April 22, 2025 • 37 mins
When Christina Napoleon lost her husband to cancer while raising their six-year-old daughter, she found herself without a roadmap. A successful finance professional accustomed to checklists and clear directives, she suddenly faced the disorienting reality of grief with no instruction manual. This experience—followed by the losses of her mother and father—eventually led her to a profound moment of decision at the beach, watching waves crash against the shoreline.
"Those waves are just like grief waves," Christina shares, describing the pivotal moment she decided she no longer wanted to remain "at the bottom of the darkest ocean floor." Instead, she committed to learning how to swim through her grief and find light again—not just for herself, but for her daughter who needed her mother back.
Christina's journey from corporate finance to certified grief educator and coach reveals powerful insights about widow's fog, the challenges of decision-making during grief, and the importance of incremental healing. Her innovative "Power of One" approach began with just one minute of walking each morning, gradually expanding to thirty minutes as she slowly reconnected with the world around her.
Now the author of "The Positive Widow" and founder of a 10,000-member Facebook community, Christina shares why traditional grief counseling often falls short for widows, how unprocessed grief eventually demands attention, and why finding the right support makes all the difference. She explains that moving forward with joy doesn't mean leaving loved ones behind—we can experience both gratitude and grief simultaneously as we rebuild our lives after devastating loss.
Ready to transform your grief journey? Explore Christina's book, coaching programs, and free grief guides designed specifically for widows navigating life after loss.
Contact:
www.asiliveandgrieve.com
info@asiliveandgrieve.com
Facebook: As I Live and Grieve
Instagram: @asiliveandgrieve
YouTube: asiliveandgrieve
TikTok: @asiliveandgrieve
To Reach Christina:
Email: thepositivewidow@outlook.com
Website: www.thepositivewidow.com
Social Media: thepositivewidow on all platforms
Credits:
Music by Kevin MacLeod
Copyright 2020, by As I Live and Grieve
The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to as I Live and Grieve, a podcast that tells
the truth about how hard thisis.
We're glad you joined us today.
We know how hard it is to losesomeone you love and how
well-intentioned friends andfamily try so hard to comfort us
.
We created this podcast toprovide you with comfort,
knowledge and support.
We are grief advocates, notprofessionals, not licensed
(00:23):
therapists.
We are you.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hi everyone.
Welcome back again to anotherepisode of as I Live and Grieve.
Thanks so much everyone.
Last time I said y'all.
I tried hard not to do thatthis time.
But thanks everyone for tuningin.
Whether you tune in every weekor just hop around the different
episodes doesn't matter to me.
What matters to me is thatyou've taken the time out of
your day, out of your scheduleto give a listen, and I
(00:50):
appreciate that.
Today Got a really neat guest.
Today We've already decidedwe're probably best friends,
even though we just met momentsago.
With me today is ChristinaNapoleon.
Thanks, christina, for joiningus today.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Thank you so much for having me.
It's such an honor to be herewith you tonight.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Oh, thanks, it's our honor.
And also with me is my sidekickKelly.
Hey, y'all.
Oh, so she did the y'all, butshe really does live down south.
She lives in Texas.
I'm still a Yankee.
Okay, Christina, to get usstarted, could you just share
with our listeners a little bitabout your background?
Who is Christina?
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Thank you for asking.
So my background is veryinteresting.
I have 25 plus years in finance.
But then when I lost my husbandto cancer and my daughter was
only six years old, I came froma world of finance where I went
into the office in the morning,my assistant gave me a checklist
(01:49):
and I knew exactly what Ineeded to check off before I
could leave for the day.
But the night that my husbandpassed away, nobody gave me a
checklist, nobody told me what Ineeded to do, the very first
steps as I entered widowhood, asI entered solo mamahood.
So I decided to make it amission to learn as much as I
(02:12):
could about grief and I left thecorporate world and left the
finance world and entered theworld of healing and I immersed
myself in three years of griefeducation, training, grief
coaching, and I now have aprivate Facebook group for
widows and I do widow griefrelief coaching.
(02:34):
I wrote a book.
The book the positive widow isfound on Amazon.
That is where I found myhealing.
I was at a place in my lifewhere I was at the beach because
I live in Florida, and this wasafter I lost my husband.
I then lost my mother and thenI lost my father and all of a
(02:56):
sudden I lost my identity.
I was no longer a wife and nowI was no longer a daughter.
I didn't know who I was, and Ican remember the exact morning
where I dropped my daughter offand I drove right to the beach
and I just wanted to give up.
The world was so dark.
I would drop her off at schooland I would go back home and I
(03:20):
would put the comforters over myhead, close the curtains and
then I would just hold hispicture in my hands, spray it
with his favorite cologne, wearhis favorite white Hanes t-shirt
, and I did not know how to getout of bed that morning when I
went to the beach, I wanted togive up and I kept.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
I'm getting emotional .
Sorry, that's okay, we'll cryright along with you.
Don't do that thing.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
I kept walking and watching those waves crash
against the shoreline and I keptthinking, wow, those waves are
just like the grief waves.
That morning I couldn't evenpinpoint what it was that made
me feel so griefy that I had todrive to the beach.
I needed to catch my breath,get some fresh air.
But I realized in that momentthat I no longer wanted to stay
(04:09):
at the bottom of that darkestocean floor.
I made a decision right thenand there, that I wanted to
learn how to swim through thosebrief waves and find the light
again in my life.
Because, if you think about it,my daughter didn't just lose
her daddy to cancer, that'sright.
She lost me, that's right thatfun, loving, carefree mama who
(04:33):
would take her to ballet classand go out to McDonald's.
I was riddled with, crippledwith anxiety that I couldn't
even get in the car and take herto McDonald's, take her to
ballet classes.
I just wanted to stay in bedand hide in the darkness and
shut the world off.
But that morning I made thedecision she needed her mommy.
(04:55):
I too wanted to find hope again, I wanted to find healing, I
wanted to find light, and that'swhen I decided I was going to
immerse myself in everything Icould grab my hands on regarding
grief.
And then I became.
I didn't know I was going toimmerse myself for three years
in grief education and I decidedto become a grief coach and
(05:19):
started my own Facebook group.
I have over 10,000 followersand members Facebook group.
I have over 10,000 followersand members and it's just been
beautiful.
But the biggest healing waswhen I wrote my book and it took
me a long time to write thepositive widow and it is just.
It came from my heart and Ishare some of my own stories.
So widows don't feel like whatthey're going through.
(05:41):
They're doing it all bythemselves and they're going
crazy.
But I also share the healingtools that I developed and
created and reflection questionsand self-care and grief
education all within my book.
And when I wrote my book Iunderstood widow's fog, how it
just holds you back from makingsimple decisions.
(06:04):
So I knew that if I wrote thisbook, the chances of anyone
reading it from the front toback would be very slim, because
the widow's box, that's right,yep.
So I made sure that there's atable of contents and I call it
a widow's wisdom box.
They can pull out what theyneed from the widow's wisdom box
(06:25):
.
Maybe they're suffering withanxiety that day, like oh wait,
christina wrote about that.
Or maybe they're having panicattacks Christina wrote about
that.
Or maybe you know whatChristina said something about
grief and gratitude and how shedid not know how to find it for
a long time.
And I just don't feel any griefand gratitude in my heart today
.
