? What are my steps that I need to take now?
The Role of Coaching in Grief
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Which is exactly where coaching comes in. Coaching is very forward focused. It's very future focused. It's very action oriented.
There is a component of emotional healing. There is a component of grief recovery, and with most clients, this is where we [00:23:00] start.
What I love so much about the Brave Widow one-on-one coaching program is that we have structure, we have strategy, and we have a plan of what we are doing. So typically with most clients, where we start is learning about grief, learning how to process it, how to navigate life, embracing the messiness of it.
So it's not about oh, we're gonna hurry and go through these grief recovery sessions, and then everything, you feel magical and you're never gonna have any issues going forward. Instead, we embrace the word and I. A lot. That's one of my clients' favorite words, is we embrace the sorrow and we embrace joy.
We love the life that we had, and we are working to build a life we can love. Again, we honor our person from the past and we make a [00:24:00] room for new friends, new connections, new ways of doing things that maybe they wouldn't have liked, and that's okay. So in the beginning, when I'm working with one-on-one clients, I really wanna make sure that you have not only the knowledge, but you have the tools, you have the process.
You have what is needed to navigate grief for the rest of your life. So no matter if you lose a job, if you lose a friendship, if you remarry and get divorced, if you have a parent die, if you have a child that dies, you'll know how to navigate grief and loss and how to show up for yourself and how to show up for other people.
This is where we start in one-on-one coaching. It is fundamental to your growth in rebuilding a life that you love. This is often why people feel stuck or feel disappointed [00:25:00] oh, I thought I was doing better. And then, I tried this thing and I broke down and I was sobbing, and now I'm questioning everything.
Like I'm questioning it all because this one thing, like this one song, this one sound, this one smell just sent me over the edge. I teach you how to navigate all of that and what to do when it feels like you've just gone back to square one. It's not possible to go back to square one, by the way.
You can't unhealed things that you've healed, but it can feel that way. So I teach you how to get through that, how to navigate that and to help normalize, like this is part of the process. There is a component where time is helping us, where things get less volatile over time. Time alone doesn't heal our heart or rebuild a life for [00:26:00] us, but time is part of the process.
So when clients first come to work with me, typically they're in that around the one year mark, maybe the two year mark. Sometimes it's a little bit longer, but for the most part, people are usually around that one to two years. They usually have gone to therapy, they've gone to grief or support groups, or maybe they tried grief share.
I have a client that just sent me an email over the weekend. It was the most beautiful email, and she said in there yeah, I went to therapy a couple times. I went to grief share for the first week or two, and I just never, essentially what she was saying is I never felt like I fit in. Like I didn't feel like the normal stages of grief applied to me.
And guess what? The five stages of grief don't actually apply to you. I never felt angry. I never felt some of these things that are the stages. Guess what? That's okay. They weren't created for people who were grieving the loss of a loved one. So typically [00:27:00] widows have tried other things.
They've done books, courses, groups, therapy, and to an extent, in many cases, it has helped them with healing, with getting to a place where they're in this weird new routine and they're in what I call maintenance mode. So they're not in survival mode anymore. They don't feel like they're drowning every day, but they're at this weird place where it's what do I do now?
Because I don't want this to be my life forever, but I'm not as in a, as deep of a place as I was before. When we start working together, we typically do some emotional healing. There's usually some that still needs to be done. I give you the tools, the strategy, the ability to navigate grief the rest of your life.
Okay?
Building Confidence and Moving Forward
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Then after we work on that, most of the time we work on rebuilding your confidence. So I have a method called the self-trust System, and we work [00:28:00] on building confidence in yourself, building confidence in your ability to do and try new things, building confidence in your ability to make decisions and all of the tools and the strategies that you need that will support you again the rest of your life.
Everything that you learn in coaching isn't just, oh yeah, I coached with Emily for six months. We talked, once a week and then I was done, and I just went about my life. No, that's not how it works.
Lifelong Skills for Confidence and Growth
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What I teach you and what I equip you with are skills that you will use the rest of your life.
Think about that. If you knew how to build confidence and how to put things in place like your own board of advisors, that you could just continue to use the rest of your life. It's not just while you're in coaching, you learn how to do it and you start doing it in coaching, but then you have that resource the rest of your life, which is [00:29:00] amazing.
