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56. Widowed Not Alone- With Kathryn Monaco-Douglas
84 Plays4 years ago
Kathryn Monaco-Douglas shares her journey of when she became a widow over 20 years ago when her husband Larry died, they had been married for over 19 years and had 3 kids. She had to learn how to do things on her own, because Larry used to take care of everything and was also the financial provider.
Kathryn started searching for bereavement groups, and found very few options for support. That is where she met Scott, her husband, who was a widower. After attending a few bereavement groups, she realized she could not listen to everyone's journey and take "their losses on top of hers". So she decided she would change it! A few years later, she launched Widowed Not Alone, an organization to help widows, widowers and their families have a place where they could come together and have support.
To contact Kathryn Monaco-Douglas for more information about in person or online support sessions: https://widowednotalone.com/
Contact Kendra Rinaldi if you want to be a guest on the podcast:
https://www.griefgratitudeandthegrayinbetween.com/
Music: https://rinaldisound.com/
Logo: https://pamelawinningham.com/
Production: Carlos Andres Londono
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Transcript
Catherine's Journey to Helping Widows
00:00:01
Speaker
I wasn't looking to teach anyone. I wasn't looking for another job. I had a full-time job. I had these kids. I had a lot on my plate. I was looking to help widows. So with that, I went home and I started thinking about how, where can I go? And my church didn't have anything. So I went to the church and they took me and they sent me for training. So I trained for a year and then I started with four elderly women
Exploring Grief and Offering Hope
00:00:30
Speaker
the group and then from there it just started to grow by word of mouth.
00:00:46
Speaker
This podcast is about exploring the grief that occurs at different times in our lives in which we have had major changes and transitions that literally shake us to the core and make us experience grief.
00:01:03
Speaker
I created this podcast for people to feel a little less hopeless and alone in their own grief process as they hear the stories of others who have had similar journeys.
Interview with Catherine Monaco
00:01:14
Speaker
I'm Kendra Rinaldi, your host. Now, let's dive right in to today's episode.
00:01:26
Speaker
Hello and welcome to today's podcast today. I will be chatting with Catherine Monaco and Catherine is a widow and she's created something really special out of her whole process to be able to support other widows as well. So I am excited to find out all her journey with you all, the listeners, because this is the first time she and I are chatting. So welcome Catherine.
00:01:54
Speaker
Thank you, Kendra, for this opportunity. I appreciate it.
00:01:57
Speaker
I'm so grateful that you're here. And we were just talking before we started to record that we both were really bad allergies. We both took Claritin. We already have something in common there aside from grief. We both had to take Claritin.
Catherine's Personal Loss and Growth
00:02:13
Speaker
I should tag Claritin on this podcast and give them props for our performance today. That was okay. By Claritin, we made it through without sneezing through a podcast.
00:02:26
Speaker
Welcome. Thank you for taking the time this morning to chat with me. Thank you. Tell me a little bit then about yourself. Tell me about your husband, your kids. This is the way back when, and then how you became a widow, and then we'll go from there. From there? Okay. I became a widow at 42 years old. I was married 19 and a half years.
00:02:56
Speaker
to my husband, Larry. He was my knight in shining armor. I came out of a divorced family where my father abandoned us when I was eight years old. I reunited with him when I was 21, but the damage was still there. And when Larry came into my life, he was just everything to me. He taught me how to,
00:03:20
Speaker
be the best me. He told me what family was about. He was an amazing father. We had three kids. And at 44 years old, he developed a blood clot in his armpit. And we went to a specialist
00:03:39
Speaker
And they did a sonogram and the next day they sent us home and the next day he passed away. My 11 year old daughter told me that she was trying to wake him up, but she couldn't. And from that point, my whole life did a spin around. And I know that I had a very strong codependency on my husband because
00:04:08
Speaker
partly because of my childhood and just, he was just every, like he took over everything. I was a housewife, I didn't have to work. He just made my life easy, maybe too easy. Cause when I lost him, it was so difficult to then find my way.
00:04:24
Speaker
because you had to basically learn. Oh, give me a second. There's a little bit of echo. Are you using a headset by chance? Yes. Oh, OK. OK. I don't know. I thought I heard my echo of my own voice. But OK. So you basically had to then learn how to not only adjust to being without him, but also adjusting of doing everything and learning to do the things that he used to be the one in charge of doing.
00:04:51
Speaker
Absolutely. I didn't pay the bills in the house. I didn't know what the bills were.
Challenges with Grief Resources in 2000
00:04:56
Speaker
I didn't know where the things in the house were, like to shut the water, the gas. I didn't know what to do with the cars. I never did the inspections. I didn't even know tires had to be rotated until I got a flat. He just took over everything. All I did was raise my kids and
00:05:16
Speaker
you know, keep a clean house. And I was a real housewife, but my kids were full time job. But still, I wish I would have been a little bit more in tune to what he did, which I had to learn from scratch. So I didn't even have a computer. I didn't have an email address because what would I need that as a housewife? And this was what year? What year was this? This was in the year 2000, where we didn't have social media. So my resources were limited. I
00:05:46
Speaker
I didn't have, you know, social media or an Internet to look up what to do with grief. I didn't have any of that. I had to figure a lot of things out on my own. Wow. Now, how how old were your children when your husband passed, when Larry passed? Yeah, they were 11. My daughter was 11. My son Anthony was 14 and my oldest Michael was 18.
