Navigating Grief: Three Widows Share Their Transformative Journeys
This podcast delves into the profound and often unspoken journey of widowhood, featuring three remarkable women who share their personal experiences and insights. They emphasize that there is no right or wrong way to grieve, highlighting the individuality of each person's process. The conversation uncovers the importance of being prepared for unexpected life events, with practical advice on how to support those facing loss. Listeners will find valuable takeaways on the significance of open communication and community support, as well as the need to prepare for the future, even in the midst of grief. Ultimately, this discussion seeks to shine a light on widowhood, aiming to foster a greater understanding and compassion for those navigating this challenging path.
The podcast features a profound exploration of widowhood through the heartfelt experiences of three remarkable women, Karen, Rebecca, and K.J. Each guest shares personal anecdotes that highlight the unique challenges and triumphs they faced after losing their spouses. The conversation begins with reflections on the best advice they received, revealing how these nuggets of wisdom shaped their resilience and perspective on life. As the dialogue unfolds, the women delve into their individual journeys to widowhood, discussing the suddenness of loss and the long, often painful process of grief that followed. Rebecca recounts the brief but impactful nature of her husband's passing during the COVID-19 pandemic, while Karen and K.J. share their experiences of long-term illness and the anticipatory grief that accompanied their spouses' illnesses. These narratives serve as a poignant reminder of the unpredictability of life and the necessity of preparation for unforeseen events.
The discussion transitions to the practical aspects of navigating widowhood. The guests emphasize the importance of preparing for the unexpected, offering valuable insights on how to approach conversations about death and financial planning with loved ones. Their upcoming book, "Widows Among Us," aims to foster open dialogue about widowhood, destigmatizing the topic and encouraging proactive discussions about life planning. Each woman's story contributes to a larger narrative that underscores the importance of community support, the diverse ways individuals cope with loss, and the need for friends and family to engage with those grieving in meaningful ways. The podcast ultimately serves as both a source of comfort and a call to action for listeners to consider their own preparedness for life's uncertainties.
Takeaways:
- Grieving is a personal journey, and there is no right or wrong way to do it.
- It's essential to have conversations about loss and preparation long before it happens.
- Offering specific help, rather than asking someone what they need, is much more effective.
- Widowhood can be a catalyst for personal growth and discovering inner strength.
- Many women feel unprepared for widowhood, which highlights the importance of planning ahead.
- Sharing experiences of widowhood can help break the stigma and encourage open discussions.
Links referenced in this episode:
Transcript
Well, ladies, welcome to the podcast.
Host:How you doing today?
Karen:Very good, Keith, thank you.
Rebecca:Doing well.
K.J.:Doing very well.
Host:Good.
Host:It's so good to have you all on and I'm looking forward to this conversation, but I'm going to do this a little different.
Host:So what I'm going to do, I always ask my question, my favorite question.
Host:So each of you get a chance to answer this question.
Host:So whoever wants to go first can kind of be the guinea pig for all the rest of you.
Host:But the question is, what's the best piece of advice you've ever received?
Karen:My father told me you can do anything you want to do.
Karen:He didn't tell me that early enough in my life, but he told me that at a significant time.
Karen:And it's not really advice, but it was empowering.
Rebecca:Well, I have something similar to that.
Rebecca:Again, it was from my dad and it wasn't verbal advice as much as when my sister and I each turned 16.
Rebecca:He bought each of us a very priceful piece of good jewelry.
Rebecca:And his rationale for doing that was that he wanted us to learn that we should look for a partner in our future who would value us as much as he did.
K.J.:Okay, my turn.
K.J.:Still thinking a little bit.
K.J.:Honestly, I think mine is more of like a quote or something that you would say, but it has to do with the fact basically what you think about, comes about and how you perceive your life or things happening to them is actually how your life goes.
K.J.:And so attitude really does matter.
Host:I love that.
Host:So the audience get a chance to know each of you a little bit.
Host:Why don't you give us a little bit of your bio?
Host:Karen, you can start first.
Host:And she was the last one to go.
K.J.:Okay.
Host:Karen Smith.
K.J.:Yes.
K.J.:I am currently semi retired other than writing a book.
K.J.:I have, I used to.
K.J.:My late husband and I owned an accounting business.
K.J.:So I have a background in taxes and accounting, which is not my love.
K.J.:It was his.
K.J.:I have.
K.J.: and a half years ago in: K.J.:And so I have since remarried have.
K.J.:I have three kids of my own, two step kids, grandkids.
K.J.:We love to go camping and national parks and just travel and enjoy life because you never know what's around the bend.
K.J.:So you enjoy every day.
Host:Love that.
Host:Rebecca.
Rebecca:What was the question again?
Rebecca:Keith, Just give us a.
Host:Give us a short bio.
Rebecca:Short bio.
Rebecca:Yes.
Karen:Well.
Rebecca:Oh, well, there are times where I feel like I've been here for 2,000 years.
