Grief At A Round Table With Peggy Langenwalter & Trish Comer

Peggy Langenwalter and Trish Comer had their respective rugs pulled out from under them when their husbands died. "Widow" became their new, unwelcome reality and dealing with the loss of a spouse became their daily focus. On this first group discussion on Coming Back, we're talking about what it's like to take on the role of a deceased partner, how grief doesn't give a damn about convenience, and how everyone's voices are heard when we welcome grievers to a round table.

Transcript

Well,

Grief Growers,

I am so excited to welcome Trish and Peggy onto the show today.

They're also known as the Wonder Widows and they will be coming with me on the Bereavement Cruise in March of next year.

And I'm so excited because already before we've gotten on the mic today,

We have had a ton of laughs.

We've already had a couple tears and as we all know here on Coming Back,

It's not a real interview unless we've both laughed and cried.

So Peggy and Trish,

Welcome to the show.

Thank you,

Shelby.

Thank you,

Shelby.

Yes,

And I am so excited.

We're going to start off where we start off every single one of our interviews here on Coming Back and I will ask Peggy to go first to share your lost story and then Trish immediately after and if you could identify yourselves voice wise when you come on and tell your story that would be great for all of our listeners as well.

Okay,

That sounds great.

This is Peggy and Shelby to prepare for this podcast,

I did write down my story and I'm going to read it because I think that will help me stay on track and I can keep myself together and get through it all.

Perfect.

I did not know why I was reluctant to leave on a long scheduled business trip.

My heart felt an intuitive tug as I put my suitcase in the trunk of my car and headed to the airport.

Two days later,

While still out of state,

I received the phone call no one wants to receive.

Mom,

We're at the hospital with dad and it's serious.

I've arranged for you to be on the earliest flight home in the morning.

So began the next chapter of my life as we like to neatly explain the difficult task of grieving and living life as fully as possible with a tattered heart.

Dan had been hale and hearty when I left home.

He had received an outstanding report from his doctor at his well patient annual check up only eight days before.

We had plans for a nice dinner out when I returned to the next afternoon.

Instead,

Two of our grown sons met me at the airport on my return,

One on each side protecting me.

They escorted me through baggage claim and to my car.

One drove my car and me to the trauma hospital and the other met us as we arrived.

The attending doctor took us immediately into a small room and showed us x-rays of Dan's brain.

It had suffered greatly in the accidental fall off a ladder.

There was no hope of recovery.

Finally,

We were escorted down the hall to the room where my big strong husband lay hooked up to a ventilator that kept him barely alive until I could be with him and until our son who was in the Navy could be flown in by the Red Cross.

I climbed up into the bed with my husband of 42 years.

I wove my fingers into his and scooted as close as I could.

I put the palm of my other hand on the chest I knew so well.

I knew I must imprint the feel of his chest hair on my palm in my memory because this would be the last time I would have my hand on the chest of the man I deeply loved.

It was time to do what had to be done.

Notify family and friends and donate all qualified organs.

I'd like to make a comment on that too.

This is Trish.

That essentially that's an excerpt from our forthcoming book,

Wonder Widows,

Three widows coming together to empower women to break the silence of widowhood.

And I get choked up just hearing you say that Peggy.

I've worked with you now for quite some time but that still gets me too.

It's hard to get through.

Yes,

And it's a short picture of what is a very,

Very powerful moment and then still carries with it an aftermath.

You have the hours,

The days,

The weeks,

The months,

The years that happen after.

So yeah,

Very fitting to condense that all into a story but I'm excited to get into the rest of our interview too that talks about what happens next.

Yes,

So Trish would you be so kind as to share your story with us as well?

Sure,

I'd love to.

It was two days just before our 36th wedding anniversary.

My husband had started to complain of intense stomach pain and to the point where he asked me to take him to urgent care which was quite an unusual move for my husband who seemed to bear pain quite well.

And so we got there and there was no,

You know,

There was just a few tests and the gate was an ulcer and so forth.

But it was probably the biggest roller coaster of my life because two months and three weeks later he was dead.

And that was just an incredible time frame for me at that point.

I didn't even know I was really preparing for this at the onset of him becoming ill.

We were still looking at the possibility of getting to Mayo Clinic with the appointments that we had set to really be able to determine what was going on so we could at least have some type of diagnosis and perhaps a treatment plan.

But I never did give up hope for finding that cause but yet this is the interesting side of that.

Intuitively I felt that I was actually preparing for him to leave.

So there was like two sides of myself.

One side said,

Oh no,

No,

No,

Let's just keep moving forward.

Let's try to find the diagnosis.

Let's try to find something to help him.

And then the other side of me is saying,

Yeah,

But I think he's getting ready to leave.

It was an odd moment and this happened quite a bit during that time frame.

But it was however,

It was during his first full day in ICU,

Which by the way was his second hospital visit by now,

That I was standing beside him.

He was in the bed and I was holding his hand and he commented on how pretty my new blouse was and I thought,

Oh,

That's so sweet.

And I said,

I told him,

I says I bought the new blouse so I had some lighter weight clothes to take with me to Scottsdale,

Arizona where the Mayo Clinic was located.

You know,

I just wanted to make sure I had a couple of new things and easy wash and wear.

All this was still in the planning stages of getting him to Mayo Clinic.

And then all of a sudden I had this feeling it came over me again.