How did she start to find itfor a long time?
And I just don't feel any griefand gratitude in my heart today
(06:46):
.
How did she start to find it?
They can pull that out of thewidow's wisdom box and go right
to the table of contents.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Wow, so much of what you've said.
I'm trying to tuck it intodifferent corners of my brain
and my mind because I haveordered a copy of your book.
I'm waiting for it to get to mydoorstep, but I can't wait now
to go through the pages I know.
First of all, I have to tellyou I love the word greasy,
because first time I've heard it.
(07:13):
But I love it.
I'm going to be using it nowand I will credit you for that.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Thank you.
I see it all the time and itprobably started with my
daughter.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Yeah, yeah.
Now how many years has it beensince you've lost your husband?
Speaker 3 (07:24):
It's been nine years.
Nine years I lost Roger Okay.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
I'm coming up on seven years since my husband,
tom.
I'm so sorry for your loss.
Oh, thank you.
Like you, I got to a point thatI had to do something, and it's
very interesting how it happenswith different people at
different times.
How it happens with differentpeople at different times.
(07:49):
I love that it was the wavesthat helped you, because nature
often plays a part in that,whether it's the sounds of
nature, the air that you'reinhaling or the log you might be
sitting on, or the picnic tablein the park or whatever.
But the other thing I kind ofwanted to mention too is this
whole widow's fog.
I never thought much about it,even though I had heard the term
(08:09):
before.
I never thought much about ituntil I could not make a
decision which M&M to eat firstand I thought oh my gosh, here
we are, here we are.
This is uglier than I thought.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
It is, and nobody understands it unless they're in
our shoes, exactly Because wewere a we and now we have to
navigate life as a me.
Yeah, so the person that Iwould always go to and ask for
oh right, just to do Right, theperson I needed to help me get
through that grief, he was nolonger here, right, and yours
(08:47):
was double-sided because youwere no longer a wife.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
okay, but your daughter is looking to you and
watching you and she lost themom that she knew.
Yes, yes, you know.
So you once you realize that ofcourse you were trying to
reconstruct that and rebuildthat bond and everything and
show her and reassure her thateverything was okay.
(09:13):
Now you stood there in front ofthe waves and you decided you
wanted to swim.
You know, you didn't want togive in, you didn't want to give
up, you wanted to swim.
What did you do first?
Oh, this is a good question.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
I did not know what self-care was.
I came from Chicago I grew upwith my dad came from Lithuania.
My mom came from Germany.
They were already in their 20swhen they came to America and in
Chicago we have all theseethnic communities.
So I didn't even speak English,even though I was born in
Chicago.
Until I was five years old, Itaught myself English through
(09:48):
watching Sesame Street when Iwas made fun of in kindergarten
because I didn't know how tospeak English.
So my background is EasternEuropean and we.
I lost my brother when I wasnine years old and, no, we were
not allowed to talk about it.
We were not allowed to talkabout him.
We weren't allowed to bring uphis name.
(10:09):
We had to shut all of that down.
Any emotion I felt, I had tobury it deep inside of myself,
and so I was raised that hardwork ethics is what makes you be
a good person, and sharingfeelings was a sign of weakness,
right.
So when I made that decision onthe beach, I had no idea what
(10:34):
self-care was, even because tome that was selfish.
I was a caregiver for almostfive years for my husband.
Then I was a caregiver for myfather, so for a good 10 years I
was a caregiver.
There was no way that I wasgoing to take time, carve out
time to do a massage, or goingand go for a walk, and just go
(10:57):
for a walk without a purpose,just to go and breathe and talk
to God and talk to my husband.
That was so foreign to me.
But on that beach there was abeach yoga session happening
that time and I watchedeverybody there and I stopped
and I'm like what are they doing?
And it's not the traditionalyoga.
(11:20):
They were just stretching.
It's not really what it lookedlike and I thought, okay, I
needed to catch my breath.
I was feeling so overwhelmedand I was scared.
I was scared I was having aheart attack and I needed to
calm down, I needed to breathe.
So I didn't have a yoga matwith me, didn't have a towel,
nothing.
But I went furthest away fromthe group right Look here the
(11:42):
yoga instructor and I just laidthere and started doing the
stretching exercises, includingbreathing exercises, and I could
hear the waves crashing as Iwas doing it.
I just started to cry.
I just started crying and itwas my very first emotional
release, the very first time Iwas releasing all that grief
(12:06):
that was sitting so deep insidemy body and so I thought, okay,
I don't know what that was about, I'm going to go back again
tomorrow.
And that's when I started towalk and I started to do the
beach yoga.
And also at the time when myhusband passed, he passed away
through hospice at home.
(12:28):
So I was able to getbereavement counseling through
hospice and it was only a shorttime they only allow you to have
so many sessions.
But he kept asking me well,what did you like to do before
he passed away?
And I didn't know, I was just awreck.
And then she said, well, saidwhat did you like to do before
you met him, before you weremarried?
(12:48):
And like, why you still like towalk?
And she's like, okay, let'stalk about walking, why don't
you go and walk?
Or she had not lost her spouseand she didn't understand.
And I was like, well, I can'tdo that.
Remember I wanted to owe everymorning, wanted to just crawl
under the bed and take thispicture.
So I made a promise to her thatI would start to walk.
(13:09):
I failed that very first morning.
I woke up and I laid my shoesout the night before.
You would think it would be soeasy to just lean over and tie
your shoelaces?
It's not.
It is not.
I couldn't do it.
It was horrible.
So I made a deal with myself, Inegotiated with myself and I
(13:30):
told myself and I write aboutthis in my book, the Power of
One If I get up tomorrow morning, all I have to do is walk for
one minute.
One minute, then I can go backto bed and I can cry and hold
his picture, and then I'll addone minute every morning.
And it was the best gift I evergave myself, because in that
(13:54):
there was a one minute everymorning turned into 30 minutes
one month later and I started tosee the sky was blue again, I
started to smell the grass, Icould see the grass was green
and I started to feel aliveagain.
So that's the first step I didwas I had to do inner healing
(14:15):
within myself, right.
And then I started to look intoresources, and that was
becoming a certified griefeducator and grief coach.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Yeah, yeah.
And that often happens ispeople will decide you know,
this was so painful, sodevastating, so difficult.
I have to help others.
Because I made it this far, Ihave to help others.
It's also very common to findthat same perspective in
addiction and addictioncounseling.
A lot of times your counselorsfor addictions and alcoholism
(14:48):
are addicts and alcoholicsthemselves.
It's the same thing.
They found recovery.
They know it's hard, very, verydifficult.
So they want to help others andthey want to be because they
have the credibility and theycan honestly say I know how you
feel and they can mean it.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
yes, they can be honest and that's why I was so
passionate about wanting tobecome a certified grief coach.
I was shopping grief counselors, yeah, because remember I only
got so many sessions throughhiatus, right.
And then I felt lost again.
And as I was shopping griefcounselors through my health
(15:27):
insurance, nobody was a widow.
Nobody had ever experienced theloss of a spouse.
Some of them had neverexperienced any kind of loss.
Yeah, their knowledge wastextbook, right, right.
And I could, I cannot connectwith them.
I felt like I was being justsit here and talk to me for 45
(15:49):
minutes and they were watchingthe clock and I didn't feel like
they really were giving me anytools to be able to take those
baby steps, to feel like I'mfinally moving forward.