Rebecca:You know, I've actually had very broad experiences and background.
Rebecca:I haven't had what one would call A linear career because usually about every 10 years, I tend to redefine myself.
Rebecca:And I will say that through the first part of those years, I spent 30 years in various forms of nursing.
Rebecca:And then when I left nursing, I took on several careers in terms of art and alternative healthcare and quite a few other things.
Host:Right, Karen, K.J.
Host:we'll go that way.
Host:I don't get you too mixed up.
Karen:I'm five foot tall.
Karen:The other Karen is six two.
Karen:We go by short Karen and tall Karen.
Host:Oh, okay.
Host:Well, you're sitting down, so you all look the same.
Karen:I know.
Karen:Exactly, exactly.
Rebecca:I'm medium Rebecca.
K.J.:Yeah, there you go.
Karen:Right in the middle there.
Karen:Yes.
Karen:Well, I have a nonlinear life as well as career.
Karen:My father moved around a lot because of his telephone technology expertise.
Karen:They kept moving them to change equipment and so forth.
Karen:Then the guy I fell in love with in college got drafted by the army, and so I was an army wife for 31 years.
Karen:So my life was nonlinear, moving all those times to different countries and different states.
Karen:I have been a daycare center teacher, a high school teacher.
Karen:I've taught taxicab drivers who were 76.
Karen:I've run nonprofits.
Karen:I've written for expatriate newspapers in Norway, worked for the economic development department in Killeen, Texas, and in Oslo, Norway.
Karen:Just projects in Norway.
Karen:So now I'm writing a book and I write for a magazine.
Karen:I've probably been writing through all of those and now it's all I do and travel a lot, as much as I can.
Host:That's so cool.
Host:I love that.
Host:So let's dig into the reason why we're on the podcast.
Host:So can each of you share with us your personal journey to widowhood and how it shaped your perspective on life?
Host:We'll start with Rebecca.
Host:We'll kind of mix it up a little bit.
Rebecca:Yeah.
Rebecca:Okay.
Rebecca:Well, actually, my journey to becoming a widow was rather short in terms of.
Rebecca:My husband had a heart attack in the early days of COVID but he refused to go to the hospital because he was afraid he would catch COVID in the hospital.
Rebecca:So all total.
Rebecca:That was like a total 36 hours, you know, so becoming a widow was short the process, however, for me, you know, in moving through widowhood probably took me a year to 18 months because I really developed a very heavy duty case of brain fog and just felt no energy, no energy whatsoever.
Rebecca:And I developed a long term relationship with my sofa and Netflix for a period of that time.
Rebecca:So.
Rebecca:But eventually I was angry with myself because I wasn't acting and Meeting my daily life as the woman that I had been before my husband died.
Rebecca:And I undertook a very rigorous and very deep dive into my.
Rebecca:Myself, my history, childhood traumas and so forth, to see where I needed to go and how I could come out of it.
Rebecca:But what also was one of the complications, it really wasn't a complication for me, it was a complication for other people, is that I am neurodivergent and I prefer to be alone.
Rebecca:And in that regard, my healing and traversing through my grief story actually required me to isolate myself as much as possible, which is not what people expect you to do.
Host:Wow, that's hard.
Rebecca:Yeah.
Karen:My husband was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer by accident.
Karen:In many ways, something else was wrong.
Karen:They were investigating it and in doing the exams, they found the whatever node, nodule piece of the cancer.
Karen:And so they were able to.
Karen:We were able to through networks, Keith, you know, blessings and angels and networks we had.
Karen:We were able to get surgery for him in two weeks time.
Karen:And they were able to capture the critical parts, but not enough, evidently, because he passed away three years later.
Karen:So my journey into widowhood was three years long.
Karen:And it was a seesaw and a balancing beam of anticipatory grief trying to shore him up, still having.
Karen:Enjoying our lives, filling them as much as we could, trying to be positive, trying to balance my challenges with not making him feel that I was not going to be okay.
Karen:So it was a challenge.
Karen:And then when he passed away, honestly, I was ready to go in many ways.
Karen:I bought a condo just because had been on the market.
Karen:I lost and then was sold.
Karen:And after he passed away, it came off back on the market.
Karen:So I grabbed it and that sort of like started a rat race for a while.
Karen:So typical me, full of change, always change.
Host:Right?
Host:Oh, good.
Host:Tall Karen's back.
Host:Now you are.
Host:So why don't you start from the beginning of your story.
K.J.: er, my husband passed away in: K.J.:He was 49, I was 47.
K.J.:We owned an accounting business, a tax and accounting business.
K.J.:And he passed away on April 12, which as you can imagine, kind of threw everything into chaos at the office because we still had extensions to file and all that kind of fun stuff I had.
K.J.:We had a.
K.J.:Our oldest daughter was graduating from college in a few weeks and our youngest two, their twins were freshmen in college.
K.J.:And my dad had actually passed away just six months prior.