00:06:12
Speaker
And they were all still home. So Michael, he was still home. Yes, Michael just, yeah, he just started college. He had graduated high school. He tried to do a year of college and he ended up dropping out. He could concentrate. I tried to get him therapy. He was rejecting it. Again, I didn't know what other resources for him. It just, there wasn't anything. It was really difficult. So for me, my sister put me in a bereavement group.
00:06:41
Speaker
in a local Y, and they didn't take me until three months after my loss. That's the restrictions here in our area. What area do you live in? I live in Long Island, New York. So at that time, the restrictions were to wait about three months, like before you could even start this bereavement group. So here you are, three months,
00:07:05
Speaker
without, it's basically like you're in a boat without a paddle, right? Absolutely. That's kind of how you felt without paddles and not knowing how to navigate this new journey, not only of grief, but of how do I take care of a household by myself?
Starting a Mural Business and Support Group
00:07:23
Speaker
It was overwhelming. It was totally overwhelming.
00:07:28
Speaker
Now, what did you do then those three months, then if you didn't have the bereavement group yet, what other tools did you use and how did you even start then job searching and those, I don't know, like where, I can't even imagine like, you know, like how it would be to start out of a sudden when you haven't worked in, you know, what, 20 years? Yeah, 18. I was a respiratory technician. I couldn't go back to that because I'd have to be re-schooled.
00:07:57
Speaker
You know, because my daughter had to get around the bus, I couldn't go back to school. So I had to have a job. So God blessed me with the gift to be able to paint. And I started painting murals in kids' rooms and faux finishes. And that was how I supported myself and my kids. I took a van that we had. I pulled the seats out, put ladders in there and crates, and just started hustling my painting business.
00:08:28
Speaker
I love this because, Catherine, it just shows how, one, how resilient we are, two, how resourceful we can be if it really comes down to it. We really can be very resourceful as human beings. We find the means to do things.
00:08:46
Speaker
I think so. I think it's like a survival, you know, what choice that I have and tools. The only thing that I did, and I still share this, you know, with people is that I would take a nap. Like when it really got really painful, because, you know, we don't sleep good in the beginning, we're tossing and turning and thinking and overwhelmed. And so we don't sleep good. And then we try to function during the day.
00:09:15
Speaker
And everything's so overwhelming. When it got too much to bear, I would just take a nap. And then I would start again when I would wake up. That was my biggest tool.
00:09:26
Speaker
It's like a reset button. It was like a reset, like the nap could help you like as a reset button. Like it's like, I even use that in the middle of my day, even if it's 15 minutes sometimes, like when I need to ground myself being an empath and stuff like, and I'm sure you too, cause we'll go into that too. Cause now you help other people when you're surrounded with so many different types of energy too, you kind of need to center yourself. That's like, I called that my meditate. My meditation is a 15 minute nap sometimes. That's my meditate.
00:09:53
Speaker
That's why it's relaxing and it takes you out of where you are for the moment and when you When you wake up all of a sudden you feel like okay, I could handle this now You know, let me just do what I have to do. It's that the what they take over your they take over your mind. I
00:10:11
Speaker
Yeah. And especially when you don't know how to navigate them or what to do with them when it's so overwhelming. And especially because you still had to be able to function to be able to work and give your kids food and take care of them and take care of yourself. So it's kind of like you couldn't just completely submerge yourself
00:10:30
Speaker
in the grief itself, full on, you have to kind of keep going. Now, what then shifted? At what point did things start happening? When you joined them, the bereavement group, three months in, what did you find in that particular community for you?
00:10:52
Speaker
I met my husband now and another gentleman and another woman that were, we were all around the same ages and we stayed connected. The group is over after eight weeks, which I felt after 19 and a half years of marriage that eight weeks was just not enough support. I was like, they gave it time. Like, it was only like eight weeks. Eight weeks to get over.
00:11:22
Speaker
So it was funny because I was the one that kept saying to these other two guys and this girl, let's get together. Let's do lunch. Let's do dinner. What could we do to meet up? Like I needed some type of social activity because my Friday and Saturday nights were lonely and empty. And I was used to being out with my husband during the week. I was working, but the weekends were real. I mean, I worked on the weekends too, but they were really a struggle at night because the kids would go out with their friends. And I found myself alone a lot.
00:11:53
Speaker
So then I put myself in another bereavement group. And there's something that they do in these bereavement groups that I really struggle with. And that's that they sit around in a circle, like from that movie, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they're all sitting around a circle. You think, okay, I'm in this movie now, right? And I didn't want to be a widow. I didn't want to be in the circle. But I do need help.
00:12:19
Speaker
And they're all sharing the details of their loss. And being sensitive as I am, I just couldn't take their losses on top of my loss. It was just too much to take in. So with the second group, when I went and they did it again, I jumped up and I said, I'm out of here. I don't know who made this rule, but I'm out of here. And I stormed out of the room. I was hysterical crying. I cried all the way home.
00:12:46
Speaker
And I decided then if I ever got on my feet, I was going to go back and change it. And that was what I stuck with like the whole time during the years of grieving that I was going to go back and do this. I didn't know where, I didn't know how, I didn't know when, I just knew that I was going to do it. And so
00:13:12
Speaker
You basically decided, yeah, what you were, what you, sorry to interrupt you, what you, what you realized that that is that what, what the tools that were there were just not a fit for you per se and what you needed for your own grieving process. You didn't want to be hearing other people's stories, their hardship, but more also probably, did you feel like you're like, you wanted to hear more like, what are we going to
00:13:38
Speaker
do about it? What did you feel was what you needed and what is it that you created? So what I felt was the first group when I went in, they shared their losses. And I did the first time and it was really hard to deal with. So I kind of feel like
00:13:57
Speaker
If you get 12 people in a room, you're listening to 12 losses and you're a grieving person, that's a lot to take on. It's one thing to listen to one loss. Like I tell you, my husband died, you know, he had a blood clot, it was medical negligence. That's one loss. But if you're listening to 12 people one after the other, one is suicide, one is, it just gets overwhelming on top of a grieving, like I'm not trained to listen to all that.