I didn't think we were going to make it there.

And then he tried to wipe away my tears because then I started to begin to cry and he says to me,

Looks up at me and says,

I don't want to see you suffer any longer.

I was like,

Oh my God,

In a way I felt like,

It was like he knew in his own way that he didn't want to see me suffer.

And he knew that he was getting closer to bedtime.

Still no diagnosis,

You know,

So it was just the most honest moment.

And then I fought back all those tears I had to look at him and said,

Have you ever been to the other side?

Have you gone there?

Because I've heard of stories,

You know,

Of people actually going there and not staying,

But going,

You know,

And visiting that place.

And he said,

He looked right at me and says,

Yes I have.

I said,

Oh,

Okay.

I says,

What did it look like to you?

What happened?

And he goes,

Well,

It just looks a lot like here.

It's just crisp,

Brighter,

More distinct.

And I thought,

Okay,

That was a good question.

He gave me a good response.

And I thought,

Okay.

I says,

Well,

My next question was,

Have you talked to anybody over there?

I have also heard stories about that,

You know,

When they meet relatives or they've met a good friend or something,

You know,

Somebody they know,

You know.

And he says,

No,

No I haven't.

And I thought,

Oh,

It's not quite time.

You know,

And I thought,

Good.

That was,

That was my,

Okay,

We still got some time left here.

You know,

Let's try to figure this out.

Let's get it,

You know,

Going and we can find some type of treatment,

You know,

For him.

So then,

And all of a sudden he just looked straight ahead in the app and he says,

Do you see that beautiful yellow butterfly at the foot of my back?

And I,

You know,

Knowing that symbolically yellow butterfly could often mean a sign of transition.

And of course I couldn't see it,

You know,

But I didn't tell him I couldn't.

You know,

I mean,

I felt like I needed to go along with,

Yes,

Honey,

I do.

And it was just something I felt like I needed to do.

You know,

I didn't want him to go,

Why not,

You know,

Or something.

And so anyway,

That,

That's how that worked out.

And then of course I,

I knew in that moment that we were both preparing for separate journeys,

Albeit very different journeys.

And eight days later he left this world.

You know,

It was just like that.

That's so incredible.

And I'm,

I'm drawing,

First of all,

Thank you both for sharing your stories.

I want to take a second before we get into any of the rest of our interview and just take a moment to say the names of your respective partners and describe who they were to you in life.

Because I think for a bit of grief,

For much of grief,

We focus on the ending and not necessarily who our loved ones were to us in life and maybe the things they gave us and the things they taught us or the things that,

That made us laugh.

So for each of you,

I would love to know more about each of your partners.

Wow.

Peggy,

You want to go first?

On the spot.

You first,

You first.

All right.

That's,

That's,

That's tough.

You know,

The emotions are just welling up and whew.

Okay.

My husband's name is Dan Langenwalter and I met him when I was 18 and he was,

He had just turned 23 and two months after we met,

We got married.

We just felt like it was the right thing to do,

Although it scared our parents.

I was not quite 19 when we did get married and so we,

I grew up with him.

You know,

We grew up together from that point on and he became my best confidant,

My best and most understanding friend,

My person that was in every thought I had,

Every decision I made.

There was a little bit of Dan in there,

Like how will this affect him or we're going to enjoy this.

Eventually we had three sons who all share a lot of characteristics of their dad.

So that's all fun and it's also a little bit of a reminder that their dad's not here.

So it's an interesting thing to deal with my sons.

And he was a grandpa to our two grandchildren that we had at the time.

He was of course,

Like we discussed Shelby before we started recording,

You know,

I knew when Dan died,

Well there goes my sex life.

How was that?

He's,

You know,

The man I had known for all these years,

For 42 years and everything in life has changed without him.

I've taken on not only the tasks,

You know,

When we're in a partnership,

We slowly but surely start to adopt roles that one of us is stronger at or better at and so over the years my role had become,

Looks like one picture,

Dan's role was another picture and together we were really happy and we were compatible and all that.

So now that Dan's gone,

I have to be taking care of my stuff and all of his stuff and that's sometimes very exhausting to keep it all going and I've really worked hard to,

Or I tell myself that I'm doing this,

Simplify my life and give myself permission to not do everything that combined was taken care of with the two of us working at it,

You know,

Working at our life together.

So yeah,

He was my everything and I miss him every moment.

So Trish is reminding me that this was a long time partnership.

It was 42 years that we had been together and you know the saying that a couple shall grow as one.

I think over time we do start to form one entity.

It's made up of two individuals,

But we become one very visible entity and I had a saying there which I think ended up in the book that we spend a lot of years learning how to get along together and then we have to spend a whole lot of years learning how to live without the other.

Yeah,

Yeah.

Trish,

Can we bump over to you?

Of course.

My husband,

And it's funny,

I had it written out in my portion to talk about Bob this,

Bob that.

I didn't even reference his name when I realized that about three quarters of the way through I was when I was reading it or not reading,

I wasn't reading,

I was just talking about it.

But I look back on my notes,

I could see his name there.

But anyway,

Yes,

His name is Bob and he spent the rock of my life and he was my best friend,

My lover,

Father of my children,

Grandfather to our pestle of grandchildren and we were married for 36 years.

He was just taken away so young in life.

He was just shy of his 61st birthday.

So to me it was just like,

Wow,

You set all this time aside to over the years and you planned for your second half of life.