K.J.:So there was a lot at the time that Sam passed away, we were helping, you know, my mom figuring out her new role As a widow.
K.J.:And, you know, it was just, well, as soon as tax season's over, we'll really figure things out.
K.J.:Of course, we never got to that point.
K.J.:And so I honestly don't remember much of that first year of widowhood.
K.J.:I was busy trying to keep the business going.
K.J.:I worked a lot because if I worked, I was exhausted and I could then sleep, but I didn't have to think of anything.
K.J.:So one of my blessings was my oldest, who had graduated, lived at home for the first year in between college and going for her master's.
K.J.:So that was helpful to have someone in the house, but it was.
K.J.:It was a journey.
K.J.:I also.
K.J.:Something to know about me is that I was a very quiet and shy person.
K.J.:And I liked Sam, my husband.
K.J.:He.
K.J.:I wanted him to handle everything.
K.J.:Like, I would tell him, here's my thoughts, here's my opinion, but you need to go make it happen.
K.J.:And so when he died, I kind of had to stand on my own.
K.J.:My.
K.J.:What I really wanted to do was to crawl into a hole and just kind of lock myself away from the world.
K.J.:But that obviously wasn't going to happen.
K.J.:Between my kids and my mom and my clients and my employees, they were like, yeah, no, we need you.
K.J.:So kind of had to step up to the plate.
K.J.:And in that process, I found a voice.
K.J.:I found my love of leadership and speaking.
K.J.:And it's just.
K.J.:I feel like I ultimately became the woman that Sam always knew I could be.
K.J.:That was very opinionated.
K.J.:Well, he always, always opinionated, but not to the world, but really, you know, stood up for things and enjoyed what I was doing and confident in what I was doing.
K.J.:And so that's where I am today.
K.J.:Obviously, we're writing this book.
K.J.:I had written a book a number of years ago called I Didn't See that Coming.
K.J.:And it is a workbook, basically, to get all of your paperwork together so that if and when an unexpected life event happens, you know where the paperwork is or your loved ones do or whatever.
K.J.:So, you know, that kind of has morphed into just talking about the whole experience of widowhood and life traumas and, you know, what the three of us talk about.
K.J.:Part of what we do talk about is being prepared.
K.J.:But obviously, we talk about a lot more than that, because that's just a piece of it.
Host:This is an interesting topic because my very first congregation, I walked into a congregation.
Host:It was a much older congregation, older members.
Host:And then the first year, we had five women lose their husbands, and they were older.
Host:And almost every single one of Them were very dependent on their husband.
Host:And I had read somewhere that if you don't get people back involved in life within the first year, you probably will lose them.
Host:And so I started a widow's ministry.
Host:Widow widower ministry, to keep them engaged.
Host:We would get together once a month and do a fun event, do a Bible study, go do a trip.
Host:And it really started to get them back into the swing of being a part of community again.
Host:So kind of what you all are describing is something I intuitively didn't know.
Host:It was, like, almost 30 years ago.
Host:It's like something has to get people moving, otherwise you may lose them.
Karen:Well, actually, you said five in a year.
Karen: Do you know that every day: Host:No, I did not.
Karen:At the average age of 59.4.
Host:Wow.
Karen:Yeah.
Karen:So it must have been a small congregation.
Karen:You only had five.
Host:Yeah.
Karen:But it's still daunting.
Host:Yeah.
Host:No, that's amazing.
Host:So you write this book, Widows Among Us.
Host:Kind of tell us how this collaboration came together.
Rebecca:You can start short, Karen.
Karen:All right, I'll start.
Karen:Our story is I'm in love with Morocco.
Karen: I had traveled there in: Karen:It's just something so different from our culture and yet so wonderful as well.
Karen: So in: Karen: Well, in: Karen:Hey, I'm over here.
Karen:I'm planning this thing, if you, you know, let me know if you're interested.
Karen:Well, Karen and her husband, Second husband, came and signed up, and Rebecca signed up.
Karen:And toward the end of our nine or 12 days in Morocco, we were in a town called Essuero on the coast.
Karen:And our guide planned for us to go to a Berber hammam, which is kind of like a Moroccan spa, only on a more provincial level.
Karen:So, well, you know, we got scrubbed and washed and hosed, and.
Karen:Rebecca, why don't you talk about that?
Rebecca:Yes.
Rebecca:Well, there were the three of us in this tiny little hot room, laying on heated marble with steam everywhere.
Rebecca:And what ends up happening in the hammam is that you actually end up totally nude and these women are just scrubbing the heck right out of you.
Rebecca:It was one of those events where I said to the other two as we.
Karen:Oh, yes, we're in a shared room.
Rebecca:Yeah, Well, I.
Rebecca:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rebecca:As I said to the Other two.
Rebecca:I said, wow, you guys are seeing the tattoo that only my husband has ever seen.
Rebecca:And so that kind of started, you know, where we had a shared experience and we built on it from there.