00:14:22
Speaker
So when I went into the second group and they were doing the same thing again, it just was a trigger that I thought I had gotten to a certain point where I was doing a little bit better. And now this is bringing me right back to day one. So that's what made me feel like, why am I doing this again? Like, this isn't good. Like, there's no continuation from the eight weeks that I was in. It just went back to the beginning again. And what I really wanted was someone to teach me how to survive this.
00:14:52
Speaker
You know, tools, give me tools. How do I do this? I don't know how to do this without my husband. I was very dependent on him. And the changes were coming left and right and I couldn't handle them.
00:15:05
Speaker
I think this is such good input that you're sharing. I myself am a facilitator in a bereavement group and so for an organization. And so what you're sharing is very insightful for me because I had not thought of what you just said that
Blending Families and Building New Dynamics
00:15:26
Speaker
you as a participant are not, you're not trained to have to listen to all these other hardships. You know about your grief, but then listening to other people's journeys, it's like somebody that is like a facilitator, a counselor, a therapist, or any, they're trained to know how to listen to these things and to be able to deal with their emotions, but participants necessarily are not. So taking all that for you was just a lot.
00:15:55
Speaker
Thank you for that insight. It's helpful even for me. So I appreciate that. So now tell us then, at what point then did you start then creating your own group? My own group. So five years after my loss, I remarried. I married one of the men that I met in the bereavement group, Scott.
00:16:21
Speaker
And he has three kids. I adopt his three kids so that we could be a blended family. And Scott knew my intention to go back. So now I'm working full time, raising six kids. And I don't even know where I got the courage to do this. But I started seeking out how to do a group, help the widow. So I went back to the why because I felt, well, that's where I went.
00:16:50
Speaker
you know, I, I guess my, my thought process was a little limited at the moment, you know, I go there, that's where I got help. And so I went there. And they rejected me. They said, you're not a social worker, and you're not a psychologist, and you can't do this. But you could, they call me later to tell me I could do a chat group for divorces and singles and teach them how to paint. Which was interesting, because
00:17:19
Speaker
that makes me, that just is how people don't get a widow and they didn't get my intentions. I wasn't looking to teach anyone. I wasn't looking for another job. I had a full-time job. I had these kids. I had a lot on my plate. I was looking to help widows. So with that, I went home and I started thinking about how, where can I go? And my church didn't have anything. So I went to the church and they took me and they sent me for training.
00:17:49
Speaker
So I trained for a year and then I started with four elderly women, the group. And then from there, it just started to grow by word of mouth. And after a year, I got a call from the Y that they wanted me to come there and do a group for them. And they wanted to pay me. So that was kind of ironic because they started to hear how it was growing. And all of a sudden, it didn't matter that I wasn't a social worker or a psychologist.
00:18:20
Speaker
Well, because you have the intuitive component too. Now, the training that you got, was it like to be a grief coach? What kind of training was it? Yeah, they were workshops. I guess they really wanted to see where I was in handling, speaking about grief. It's not as intense like when I teach facilitating because I teach as well.
00:18:49
Speaker
I teach all like what to expect. I go through everything. They didn't do that with me. I like doing actual program. They just sent me for workshops. I had to do them for two years, but I started the groups after the first year. And I would just go to these like two-hour workshops, like seasonal, you know, and I just completed it. And then she gave me the permission to start the groups and they gave me a room for free.
00:19:16
Speaker
coffee for free and I just bought the pastries and I made it. I created what I had in my head that should have been. I didn't have a three month limit. I kept the groups connected after the eight weeks. We have social gatherings. I just did everything that I couldn't find for me I created.
00:19:38
Speaker
That's wonderful. So for example, so when somebody would start, they'd have to start and finish at the same time. You didn't have people kind of joining in halfway through a particular group set so that it wouldn't change the flow. Is that correct? No, no, that is not correct. We do take people.
00:19:54
Speaker
in the middle? Oh, yeah. How would it work then when somebody would then come in in the middle of it? If you had already, like do people, okay, I'm just trying to like wrap my head around your program. How is your program unique? How is it, because it's still running, unique in terms of like when people come in, then how did you make that different as to not having to reshare, relive every single second? Tell me how that goes.
00:20:23
Speaker
In in that i'm just i'm curious okay so first of all we're doing them the groups virtually now but we've always been in in person group so i'm first thing i do is i do an icebreaker it's like a you have a see like that three minutes be dating.
00:20:41
Speaker
Yes, yeah, yeah. Something like what's the favorite place you want to go? If you had one food to take to a desert, deserted island, what would it be? Like those kinds of things? No, no, no. The icebreaker we do is I put 10 chairs. If I have 10 people, I put five chairs in front of the other five chairs parallel. And I give them three minutes to talk to each other, but not talk about their grief. And I ring a bell, and then one row moves down a seat.
00:21:09
Speaker
And then we do it again. And this way, everybody gets to meet each other before we sit around a table and talk. What a fun activity. That's so fun. It gets loud. They laugh. It really is a good way. Love it. Now, how are you doing that? Virtually, are you able to then create little breakout rooms and then switch them up?