We were in the throes of just getting that going.

We started a nonprofit together,

It's a neighbor helping neighbor project.

And we combined our skill levels of the things from human services and other areas that we came together on.

We did meet at a social service,

Youth service bureau.

When we first met I was doing some training for the volunteers and he was doing an internship there.

So I see this strapping,

Six foot three,

Very handsome man and it caught my attention immediately.

Oh,

I knew as soon as I saw him,

He was my soulmate.

There was no doubt about it.

And I knew there was a reason that we needed to be together.

If I think back on it,

If I had ever thought about would I have married him if I had known that eventually someday he was going to be taken away from me.

That's interesting,

I've asked myself the same question.

I don't think I would have.

I think what I would have done was avoid the heartache.

But then again,

As it's always told that you can't love without losing someone too.

And that's a part of the risk we all take.

But I think when I was 22 years old I would have said,

I don't think so.

No thank you.

Oh no,

We don't want to go there.

You're invincible at 22.

You're still thinking that you can do anything and do everything.

And you don't think about death ever popping into the equation.

I think I learned more about our relationship after he had passed away than I ever understood while he was here with me in this physical plane.

But he was definitely my rock.

My mother passed away or was getting ready to pass away just a year and some months before he did.

And this is back in the Chicago area.

And I can recall that mom wasn't going to get better.

She was going to need required dialysis.

This wasn't going to be easy on her at all.

And it was more complicated than it sounds the way I'm making it sound.

But I found myself going,

He stayed back in New Mexico while I was in Chicago dealing with this with my sister and my dad was there.

And I just remember calling him up so many times during the day.

I think I talked to him three or four times a day.

Just for him to help me maintain a perspective of trying to prepare not just my family,

My mother,

But myself to let go of my mom.

And he did such a wonderful job with me.

And he handled me so well that it was so interesting.

It was because I kept hearing a lot of what he had told me just a year or so before when it came time to let him go.

Wow.

Yeah.

You know,

Shelby,

This is Peggy again.

I think a lot of times we'll find that deaths don't happen just one and then you get a chance to do proper breathing and catch your breath.

Ah,

Dan's death was the fourth within 10 months,

The fourth serious death for me within 10 months.

And he was helping me through the others.

Like Bob had been helping Trish with her mother's passing and boy,

To not have that steady rock to then help me through the worst death was really difficult.

Very challenging.

Yes.

There's something that comes up a lot in the grief recovery method,

Especially with—they classify relationships in two ways,

They do relationships with loved ones and they do relationships with loved ones that need to be mended or have some kind of reparations that didn't end well,

Essentially,

Or there was hardship or some kind of abuse or things like that.

And with loved ones,

It seems there's always this feeling of reaching out for someone who's always been there for you.

They've been the rock,

They've been the study,

They've been the everything.

And when you go to reach out again,

They're not there.

And so that consistent reliability that you've come to depend on is gone in an instant.

And that in itself is a whole different type of grief and a different type of loss.

Not only are they not physically there,

But you can no longer depend on them for anything going forward or anything going backwards,

In your case where it's been 10 months leading up to this and you're still actively grieving things when he's gone.

So yeah,

Just acknowledging how hard that is.

And I say all the time,

A lot of times in my written work and on coming back to that grief does not exist in a vacuum.

You don't get that perfect package,

You know,

I have lost something and then I take time to grieve and then life goes back to normal.

It's I lose something in the craft storm of things that's already happening in my life and so I have to manage to juggle this along with everything else.

We are shaking our heads vigorously.

Yes.

Oh yeah,

We are.

We all are,

I'm sure.

And it's just the hardest place to be because grief is not,

Grief doesn't care about convenience.

It doesn't give a damn about convenience.

There is no time when we're ready to experience loss.

I wrote down while both of you were talking strangely,

But not strangely because we're all intuitive creatures here,

Both of you actually used the word intuition when you were telling your stories.

And I want to talk about the role that intuition has played in these first days of grief or even in loss and then as you went into your grieving process,

How did intuition manifest itself for you as like gut feelings or even trish with you knowing,

Yeah,

We're not going to make it that far in the process or just these inner knowings because I think a thing that people struggle with a lot with grief is they have never tapped into their intuition in the first place or when grief happens,

All of a sudden they don't trust it anymore because it has somehow brought about the worst thing that has ever happened to them.

And so all of a sudden there's this disconnection or distrust in this gut feeling again.

So I kind of want to know what role intuition played in both of your losses.

This is Trish and intuition has always been a major part of my life and I've always associated intuition with,

And there's so many different ways of saying this,

Your higher self.

It's associated with my spiritual side and so when I'm calm or quiet or I need to hear it,

It appears.

And so intuition has always played a major role in my life.

I'm an intuitive.

I can just say it right out loud.

That's just exactly what I am.

And that's why that was such a,

There was two sides to my grieving.

There was always two sides to me letting go of mom.

There was the side of me that said,

Oh my God,

I can't let him go.

There's got to be a solution here.

There's got to be a fix.

There's got to be something we can do.

We've got to find this diagnosis.

There's got to be something in this day and age that can save his life.

And there was the exhaustive moments of running him to one doctor,

To another doctor,

To a blood draw,

To all these different things that I was having to take care of.

And at the same time,

Be with him at home,

Hold him in my arms,

Give him my love and to try and say,

Why?