Karen:Yeah, we started traveling together and one of our trips was to Sedona, and Rebecca wanted to go to Vermont.
Karen:We said, let's go someplace warm.
Rebecca:It wasn't warm.
Rebecca:It wasn't.
K.J.:Tell them what we picked Sedona.
K.J.:We're like, oh, it'll be nice and warm there.
K.J.:Well, it was not, especially because we went further north up to the Grand Canyon where there was snow and, you know, whatever, it's fine.
K.J.:But the place that we picked had a beautiful porch outside porch.
K.J.:And so we're wrapped in blankets with a fire out there and everything.
K.J.:And we're talking about our experience at that point.
K.J.:So Karen and I had been widowed prior to Morocco.
K.J.: usband passed a year later in: K.J.: So this is: K.J.:And we were like, you know, we should write a book about that.
K.J.:And we went out the next day to Staples and bought color coded legal pads and pens and just started like, like, oh, this is what.
K.J.:And you know, me being the business person, I'm like, oh, this is what we need to do.
K.J.:Create a business, and this is how we need to do it.
K.J.:And we got a.
K.J.:We got a, you know, a website name or a domain name and.
K.J.:And it just, it.
K.J.:It went from there.
K.J.:It.
K.J.:It just ballooned from there.
K.J.:We had a few writing retreats.
K.J.:I guess that was in February of 23.
K.J.:We were quote, unquote, done writing the major part of the book by July of 24, so 18 months.
K.J.:But in that time, we did a couple of writing retreats and we did a good job of pulling stuff from us.
K.J.:We all cried at different times, reliving emotions and experiences.
K.J.:One of the biggest things we heard from each other, to us, or even some of our beta readers was go deeper.
K.J.:You know, the thing that they would say to me is, you're telling me I want to feel it.
K.J.:And, you know, so we really have dug deep for this because we want to.
K.J.:We want to tell our experience, but we want people to feel it as well and understand it.
K.J.:The goods, the bads, the ups, the downs, the missteps, the, you know, the wins and everything and really the journey to who we are today.
Host:So in this book, how do you guys describe the process of grieving first and then healing after the loss of.
Rebecca:A spouse, well, it's individual.
Rebecca:Because what you'll find as you're reading the stories, our stories, is where three wildly different women with different experiences, different approaches to the world.
Rebecca:And that was the absolute influence in terms of what we experienced, emotionally or otherwise.
Rebecca:And that's one of the things that we want other people to understand, is you're not required to grieve how somebody else thinks you should grieve.
Rebecca:You will grieve according to how you're feeling and what works for you.
Rebecca:And the healing process for each of us is the same way.
Rebecca:You know, that we all heal according to our own personalities, our own differences, our own experiences, our own support structures.
Rebecca:You know, who's with us, who's supporting us, who's not supporting us.
Rebecca:So it's really not a patent prescription for how you can grieve or how you can heal.
Karen:Afterwards, when you asked us how we described it, I think it would be that we described it in three different ways, and we emphasized that there are a gazillion other ways.
Karen:As Rebecca said, each of us was different.
Karen:And as I mentioned earlier, I bought a condo a week after my husband's memorial service.
Karen:And Rebecca talked about brain fog for over a year.
Karen:So we want.
Karen:That's one of the key points, is that we want people to understand you're not doing it right and you're not doing it wrong, and however long it takes you or however deep or outside emotion you are, you know, Karen and I both.
Karen: My father had passed away in: Karen:And I.
Karen:Karen loves road trips.
Karen:It's during the pandemic.
Karen:And she says, oh, please, let me drive you to Michigan.
Karen:Let me drive you to Michigan.
Karen:I want to go out.
Karen:I want to get away.
Karen:So we're driving back from Michigan, and, you know, we're talking about death.
Karen:We were both widows.
Karen:I was.
Karen:We were there because of a death, and we were talking about Rebecca, our friend from the hammam, and the fact that her husband had passed away, and it was Covid, and she was sequestered, and she must be needing something.
Karen:You know, we felt she had to be needing something.
Karen:Well, she advised us later that her personality was, no, I'm neurodivergent, and I manage this totally differently.
Karen:Which, you know, actually, Keith, we learned a lot from each other about the fact that it's.
Karen:Honestly, it's different and it's going to be okay.
Karen:So we were our own study sample in many ways.
Karen:So, yeah, it's.
Karen:It's Been a journey.
Karen:And we shared, we shared a lot of that.
Karen:We, we shared all of that information in our book too, about how Karen and I learned from Rebecca.
Host:You know, people always want to jump in and help you.
Host:And you guys, you ladies have made a really good point of everybody handles grief differently.
Host:Do you have any words of wisdom for the person who, like, especially you, Rebecca?
Host:I'm sure people like, let's get Rebecca out of the house.
Rebecca:They tried.
Rebecca:They tried.
Host:So how do you help people without being a hindrance in their process?
Host:Have you guys got any words of wisdom?