Nobody told me that I can moveforward and, with more love,
more peace, start to find joyand hope.
And I'm not leaving him behind,because that's what I struggled
(16:12):
with.
Every time a moment of joywould come up, I would push it
down because that guilt wouldcome up.
How dare I start to feel joy ifhe's not here?
Right, right.
And so none of my counselors,grief counselors, they didn't
understand that.
They never told me that I canhave gratitude and grieve at the
(16:33):
same time, right, right theyjust couldn't put it all
together in the rightperspective for you.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
I understand that I was talking with someone
recently about that very issue,that if you decide that you want
to reach out and get someprofessional help, it's
important that you not just say,okay, I'm going to go to this
person.
You need to figure out is theresome chemistry there?
Does this person make you feelcomfortable?
Do you feel that they can giveyou what you need?
(17:00):
And it's almost like aninterview.
And then I made it a point tosay that most of the grief
educators, grief counselors,therapists, whatever their
background, whatever theirtraining is, whatever their
certification is, most of themwill offer that initial free
(17:21):
consultation, phone call,virtual meeting, whatever,
whether it's 10 minutes, 15minutes, half an hour.
I even know someone who does itfor an hour You'll get an hour.
Well, now, I know more than onesomeone's, but that's rare.
But in an hour's time youshould be able to know.
Well, let's face it, christina,I met you tonight for the first
(17:44):
time and probably within threeminutes.
You know we just clicked.
Yes, we just clicked.
And yet I have met guests thatwell.
We just didn't really click.
You know we still had asuccessful episode, but you know
, when you click with someone,so try to.
If you're going to look forprofessional help, don't look
(18:05):
for a person, look for severaland talk to all of them and then
make your decision based onthat and I think that 50% of
your healing actually is due toconnection, absolutely,
absolutely, actually is due toconnection, absolutely
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
So having that connection is so important for
you to even find many hope andhealing.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Absolutely and, let's face it, you are going to be
telling these people some ofyour most intimate thoughts,
fears, beliefs.
You want someone that's goingto be accepting of that,
nonjudgmental, and someone who,number one, is actually going to
listen and has the tools toshare with you, yes, and also
(18:50):
has a solid resource list ofdifferent things that might help
you.
Yeah, absolutely, I love thatyou said that the acceptance
yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Because that's what I do.
I accept you where you areright now, absolutely.
You need your grief to bewitnessed.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
Yeah, yeah, kelly do you want to play?
I was just going to say that Iagree on the person thing.
Fortunately, with my therapist,we clicked instantly and we're
here 13 years later so doingtherapy once a week.
But it's just, it's very, veryimportant.
I agree that you'd have toconnect with that person.
Or you're not going to behonest with them or yourself and
you're just going to be wastingboth of your time.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
Yeah, that's a good point you are.
If you're, if you don't feelcomfortable with them, how are
you going to open up the barriersoul, let's face it.
Grief is Because, let's face it, grief is messy?
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Oh it is, it's ugly.
It's ugly, it really is.
Yeah, and now you mentionedthat you've lost your husband.
You've lost both parents, andthat mirrors my losses too.
I had one other that I added.
I didn't add it, it justhappened, but I lost an infant
son who was less than 24 hoursold.
(19:58):
And all of those losses were atdifferent times in my life and
the grief was different witheach loss.
And in fact, the loss of myinfant son, lee, was number two
in my list of four major losses,and it was so long ago that the
society's process, if you will,for dealing with grief is just
(20:22):
pick yourself up, put your biggirl panties on and move on.
So for me, and that situationwas unique in that when he was
born, first he was stillborn,then they came back and said he
was alive, and then they had towhisk him off to a different
facility where they had aneonatal intensive care unit.
That was time before smartphones.
(20:44):
I never saw him, I never heldhim, there was no picture taken
of him.
So once I got home and then youadd that generational
conditioning, I call itsometimes of pick yourself up
and move on yes, after a while,I forgot it ever happened.
You know he was no longer in mythoughts.
Every so often I'd have afleeting thought, but it was
(21:07):
just not there, not constant.
And it wasn't until after Istarted the podcast and I
started to talk about that lossagain that I actually started to
grieve his death after allthese years.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
I'm so sorry for your loss.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
In my training they say that the two most difficult
losses you will experience inyour lifetime is spousal loss
and the loss of a child, and theonly thing I can think of that
would have made his loss moredifficult was the loss that
people experience when they losea child who is an adult,
(21:42):
because they've had all thoseyears of knowing and loving that
child and watching them growand watching them develop and
mature, and then to lose them.
So that must reallyexponentially be far more
difficult.
So, and my point in that was,you know, there were actually
several points.
First of all, grief isdifferent for everybody.
(22:02):
Yes, sometimes, depending onsituations, you will go on not
even aware anymore thatsomething like that happened and
then all of a sudden, bam, it'sgoing to come and blindside you
and you're going to have todeal with it.
Yep, those grief waves.
Now, someone had called them,someone had named them at one
point and I can't remember the,can't remember the doesn't
(22:30):
matter, but they were.
It was like those little briefmoments you get where you really
get blindsided by that, thatgrief.
And no, it was.
They had a little acronym forit and I'll have to go look it
up now and everything.
But there was an articlewritten about it.
It was interesting.
I probably mentioned it in apodcast 95 times in year 97.
I can't think of it At any rate.
But it is a definite issue andyou know, I will go through days
(22:52):
as, like I say, it's beenalmost seven years and I will
think of Tom every minute ofevery day.
But all I have to do andKelly's going to smile at this
one is see a bottle of hot sauceand Tom will immediately come
to mind.
He loves hot sauce.
If I see someone in a militaryuniform, of course my mind will
go to Tom.
He served in Vietnam in aretired army, if I, even a first
(23:15):
responder in uniform will bringback a memory of Tom.
So there's many different thingsduring the day.
Tim Hortons always summons Tomback to me as well, because
every day he had to have his TimHortons coffee.
It's all those secondarylawsuits, absolutely, absolutely
, you know, and those are things, but where they used to make me
tear up, now they make me smile.
Oh, that's good.
(23:36):
So that also lets me know thatI have progressed in my healing.
Now I want to ask you too andmaybe you said it and I missed
it when you went to the beachand stood in front of those
waves about how long had it beenthat your husband had been gone
from you.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Oh, I don't know.
I would have to think about it.
I can tell you more about that.
That was right after my daddied.
So I buried my grief with mydaughter, wanting to be her rock
.
I did not process my grief, Iburied it, shoved it down.
Yep, it's what we do a lot.
And then when my mom diedunexpectedly with a brain
(24:13):
aneurysm, I had to take care ofmy father, didn't even have to
mourn my mom's loss, and thenwhen my dad died, it all came up
, okay.
So I can tell you that this wasabout two months after my dad's
passing.
Okay, when that happened and itwas I just couldn't.
I didn't realize how quiet myhouse was.
(24:36):
He died during my daughter'swinter break.
My father and, as his caregiver, I had pushed him in the
wheelchair, help him with awalker.
He had an oxygen tank.
That first morning, after Idropped her off I think it was
January 10th, after winter breakended it was so quiet in my
house and that's when I realized, wow, I did not realize that
(25:00):
his wheelchair made so muchnoise, how loud the oxygen tank
was.
