One of the biggest things my team and I hope to help widows understand is that balancing their money can greatly impact their emotional healing. When you understand your financial situation, you are ultimately creating more choice for yourself and your next steps. This allows you to feel more in control and confident during a time that is so turbulent with grief, sadness, and overwhelm. And this choice can create curiosity. And … [Read more...]
Your Guide to Self-Care While Managing Key Financial Items
For the past few months, we’ve been focusing on making an informed decision for your financial future. But as you follow through on key financial items, it’s important to understand the healing power of creating a routine for yourself. Routine restores order. Order cultivates calm and stillness which is essential to healing. Because my team and I create a financial advisory process that is designed around the unique needs of widows, we … [Read more...]
3 Steps to Emotional Healing Through Financial Organization
Organization can be a lifeline when you are being tossed around and feel like you are drowning in a sea of grief. One of the positive effects of organizing your finances is the added confidence you may gain in your decision-making capacity. I am often asked, “Now that I’m a widow, am I going to run out of money?” Although I know it is a scary question and can feel devastating, it is answerable. Most widows will undergo some decreased income … [Read more...]
Acknowledge Your Loss Those First Few Weeks: Ask for Help & Choose You First
As a recent widow, your energy can be so depleted in those first weeks. Your behavior may even seem bizarre or out of control. There will be inevitable feelings of cycling between merely going through the motions to tiny bursts where you think you just might be alright. You might find yourself losing your keys, forgetting your destination while driving, and a sluggish reaction time to certain moments. It may even feel like life has lost its … [Read more...]
How to Do Self-Care When Your Husband Dies
“Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you.” You’ve heard it probably a million times lately - or a variation, at least. When your husband dies, those first few days can feel like you are moving through Jell-O. You take steps, your clothes somehow go on; you talk to people, you form words, but you aren’t actually sure how it’s all being done or said - and that slow moving feeling stays with you. You reply, “Thank you. That’s very kind … [Read more...]
Grief, Gratitude, & Thanksgiving
Alice stared at the unlit candles on her table. Grief had stolen so much from her. Now, it seemed it had taken away the joy of Thanksgiving too. Family were on their way, but she couldn’t muster up the energy to finish setting the table. What Alice really wanted was to crawl back into bed until Thanksgiving was over. This year, she had become a member in the club no one wants to be in...widowhood. Loss can rob your sense of hope. It can … [Read more...]
Becoming A Financially Confident Widow Through Coaching Conversations
Alice left with a huge stack of papers from her husband’s financial advisor. She knew they were important and she was supposed to be completing the forms, but they didn’t connect with everything else going on in her life. Instead, they sat on the corner of her desk, collecting dust. After all, she was trying desperately everyday just to keep her head above water to survive her grief. Widows often see themselves as blocked off from re-entering … [Read more...]
After The Service
Please take some time for yourself. For most widows, after the service is not the time to immediately start organizing your financial affairs. Conflicting and rapidly changing emotions are often experienced after the initial shock. The numbness your mind utilized to keep your body functioning begins to wear off. People begin to go home, back to their normal lives. The “quietness” sets in and your body begins to feel the pain. This is usually when … [Read more...]
Immediately After His Death
Regardless of the circumstances leading to your husband’s death, the initial response is usually shock, disbelief, denial, and numbness. “It’s as if time stopped.” This is the body’s natural way of protecting itself against emotional shock. You may immediately feel as if you are in a tunnel or a ‘daze’. Often there is an experience of voices being muffled or far away. During this extremely fragile and vulnerable time, you must take care of … [Read more...]
Purposeful Grieving for Widows: Choosing Your Thoughts
Your grief is deep, personal, and private. You do, however, share characteristics with others in your style of grieving. Most people fall into two categories: Intuitive and Instrumental. Developed through the research of prominent psychologists Kenneth Doka and Terry Martin, these characteristics help people move through the grief process. Intuitives tend to experience grief as a deep feeling they must express and talk through, often … [Read more...]