K.J.:So one of the things I'll say when Karen and I were talking about this is what we did was we reached out to Rebecca.
K.J.:We set up a messenger group with the two of us.
K.J.:We actually called it the accidental Hammam ladies.
K.J.:And we just kind of, we set that up and like, hey, Rebecca, just touching base.
K.J.:And so we didn't show up on her doorstep one day.
K.J.:I promise we probably did eventually, but that wasn't our first response.
K.J.:Right.
K.J.:But it was about kind of reaching out to let her know that we were there if she needed or wanted anything without forcing herself on us, on her.
K.J.:Right.
K.J.:And so I think that's the key.
K.J.:And it kind of goes along with another topic that we talk about a little bit in the, in the book.
K.J.:As far as friends go.
K.J.:I have a friend who called me every day after Sam died.
K.J.:Could have just been a, you know, 30 second conversation, but she called to say, thinking of you, do you need anything?
K.J.:I have other friends that they didn't know what to say, so they didn't say anything.
K.J.:And some of them, I actually, most of my friends of today, I didn't know before Sam died.
K.J.:And so it, it's hard when somebody goes through something like this to know what to do.
K.J.:But especially because whether you know that person well or you don't know them that well, but you know, we're thinking of them.
K.J.:A lot of times it's just reaching out in a non, you know, like a non aggressive or a non, non.
K.J.:Like it's not that you want to insert yourself in their life, but you just want them to know that you're thinking of them.
K.J.:And sometimes that's all they need to know is like, hey, somebody else there is thinking of me.
K.J.:That's awesome.
K.J.:And it might take three or four texts or three or four, you know, whatevers to say for them to respond back and go, thanks, I appreciate it.
K.J.:But you know, it's seen, it's appreciated.
K.J.:It doesn't Mean that they're ready to reach back out to you, but the reaching out is important but without expectation.
Host:That makes sense.
Karen:That's one reason Rebecca was protected by Covid.
Karen:Yeah, I was.
Karen:We couldn't.
Karen:So, you know, I would drop off another.
Karen:The person I met Rebecca through.
Karen:She and I lived closer to Rebecca than Karen did.
Karen:And we would drop off food at the doorstep and so forth.
Karen:Because part of our book, the last part of our book is how ways to help a widow.
Karen:Suggestions, ideas, and things not to do.
Karen:So we have all sorts of things.
Karen:Like, I teasingly said to Karen that I was going to create a beer and batteries date with her husband because he's tall, I'm short, and I didn't keep the tallest ladder I needed to keep when I moved into my condo, so I can't reach my.
Karen:My smoke alarms and so forth.
Karen:So I was going to invite him over for a beer and have him check all the batteries in my house.
Karen:So it's beer and batteries.
Karen:It's dropping off food.
Karen:And we actually have made some sort of a checklist that says, here are some things you could do that first week, and then the second or the third week after everybody's disappeared.
Karen:Here are ways you can follow up.
Karen:Here are ways you can continue to support.
Karen:And our list actually goes out, like, six months from now.
Karen:Check the batteries in her house or.
Karen:Rebecca talked about the garbage next.
Karen:The garbage can next door.
Rebecca:Yeah, yeah.
Rebecca:The family across the street.
Rebecca:The husband passed away, and it had been his job, you know, as.
Rebecca:As couples do, that he would handle the trash cans and the recycling cans, you know, come trash day.
Rebecca:And his wife was just not used to that as well as who knows, you know, what her energy level might be.
Rebecca:So on trash day, I would just walk across the street and take their trash cans, pull them out to the curb, and then when the trashman emptied them, I would take them back up to their garage.
Rebecca:Something simple.
Rebecca:I mean, truly, how simple is it just to move a trash can?
Rebecca:But yet she really appreciated it when she found out who was taking out her trash for her.
Karen:Because I think one of the people we've talked to said that she refused to take out the trash.
Karen:It was her husband's job.
Karen:He deserted her.
Karen:And it was like six weeks.
Karen:And she didn't take the trash out because that was her expression of anger and frustration and grief in a different way.
Karen:So if you don't want a sticky neighborhood, take out your neighbor's trash.
Host:Take out your neighbor's trash.
Host:Oh, my.
Host:So what would you Guys say are some common misconceptions about widowhood that you hope to dispel through your book.
Rebecca:Well, one of the big things is somebody will invariably will come up to you as the new widow, and they will say, call me if you need anything.
Rebecca:Ain't gonna happen.
Rebecca:Because first of all, as the widow, I couldn't retain that information.
Rebecca:It was gone.
Rebecca:Second of all, I didn't have the energy to call anybody.
Rebecca:I mean, some days I was fortunate enough to be able to crawl out of bed, and then even then, I wouldn't even have been able to tell you what I thought that I needed, you know, I mean, to go, oh, let me go open the refrigerator and see what I need in there.
Rebecca:You know, how much energy that takes when you really don't have it, you know, so that.