That silence was so loud.
I don't know how to explain itother than all of the noises
that he used to bring with hischair was gone, had to just pick
everything up the day that hedied.
(25:20):
So I would say it was about twomonths or so because I stayed
stuck in bed after my dad diedbecause all of a sudden, when he
died, everybody that I lost mybrother, my mother, my husband,
my dad we all came up at once.
And that's what I teach myclients is if you don't feel the
(25:41):
feels, those grief feels, ifyou don't process it, if you
don't dig deep down and do thegrief work, yeah, it's going to
come up when you don't want itto come up, when you least
expect it to.
Right, and that's what happenedto me with.
It was when my dad died.
Yeah, I mean, you think aboutit, that was my first man that I
ever loved.
I was sure, girl, sure.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Yeah.
So, yeah, yeah, that happensand we often do push our grief
down.
We may, you know, sometimes wepush it down for a long period
of time, like you did, butespecially if you have children,
I think there's a tendency todo that even more.
I didn't have anyone else in myhousehold, it was just Tom and
I.
But I did experience getting upone day thinking, oh, I've got
(26:22):
to get ready, I've got to go toBatavia, which was about a 45
minute drive, I've got to go andvisit Tom.
And then I realized no, I don't.
And I stood there and I thoughtwhat do I do now?
Right, I was, I was lost, yes,I was lost.
So, yeah, it's very difficultand pushing it down doesn't help
(26:42):
.
I mean, that's what I did foryears with Lee and even with my
father and my mother.
My father died in his late 40sand he actually was ill and
couldn't give me away for mywedding.
He was in the hospital that day.
So those all, even though therewas a loss attached to that,
there were other losses.
There were all these incidentallosses, these collateral losses
(27:05):
, the fact that my own fathercouldn't give me away for my
wedding.
My brother fortunately steppedup in his US Air Force blues and
walked me down the aisle andthat was okay, and my brother
and I talk about it and we laughabout it to this today because
as he stood there with me infront of the minister and the
minister said who gives thiswoman to be wed, we had
(27:27):
rehearsed it.
He was supposed to say hermother and I do okay, or our
mother and I do, whichever onehe wanted.
And my brother stood there thatday and when the minister said
who gives this woman to be wed,his response was there that day.
And when the minister said whogives this woman to be wed, his
response was our mother and I dogladly.
I don't think anybody else inthe church could hear that.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
Gladly, Gladly yeah.
But, he was probably nervous.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Oh well, no, I think he did it to be just my brother.
You know we have a really goodrelationship at any rate, okay.
So at what point then did youknow, when you saw those waves
and everything, did writing abook come to you then, or was
that later?
Speaker 3 (28:07):
Oh, no, the book was later.
Yeah, oh no, it was.
I didn't know where to startand that's why I went and found
other grief counselors and wasfirst trying to do it where it
was through my health insuranceand, I'll be honest with you,
that stopped.
I could not find any griefcounselor, yeah, that understood
spousal loss and understood,and I almost felt berated.
(28:30):
Yeah, you know, like, well, whycan't you do this?
And they never share.
Not one person talked to meabout widow swag Not one person
at my primary care.
Every time I would end up in anER not understanding what was
happening.
I could not ignore the symptomsbecause I thought I was having
a heart attack and I couldn'tcall 911 because I didn't want
(28:52):
my little girl to see uh-oh, ismommy going to die now too?
So every time I would go to theER, they didn't talk to me
about widow's fog.
They didn't talk to me aboutany tools or anything that I
could do to help myself, becausethey don't know.
No, we live in such anuneducated grief society and the
(29:12):
doctors who have to care for us, they have not gone through a
grief education.
They have never been trained tohave bedside manners, at least
in my experience and still theone day that I did have a sweet
doctor who he just held my handand he said sweet doctor, who he
just held my hand and he saidyou need to take care of
yourself.
The way you have been placingthat nurturing heart into
(29:36):
everybody else, you now need todo it for yourself, absolutely.
But no, I don't know when.
The book I just published it ayear ago.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Yeah, and it took me over a year, almost two years,
to write this book, and so it'snow.
Self-care was and my goodfriend John Polo said once that
self-care can be very simple.
It can be simply surroundingyourself by the right people,
you know, making sure that thepeople who support you are on
your little team and everything.
And if you have toxic peoplethat keep asking you, you know,
(30:31):
haven't you gotten over yet?
Speaker 3 (30:32):
Yeah, oh, you know I go this all the time.
Christina, you need to move on,yeah, over him.
Like, how do I get over him?
He's the father of my child,absolutely, absolutely.
Also, I also say in my group,when I talk about self-care,
that rest.
We need to listen to our body,oh, absolutely, and sometimes we
(30:55):
just need to rest and that's aform of self-care too.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Yeah, yeah.
And the first thing, the firstpiece of advice I ever give.
Anyone who says, what would youtell somebody who's dealing
with grief?
I just say be patient withyourself, give yourself grace.
Yeah, just be patient.
Patient with yourself, giveyourself grace.
Yeah, just be patient.
Yeah, I love that, yeah, yeah.
Well, sadly, time goes by sofast.
These, yeah, I talk forever.
I really think we could.
So that just means that you'regoing to have to come back
(31:20):
another time.
I would love to it would be myhonor, thank you no, not, not a
problem.
It'll be our honor, actually.
But yes, you need to come backanother time.
But let's wind this down.
First of I want to turn themicrophone over to you and have
you tell people more about yourbook, about what other services
you might offer them, anyclasses you might have, your
(31:41):
coaching services whatever.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Thank you so much.
Yes, I've written that book,the Positive Widow, and it's
found on Amazon, but I'veactually started offering to
anyone that wants me topersonally sign the book and
write a little bit about theirhusband and dedicate it to their
husband and his memory.
I will be happy to do that,Sweet.
Yeah, that's been actually sucha blessing for so many.
(32:06):
You can reach out to me byeither sending me an email to
the positive widow at outlookcom, and I also have a website,
wwwthepositivewidowcom.
If you are a widow, I have afree Facebook group, the
positive widow.
That's my brand.
If you haven't picked up onthat, I'll be looking for it.
(32:28):
Yeah, I see you should.
And I also have a coloring book, an adult coloring book that
helps with anxiety, and that'son Amazon and that's under the
Positive Widow as well.
And then I also have been akeynote speaker at many grief
events and I created a programthat I'm so proud of.
(32:50):
It's called the Positive WidowGrief Relief Group Coaching
Program and it's a very smallgroup.
I have to keep it small becauseit's a very personalized grief
coaching program and I call itthe hope seat instead of the hot
seat.
I do some teaching for about anhour and then I have grief
(33:12):
experts come in to do grief bodymovement exercises and then I
do the hope seat and that'swhere the magic happens and
that's where the sisterhoodconnections happen, and I offer
that throughout the year.
So feel free again to email meor you can Facebook Messenger me
.
You can find me anywhere atsocial media under the positive
(33:33):
widow or Christina.
Napoleon Sounds great.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Sounds great.
Thank you so so much.
Absolutely so, kelly.
Did you have anything you wantto insert before I wrap?
Speaker 4 (33:44):
it up.
I just want to say thank you,christina, for coming on our
podcast today.