00:21:31
Speaker
Honestly, no, I didn't even find out about breakout rooms until recently. We don't have the icebreaker, but we give each person a chance to introduce themselves and a little bit about themselves, but we don't talk about the grief right away. Then we start talking about how you lost your spouse, but not the details, just like
00:21:53
Speaker
What was it? Like for me, it would be medical negligence, someone else, it's like suicide, overdose, car accident, murdered, whatever it is, but we don't get into how they were murdered or how they killed themselves. We don't get into that. We just only know that. And I say to them, listen, I tell them the truth. We don't want you to go into the details. We feel it's too much for you. But if you connect with someone else in the room, feel free at the break to talk to them.
00:22:20
Speaker
So if I saw someone that had the same thing my husband had, I might want to go talk to them. Because for some people, the sharing and the sharing the details is one of the ways that they kind of come to terms to the reality of what happened. So for some people that may be
00:22:41
Speaker
helpful, and so you allow that to happen, but more like in the one-on-one kind of situation. One-on-one, right. And I recommend therapists for everyone so they could get to tell their story. I tell them all they could call me anytime and tell me their story. If they feel the need to tell their story, I'm here to listen to them. I just don't want to subject everyone to everyone's story. Yeah.
00:23:10
Speaker
I can see that. I actually find that even true with even just this podcast. A lot of times people that I know that may be grieving are not, for example, wanting to even listen to even just the podcast episode because
00:23:26
Speaker
It can be a lot even for themselves to hear somebody else's journey on the podcast. Depending on who I'm interviewing, sometimes people do share more details because that is what they feel like they want to do. In other cases, they don't. Again, I am taking notes as you're speaking, but it's also helpful for me to have that into account.
00:23:51
Speaker
as a podcast host, and when I'm asking and so forth, so that the listeners themselves don't have to carry something else with them, rather, you know, feel lighter, to some extent, rather than heavier, when they get off of listening. Some of them will say that when they call, they'll say, do I have to share my story?
00:24:11
Speaker
And I'm like, no, you don't have to share your story. We don't do that. You just, you could just say how they passed and that's it. And if you don't want to share that, you could just not share that. You could say, I'd rather not. I don't want anyone to feel pressured or judged or, you know, I just want them to be comfortable in the space that we have for them and to know that we're there for them.
00:24:32
Speaker
Yes, no, that's very, very good. Now, take us then into what it's become then, and tell us the name, and this is again in Long Island, but now that it's virtual, are you going to maintain a virtual component? Yes, because we're helping people.
00:24:53
Speaker
We have people from Canada now. We have people from Florida, from Texas, from all over. They're in and out of all my groups. So right now I have eight groups. Two groups are extra, are for kids, 14 to 17. And then we have a group for young adults. It's just kind of like a chat group.
00:25:19
Speaker
I have two groups for those that don't have children. We have a lot of members that don't have children. And then they're in a bereavement group with people who have children issues. And some of them couldn't have children or had a miscarriage. And they don't want to be in a group with those that are talking about their kids. So we made a separate group for them. And that group has been growing.
00:25:46
Speaker
Expedentially, since we started it last year, I had to make two out of it, because one was, it was too many people in one session, so I had to make two groups out of it. So we separate our groups by ages. So like I have a group of 30 and 40 year olds, 50 year olds, 60 year olds, 65 and over, and the groups for those with no children.
00:26:15
Speaker
And then after the eight weeks, typically when we're not in a pandemic, we have gatherings. We have three gatherings a year. We have a Halloween party slash gathering. We have Everybody Brings Edition gathering. And we have a huge picnic, which I made it a fundraiser to help those that had financial hardship in my group. And we had over a thousand people
00:26:44
Speaker
uh, two years ago when we did it, but last year we were forced not to do it because of the pandemic. But I'm hopeful that we'll get back to that at some point, but right now. That's right. So for people to sign up, then they go to your website. I just want to make sure I don't forget and I'll put you on the show. It's widowed not alone. Um, because I felt in the beginning, you know, that I was really on my own. I was alone.
00:27:14
Speaker
And I felt that no widow should have to go through this alone. So we're widows and widowers. I have men too in the group. I have a lot of men in the group considering that men don't typically do bereavement groups. But they feel comfortable because they're not the only man. And just like myself, how I met my husband in my bereavement group,
00:27:40
Speaker
we have some couples that came out of my groups and a couple of babies. So I always say that, yeah, I say it's serendipity. That's not what the group is about, but I can't help with people click together, you know?
00:27:56
Speaker
Right. No, it's just it's one of the things is to is just you find a commonality. So my dad, my dad is a widower and his wife is a widow. So so they and they did bond over that component, too. Right. Because they had a common. Yeah. So.
00:28:15
Speaker
Would you want to share a little bit more of how that journey was? Would it be with you and Scott? Sure. And how did you navigate then the kids too into that aspect? I mean, they were older, but how did you navigate the blending of the families too in your journeys? So Scott's kids were much younger than mine. His oldest was 11 and my youngest was 11.
00:28:44
Speaker
And then he had a five-year-old and Zachary's a year and a half older. So he was like six and a half. And we got married. It was five and a half years for him and five years for me. So the kids were a little bit older, but they knew me through the years of just being friends. And then when we started dating. But once they came into the house, it was a little difficult because
00:29:14
Speaker
that's kids had no mom for five years. So they had 31 nannies. The nannies were robbing from them. He would one cooked a chicken in his fireplace. He was just having so many issues with the nannies. So the kids didn't have, you know, they didn't have a lot of structure. And I'm a very structured person. So when we first got married, and the first year was so hard, like getting the kids to sit and have dinner at the table.