Okay?
Exploring New Possibilities and Rebuilding
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We also start to explore new possibilities. So for many clients they feel like they don't really know who they are. They don't know what they like, what they don't like. They're having to rebuild their social circle. People aren't inviting them to go do things, and so they have to learn like, how do I make friends?
How do I get involved in things in my community? How do I figure out what I like and what I don't like and how do I work on relationships that maybe I still have, but they're toxic or they're hurtful or we just don't communicate well. Like it's just not a great relationship. How do I have boundaries and stop all this people pleasing and stop, oh, I should do this and I should do that.
And they're gonna be mad at me if I don't do this. Like, how do I get out of that?
The Coaching Journey: Practice and Perseverance
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I equip my clients with the ability to do all of these things. And [00:30:00] part of coaching is that we practice and we try, sometimes we stumble. It's like riding a bike for the first time. You get on the bike and you try to pedal and you fall over and I'm right there with you saying, it's okay.
Get back on the bike. Come on, we got this, we can do it. You get on the bike and you pedal, and you hit a rock and you go flying over the handlebars of the bike and I sit down beside you and I'm like, oof. That really hurt. I know. That had to really hurt. Let's talk about it. And once we talked about it and we sat in it for a while and I look at you and say, and I get back on the bike, let's go.
You get back on the bike pedal. Pedal puddle. Pedal. Oh, I didn't turn fast enough and I hit a tree.
Are you okay? Do we need to talk about it? Nope, I'm good. I'm getting back on the bike. Okay. I All right, I'm here. You, we can do this maybe next time when you're coming up on the tree. Let's do this [00:31:00] instead of that. Okay. Okay coach. I'll try that. That is what it's like to have a coach that's working with you.
Navigating Widowhood: Grief and Excitement
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We start to explore who you are now, what you want for your future, and you will get a vision that starts to excite you. Now, the tricky part of this season of widowhood is that you're wrestling with one hand, grieving your old life, missing your person, and on the other hand, starting to get excited about things again, starting to think oh, I could really like this, or I enjoy this, or, oh my gosh, I did this for the first time.
And then that even creates a challenge because you wrestle with the emotions of, Ugh, I did this for the first time, and he's not here to see it. Oh, he would be so proud of me. Why did it take me going through this to become this version of [00:32:00] myself? Ugh, I hate that. And so as we're moving through these seasons of grief, of healing, of rebuilding a life you love, you're wrestling right with all of these emotions and all of these concepts of becoming a more elevated, mature, well-rounded, capable person who's doing amazing things and yet wishing that your person was there to see it and believing that they're proud of you, but wishing that they were there to experience this with you.
And so as your coach, I'm there with you celebrating the wins, sharing in the successes, and sharing the burden of your sorrow and holding space for you. To cry, to be [00:33:00] angry, to be frustrated that this is your life, while also building this new life.
Investing in Yourself: The Value of Coaching
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I am a huge believer in investing in yourself, and I truly believe that's what it is. It's an investment.
I have invested and continue to invest in myself, tens of thousands of dollars in books, in courses, in coaching programs, in group coaching programs, and one-on-one coaching programs. And here's what I will share. There's value in all of them. You can also find tons of information for free on YouTube, like you can Google on YouTube, how to get through grief, you can search on YouTube how to rebuild your life as a widow, and you can find all kinds of information for free.
The challenge is sometimes that can feel really overwhelming. You don't really know who to listen to, you don't know if it's specifically going to help [00:34:00] you. You don't know if it's just some random stranger on the Internet's opinion about how things should be done versus someone who's walked the walk, helped other people walk the walk, and if it's really meant for you and where you are with all of your challenges.
I've offered courses and class series and masterminds. You may have heard me even talk about the Brave Widow Mastermind, which yes is gonna be coming back probably in the fall. It's a group coaching program and you can get tons of value in group coaching programs. I am right now in two different group coaching programs.
Okay, so I believe in group coaching. I believe that it works and I believe that you can get a ton of value in all of those things.
The Power of One-on-One Coaching
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What has propelled me [00:35:00] forward the most every time is one-on-one coaching. When I needed to write my speech, when I spoke at the National Funeral Directors Association last October in New Orleans, and I needed to write a speech, I could have looked it up on YouTube, how to write a speech, how to write a great speech, how to speak well.