I learned so much from youalready, and it's only been it,
so I look forward to talking toyou again and I'll be emailing
you.
That's so kind.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
Thank you so much for saying that.
It means so much to me.
Thank you, it was such apleasure to meet both of you,
and I would love to come back.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
Well, I think our friendship has only just begun.
I think so too.
Our paths are going to cross afew times here.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
And that's the beautiful thing about what we're
doing, absolutely.
We meet such wonderful peopleand our bonds and connections
are so strong.
Yep, I love lifelongconnections.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
I believe that I believe that I believe that
completely.
So, listeners, it's time onceagain for me to wind down and
say again thank you, thank youfor taking the time out of your
day to listen.
Whatever activity you may havebeen doing in addition to
listening is fine.
The fact that you listen iswonderful, listening is great.
I hope you have heard somethingthat has piqued your curiosity
(34:52):
and that you either reach out toChristina, maybe to ask a
question or ask about herservices or to purchase her book
, and if, for some reason, youare not able to afford a book,
ask your library to get a copy.
Ask your library, let them knowyou heard this great podcast
and make sure you tell them thename and this book was talked
about on it and you think it'dbe a great addition.
(35:14):
Did you know?
Can I offer something?
Speaker 3 (35:16):
free to your listeners, Sure go ahead.
If they want to send me an emailto thepositivewidowatoutlookcom
, I can email them three freeGreek guides.
Wow, yes.
So for any of your listeners,they're wonderful guides.
The first one is how to survivethe holidays after a loss.
And then, because of my financebackground of 25 plus years, I
(35:40):
also did a financial referenceguide for me with oh, and that
one is the most sought afterguide.
And then I created a hopefulmornings and a peaceful evening
practical checklist.
I love checklists, I'm achecklist girl and, as widows,
as caregivers most especially ifwe're entering widowhood, as a
caregiver we're so exhausted soit's little things that you can
(36:03):
check off, like remembering tobrush your teeth at night.
That's cool.
Yes, it is all centered aroundthe words hopeful and peaceful
Nice, I like that.
Well, feel free to send me anemail and I'll be happy to send
those free grief guides to you.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
I'll have to try to remember to put that in the
podcast notes as well, forpeople that maybe didn't listen
all the way to the end.
Yeah, I know sometimes thathappens.
I'm just Alrighty.
So I guess I've talked enough.
Now it's time to let Christinago, let Kelly go, but to say to
everyone thanks so much againfor listening.
(36:41):
Please take care of yourselvesand come back again next time,
as we all continue to live ingrief.
Thank you, christina.
Thank you, as we all continueto live and grieve.
Thank you, christina.
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Thank you so much for listening with us today.
Do you have a topic that you'dlike us to cover or do you have
a question from one of ourepisodes?
Please email us at info atasiliveandgrievecom and let us
know.
We hope you will find a momentto leave a review, send an email
and share with others.
Join us next time as wecontinue to live and grieve
(37:14):
together.
Welcome to as I Live and Grieve, a podcast that tells
the truth about how hard thisis.
We're glad you joined us today.
We know how hard it is to losesomeone you love and how
well-intentioned friends andfamily try so hard to comfort us
.
We created this podcast toprovide you with comfort,
knowledge and support.
We are grief advocates, notprofessionals, not licensed
(00:23):
therapists.
We are you.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hi everyone.
Welcome back again to anotherepisode of as I Live and Grieve.
Thanks so much everyone.
Last time I said y'all.
I tried hard not to do thatthis time.
But thanks everyone for tuningin.
Whether you tune in every weekor just hop around the different
episodes doesn't matter to me.
What matters to me is thatyou've taken the time out of
your day, out of your scheduleto give a listen, and I
(00:50):
appreciate that.
Today Got a really neat guest.
Today We've already decidedwe're probably best friends,
even though we just met momentsago.
With me today is ChristinaNapoleon.
Thanks, christina, for joiningus today.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Thank you so much for having me.
It's such an honor to be herewith you tonight.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Oh, thanks, it's our honor.
And also with me is my sidekickKelly.
Hey, y'all.
Oh, so she did the y'all, butshe really does live down south.
She lives in Texas.
I'm still a Yankee.
Okay, Christina, to get usstarted, could you just share
with our listeners a little bitabout your background?
Who is Christina?
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Thank you for asking.
So my background is veryinteresting.
I have 25 plus years in finance.
But then when I lost my husbandto cancer and my daughter was
only six years old, I came froma world of finance where I went
into the office in the morning,my assistant gave me a checklist
(01:49):
and I knew exactly what Ineeded to check off before I
could leave for the day.
But the night that my husbandpassed away, nobody gave me a
checklist, nobody told me what Ineeded to do, the very first
steps as I entered widowhood, asI entered solo mamahood.
So I decided to make it amission to learn as much as I
(02:12):
could about grief and I left thecorporate world and left the
finance world and entered theworld of healing and I immersed
myself in three years of griefeducation, training, grief
coaching, and I now have aprivate Facebook group for
widows and I do widow griefrelief coaching.
(02:34):
I wrote a book.
The book the positive widow isfound on Amazon.
That is where I found myhealing.
I was at a place in my lifewhere I was at the beach because
I live in Florida, and this wasafter I lost my husband.
I then lost my mother and thenI lost my father and all of a
(02:56):
sudden I lost my identity.
I was no longer a wife and nowI was no longer a daughter.
I didn't know who I was, and Ican remember the exact morning
where I dropped my daughter offand I drove right to the beach
and I just wanted to give up.
The world was so dark.
I would drop her off at schooland I would go back home and I
(03:20):
would put the comforters over myhead, close the curtains and
then I would just hold hispicture in my hands, spray it
with his favorite cologne, wearhis favorite white Hanes t-shirt
, and I did not know how to getout of bed that morning when I
went to the beach, I wanted togive up and I kept.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
I'm getting emotional .
Sorry, that's okay, we'll cryright along with you.
Don't do that thing.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
I kept walking and watching those waves crash
against the shoreline and I keptthinking, wow, those waves are
just like the grief waves.
That morning I couldn't evenpinpoint what it was that made
me feel so griefy that I had todrive to the beach.
I needed to catch my breath,get some fresh air.
But I realized in that momentthat I no longer wanted to stay
(04:09):
at the bottom of that darkestocean floor.
I made a decision right thenand there, that I wanted to
learn how to swim through thosebrief waves and find the light
again in my life.
Because, if you think about it,my daughter didn't just lose
her daddy to cancer, that'sright.
She lost me, that's right thatfun, loving, carefree mama who
(04:33):
would take her to ballet classand go out to McDonald's.
I was riddled with, crippledwith anxiety that I couldn't
even get in the car and take herto McDonald's, take her to
ballet classes.
I just wanted to stay in bedand hide in the darkness and
shut the world off.
But that morning I made thedecision she needed her mommy.
(04:55):
I too wanted to find hope again, I wanted to find healing, I
wanted to find light, and that'swhen I decided I was going to
immerse myself in everything Icould grab my hands on regarding
grief.
And then I became.
I didn't know I was going toimmerse myself for three years
in grief education and I decidedto become a grief coach and
(05:19):
started my own Facebook group.
I have over 10,000 followersand members Facebook group.
I have over 10,000 followersand members and it's just been
beautiful.