00:29:42
Speaker
So I was always traditional. We sit at the table and, you know, I set the table and we all sit together and we talk. I always felt that was important in my house and his daughter would get up and say, I don't want to eat that. I want to have a bagel and cream cheese. And I'd be like, no, this is what you're eating. And then she would have a tepid tantrum on the floor.
00:30:02
Speaker
And Scott was pretty cool about, you know, saying, okay, this isn't a restaurant. This is what mom made. And this is what you're going to have. And you don't want to have it. Then you don't eat until I think it was kind of like a struggle between her thinking she was the mother of the house after her mother died and me coming in now and being the mom. And I didn't want to be bossy with them, but I also wanted them to have structure and
00:30:32
Speaker
So it was a lot of struggle in the beginning. Like I would say to my son Zach, did you brush your teeth? And he would say yes. And I go, okay, let's go check. And then I'd see that he didn't brush his teeth. He was eating candy for breakfast. I'm like, well, you're eating candy? And he'd be like, yeah, my dad says it's okay. Like they were lying to me. I'm like, I'm sure your dad didn't say it was okay to have jelly beans for breakfast. So there was a lot of struggle trying to get them on board.
00:31:03
Speaker
And how was it for yours with then Scott? How was it for your kids adjusting then to Scott being now in the home? Well, my daughter was angry. She didn't want me to get married again. It was a big adjustment for her to adjust to a sister. And because Jordana was so young, she was like clingy a little bit. And my daughter wasn't used to that. So she really had to adjust to that. And the boys were kind of like, OK.
00:31:32
Speaker
Everybody was tolerating each other in the household. There was a lot of friction. And we just kept sticking to it, Scott and I. We would discuss the kids, you know, what a therapist. And we just kept working towards, this is our family. This is our family. And when my daughter would speak nasty to Scott, I would say, excuse me, you can't speak to my husband that way. You have something to say, you have to say it with respect. And we just stuck to our guns. And they just grew up.
00:32:02
Speaker
Now my girls are sisters. I mean, like, my daughter got married and her sister was her maid of honor. Like, they love each other. And my boys are, they're all together. They're cool each other brothers. You know, it's just- Yeah, there's a little bit more of an age gap between the boys, but the girls are pretty, they're the same. No, my daughter is 32 now and my other daughter is 25.
00:32:31
Speaker
Oh, okay. There's a big age difference there. Yeah. Okay, so it was his oldest 11 year old was a boy. Got it. Got it. I thought that may be the girl. So yeah, so it's all about just really also just being persistent and consistent. And then, you know, kind of like you said, sticking with it. Oh, man, it was it was challenging at times. It really was.
00:32:58
Speaker
I mean, it isn't easy necessarily to suddenly, I mean, even me as an adult, and my dad hears this podcast, so my dad, he'll be hearing as I'm sharing this, but when my dad was going to remarry, it was an adjustment for us too, and we were adults. My mom passed away four years ago, so when he got married a little bit over a year ago,
00:33:24
Speaker
It was not about the fact of somebody else being in our life. It was just the fact that it was another level of our own grief that we had to be dealing with. It was about our grief, not about his wife. It was about us and our grief. So it was definitely an adjustment even as an adult of a child.
00:33:46
Speaker
I think that's like the hidden, like, you know, like, there's the hidden second losses that we go through. I think that's another hidden, hidden thing, like, even amongst widows, like, because I do the groups, and it's like hidden, like, they think, oh, she met someone, she got married, she's good now. Well, no, I still had to support my kids. God was good to support my three kids, you know, so I'm still working.
00:34:09
Speaker
And I'm putting my daughter and my son through college and I'm still paying their medical bills and all their things. And I'm working on this family to try to make it a one family. And it's not as easy as you think it is. And it's like.
00:34:25
Speaker
I think that's like the misconception, like just because you meet someone. And even when I was dating him, it was like everyone that was helping him with his kids stopped helping him. Like they thought I was helping him. I couldn't help him. I had my own kids and my own work. I was still supporting my household. So I think there's, you know, people just think, oh, cause you met someone or you got married again, now you're good. And you're not. And I was still grieving. I still was grieving Larry, even though I married Scott.
00:34:56
Speaker
Scott just understood like if it was my anniversary or the day that he passed that that was a bad day for me and he knew it and I knew it for him. But I was still grieving. I didn't wait till I felt like I was better or I would have never did anything. You know, I hear that so many times talking with widows and widowers that have been married. I actually did an interview with
00:35:20
Speaker
with a couple so basically like you and Scott like that but like I interviewed them both at the same time I would interview you know Liz you know and then and then the her boyfriend and then the two of them together the how they met but they also are widow and widow were
00:35:37
Speaker
And the same thing, they talk about their spouses. Theirs is more recent. They have young kids and they still honor all these special, you know, occasions and stuff, too. So how did you both then also honor then what was Scott's first name? Sally. Sally. How do you honor Sally and Larry?
00:36:02
Speaker
in your family and how did you honor them through the years as the kids were growing up in this new dynamic? Like you said, like, for example, anniversary is for you or birthdays and so forth. Pictures of the families, of them in the home, those kinds of things.