Rebecca:That statement right there, as a matter of fact, I got to tell you, you know, on a personal level, I kind of have a negative concept about when somebody offers that.
Rebecca:That statement, call me if you need anything.
Rebecca:Because it's almost like an insincere way of saying, oh, yeah, I want to help you, but you're the one that has to call me.
Rebecca:And so I think that's one of the big major myths is, you know, you don't ask, you offer.
Rebecca:And, oh, I let the Karens talk about offering versus asking.
K.J.:Yeah.
K.J.:So, I mean, that could be as simple as.
K.J.:Rather than, you know, what do you need?
K.J.:Or what can I do for you?
K.J.:Hey, I baked a lasagna.
K.J.:I'd like to drop some off for you.
K.J.:And, you know, that way, all they have to say is yes or no.
K.J.:They don't have to go like, I'm going to the grocery store.
K.J.:What do you want?
K.J.:I have no clue.
K.J.:And I don't have the energy.
K.J.:Like Rebecca said, I don't have the energy to think about it.
K.J.:Right.
K.J.:But I can think about.
K.J.:Does lasagna sound good?
K.J.:Yes or no?
Karen:If you send a bottle of wine with it, especially.
Karen:Right, exactly.
K.J.:Exactly.
K.J.:You know, and so it's more about when you're going through a trauma and a grief like that.
K.J.:It.
K.J.:It's a lot about your energy is spent getting through the day and having to make decisions on little things.
K.J.:It's just.
K.J.:It's overwhelming, you know, and it's hard to understand how overwhelming it can be to think about what you might want to eat for dinner, what you might, you know, did I brush my teeth today?
K.J.:Am I, you know, anything?
K.J.:It's overwhelming to think about just the little things.
K.J.:And so being able to offer Something concrete, right.
K.J.:Can I bring you over some lasagna Here?
K.J.:I went to the grocery store.
K.J.:Here's a bag of food that I hope you can use that's non perishable or you know what, here's a.
K.J.:Karen at one point had a banana split show up in her door, right?
K.J.:So it, it's not making the widow think about what she might need, but just doing something for her that's going to be helpful, like Rebecca had said, taking the trash out or something.
Karen:And it could be even more simple than that without any work that you have to do.
Karen:And if you're not a cook and you figure, well, I can't take food and I don't know what she can have and what she might be allergic to and what she'd like or doesn't like, you can say, it is a beautiful sunset tonight.
Karen:Come on over and join me on my porch because you can't see it from there.
Karen:Or, you know, I'm going out for coffee tomorrow morning.
Karen:Let me pick you up and take you with me.
Karen:It doesn't have to be that you prepare something for them.
Karen:It could just be including them.
Karen:And that's another thing about.
Karen:You asked about some of the lessons, inviting people.
Karen:If you have had this couple as your friends and one of the spouses dies, don't quit inviting the other one.
Karen:Don't feel like they're going to think that they're a fifth wheel or a third wheel.
Karen:They're going to feel left out and unloved and almost not valued.
K.J.:What?
Karen:You only liked me because of my husband or my spouse.
Karen:That's, that's an insult or can be taken as an insult.
Karen:And the other thing is if you're going someplace to a.
Karen:You know, if you were both crafters or you both went to Bible study or you both went to the movies on Saturdays and you keep inviting her and she keeps saying no.
Karen:Continue to invite her, saying, you might not be ready yet, but I'm going to see whatever.
Karen:How about this week?
Karen:Do you want to go now?
Karen:Continue with that.
Host:I love that.
Host:What has been the most rewarding feedback you guys have gotten from the readers so far?
Karen:There have been some.
Karen:There's been some gems.
Karen:I had a woman, a friend, whose husband had been murdered in front of her when she was in her 20s.
Karen:She's now in her 50s and she was one of our pre readers and she said to me, Karen, after 30 years, your book allowed me to let go of the guilt of moving on.
Karen:Keith, that's 30 years of guilt.
Karen:That we.
Karen:Our book.
Karen:Relieved.
Rebecca:Yeah.
Host:Wow.
K.J.:And we've had, you know, when we've had women that are facing widowhood, their husband is, you know, has cancer or something, some kind of a disease, and they know it's coming, and they have said that it has helped them.
K.J.:It's actually helped them know that they're going to be okay.
K.J.:And.
K.J.:And I think that's one of the things that.
K.J.:That we really are trying to get across and one of the reasons that we're adamant that this is not a book just for widows, it's a book for women to help them prepare.
K.J.:Because we do.
K.J.:That is one of the sections that we talk about to prepare beforehand, whether it's paperwork, whether it's household items, whether it's financial.
K.J.:Financial is a big, big aspect of widowhood because your income is significantly less usually, although your expenses are not.
K.J.:Yeah, usually significantly less, although your expenses are not.
K.J.:But it's about a woman's journey through an event, and in this case, it is widowhood.
