The Widowed Mom Podcast

Have you ever found yourself frozen, wanting to support someone who's grieving but afraid of saying the wrong thing?

Most of us weren't taught how to show up for someone who's experienced a devastating loss. We want to help, but sometimes our well-intentioned words can accidentally cause more harm than good. 

Join me this week as I share practical guidance for anyone who wants to be a genuine source of support for a widow in the...

Have you been beating yourself up because you can't stop thinking about something?

Maybe it’s the last conversation you had with your person, something someone said that felt hurtful, or a decision you're questioning. You tell yourself to move on, but the thought returns like a boomerang, taking up mental space you desperately need for other things. The frustration builds as you wonder why you can't just let it go, especially when ...

Have you ever had someone say, “You're so strong” or, “They're in a better place now” and felt... worse? These well-meaning comments, though intended to comfort, often leave us feeling misunderstood and alone in our grief journey.

Sometimes the people who love us most can hurt us without meaning to. This disconnect between what someone intends and how their actions affect us shows up everywhere in widowhood. And understanding this ...

If you’re surprised by how some friendships have changed after losing your spouse, you’re not alone.

When we lose our person, we often don't expect to also lose connections with friends who we thought would always be there. And many widows experience this unexpected secondary loss - the shifting or disappearing of friendships they thought would remain steady through their grief journey.

Understanding the dynamics of friendship chan...

Are you constantly putting everyone else's needs before your own, even in your grief? When we're grieving, it's tempting to try to "keep it together" for everyone else. But managing your grief for others' comfort comes at a deep cost to our own healing.

This week, I’m joined by Bea Albina, a nurse practitioner turned master life coach, somatic expert, and author of a new book called End Emotional Outsourcing: How to Overcome Your C...

Have you ever told yourself, “I'll do it when I feel motivated?”

Maybe it's about going through your person's belongings. Maybe it's about getting back to exercise. Maybe it's about making those difficult financial decisions. Here's the truth: If you're waiting to feel motivated before taking action, you might be waiting a very long time.

Tune in this week to learn the importance of understanding the difference between motivation a...

Have you ever found yourself lying awake at night, with your thoughts spinning out of control? One worried thought leads to another, and before you know it, you're imagining worst-case scenarios that feel all too real.

I call this the ‘what-if' doom spiral, and if you're experiencing it, you're not alone. 

Listen in this week to learn how to recognize the what-if doom spiral, and how to calm your nervous system, ground yoursel...

Standing in a crowded room after losing your spouse can feel like being invisible in plain sight. The laughter around you seems distant, the couples holding hands become all you notice, and somehow being surrounded by people makes the loneliness even sharper.

Join me today to learn simple but powerful actions and mindset shifts that will help you move from feeling like an outsider to feeling genuinely connected, even in challenging...

The human brain has a remarkable ability to adapt to both positive and negative life changes, eventually returning us to a baseline level of happiness. 

When your person dies, it can feel like your happiness baseline has been permanently lowered. Many widows worry they'll never experience the same level of joy or fulfillment they once knew. But here's what modern science tells us: your happiness is changeable through cons...

Grief doesn't follow a straight line. It spirals. When intense emotions resurface months or even years later, when you circle back to feelings you thought you'd already processed, it's not a sign of failure or regression. 

The Healing Grief Spiral is a framework I created that reflects how grief actually works: as an upward expansion cycle where we revisit three core steps over and over, each time from a place of greater stren...

Community isn't just about having people around you - it's about finding those who truly understand the weight of what you're carrying. 

When Jennifer Schroeder lost her husband Jerry after 40 years together, she discovered that the isolation of grief was almost as crushing as the loss itself.

Join us this week as Jennifer shares how joining a community of widows transformed her relationship with grief. From arguing that lovin...

Life after loss can feel heavy. Not just in the early days of grief, but years later when you're managing moves, anniversaries, and unexpected challenges all at once.

When your brain gets stuck in "everything is hard mode," it becomes a pattern-seeking machine that filters every experience through that lens. The to-do lists multiply, the emotions intensify, and suddenly you're living in what feels like a terrible, horrible, no good...

Do you find yourself second-guessing every decision since your loss?

When grief hits, the ground beneath your feet doesn't just shift - it disappears entirely. The person who helped you think through decisions, who was your emotional anchor and nervous system co-regulator, is gone. Now you're trying to navigate life with a brain on high alert and a body that's exhausted, wondering why every decision feels impossible and why you can...

Feeling stuck after loss looks different than most people imagine. You're functioning, checking off your to-do list, and everyone thinks you're doing well. They tell you how strong you are. But inside, you're watching your life happen from the outside, going through the motions without really feeling connected to any of it.

This particular kind of stuckness happens when you're past the point of barely surviving but nowhere near thr...

There’s an invisible ceiling above you, limiting what you believe is possible for your life after loss. You didn't put it there consciously, you probably can't even see it clearly, but you can feel its weight pressing down on everything you do. This quiet but powerful belief problem shapes your entire future without you even realizing it's there.

After losing your person, you put one foot in front of the other and get through the p...

When Hugo died, people kept assuming I'd be furious at the driver who had meth and alcohol in his system. But the anger just wasn't there - it felt like a tragedy, not a betrayal. The emotions I carried were heavy with sadness and shock, but not the white-hot rage everyone expected.

This time around, with my recent breakup and having to sell the house, I'm experiencing wave after wave of intense anger. Maybe you've been caught...

Black-and-white thinking shows up everywhere in grief - in the harsh judgments we make about ourselves, in the impossible standards we hold ourselves to, and in the rigid rules we create about how healing should look.

It's that voice that says you're either doing grief "right" or you're failing completely, with no room for the messy middle ground where most of us actually live.

In this week’s episode, you’ll learn a more gentle way...

In this episode, I'm addressing the productivity pressure that so many widows face - that nagging feeling that you should be doing more, moving faster, or getting back to normal. This isn't just about recognizing the pressure; it's about understanding how deeply our culture has tied our sense of worth to our output.

Join me this week to discover how to identify when productivity pressure is affecting your grief process, even w...

While cleaning light fixtures in my home, I discovered layers of built-up dirt that had dimmed what were actually crystal-clear glass fixtures. For years, I had accepted the clouded appearance as normal, never questioning if something better lay beneath. This simple household revelation sparked a powerful metaphor for how we often settle into life after loss.

I understand firsthand how we can unknowingly plateau in our gr...