I could have bought a course, I could have gone to a group coaching program on how to write a speech. But this was so important to me that I knew I wanted a one-on-one coach. Why? Because I didn't wanna compete with other people on a group coaching call. I didn't wanna watch somebody's video and figure out how to translate that into a speech for me that was gonna be impactful for these other people.
No I wanted. Time, attention, focus on me on this speech. I wanted somebody [00:36:00] who was gonna make sure I actually wrote the speech, made sure I practiced a speech, who would teach me specifically how to create something that was gonna be captivating and that was gonna be impactful for these funeral directors.
These funeral directors come from countries all across the world. Like I had a whole group of PE of funeral directors from the Philippines that came up and took a group picture and they were like, we're taking everything you taught us back to the Philippines. That is crazy. Amazing. Amazing. And so it was important to me that I had a one-on-one coach that was teaching me, that was preparing me, that was getting me ready.
It was that important to me to invest in a one-on-one coach. How important is this to you? How important is it to be able to understand grief and how to navigate it to rebuild a life [00:37:00] that you can love again, to have a social circle of people around you who support you, who care about you, who are gonna be there for you?
How important is that to you?
Client Success Stories and Impact
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I logged into my computer this morning. It's Monday. The day that I'm recording this, I logged into my computer and I can't tell you how, I don't even know if I can describe how I felt reading emails. Getting pictures from my clients through Voxer, getting messages through Voxer from my clients of Hey, I just had to tell you that this happened.
Oh my gosh, I can't believe I did this. Or, Hey, look at this picture of me on a date. Oh, hey, I just have to tell you how much Brave Widow has meant to me and how much your coaching program has meant to me, and I have to keep working with you. Like how much of an impact [00:38:00] that the coaching program has had on other people and how just so proud and so grateful I am that I get to help people move forward, that I get to help them not stay stuck forever in a place of sadness and sorrow and self pity, but I get to help them honor their grief process, emotional healing, and say, okay, now let's get on the bike.
If you're not ready to get on the bike, let's put our hands on the handlebars. We're gonna walk beside the bike, and when you get that text that sends you over the edge, or when you have an interaction with a coworker that just frustrates you to no end, you pick up the phone and you send me a message, and guess what?
I'm gonna message you back so you don't have to wait till next Wednesday when it's our next coaching session. You can message me 24 7. That is the [00:39:00] kind of coach and support that I am for my clients, because I believe that's the type of coaching and support that you need. It was what helped me the most.
Dr. Betsy, she ran the Life Coaching Certification program, but she also changed my life. I can message her. I can message her right now on this podcast and say, I need to get on the phone with you. And she would get on the phone with me. We don't count sessions. I don't count minutes. I am here to support you and ensure your success as your coach, and I believe that's what's needed.
It's not for me to say you get 50 minutes every other week, and that's the only access that you have. Yes, I do have boundaries. I try not to check my [00:40:00] messages and respond on the weekends. I try to honor that time with my family and enjoy my time there. But Monday through Friday, I'm here for my clients. I respond, I support, I ask questions, I give feedback, and sometimes I just check in if I haven't heard in a while.
Because I believe as your coach, I am called to help you and other widows. Walk side by side with you on this journey, not just give you advice, not just tell you what you should do. I am walking this journey side by side with you every step, every day, all the way.
I will help you create a life that you are proud of, that you love, that feels deeply meaningful to you. Coming out of a place where life might right now feel [00:41:00] hopeless and pointless. And meaningless.
I am so confident I can help you because I have helped and am helping other widows. And it's not to brag. I don't pretend to have all of the answers. But it comes from a place of deep service because I have helped people and I wanna continue helping people. This is my calling,
and what an honor it is.
What an honor it is to meet people at sometimes their most vulnerable, their most sorrowful, darkest time. And to say to them, I'm gonna walk side by side with you and we're gonna move you from the deep darkness to a place of light and hope and the ability to bring joy into your life. And I'm [00:42:00] not gonna leave your side until we get you there.