Grief's Lasting Impact and Personal Growth
00:36:20
Speaker
Well, the kids would keep their pictures in their rooms, but we didn't keep pictures in the house itself. We both sold our houses because we felt
00:36:28
Speaker
that if either one of our families moved into the other house, then the kids would be territorial and it wouldn't be on equal ground. So we both sold our houses and we bought a house together so that we all moved in at the same time. And Scott's Jewish and I'm Catholic. And I loved what he was doing. He was lighting these little yes site candles that burn
00:36:57
Speaker
for 24 hours in memory of Sally. And so then I was like, I want one of those for Larry. So the kids would know when the candles were burning, it was either for Sally or Larry. And they would say, who's the candle for? And they would know like it's Larry's birthday or Sally's birthday. And it was the day Larry died. And they would know because of the candle. But for myself,
00:37:23
Speaker
I would go to the cemetery, I would have a masthead for Larry, I would just do my own thing and Scott would do his.
00:37:32
Speaker
That is wonderful that you also honored also the different ways in which you were each honoring because of your religious backgrounds too, yet you also incorporated some of the ways in which he would, you know, the ceremonial or traditional ways that he was doing it into your own way. So I love that. It's a beautiful tradition and I really like it. And I share it with the groups that we do that.
00:37:58
Speaker
Oh, that's so good. Now, how does your grief look like now, these many years later? What does it look like now? I still honor Larry on the days that I just experienced 21 years that he's gone. And it's just amazing how you could be so many years later and feel like it was yesterday at the same time.
00:38:27
Speaker
And I hear people say that at four years and five years and eight years, but you don't think when you're 21 years, you're still gonna feel that way. But I still do. I still love him just as much as I did when he passed. And on the days like the anniversary of his death or his birthday, I allow myself to greet those days for him. And I pray and I go visit the cemetery or whatever, but I give myself that time
00:38:57
Speaker
you know, like my Larry time, you know, and then I go about my life. I love that, that you just still give yourself that space. And you said something important. It's that, yeah, there's no time. I wrote the other day a little, I don't know, things that just kind of come into my head sometimes. I wrote it on my Instagram. Like, there's no timeline for loving. So why should we expect a timeline for grieving? Absolutely.
00:39:26
Speaker
Oh, there's like, we, we, um, we don't like say, Oh, Oh, you love that person? Oh, and now they're not like, well, stop loving them now. It was like, what do you mean that? Cause I like an on and off switch. That doesn't just, it's so true, Kendra, that, that is so true because you don't say to someone, how much do you love them? But people, but people will say to me, how long has he gone? Like, as if I should be over it.
00:39:54
Speaker
You know, it's 21 years. That sounds like a long time, but it's still traumatic to me, you know?
00:40:01
Speaker
It is. And the thing is that there's this expectation then that grief is a timeline, like as if it's supposed to then end. And, you know, like sometimes in society that especially, okay, let me just give an example. For example, even at work. Let's say you have a nine to five job, a job that you have to go in. Somebody dies in your family. How many weeks do they give people off?
00:40:28
Speaker
to be able to grieve probably just a week or something like that. Not even. Not even? OK. Not New York, though. Oh, my gosh. Just to deal with maybe just the funeral arrangements. Unknowingly, there's going to be all these different waves that are going to come in and out and so forth. So yeah, there's no time. There is no time. There is no time.
00:40:56
Speaker
As far as the workplace, there's a lot of people that have come to me and said like in the medical field that they had to go back to work within three days of losing their spouse. I can't imagine, and they're young, like I'd get someone 36 years old who lost her husband and they wanted her to go back to work and she was worried about losing her job on top of losing her husband. It's so stressful. Some of the things are just so stressful that
00:41:25
Speaker
you hear over the years. For some people, and you probably encountered some people too, in which their job does become their way of managing their grief. I've known of people that they actually want to still continue their routine because already so much has happened and changed that they don't necessarily want to add another big
00:41:50
Speaker
change and like stop going to work because work becomes their sanity. Like that work becomes like their space in which they at least feel like they're something is like the same to some extent. Correct. That is that is what they need but others don't like others do need space and that's something that in society we don't necessarily allow for it to look different how people grieve that it will look different.
00:42:16
Speaker
That's correct. But I think that people kept saying to me personally, when are you coming back? They were looking for the old me and that that person died with Larry. I always say that Scott didn't marry the same person Larry did.
00:42:36
Speaker
You know, I wasn't the same woman. I changed. You know, here I became a business owner. I'm running a household. That wasn't the same person Larry married. I wasn't codependent on my husband now like I was on my first husband. I'm independent in my marriage. So I'm a totally different person. I always say like if Larry ever came back to the earth and saw me in action, he would be like, who is that?
00:43:06
Speaker
Who is that person? I'm sure in my perspective, he's watching you and he's just cheering you on. He's so proud of you. In my perspective, he's just watching on the bleachers and being like, Yeah, you go Catherine, look at your girl. I knew you had it in you. This is a woman that didn't have to pay a bill or do an email and they ended up running a business and running these groups and
00:43:33
Speaker
like running a household, sold a house, bought a house. I mean, it did so many things within my griefhood that I myself don't even know how I did it.
00:43:43
Speaker
Amazing, right? We surprise ourselves of what we're capable of, and we don't give ourselves credit sometimes for seeing how much growth has happened. And just hearing your story of how much you've done in the last 21 years since you experienced that traumatic day and his sudden death and you changing completely to who you are now.
00:44:10
Speaker
That's amazing. That's amazing. I honor you for that. Thank you. Yes. Some people say, I had no choice. I had to. I had three kids. I had to. I had to put one step forward and keep going and figuring it out as I went. That's the thing. You just figured it out as you went. It's not like you had this
00:44:32
Speaker
plan, you know, you didn't have any guidebook to know what it is. No, I couldn't even read honestly. My reading was challenged by the trauma of finding my husband.