But the biggest healing waswhen I wrote my book and it took
me a long time to write thepositive widow and it is just.
It came from my heart and Ishare some of my own stories.
So widows don't feel like whatthey're going through.
(05:41):
They're doing it all bythemselves and they're going
crazy.
But I also share the healingtools that I developed and
created and reflection questionsand self-care and grief
education all within my book.
And when I wrote my book Iunderstood widow's fog, how it
just holds you back from makingsimple decisions.
(06:04):
So I knew that if I wrote thisbook, the chances of anyone
reading it from the front toback would be very slim, because
the widow's box, that's right,yep.
So I made sure that there's atable of contents and I call it
a widow's wisdom box.
They can pull out what theyneed from the widow's wisdom box
(06:25):
.
Maybe they're suffering withanxiety that day, like oh wait,
christina wrote about that.
Or maybe they're having panicattacks Christina wrote about
that.
Or maybe you know whatChristina said something about
grief and gratitude and how shedid not know how to find it for
a long time.
And I just don't feel any griefand gratitude in my heart today
.
How did she start to find itfor a long time?
And I just don't feel any griefand gratitude in my heart today
(06:46):
.
How did she start to find it?
They can pull that out of thewidow's wisdom box and go right
to the table of contents.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Wow, so much of what you've said.
I'm trying to tuck it intodifferent corners of my brain
and my mind because I haveordered a copy of your book.
I'm waiting for it to get to mydoorstep, but I can't wait now
to go through the pages I know.
First of all, I have to tellyou I love the word greasy,
because first time I've heard it.
(07:13):
But I love it.
I'm going to be using it nowand I will credit you for that.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Thank you.
I see it all the time and itprobably started with my
daughter.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Yeah, yeah.
Now how many years has it beensince you've lost your husband?
Speaker 3 (07:24):
It's been nine years.
Nine years I lost Roger Okay.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
I'm coming up on seven years since my husband,
tom.
I'm so sorry for your loss.
Oh, thank you.
Like you, I got to a point thatI had to do something, and it's
very interesting how it happenswith different people at
different times.
How it happens with differentpeople at different times.
(07:49):
I love that it was the wavesthat helped you, because nature
often plays a part in that,whether it's the sounds of
nature, the air that you'reinhaling or the log you might be
sitting on, or the picnic tablein the park or whatever.
But the other thing I kind ofwanted to mention too is this
whole widow's fog.
I never thought much about it,even though I had heard the term
(08:09):
before.
I never thought much about ituntil I could not make a
decision which M&M to eat firstand I thought oh my gosh, here
we are, here we are.
This is uglier than I thought.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
It is, and nobody understands it unless they're in
our shoes, exactly Because wewere a we and now we have to
navigate life as a me.
Yeah, so the person that Iwould always go to and ask for
oh right, just to do Right, theperson I needed to help me get
through that grief, he was nolonger here, right, and yours
(08:47):
was double-sided because youwere no longer a wife.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
okay, but your daughter is looking to you and
watching you and she lost themom that she knew.
Yes, yes, you know.
So you once you realize that ofcourse you were trying to
reconstruct that and rebuildthat bond and everything and
show her and reassure her thateverything was okay.
(09:13):
Now you stood there in front ofthe waves and you decided you
wanted to swim.
You know, you didn't want togive in, you didn't want to give
up, you wanted to swim.
What did you do first?
Oh, this is a good question.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
I did not know what self-care was.
I came from Chicago I grew upwith my dad came from Lithuania.
My mom came from Germany.
They were already in their 20swhen they came to America and in
Chicago we have all theseethnic communities.
So I didn't even speak English,even though I was born in
Chicago.
Until I was five years old, Itaught myself English through
(09:48):
watching Sesame Street when Iwas made fun of in kindergarten
because I didn't know how tospeak English.
So my background is EasternEuropean and we.
I lost my brother when I wasnine years old and, no, we were
not allowed to talk about it.
We were not allowed to talkabout him.
We weren't allowed to bring uphis name.
(10:09):
We had to shut all of that down.
Any emotion I felt, I had tobury it deep inside of myself,
and so I was raised that hardwork ethics is what makes you be
a good person, and sharingfeelings was a sign of weakness,
right.
So when I made that decision onthe beach, I had no idea what
(10:34):
self-care was, even because tome that was selfish.
I was a caregiver for almostfive years for my husband.
Then I was a caregiver for myfather, so for a good 10 years I
was a caregiver.
There was no way that I wasgoing to take time, carve out
time to do a massage, or goingand go for a walk, and just go
(10:57):
for a walk without a purpose,just to go and breathe and talk
to God and talk to my husband.
That was so foreign to me.
But on that beach there was abeach yoga session happening
that time and I watchedeverybody there and I stopped
and I'm like what are they doing?
And it's not the traditionalyoga.
(11:20):
They were just stretching.
It's not really what it lookedlike and I thought, okay, I
needed to catch my breath.
I was feeling so overwhelmedand I was scared.
I was scared I was having aheart attack and I needed to
calm down, I needed to breathe.
So I didn't have a yoga matwith me, didn't have a towel,
nothing.
But I went furthest away fromthe group right Look here the
(11:42):
yoga instructor and I just laidthere and started doing the
stretching exercises, includingbreathing exercises, and I could
hear the waves crashing as Iwas doing it.
I just started to cry.
I just started crying and itwas my very first emotional
release, the very first time Iwas releasing all that grief
(12:06):
that was sitting so deep insidemy body and so I thought, okay,
I don't know what that was about, I'm going to go back again
tomorrow.
And that's when I started towalk and I started to do the
beach yoga.
And also at the time when myhusband passed, he passed away
through hospice at home.
(12:28):
So I was able to getbereavement counseling through
hospice and it was only a shorttime they only allow you to have
so many sessions.
But he kept asking me well,what did you like to do before
he passed away?
And I didn't know, I was just awreck.
And then she said, well, saidwhat did you like to do before
you met him, before you weremarried?
(12:48):
And like, why you still like towalk?
And she's like, okay, let'stalk about walking, why don't
you go and walk?
Or she had not lost her spouseand she didn't understand.
And I was like, well, I can'tdo that.
Remember I wanted to owe everymorning, wanted to just crawl
under the bed and take thispicture.
So I made a promise to her thatI would start to walk.
(13:09):
I failed that very first morning.
I woke up and I laid my shoesout the night before.
You would think it would be soeasy to just lean over and tie
your shoelaces?
It's not.
It is not.
I couldn't do it.
It was horrible.
So I made a deal with myself, Inegotiated with myself and I
(13:30):
told myself and I write aboutthis in my book, the Power of
One If I get up tomorrow morning, all I have to do is walk for
one minute.
One minute, then I can go backto bed and I can cry and hold
his picture, and then I'll addone minute every morning.
And it was the best gift I evergave myself, because in that
(13:54):
there was a one minute everymorning turned into 30 minutes
one month later and I started tosee the sky was blue again, I
started to smell the grass, Icould see the grass was green
and I started to feel aliveagain.
So that's the first step I didwas I had to do inner healing
(14:15):
within myself, right.
And then I started to look intoresources, and that was
becoming a certified griefeducator and grief coach.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Yeah, yeah.
And that often happens ispeople will decide you know,
this was so painful, sodevastating, so difficult.