What is going on here?

Because my intuition was saying,

Listen to what he has to say.

You know,

He's got a lot to be saying,

But he was a quiet,

Very private man.

So he wasn't going to tell me too much.

So my intuition was working on overdrive through this whole process,

You know,

Show me what to do,

Tell me what to do.

And at the same time,

You know,

I was saying like in the hospital when I knew.

And when I talked about that story,

When I,

When he was in the bed,

In the hospital and ICU,

When he was talking to me,

Knowing that we were both going on separate journeys,

New ones,

There was a peace.

I didn't talk about this before,

But there was an intuitive peace that came over me.

There was a side that knew,

You know,

My intuition knew that this was all in divine order.

Now,

I couldn't have told you why at the time.

I just knew it.

And the,

The feeling I had at that moment was this,

This,

It was a calm,

Deep sense of peace in such a sharp contrast to the emotions that I was experiencing.

The crying,

You know,

Going to bed alone at night,

You know,

While he was in the hospital crying myself to sleep,

You know,

And,

And running around like a crazy woman,

So to speak,

Trying to figure out saving my husband's life.

You know,

I mean,

There was that side too.

And I was exhausted,

Absolutely exhausted from that.

But what gave me the strength was the peace of knowing that it was all in divine order.

I knew I needed to trust in the process and I knew I was going to be okay.

And I knew all was going to be well.

So it was a juggling act.

It was a balancing act.

I guess you could say more than a juggling act.

So I,

That's where I had to learn and to give myself permission to feel both and not to shut one out in,

In,

You know,

In relation to the other or favor the other.

I knew I needed to allow both to occur.

That was very well said.

And this is Peggy.

And a lot of,

As Tricia's talking,

I'm shaking my head in agreement because our details are different and she,

Although it seems like two months was a very short time to prepare for your husband's death,

I had zero,

I had minus sometime.

But as I was packing to leave town on that business trip,

I got intuitive messages that I was going to be a widow.

And I found myself,

I described this in the book,

I found myself talking out loud to nobody as I was finishing up packing about,

Well,

What would happen if Dan were to die?

And I was saying out loud,

Well,

I'd be a widow.

And I even got intuitive visions of how it would happen.

And then I tried to push that out of my mind because I didn't want it to happen.

I pushed it out of my mind by thinking,

Oh great,

Well at least I have 20 more years before I have to,

Before this really happens.

And I guess in some ways there was also this peace.

I mean,

I didn't feel a panic at all when I was getting these messages.

And I felt calm and I did not get another message that told me to contact Dan and warn him not to do what I was seeing.

It was going to be,

It was like,

It was going to be all right.

I was going to survive.

So in some ways that has helped me to tap into that through this time saying,

Well,

It wasn't totally a surprise and a shock,

Although there was plenty of that.

I did have that little bit of forewarning for a few minutes.

Right and this is Tricia again too.

And you know,

Speaking of that intuition that Peggy described before she left for her business trip preceding Dan's passing,

I had several things that occurred too,

You know,

That I said,

Oh my God,

Thank God.

Just feel like I'm a widow,

You know,

Already taking care of household chores that needed to be taken care of before my sister and my dad arrived from Chicago.

But Bob was still alive.

Bob was still alive,

But no,

It was actually,

He was still at home.

Yeah,

But he was,

You know,

Kind of staying on the couch,

You know,

During the day napping in and out.

And I had discovered a leak in the wall,

You know,

I was cleaning up the guest room and getting it ready and realizing that it was a plaster.

We have an older house,

It's a plaster wall.

Fortunately I can plaster,

But I'm in there plastering in the bedroom in coats and coats and I'm going outside and doing the restock up.

And I thought to myself,

God,

You know,

I just feel like a widow.

And then I,

You know,

I was like,

Nah,

You know,

Put that out of the mind.

And I have to,

I have to share this too if I can,

Is that my mom,

My dad and my sister arrived from Chicago the day they did.

And on our way to the train to pick up my relatives,

We got a call from his gastro doctor,

You know,

For his stomach problems.

And he says,

I think we found the problem.

And he says,

We think it's autoimmune pancreatitis.

And there was a sudden relief that came over us at that moment because that was treatable with steroids.

And so we went to the train feeling a lot more joyous and a lot more upbeat than we had felt,

You know,

Previous to that moment.

And I was leaving the bathroom with my sister in the restaurant,

We all went out for dinner that night.

And as I was leaving the bathroom with her,

I said,

God,

For a moment there,

Allison,

I thought it was going to be a widow.

And you know,

And these things kept occurring.

I mean,

They were just like all over the place.

And you know,

And Peggy and I both address this in the book as well,

You know,

And how that was so profound for us,

Even though we didn't really want to believe it,

You know,

That's the thing.

We didn't want to believe that that was possible.

This is Peggy.

We both have a lot of experience through the years with intuition.

And I've never had my intuition lead me astray.

But with that one,

I was doing my best to push it back as far as I could.

Exactly.

Because that'll piss you off.

That'll make you angry.

Like,

No,

I don't want to think about that.

I don't want that to be my life.

How dare you?

How dare you imply that that's even a possibility?

I thought it was pretty nice that I was being given this,

Or I was trying to make it so,

I was trying to make it so that I was getting a nice 20 year warning.