The Six-Month Transformation
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So sometimes people ask, why six months? How long does it take, Emily? Are you telling me that I can go from being in deep grief to just loving my life and everything's perfect in six months? No, but I am telling you with great confidence that you're gonna make significant strides in six months.
It's the reason I pick six months. What I have observed over these past couple of years of coaching widows is that it usually takes two to three months for people to feel like they're starting to turn the corner. And the reason for that is because usually the first couple of months, we're doing a lot of learning, we're doing a lot of processing, of using the tools to navigate grief, of unpacking things that kind of forgot.
[00:43:00] We're in the corners of our heart and our mind that we need to process. And we're just around that third month really starting to take those steps forward, really starting to change a lot of the behaviors that we've been accustomed to in the past. So three months is really when people start to feel like, oh yes, I see we're making progress.
We, I've got traction, I've got tools. Now th this is working. This is working right? And then from three to six months, that's where people start to make some really big leaps. From three to six months is where we are building our confidence, where we're inviting people to go to lunch with us, maybe for the first time where we're going to new places, we're trying new things, we are getting on the bike, we're pedaling, we're going.
We're zooming around. We're having all these experiences, and we [00:44:00] are learning how to grow our heart and grow our capacity, and our ability to hold all of these really big emotions all at the same time. In our minds, we think, oh, it's one or the other. We're happy, or we're sad, we're curious, or we're disinterested.
No. I teach you how to expand your emotional capacity to hold all these really big emotions and things all at once, and to say, and this. It's not this or this, it's this and this, and you grow. You actually grow your ability to do that. We grow your confidence, we grow your sense of purpose.
You'll grow in. Just the feeling that you're moving forward. So often we feel stuck because we're not growing. I just saw a clip from Mel Robbins on this over the weekend. I think I saved it 'cause I wanted to stitch it is, it was so [00:45:00] good. She said, often we feel stuck because we're not growing and in this coaching program you will grow.
You are gonna grow, you're gonna expand. You are going to do things that six months from now you're gonna be like, wow, who is this person? I don't even know. I'm just like, I'm so proud of myself. This is amazing. Those are things that I often hear. So six months is a really good time. Now I have some clients that have been with me over two years.
I have some clients that have been with me over a year, or we're coming up on a year or, we just keep extending the time that we're working together. And it's not because oh, this isn't working. I still need help. But we just uncover more okay, Emily, you've helped me with this, but also I brought these other things and I wanna keep working on this.
Now I wanna work on this. Now I wanna work on my relationship with my family. Now I [00:46:00] wanna work on my relationship with my workplace. Now I wanna work on, this goal I have and whatever that is it's just you uncover things that you wanna continue to work on and you don't wanna lose that momentum.
The Importance of Having a Life Coach
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I believe most people should have a life coach. Whoever you are, it doesn't matter. You're a widow. You're not a widow. I believe most people should have a life coach. And I say most because there are people that don't wanna grow. There are people that wanna wake up and have the same day every day and not think about life and or they just feel that life happens to them and that they have no ability to change things.
And I do get some of those people who reach out and ultimately, sometimes I tell them, I'm not the coach for you. Like I am the person who believes we can't ultimately control everything in our future. That's true, but. Or should I say, and [00:47:00] I believe that we still have the ability to create something beautiful out of something horrible and tragic that has happened.
I believe that God gives us hope and promise for a beautiful future and something so beautiful and abundant and amazing that right now you probably can't even imagine just how good that could be.
And the journey in getting there isn't easy, somewhat simple and straightforward, but isn't easy. And so having a coach to walk that journey with you is really an invaluable investment that you make in yourself. I have coaches that help me in different areas of my business or my life. I will always have a coach the rest of my life.
Because I'm a learner. I'm a dreamer. I'm a doer. I am, like I said, I'm a high achiever. I always have things that I wanna work on to improve myself, [00:48:00] to improve my relationships, to improve my finances, to improve my health, to improve whatever it is. I always have something that I wanna work towards that gives me hope for the future.
It gives me something to look forward to. And it's not to say I'm never satisfied, I'm never content because I have learned how to be content and I don't wanna settle. I wanna be the best version of me I can be. I wanna be the best wife, the best mom, the best grandma, the best everything. Best version of me, and the best version of me that God has called me to be.