I have to help others.
Because I made it this far, Ihave to help others.
It's also very common to findthat same perspective in
addiction and addictioncounseling.
A lot of times your counselorsfor addictions and alcoholism
(14:48):
are addicts and alcoholicsthemselves.
It's the same thing.
They found recovery.
They know it's hard, very, verydifficult.
So they want to help others andthey want to be because they
have the credibility and theycan honestly say I know how you
feel and they can mean it.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
yes, they can be honest and that's why I was so
passionate about wanting tobecome a certified grief coach.
I was shopping grief counselors, yeah, because remember I only
got so many sessions throughhiatus, right.
And then I felt lost again.
And as I was shopping griefcounselors through my health
(15:27):
insurance, nobody was a widow.
Nobody had ever experienced theloss of a spouse.
Some of them had neverexperienced any kind of loss.
Yeah, their knowledge wastextbook, right, right.
And I could, I cannot connectwith them.
I felt like I was being justsit here and talk to me for 45
(15:49):
minutes and they were watchingthe clock and I didn't feel like
they really were giving me anytools to be able to take those
baby steps, to feel like I'mfinally moving forward.
Nobody told me that I can moveforward and, with more love,
more peace, start to find joyand hope.
And I'm not leaving him behind,because that's what I struggled
(16:12):
with.
Every time a moment of joywould come up, I would push it
down because that guilt wouldcome up.
How dare I start to feel joy ifhe's not here?
Right, right.
And so none of my counselors,grief counselors, they didn't
understand that.
They never told me that I canhave gratitude and grieve at the
(16:33):
same time, right, right theyjust couldn't put it all
together in the rightperspective for you.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
I understand that I was talking with someone
recently about that very issue,that if you decide that you want
to reach out and get someprofessional help, it's
important that you not just say,okay, I'm going to go to this
person.
You need to figure out is theresome chemistry there?
Does this person make you feelcomfortable?
Do you feel that they can giveyou what you need?
(17:00):
And it's almost like aninterview.
And then I made it a point tosay that most of the grief
educators, grief counselors,therapists, whatever their
background, whatever theirtraining is, whatever their
certification is, most of themwill offer that initial free
(17:21):
consultation, phone call,virtual meeting, whatever,
whether it's 10 minutes, 15minutes, half an hour.
I even know someone who does itfor an hour You'll get an hour.
Well, now, I know more than onesomeone's, but that's rare.
But in an hour's time youshould be able to know.
Well, let's face it, christina,I met you tonight for the first
(17:44):
time and probably within threeminutes.
You know we just clicked.
Yes, we just clicked.
And yet I have met guests thatwell.
We just didn't really click.
You know we still had asuccessful episode, but you know
, when you click with someone,so try to.
If you're going to look forprofessional help, don't look
(18:05):
for a person, look for severaland talk to all of them and then
make your decision based onthat and I think that 50% of
your healing actually is due toconnection, absolutely,
absolutely, actually is due toconnection, absolutely
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
So having that connection is so important for
you to even find many hope andhealing.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Absolutely and, let's face it, you are going to be
telling these people some ofyour most intimate thoughts,
fears, beliefs.
You want someone that's goingto be accepting of that,
nonjudgmental, and someone who,number one, is actually going to
listen and has the tools toshare with you, yes, and also
(18:50):
has a solid resource list ofdifferent things that might help
you.
Yeah, absolutely, I love thatyou said that the acceptance
yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Because that's what I do.
I accept you where you areright now, absolutely.
You need your grief to bewitnessed.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
Yeah, yeah, kelly do you want to play?
I was just going to say that Iagree on the person thing.
Fortunately, with my therapist,we clicked instantly and we're
here 13 years later so doingtherapy once a week.
But it's just, it's very, veryimportant.
I agree that you'd have toconnect with that person.
Or you're not going to behonest with them or yourself and
you're just going to be wastingboth of your time.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
Yeah, that's a good point you are.
If you're, if you don't feelcomfortable with them, how are
you going to open up the barriersoul, let's face it.
Grief is Because, let's face it, grief is messy?
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Oh it is, it's ugly.
It's ugly, it really is.
Yeah, and now you mentionedthat you've lost your husband.
You've lost both parents, andthat mirrors my losses too.
I had one other that I added.
I didn't add it, it justhappened, but I lost an infant
son who was less than 24 hoursold.
(19:58):
And all of those losses were atdifferent times in my life and
the grief was different witheach loss.
And in fact, the loss of myinfant son, lee, was number two
in my list of four major losses,and it was so long ago that the
society's process, if you will,for dealing with grief is just
(20:22):
pick yourself up, put your biggirl panties on and move on.
So for me, and that situationwas unique in that when he was
born, first he was stillborn,then they came back and said he
was alive, and then they had towhisk him off to a different
facility where they had aneonatal intensive care unit.
That was time before smartphones.
(20:44):
I never saw him, I never heldhim, there was no picture taken
of him.
So once I got home and then youadd that generational
conditioning, I call itsometimes of pick yourself up
and move on yes, after a while,I forgot it ever happened.
You know he was no longer in mythoughts.
Every so often I'd have afleeting thought, but it was
(21:07):
just not there, not constant.
And it wasn't until after Istarted the podcast and I
started to talk about that lossagain that I actually started to
grieve his death after allthese years.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
I'm so sorry for your loss.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
In my training they say that the two most difficult
losses you will experience inyour lifetime is spousal loss
and the loss of a child, and theonly thing I can think of that
would have made his loss moredifficult was the loss that
people experience when they losea child who is an adult,
(21:42):
because they've had all thoseyears of knowing and loving that
child and watching them growand watching them develop and
mature, and then to lose them.
So that must reallyexponentially be far more
difficult.
So, and my point in that was,you know, there were actually
several points.
First of all, grief isdifferent for everybody.
(22:02):
Yes, sometimes, depending onsituations, you will go on not
even aware anymore thatsomething like that happened and
then all of a sudden, bam, it'sgoing to come and blindside you
and you're going to have todeal with it.
Yep, those grief waves.
Now, someone had called them,someone had named them at one
point and I can't remember the,can't remember the doesn't
(22:30):
matter, but they were.
It was like those little briefmoments you get where you really
get blindsided by that, thatgrief.
And no, it was.
They had a little acronym forit and I'll have to go look it
up now and everything.
But there was an articlewritten about it.
It was interesting.
I probably mentioned it in apodcast 95 times in year 97.
I can't think of it At any rate.
But it is a definite issue andyou know, I will go through days
(22:52):
as, like I say, it's beenalmost seven years and I will
think of Tom every minute ofevery day.
But all I have to do andKelly's going to smile at this
one is see a bottle of hot sauceand Tom will immediately come
to mind.
He loves hot sauce.
If I see someone in a militaryuniform, of course my mind will
go to Tom.
He served in Vietnam in aretired army, if I, even a first
(23:15):
responder in uniform will bringback a memory of Tom.
So there's many different thingsduring the day.
Tim Hortons always summons Tomback to me as well, because
every day he had to have his TimHortons coffee.
It's all those secondarylawsuits, absolutely, absolutely
, you know, and those are things, but where they used to make me
tear up, now they make me smile.
Oh, that's good.
(23:36):
So that also lets me know thatI have progressed in my healing.