And I could,

You know,

Really dig in and appreciate and make sure he knew everything.

And luckily for both Trish and I,

I'm always reminding us we are the lucky ones because there was no malintent.

You know,

It wasn't a horrific thing.

Our husbands didn't die anymore.

There wasn't,

You know,

Some terrible emotional feeling toward them that caused this death.

Still,

It's pretty painful and the loss is great.

And I will say this too,

That this is Trish again,

With the grief part of it,

After Bob had passed away,

I was so involved in my grief that I did not receive or pick up on any intuition when my,

I got the phone call in the morning from my sister back in Chicago.

This is four and a half months after Bob had passed away.

She calls me up and she says,

Tears,

I could tell that I knew,

But I didn't hear it.

I didn't feel it coming,

But my dad passed away that night peacefully in his sleep.

And I was just devastated.

I just thought to myself,

How in the world am I going to handle this?

I said,

You know,

I just lost my husband.

Now I lost my father.

I lost my mother a year and a half before that.

I was just like,

Please give me a fricking break.

You know,

I was just like,

You know,

It was emotional beyond belief,

But I missed that cue completely and it was because I was so focused on the emotional side of the grieving,

Not the intuitive side.

There was a lot of emotional,

Big emotional side to work through.

Exactly.

Exactly.

I want to get into what both of you referred to even before we got on the air today as the sisterhood of being a widow.

And so I've interviewed several widows on this show and I think what's so hard about it and what's so hard about different types of grief in general is finding your people,

Finding the ones who,

You know,

You walk into a room and you're like,

Yeah,

We get it.

You don't even have to introduce yourself or really get too far into your story before people are like,

Yeah,

We're here and we get that.

So I kind of want to shift into how each of you found your own sisterhoods,

Including finding each other and finding the third leg of the Wonder Widows and also how you've developed it into the Wonder Widows,

How you made it a thing that was kind of bigger than the three of you.

Great.

I had,

This is Peggy and my neighbor is Tricia's daughter,

Her grown daughter,

Raina.

And Raina and I had become friends and one day I was doing a teaching in my home about natural healing and health and especially essential oils.

And I had invited Raina and she asked if she could bring her mother.

Oh,

My mother loves things like that.

And I said,

Of course,

It's great.

I could meet a new person.

So Trish came and we hit it off.

And then a couple of weeks later,

I think it was just a few weeks later,

Trish texted me and said,

Can you get some particular essential oils over to Raina's house?

And Raina would get them to Trish because Trish wanted to use them on Bob who was starting to have some stomach problems.

And then as you've heard in our conversations,

Bob passed away and I knew that Trish was now part of this club that we don't volunteer for.

And so I invited her to lunch a couple of times,

I think into a movie.

And we spent a little bit of time together and one day we were conversing and all of a sudden we blurted out the same moment.

I'm going to write a book about this experience.

And then we looked at each other and said,

Well,

Let's write it together.

So we decided we would get together at my house and Trish asked if she could bring her friend Jennifer,

Who is our third author.

And because she knew that she had been through Jennifer's process of losing her husband about a year before you,

Or three years?

Actually,

It was quite a few years before me.

But she was also the one that was younger and I think she has a year or two on you.

She does.

Yeah.

And she was pregnant with her second child at six months pregnant when she lost her husband.

And it was Christmas.

Yes,

He did.

He died on Christmas Eve.

As Jennifer will say in her little taxa saxa,

She'll say,

Well,

At least it wasn't on Christmas Day.

So the three of us,

In fact,

We invited another friend,

A friend of mine too,

Who had just recently become a widow and we had been friends for a long time.

So there were four of us sitting around the round table and one reason we feel,

I have a big round diamond room table.

One reason we feel the round table is significant is that all people sitting around table have the same value,

The same weight in our conversation,

In our sharing.

And we would share and we would laugh together and cry together.

And we knew that as we were telling our stories,

The people in the room understood what we were saying,

If not the exact detail,

Then certainly the emotions,

The feelings,

And some of the struggle and some of the joys and some of the victories at mastering small things to keep ourselves going and moving toward reconnecting with joy and recreating a new way to have joy in our lives.

And I'd like to add to that too,

Is that,

And that's Trish talking.

Yes,

That's me.

Yes,

It is.

It is I.

It is I,

Trish.

It is I.

Now I can't remember what it was.

No,

I'm just kidding.

Basically it was through our casual meetings and both with Peggy and I also thinking about the book concept,

You know,

It took us a while to formulate these questions because being that we were in such an informal environment together,

The four of us at that time,

That we were able to just say,

Hey,

Hey,

Does anybody ever have thoughts about,

Do you still wear a wedding ring?

Yeah,

What do you do about this?

Yeah,

What'd you do?

Did you ever feel like you needed to hire somebody else to help with certain things in the household?

And then of course there would be a story about this and then there would be another question somebody else would have in the room and say- How about this,

Trish?

This is Peggy.

How about,

Did you ever feel like you were going crazy?

Yeah,

Exactly.

And we all understood what that felt like.

Oh yeah.

And we're all going,

God,

Yeah.

I felt like I was in a fog for months after that.

And then Peggy says,

Yeah,

We call that brain fog.

And then we all went,

Yeah.

I always remember Jennifer's favorite story because now she's got a newborn baby and she has the baby strapped to her chest.

You know how those wraps that you put the babies inside?