00:44:46
Speaker
So I couldn't even read about grief. So all of it I kind of did on the blind. But what I give to our groups is I give them the things that I wish somebody would have told me. Like even the fact that I felt like my daughter lost her father, she also lost her mother for a while.
00:45:07
Speaker
you know, things like that, like the things that I wish somebody would have said to me, you know, your children, their childhood is compromised by loss, you know, try to be there for them as much as you can, take vacations with them. I wish I would have had someone telling me that, like I didn't, I was just always worried about work, supporting my house, supporting my kids. And I didn't have enough time like to have fun with them and enjoy their, my daughter was still only 11. She still had a childhood left, you know,
00:45:35
Speaker
You said something that I heard another friend that I interviewed too, also a widow, she said the same, like for her was basically, she did not, her son was only...
00:45:46
Speaker
think three when his dad passed. And so she was like, I could not allow my son to not only grow up now without a father, but without a mother, because I could not lose myself in that. So that's what kept her going, was knowing that she couldn't lose
00:46:05
Speaker
who she was, that was what she focused on, because if not, her son would lose two people, you know, and not just one. That's what kept her moving forward. I see a lot of young people come to that conclusion on their own.
Tools, Resources, and Community Support
00:46:22
Speaker
And I don't know if they were just more aware than I was, but that didn't come to me. I was in so much pain, I couldn't see past the pain.
00:46:34
Speaker
Honestly, Catherine, it's like, and you probably see this also with your widows and widowers. Everybody's journey is so different and depending on also on what they've lived. And you even mentioned at the beginning of this conversation, you had a major component of trauma too, you were growing up too.
00:46:52
Speaker
of your dad leaving. Therefore, there's other things that you had in your own journey. Your journey cannot be compared to Scott's journey, cannot be compared to your daughter's journey. Correct. They're all different. Everybody's so different. Your past definitely contributes to your grief. Sometimes I see people with multiple losses, the complicated grief. It all contributes to how we get through this. That's why I always feel like it's
00:47:23
Speaker
You can get through it alone, but it helps so much when you get through it with a group and you have the support of others that say, you know what, I've been there already. I've gone through it and this is what helped me. I try not to give people advice. I try to just make suggestions and say, you know, this works for so many people like over the years of staying connected to the groups. I've learned a lot.
00:47:47
Speaker
I have therapists that come in on a regular basis to speak to the groups on different topics. I learned a lot from them. And I just, you know, we share all those things because we want people to, you know, have the support that they need.
00:48:04
Speaker
It's resources, and like you said, there's going to be something, some of those tools that you offer are going to be beneficial to some. For example, if I say to somebody, journal, I used to write, when my sister died, I would write letters as if I was writing to her. I was 21. Nobody told me that that's what you do. Intuitively, that's what I did. Nobody said write letters.
00:48:26
Speaker
No, I would just write letters as if I was like a journal entry and be like, oh, Zorana, today I did that. And by the way, I really miss, you know, like, so either I would write of just of what was going on with my day to her, or I would write about my emotions.
00:48:43
Speaker
about how I missed her, but that was, again, intuitive. But for somebody else, if I were to say, like, you know, write a journal or like, eh, I don't like writing, you know, that's just not the way I'm like, oh, can you dance it out then? You know, who knows? Like, somebody, everybody's different. So, like, what you do with your grievers is, you know, you offer different options. You give the different tools that are out there and take what serves you. That's really what it is. Take what serves you and then
00:49:12
Speaker
If it doesn't, it's okay. It's okay, but here are options, and this helped me. It may or may not help you. If it does, wonderful. If not, then try maybe this thing that's helped X, Y, and Z person too. Right. Some tools are like exercise or the journaling. Some of them are really helpful, and you can't tell someone what to do, but we do share
00:49:41
Speaker
like writing a letter to your spouse. And just doing that is so cathodic, you know, because it's a form of journaling. And I'm like, write to them, tell them all the people that weren't there for you.
00:49:56
Speaker
Just bent. Yeah. Get out. Because, you know, really, it's so cathodic if you write all this stuff. And this person wasn't there for me. And this person was, I didn't expect. And this is what happened. And you could just keep on writing and crying and laughing. And you just could get it all out.
00:50:13
Speaker
Yes, without judgment. Yeah, without doing a daily journal, but just writing a letter, you know. Yes, no, that's so true. Yeah, no, there's just all these different ways and experiences. And like you said, you can't say you're an ex... Okay, let me just put it this way. You have seen a lot of way more widows and widowers, and you've also done this for a long period of time.
00:50:42
Speaker
And even yet, and I say this myself, we're not experts on that. We're still not experts because only the person experiencing is the expert on their own grief. But we have enough vision of having seen people to give again those resources of what has worked. It's kind of like this is the evidence I have.
00:51:01
Speaker
This is the things that I've seen along the years that have helped people. And here it is. And this is wonderful. I just think it's wonderful that you're offering this. And now that this virtual world has opened up the doors for you to have an online program as well, how wonderful. Because now the listeners hearing this, if you're feeling that you are wanting this kind of community,
00:51:28
Speaker
and you're a widow or a widower or a child or a teen too, right? Teen, because you, but first of all, the teens are kids without one parent. Yes. A kid, a teen that lost a parent or yes, we have a woman that's in our group. She's, she lost a husband in her thirties and she happens to be a school psychologist. She also lost her dad when she was in her twenties. So she stepped forward and asked to facilitate a group.