K.J.:But we want women to read the book and be done with it and say, wow, those were great stories and helpful, and I want to pass this along to somebody else.
K.J.:You don't have to be a widow to read it.
Rebecca:And one of the other aspects that people have commented on repeatedly is that as they read our stories, they've learned something from each one of our stories, but they also appreciate the practicality of the last half of the book.
Rebecca:You know, so they have the emotional stories about, look, these three women had these experiences, and out of their experiences, they're presenting to me what they've learned, how to make my life easier when this happens.
Karen:Rebecca named that one chapter of the book, as we're talking about helping people prepare.
Karen:Nobody talks about widowhood.
Karen:It's just not one of those things that people willingly converse about with their family members.
Karen:And so Rebecca said, you know, we ought to call this mamas teach your daughters to be widows.
Rebecca:Yep.
Karen:So we did.
K.J.:And you know, and we've talked about.
K.J.:There's a section in there, you know, for the widow herself, like self talking about self care and not having to follow anybody else's agenda.
K.J.:And there's a section in there for friends and families of a widow to know what, you know, what is going to be helpful.
K.J.:And I think, you know, in reading our stories, if you do have a friend or family that has become a widow or might be on that path to becoming one, it helps to understand what they might be feeling and what they might be going through and why they are Doing certain things or making certain decisions.
K.J.:And, you know, as, again, all three of us are different.
K.J.:And when you read the book, you will get to the end of my story and to the end of Karen's story and to the end of Rebecca story.
K.J.:And at the end of each one, our personalities come out.
K.J.:Like I said, when I read Short Karen's story, I was like, I had to put the book down and take a breath because she's like, always go, go, go, go, go.
K.J.:Right?
K.J.:That's how her story reads, because that's what she does.
K.J.:Right.
K.J.:But she also talks in there, though, about the vulnerability and some of the reasons she did that and the protection and, you know, so we go into more than just, oh, here's what we did and why it really, you know, we really get into the heart of it.
Karen:I think I told you that we were taking some.
Karen:We had been taking some writing classes and so forth.
Karen:And one of the coaches was talking about storytelling, especially in nonfiction books, in order to make a point.
Karen:You want to bring a story into making the point so that people really understand what it's all about.
Karen:And I think that.
Karen:That, you know, in this case, we told the stories just to share the experience, but the stories make the point and give an example of what we talk about in the second half of the book.
Karen:Because when you read the second half of the book, you can go, oh, yeah, Rebecca suffered from that brain fog, or oh, yeah, Karen was really, you know, didn't want to share with her friends.
Karen:She was in that protect everybody kind of mode, you know, so they can relate.
Karen:When they read the second half, they can relate to the things that they relate to, the things that they read in the first half that we had all shared in our journeys.
Host:So as you think about the impact you pray this book has, how do you hope this book shapes the conversation around widowhood in the future.
K.J.:To make it a topic that people will actually talk about and prepare for?
K.J.:You know, my.
K.J.:My big area, you know, just because of the book that I had written before and everything.
K.J.:But it's the preparing for paperwork and everything else we've talked about.
K.J.:But yeah, just.
Rebecca:And then, you know, to follow up with that in terms of.
Rebecca:We really.
Rebecca:We really want it to be something, as we said, for people to talk about.
Rebecca:Because what we learned when we were talking with other widows and other women was that they had mothers and grandmothers who had been widows for 25, 40 years, and they had never shared with their daughters or granddaughters what their experience had been like.
Rebecca:So that you, you know, who knows?
Rebecca:Maybe the mother or the grandmother thought, well, I just need to plug along.
Rebecca:I don't need anybody to worry.
Rebecca:I don't want her to worry about me this way or whatever.
Rebecca:But the thing is, the daughter grows up.
Rebecca:She's 35 years old.
Rebecca:She has three kids at home.
Rebecca:Her husband dies, she loses his income.
Rebecca:She has no health care insurance because it was in his job and they had no life insurance.
Rebecca:What is she going to do?
Rebecca:And she doesn't have.
Rebecca:She didn't have anything in her background that would even suggest a preparation about how she could deal with that for herself.
Rebecca:And that's what we are hoping that, you know, we want this to be just like an open conversation.
Karen:We want to pull back the curtain on this topic that doesn't get talked about enough and bring it out, put a spotlight on it and say, hey, women, if you're married, we laughingly say it should be a wedding present.
Karen:But you know, women, you need to be thinking about this because it can happen.
Karen:2,800 of you every day in America at the age of 59.
Karen:It can.
Karen:You know, 59 is an average, so a lot of them younger got to talk about it.
K.J.:And I.
K.J.:And I think also to go along with that is to take the fear away.
K.J.:Like a lot of women, like, I was.
K.J.:I was petrified to lose Sam and I after my dad died.
K.J.:I had said, what would I ever do without you?
K.J.:Because I was petrified of losing him because I didn't know what I would do, literally.