Sure,

Yeah,

Yeah.

You wear it on your chest.

Yeah.

And she said one day she was sitting on the couch and she started to cry and Hayden,

Her son,

I think he's about,

He was about four at that time,

Says,

Mama,

Why are you crying?

And she goes,

I don't know what I did with Charlie and her baby.

I've lost the baby.

I've lost the baby.

Yeah.

And then she says,

No,

All of a sudden Hayden started laughing at her and then she's going,

What Hayden?

And she was like,

Do I smack him or do I just tell him what?

You know,

And it's not a funny situation.

Just lost the baby.

And he goes,

Mama,

It's strapping.

Charlie Ann's okay.

She's right there.

She looked down and she says,

Oh,

That's fine.

The baby is just sleeping on my chest and I didn't even realize it.

And that is such a real visceral effect of grief.

It's like an amplified version of I can't find my phone,

But it's in my butt pocket or I can't find my glasses,

But they're on top of my head.

Oh yes.

It's,

It's,

But on a,

I lost my child level,

But you really didn't.

She's strapped to you.

That's right.

They were,

They were packing up to go to the park and she had packed everything,

But then couldn't find the baby on the way out the door.

So we cried and laughed with her.

Yes we did.

We really did.

And,

And those are the kinds of stories that were being shared.

And then as each person would write a story,

A question or have a question,

I would write it down.

And when we started recording the questions and to help refresh our memories and so forth.

But we covered such a wide range of subjects.

And and then that's when we started to realize one day when Peggy says something that was quite profound and Peggy,

Please correct me if I don't say it just like you did in the book,

You know,

Since in so many words,

It's,

You know,

When the flowers dry up and die and you know,

And all the friends and family have gone home.

Now what?

It's that is what we all share in that moment.

You know,

Because we do,

We've got our loving friends or family and so forth and all of the well wishers and the people that want to hold us and you know,

And say all just the right things and express some sentiments from the heart.

Just be present.

And just be present.

They're gone one day.

People go home,

They go to their lives.

Yeah.

And the beautiful flower arrangements finally dry up and die and start to stink and you have to get rid of them and then,

And then you're there by yourself.

And then what?

Yeah.

And that was a kind of a turning point for the book.

And that's when we went,

You know what,

If we're all feeling this way,

We got to believe that more widows feel the same way we do.

You know,

That they do feel that isolation.

They do feel alone.

And and,

And that's something in society that people just don't want to talk about.

And I am a writer.

And then that was what makes us interesting.

I was talking to a writer,

A peer of mine in the writing business and and she says,

Well,

Who is going to want to hear about stories of widows?

And I was just like,

Uh,

She says,

Well,

What can you offer the widow?

And I just looked at her and I said,

Inspiration to move on,

To get on with life,

To re-experience that joy that was once there inside of all of us.

I think one of the big,

This is Peggy,

I think one of the biggest things that our experiences in our book,

Our honesty in our book offers is encouragement for women to embrace the totality of the grief process.

Because as all three of us here now know,

And many listeners know,

Within the healthy grief process,

There are some,

A lot of tears,

There's some laughter,

There are some ups,

There are some downs.

It's not a linear process.

We go forward some and then we go backwards some.

Some days we feel great and like,

Oh my gosh,

I'm really coming along well.

And then maybe even the next day without knowing why or how we were triggered,

We're back in our closet crying.

And maybe over time,

For shorter and shorter periods of time,

We experienced the sadness.

But still,

I am hoping,

We're hoping that through our experiences in the book,

People will come to recognize that the grief process is part of being human.

It's part of the human experience.

And we have a choice as to how we handle it.

And it doesn't mean that we have to stay in a place of sadness or depression or feeling foggy minded.

There are ways and maybe little methods that we can use to help ourselves reconnect with the joy of living.

After all,

We're still living.

Yes.

And we are the ones that still choose how we decide we're going to move forward.

Yes.

And one of my mantras,

Probably within a month or so of Dan's death,

Was,

Dan died.

I didn't.

I'm still living and I aim to get back to enjoying life for myself and for our sons.

Yes.

And mine was always,

You can't drive forward looking in the rear view mirror.

And it's just like,

That to me is always what kept me going.

And it says,

You know,

This is today.

I always would say to myself as well,

This is today.

This is now.

And what happened,

Happened.

Yeah,

Exactly.

And that's what kept me grounded.

And the turning point for me was realizing that I knew the greatest power,

Healing power in the universe was love.

And love didn't die.

And love didn't die,

But I sure wasn't feeling it either.

But I knew this,

You see,

I knew that it was love,

You know,

That was going to get me through this.

And it was on Thanksgiving for me that actually the first Thanksgiving after Bob had passed away in August,

It was August 21st and four years ago,

As a matter of fact,

Just this past Tuesday.

And you may,

Nevermind.

So,

You know,

I shouldn't have dated that.

But that he did pass away and it was on that Thanksgiving when I was watching my daughter's side of the family all get together.

And my daughter's mother-in-law was also a widow that had just became a widow in January before Bob had passed in August.

And I just watched the whole family coming together.

She had her family right there.

I just had my daughter.

And I watched the love that was being shared and passed around.

It was Thanksgiving.

You know,

We all felt grateful for being there.

And I just remember looking around in the room and I went,

Oh my.

You know,

I said,

If I want to feel love,

I want to feel this love again.