00:51:59
Speaker
And she does the teens, so she's a school psychologist, so she's excellent with the kids. And they like her because she understands what their mom was going through, and she also understands what they're going through, losing her own dad. And then I have another facilitator that lost her dad when she was in her 20s.
00:52:21
Speaker
and she does 20 to 30 year olds. And it's just like a, that group is like a chat group twice a month they meet. It's not like a structured bereavement group. And then I've been doing one-on-one coaching. I do it for a donation. All our groups are free. We're not a non-for-profit, we are no profit. Like I have never like organized myself as a non-for-profit because I did it through the church and they hold the funds from the fundraisers and all that.
00:52:51
Speaker
So just sign up for the program because I actually, as you're speaking, the names are coming up in my head of people that I could because a lot of times like the group I'm a member of is only here in my in my in the Dallas area. So I can't.
00:53:06
Speaker
you know, if somebody's out of the state, I'm like the organization that I facilitate, you know, that I volunteer in, is only in this area. So I'm always looking for resources to be able to pass on to people. Usually I send them to children, grieve.org, if they have children, like to kind of just see what things are in their areas. So I love that now I have one other resource to send.
00:53:31
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you. I'm definitely going to add it to my resources list too on my website too so that people can go there and be able to do this, especially now that it's
00:53:44
Speaker
that they can go from wherever they are. I love this. Thank you so much. Anything else you wanted to share with the listeners that I might have not asked you that I've forgotten to ask? Yes. I want to share that not only do we do the eight-week bereavement, but then we have a group called Chat and Connect. That group is, for those that finished bereavement,
00:54:09
Speaker
because we keep the groups together after the eight weeks, we make a captain and a co-captain in each group. And we pick a person within the group that wants to keep the group going. And so then we leave them off on their own and they keep meeting. And then all those groups, let's say I have eight groups right now, that's at least 80 people, then we all meet together with the people that I had previously.
00:54:34
Speaker
So we're always gathering and we're always bringing each other together. But sometimes over the years, because I'm doing this for 15 years, the group start breaking up. People move out of state. Somebody gets married. And then there's only like maybe two people left in the group. So we made this other group called Chat and Connect so that they could go into another group and meet new people, you know, from all the groups that are all the stragglers. They still have round table talk.
00:55:01
Speaker
And they could still meet. I love that. The stragglers, the ones that have graduated or. Well, it's just like there's still people left that they still want to connect that, you know, and why should they be left alone? Again, it's not being left alone. And then I have a member that created a group within the group that they, the, the widows that are longer, um, made like a meal train and they help the widows that just come in that if they're sick or they need extra help.
00:55:32
Speaker
They help each other, they give them care packages. And she named that Wednesday's Children because we do the groups on a Wednesday evening. And so that came out of this group as well. So there's so much growth within the grieving community.
00:55:47
Speaker
I love that you said that you still have this other group, the Chat and Connect, because like we were just talking before, you never know when again you may need to be able to talk to somebody because even just like as I mentioned, even when my dad got married in a different level of my own grief kind of coming up to the surface, there may be other occasions down the line. Like if your children get married and you don't even have the
00:56:17
Speaker
the other parent there to be present on such a special occasion, it could bring up a whole other
00:56:25
Speaker
part of their grief too. Absolutely. When they graduate from college and here you are alone seeing your child, whatever it is that made me think. Absolutely. I always say three years after my loss, we had a snowstorm and I had to shovel and no one thought to say, oh, there's a widow, she's a widow because it's three years later, but I'm still a widow and I still have these responsibilities. It was so much work to have to shovel myself out, to get to work.
00:56:55
Speaker
on top of all the other responsibilities. So there's, you need somebody to validate. Yeah, that was a lot for you to do, you know, like you're still having meltdowns. And even when I had my grandchildren, that my husband wasn't there.
00:57:10
Speaker
They're his grandchildren, you know. And my last one that we just had last May is a redhead like my husband was. So it's just like little things like that. It's nice to have people that understand what you're going through during your your grief that it's always with you. Like it doesn't go away just because the years pass.
00:57:30
Speaker
So, and in your case, like you and Scott are, you know, at least you have each other to kind of comprehend that within your same household. But there are people that don't, that may not remarry and to have them reach out or maybe they do marry, but somebody that has not gone through a grieving experience themselves. So they may not relate to what you're experiencing. So, so having these opportunities of talking to others that can relate to what you're going through is really important.
00:57:59
Speaker
Thank you so much once again, Catherine. And again, it's Widowed Not Alone. Widowed Not Alone is the name of your website. And again, I'll put that in the little whatever. I never remember what to call that, the stuff, the information about the podcast. Just scroll on the info of the podcast when you're listening to this, listeners, because I forget what that's called. And I will also add it to the resources on my website as well, the website. So thanks once again.
00:58:35
Speaker
Thank you again so much for choosing to listen today. I hope that you can take away a few nuggets from today's episode that can bring you comfort in your times of grief. If so, it would mean so much to me if you would rate and comment on this episode. And if you feel inspired in some way to share it with someone
00:58:55
Speaker
Thank you, Kendra.
00:59:00
Speaker
who may need to hear this, please do so. Also, if you or someone you know has a story of grief and gratitude that should be shared so that others can be inspired as well, please reach out to me. And thanks once again for tuning into Grief Gratitude and the Gray in Between podcast. Have a beautiful day.