Invitation to Join the Coaching Program
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So I'd love to invite you to coach with me. I have four spots left at my current coaching rate before the prices are going to increase. And here's the reason why I do it this way, [00:49:00] is because when I accept a one-on-one coaching client, like I shared, I am all in with that client every day, every step of the way.
Whatever they need, I'm right there.
And part of the challenge is that I.
My time is not unlimited. I can only help a certain number of people. I can only host so many calls during the week. I only have so much emotional and mental bandwidth to help navigate in a deeply intimate way, help people navigate through this process.
I am fully invested. I don't stand back at an arm's length and just say, oh, you over there now this step. No, I'm down in it with you in the trenches. Look, I got my sleeves rolled up. You're watching this on video. [00:50:00] My sleeves are literally rolled up. I am in the trenches with you every step of the way there to fully support and guide you.
So it takes a lot for me as someone who is introverted and needs downtime and alone time and who has a lot of empathy for people that I work with. I can separate myself. I don't have to feel weighed down by every traumatic thing that my clients have experienced in the past. And I am deeply invested in and committed to this deeply transformative work that we do in coaching.
And so in this way, that's why I limit the number of people that I work with. One-on-one, but I would love to invite you if you, if any of this has resonated with you, if you feel that urge or that call to set up a consult [00:51:00] call, then I invite you to do that if nothing else. Okay. Even if you decide oh, I don't really this Emily person.
I don't know. I have all the thoughts whatever you decide. Okay. I don't feel like some people, fear are afraid, oh, she's gonna think it's a waste of time. I don't know if she could help me. Listen, I will tell you, not every client is right for me. And there are some clients that I do say, I, I'm sorry I'm not your coach.
Here are the things that I would do in your situation. These are the things that I would focus on. Or here's another resource that's super helpful, or someone who I think is just a better fit for you. Let's talk with this person over here. I don't accept every client, but that's pretty rare that I need to have those conversations.
That tends to be with people who, again, feel very much like [00:52:00] life is happening to them and they have no influence. They have no ability to make a difference and make a change. And even when I was in corporate leadership, I would tell those people like, I'm not the mentor for you, because I believe that it might be hard, it might feel really hard, it might require a lot of work, it might take some time.
But I believe that you do have the power and the ability to make a better life for yourself. I do believe that. And so I need clients who are aligned with my beliefs and values so that it will be a great fit and that you will ultimately experience success. But so if you're thinking about scheduling a call with me, for some of you, I know you feel that urge, and sometimes you tell me like, I really feel like I need to schedule a call with you, but I'm not sure.
There's a lot of, just notice the lack of confidence. Notice the lack of peace [00:53:00] that it leaves you with. Should I schedule the call or should I not? If nothing else, just get on the phone. Let's chat. Chat with me for an hour. I'm gonna walk you through the guided process. I'm going to share insights of what I would work on, what I think the best next steps are for you.
And you will walk away with your plan. Like you will literally get your plan emailed to you and you'll be able to have that. But I wanna invite you to have that deeper conversation because this might be the exact thing that you've been looking for and that you've been praying for. I hear that so often, like this is exactly, this is just what I needed.
I was praying for this. I tried. That was the email I got over the weekend. Emily, you don't understand. I tried therapy. I went to GriefShare. I did this I tried that. I looked online and I just exhausted hours [00:54:00] trying to figure out how to move forward until I discovered Brave Widow and your coaching program and then everything changed.
I wanna see if I can get this client on a podcast with me because her, it was so heartfelt and just I think would really resonate with you.
Final Thoughts and Resources
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So go to brave widow.com or wherever you're watching this. Leave a comment, send me a dm. I will help you with scheduling a time for us to meet. Let's do a consult,
let's see whether Brave Widow is the right coaching program for you. All right, until next time.
If you're newly widowed and aren't sure where to start, you need the brave new widow's starter kit inside brave new widow. You'll find a starter guide to help you through your first few months. A quick start guide. You can share with family [00:55:00] and friends so they know how to help you. And a collection of some of the frequent topics that widows want to learn more about. To get the brave new widow series.
Just go to brave widow. Dot com slash start it's free and you'll get instant access. That's brave widow.com/start S T a R T. See you there.