And I knew in that moment that was the time I primed the pump and got it going.

And that was when I started expressing my love for my family and my gratitude for everything I did have.

And instead of grieving over what I didn't have,

It was a choice of flipping that over to the other side.

And these are the things that we want to be able to share with other widows.

Shelby,

I'm thinking this is very much how our round table discussions went.

One of us would be talking and sharing her story.

The other ones would be nodding our heads and saying,

Yes,

Absolutely.

Oh yeah,

I understand.

But that's how,

This is just like,

Shelby,

You're just a part of that.

Yes,

I feel I'm at the table.

Exactly.

And we would so invite you any time to sit at our table.

I love it.

I'm excited to move now into where we will actually be together in person,

Which will be at the Bereavement Cruise 2019 next March.

I've got a couple listeners signed up so far to come on the boat with all of us,

But I'm so excited.

For all of you listening,

There's still space.

There's still staterooms.

We would love to have you.

We would love to meet you,

Peggy,

Trish,

And I all together.

Can you go into the workshop that you're going to be leading on board as well as what your previous experiences,

If any,

With the Bereavement Cruise?

This is Peggy.

This will be our first Bereavement Cruise.

Woo hoo!

Yeah.

Yay!

We're all first timers.

We are.

And we're all learning the ropes as we go along,

And Trish is going to begin to introduce and then I'll jump in here about our workshop.

Sure.

Thank you.

The two of the three of us wonder widows,

Jennifer is unable to be with us due to it's during the school year and her children are still quite young.

But Peggy and I will be there and we're going to be presenting a workshop aboard the Oasis of the Seas on March 3rd through the 10th.

And the intent of our book is to break the isolation and silence of widowhood.

And it's based on our book,

Wonder Widows,

The three widows coming together to empower women to break the silence of widowhood.

And this is Peggy.

Our workshop is centered on the realization that each individual will experience the grief process differently according to her relationship to the deceased,

Her beliefs,

Her needs,

And her support system.

And rather than approach our presentation from the angle of expertise,

Of our being the experts,

We offer camaraderie,

Heart,

And an emotionally safe and comfortable space to share and become inspired to allow healthy grieving and a joyful recreation of life.

We will offer a variety of healthy self-nurturing techniques in the interactive part of our presentation.

And so we do invite widows to join us and their supportive friends and family and to be in attendance on the cruise itself.

And some people go,

Well,

Why would I want family and friends?

And that's because in order to break the silence and isolation,

There needs to be an open dialogue of exchange between the widow's community and the mainstream community.

And what better person can help bridge that gap than supportive friends and family who care about their family.

Exactly.

And I'd like to also bring up how this whole thing came up about Wonder Widows in the first place.

We never did get back to that,

Peggy.

Is it okay if we just mention that story real quickly?

Yeah,

Roll right in.

All right.

As a matter of fact,

We had on occasion a couple of meetings at my house.

And this happened there,

As a matter of fact.

And we were talking about who we were.

How do we feel?

Because we're putting this together to be an inspiration.

And we're all standing around my table at this time.

I guess we were getting ready to leave.

We're getting close to it.

And we all at the same time put our hands on our hips around our waist area.

And that's when Peggy says,

We are the Wonder Widows.

And it stuck.

And it was neat because it was a reminder to us that we were resurfacing,

That we were not encouraging each other to sit in our misery and stay in our misery.

That that was just a part of the process.

And that there were also very empowering moments.

Very empowering.

Because we really do want to make sure that we're coming across to the isolated widow or to somebody who is grieving.

You know,

That we're here to help inspire so they can grow into their empowering moment.

To start to feel that life surging again inside of them.

And to recognize that the grief process is a growth process.

Yes,

Absolutely.

I think that's so important.

And I'm so excited for the workshop that you're leading because such a big part in grief and being a greever,

I'm sure you can sympathize with this as well.

You look to the stories of others,

Not as please tell me how to live my life,

But as are you creating a space where I can come into?

Are you creating a conversation where,

Like you all say,

I'm welcome at the table?

And I think that's really important.

And it's kind of fitting for the whole theme of the bereavement cruise,

But especially to specialize in widowhood,

Which has its own unique set of challenges and emotions and an array of new identities to take on,

Essentially,

Is really powerful.

And it's so important that you say too,

That this is open to family and friends of widows,

Because this is very similar to minority groups here in America,

Because we can do all the work that we possibly can among ourselves.

Women's groups can do all the work we possibly can within women's groups.

But what really gets us connected to each other is having conversations with what you would call quote unquote,

The other,

The people who are outside of the circle,

Who are not yet widows or who are not women.

So women cross the bridge and talk to men and vice versa.

Men come into the women's circle and say,

How do I do this?

And in the same case with widowhood as well,

It's we do as much work as we can amongst ourselves and get the answers and do you still wear the wedding bands and the guidance and you know,

How do I handle finances and things like that.

But outside of that,

There's a support system of all these people around us who haven't had the thing happen to us,

But can help us through having had the thing happen to us.

Does that make sense?

Oh,

Right,

It does.

It really does.

I think that's so important.

And I think it's so powerful.

Really quickly,

I ask every guest before we wrap up on the show,

If you could point to one resource,

Whether it's a book or a blog or a speaker or even a quotation that helped you come back from your loss.

The title of the podcast is coming back.

So I always ask what helped you come back.