K.J.:And a lot of women will say that I don't know what I would ever do without my husband.
K.J.:Well, nobody really wants that to happen, and you don't want to plan for that.
K.J.:However, the book can let you know that ultimately, it's not fun.
K.J.:It just.
K.J.:It's not.
K.J.:We're not saying this is like a cakewalk, right?
K.J.:It's hard, but you're going to be okay.
K.J.:You will create a new life.
K.J.:And that person, that husband that you've lost is always going to be a part of you and help shape who you become afterwards.
K.J.:You always bring him with you, just not physically, but just to kind of help take away that fear so that a lot of people don't prepare because, you know, oh, well, if I get ready for it, then it's going to happen.
K.J.:And no, no, you get ready for it, and then you hope it doesn't happen for many, many years.
Host:So I love to ask my guests this question.
Host:I'm asking each of you the same question.
Host:What do you want your legacy to be.
K.J.:That?
K.J.:For me, that confidence in yourself is always there.
K.J.:It was always there for me.
K.J.:I just never realized it.
K.J.:And the I want my legacy to be for people to understand, to believe in themselves and to understand that they do have what it takes to get through whatever it is that they need to get through in life and be.
K.J.:Be okay with it and be happy on the other end of whatever that might be.
Rebecca:I think that I would like my legacy to be that I was able to bring something good into other people's lives.
Karen:And I would like to leave behind with those that I know the knowledge and the confidence that they are able to do whatever it is they want to do.
Karen:If they can dream it, they can work toward it.
Karen:They may not get all the way there, but they can, they can need to step out.
Karen:They're able to step out.
Karen:Have confidence in yourself.
Host:I love that.
Host:So what key takeaways do you want our audience listening to this podcast to take from our conversation today?
Karen:There's no right way to grieve.
Karen:Nobody is going to be facing this experience in the same way.
Karen:And you are going to be able to transform into a new future that.
Rebecca:You build for yourself and that there are ways that you have available to you to progress and move through that entire process.
Rebecca:And the book is one of those ways with the information that we share.
K.J.:To be prepared for anything that life's going to throw your way.
K.J.:Have the what if Conversations.
K.J.:Sam and I didn't have them because I refused to.
K.J.:To which then, when he died, made my life so much more difficult.
K.J.:Have the conversations, get the paperwork, look at finances.
K.J.:Just really have those conversations.
K.J.:Do yourself and your family a favor by being.
K.J.:By having the conversations and being prepared.
Karen:It's an act of love, is what we say it is.
Karen:Being prepared is an act of love.
Host:I love that.
Host:Is there anything I haven't asked you that I should have asked you?
Karen:I think you've been quite thorough.
Rebecca:You've been very thorough, Keith.
Rebecca:Yes.
Rebecca:Yeah.
Host:I love it.
Host:So where can people find your book Widows Among Us and connect with all three of you wonderful ladies on social media?
Karen:1 www.threewidows.com is a key thing to remember.
K.J.:T H R E E spelled out.
Karen:Widows because there are links to our Facebook page there and links to Amazon.
Karen:Our book is going to be released January 9th, and so it should be available when your listeners are hearing this.
Karen:And it will be available on Amazon.
Karen:Hopefully soon.
Karen:It'll be in the local bookstores or Barnes and Noble.
Karen:But always there on Amazon and our website.
Karen:Through our website.
Rebecca:Yeah.
K.J.:And we do.
K.J.:We also do speaking engagements around many of the topics that we talk about in the book.
K.J.:So, you know, and because we travel so much, we do these speaking engagements in any area pretty much that we.
Karen:Would like to give us a reason to come.
Karen:Right.
Rebecca:And as far as social media goes, we do have a Facebook page, which is Three Widows, and we have an Instagram page, which is three Widows.
Rebecca:And.
Rebecca:And we already talked about what the website was.
Karen:All right.
Rebecca:But you can contact us through the website@info3widows.com so you even go to Sedona in.
Karen:We go back.
K.J.:Yep.
K.J.:Just bring warmer clothes this time.
Karen:Be better prepared.
Karen:Karen always talked about being prepared.
Karen:We'll be better prepared for Sedona next time.
K.J.:Yes.
Host:There you go.
Host:Well, thank you, ladies so much for providing such awesome content and I think an amazing resource for women and men, honestly, who.
Host:Because it's not just women who go through widow process, but men as well.
Host:We need to think about it, even though it may not be top of our mind, but we know so many people who.
Host:I just had two friends just recently suddenly pass away and lose spouses and.
Host:Or lose a spouse and no one was expecting it.
Host:I mean, you just don't know when God says your time here on this earth is done.
Host:So we want to make sure our loved ones are prepared for that event so they can celebrate our passing as much as they should and can and still be able to grieve through that as well.
Host:So thank you for what you do and the amazing resource you've put together for people.
Karen:Thank you very much.
Karen:We appreciate being able to share this with your audience.
Rebecca:Yes, absolutely.