I'd love to know from each of you another resource that our listeners could use today,

Aside from your book,

Which is obviously going to be very high on my list of recommendations today.

Well,

This is Peggy.

Shelby,

That's a little bit tough because there were so many things.

I mean,

If I had been a younger woman and hadn't developed a lot of these,

What I call tricks in my bag,

I might have been relying on one or another more heavily.

But I had so many that I've accumulated and developed through the years that it was,

You know,

Whatever work today I was going to do,

Whether it was,

I've been a massage therapist for over 20 years and of course I knew the value of human touch.

So massage,

Reiki,

Meditation,

Essential oils,

Connecting with spirit,

A lot of different,

You know,

Listening to music or staying away from certain music that could be a trigger.

You know,

We each learn what's going to help us feel better.

So there was quite a variety,

I would have to say in my case.

And one of the things that did help me,

As I mentioned earlier,

Was just realizing very pragmatically that I was not the one who died.

I still had life in front of me and I still had that gift of life to enjoy as much as I could.

And I feel like that's one way that I can honor Dan is to live my life the best I can.

And this is Trish.

The,

It's funny,

Peggy and I have never really truly discussed this or asked,

Answered this question in front of each other,

Is in detail as we are right now.

But it's amazingly,

Again,

There's another striking similarity here because I'm also a reiki master teacher.

I've been a holistic practitioner,

Teach stress reduction,

I teach meditation,

Mindfulness meditation.

And I've been doing this for over 35 years.

It's funny,

I had never put that together until it came time to write out our biography for the cruise.

And I was just like,

Wow,

It's been a long time.

I haven't been sitting around doing nothing all these years.

Exactly.

So,

You know,

I had this wonderful group of supportive friends as well,

You know,

And I also incorporated the steps that I teach and I practice,

You know,

Which is,

This is what really turned me around was the steps.

There's actually five of them.

And one of them is I created a statement of intent.

I started my forgiveness.

Oh my gosh,

Did I start the forgiveness?

That was,

This is,

None of these were walks in the park,

Trust me.

I mean there was good days,

Not so good days,

You know,

But I kept it up.

And of course gratitude,

Having gratitude for being alive,

Having gratitude for my family,

My friends.

And if I couldn't think of a darn thing on a really crappy day,

I would just go,

I'm grateful for the sun shining and just that was it.

But hey,

It has to come with feeling and that's what I used.

And I was like,

Yes,

I am grateful.

Fortunately we live in a state that has sunshine more than 300 days a year.

So that was an easy one for me.

But the other one was also love.

Again,

I had to keep in the forefront of my mind,

I'm alive.

I have a choice.

Yes,

I choose to love.

And to me that was one of the most important things.

And then of course the last thing I did was,

You know,

This also was creating new memories,

You know,

And it was making a conscious effort to do that.

So a lot of what I did was journal,

Meditate,

Did Reiki and none of that came immediately.

I want to be able to say how important that is because really in the very beginning stages I could give a rip about any of that.

You're surviving.

Seriously.

I am now,

I make myself sound like I'm walking on water,

Which I wasn't by any means.

Oh,

I can tell you she's not.

So yeah,

There were so many things that I incorporated as well.

But I,

You know,

These are all changes that I've made throughout my life too,

That I was able to finally put into practice.

And all the healing had taken place and you know,

With what I've,

That I've learned over the years.

And it was quite cathartic.

And every year I knew I was feeling better when I would sit down and do my journal writing on Bob's date of his death.

Every year I wrote how much I had grown,

How much I had changed,

What I've learned,

What I've experienced from that year in that 365 days.

And I do that every year.

And this is Peggy again.

Shelby,

One of the things we've talked about is that we wrote the book,

We began the book two and a half years ago.

And as we go back through the book,

As we were doing our edits,

We would look at the portion that we wrote individually and we'd think,

Oh my gosh,

I've come a long way since I wrote that.

There are,

All along the way there are shifts.

There will be a shift that occurs and it's almost imperceptible.

It's maybe a very slight feeling,

But there were days when I'd say,

Oh,

I know something shifted and I would feel a little bit different about it.

And as Trish said,

It's very important.

I think all of us agreed as we were sitting around the table that we weren't denying the challenge or the pain or the loneliness,

But we also would then bring ourselves to focus on what we had rather than what we did not have anymore.

And we would keep our focus on what we were grateful to still have.

And I'd like to also say,

This is Trish again,

One more thing I had actually wanted to share with her listeners.

And I don't hold that grief as I once did.

And instead I hold love in my heart and I'll always hold Bob's love in my heart.

My children's love,

My grandchildren's love,

My good friends.

I hold humanity in my heart and the more I hold,

The more I have to give.

And again,

The more I give,

The more I can receive.

And to me it's our heartbeat.

It's our heart beating is to experience receiving love and sharing our love.

And that's what makes the world go round.

This is Peggy again.

It's a real basic thing you touched on.

Being able to receive and give love is a very basic,

Very core need of a human being.

It's in all of our natures,

Every one of us.

And that's what we need to remember,

Especially when we're in times of grief.

That there really is a healing nature within each of us.

And that's the love that's within our hearts.

And it's a part of our inner being.

That doesn't change.

Our circumstances change,

But the love doesn't change.

That's so perfect.

And I have no other notes to add.

That just seems like a perfect way to close our conversation today.