Now I want to ask you too andmaybe you said it and I missed
it when you went to the beachand stood in front of those
waves about how long had it beenthat your husband had been gone
from you.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Oh, I don't know.
I would have to think about it.
I can tell you more about that.
That was right after my daddied.
So I buried my grief with mydaughter, wanting to be her rock
.
I did not process my grief, Iburied it, shoved it down.
Yep, it's what we do a lot.
And then when my mom diedunexpectedly with a brain
(24:13):
aneurysm, I had to take care ofmy father, didn't even have to
mourn my mom's loss, and thenwhen my dad died, it all came up
, okay.
So I can tell you that this wasabout two months after my dad's
passing.
Okay, when that happened and itwas I just couldn't.
I didn't realize how quiet myhouse was.
(24:36):
He died during my daughter'swinter break.
My father and, as his caregiver, I had pushed him in the
wheelchair, help him with awalker.
He had an oxygen tank.
That first morning, after Idropped her off I think it was
January 10th, after winter breakended it was so quiet in my
house and that's when I realized, wow, I did not realize that
(25:00):
his wheelchair made so muchnoise, how loud the oxygen tank
was.
That silence was so loud.
I don't know how to explain itother than all of the noises
that he used to bring with hischair was gone, had to just pick
everything up the day that hedied.
(25:20):
So I would say it was about twomonths or so because I stayed
stuck in bed after my dad diedbecause all of a sudden, when he
died, everybody that I lost mybrother, my mother, my husband,
my dad we all came up at once.
And that's what I teach myclients is if you don't feel the
(25:41):
feels, those grief feels, ifyou don't process it, if you
don't dig deep down and do thegrief work, yeah, it's going to
come up when you don't want itto come up, when you least
expect it to.
Right, and that's what happenedto me with.
It was when my dad died.
Yeah, I mean, you think aboutit, that was my first man that I
ever loved.
I was sure, girl, sure.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Yeah.
So, yeah, yeah, that happensand we often do push our grief
down.
We may, you know, sometimes wepush it down for a long period
of time, like you did, butespecially if you have children,
I think there's a tendency todo that even more.
I didn't have anyone else in myhousehold, it was just Tom and
I.
But I did experience getting upone day thinking, oh, I've got
(26:22):
to get ready, I've got to go toBatavia, which was about a 45
minute drive, I've got to go andvisit Tom.
And then I realized no, I don't.
And I stood there and I thoughtwhat do I do now?
Right, I was, I was lost, yes,I was lost.
So, yeah, it's very difficultand pushing it down doesn't help
(26:42):
.
I mean, that's what I did foryears with Lee and even with my
father and my mother.
My father died in his late 40sand he actually was ill and
couldn't give me away for mywedding.
He was in the hospital that day.
So those all, even though therewas a loss attached to that,
there were other losses.
There were all these incidentallosses, these collateral losses
(27:05):
, the fact that my own fathercouldn't give me away for my
wedding.
My brother fortunately steppedup in his US Air Force blues and
walked me down the aisle andthat was okay, and my brother
and I talk about it and we laughabout it to this today because
as he stood there with me infront of the minister and the
minister said who gives thiswoman to be wed, we had
(27:27):
rehearsed it.
He was supposed to say hermother and I do okay, or our
mother and I do, whichever onehe wanted.
And my brother stood there thatday and when the minister said
who gives this woman to be wed,his response was there that day.
And when the minister said whogives this woman to be wed, his
response was our mother and I dogladly.
I don't think anybody else inthe church could hear that.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
Gladly, Gladly yeah.
But, he was probably nervous.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Oh well, no, I think he did it to be just my brother.
You know we have a really goodrelationship at any rate, okay.
So at what point then did youknow, when you saw those waves
and everything, did writing abook come to you then, or was
that later?
Speaker 3 (28:07):
Oh, no, the book was later.
Yeah, oh no, it was.
I didn't know where to startand that's why I went and found
other grief counselors and wasfirst trying to do it where it
was through my health insuranceand, I'll be honest with you,
that stopped.
I could not find any griefcounselor, yeah, that understood
spousal loss and understood,and I almost felt berated.
(28:30):
Yeah, you know, like, well, whycan't you do this?
And they never share.
Not one person talked to meabout widow swag Not one person
at my primary care.
Every time I would end up in anER not understanding what was
happening.
I could not ignore the symptomsbecause I thought I was having
a heart attack and I couldn'tcall 911 because I didn't want
(28:52):
my little girl to see uh-oh, ismommy going to die now too?
So every time I would go to theER, they didn't talk to me
about widow's fog.
They didn't talk to me aboutany tools or anything that I
could do to help myself, becausethey don't know.
No, we live in such anuneducated grief society and the
(29:12):
doctors who have to care for us, they have not gone through a
grief education.
They have never been trained tohave bedside manners, at least
in my experience and still theone day that I did have a sweet
doctor who he just held my handand he said sweet doctor, who he
just held my hand and he saidyou need to take care of
yourself.
The way you have been placingthat nurturing heart into
(29:36):
everybody else, you now need todo it for yourself, absolutely.
But no, I don't know when.
The book I just published it ayear ago.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Yeah, and it took me over a year, almost two years,
to write this book, and so it'snow.
Self-care was and my goodfriend John Polo said once that
self-care can be very simple.
It can be simply surroundingyourself by the right people,
you know, making sure that thepeople who support you are on
your little team and everything.
And if you have toxic peoplethat keep asking you, you know,
(30:31):
haven't you gotten over yet?
Speaker 3 (30:32):
Yeah, oh, you know I go this all the time.
Christina, you need to move on,yeah, over him.
Like, how do I get over him?
He's the father of my child,absolutely, absolutely.
Also, I also say in my group,when I talk about self-care,
that rest.
We need to listen to our body,oh, absolutely, and sometimes we
(30:55):
just need to rest and that's aform of self-care too.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Yeah, yeah.
And the first thing, the firstpiece of advice I ever give.
Anyone who says, what would youtell somebody who's dealing
with grief?
I just say be patient withyourself, give yourself grace.
Yeah, just be patient.
Patient with yourself, giveyourself grace.
Yeah, just be patient.
Yeah, I love that, yeah, yeah.
Well, sadly, time goes by sofast.
These, yeah, I talk forever.
I really think we could.
So that just means that you'regoing to have to come back
(31:20):
another time.
I would love to it would be myhonor, thank you no, not, not a
problem.
It'll be our honor, actually.
But yes, you need to come backanother time.
But let's wind this down.
First of I want to turn themicrophone over to you and have
you tell people more about yourbook, about what other services
you might offer them, anyclasses you might have, your
(31:41):
coaching services whatever.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Thank you so much.
Yes, I've written that book,the Positive Widow, and it's
found on Amazon, but I'veactually started offering to
anyone that wants me topersonally sign the book and
write a little bit about theirhusband and dedicate it to their
husband and his memory.
I will be happy to do that,Sweet.
Yeah, that's been actually sucha blessing for so many.
(32:06):
You can reach out to me byeither sending me an email to
the positive widow at outlookcom, and I also have a website,
wwwthepositivewidowcom.
If you are a widow, I have afree Facebook group, the
positive widow.
That's my brand.
If you haven't picked up onthat, I'll be looking for it.
(32:28):
Yeah, I see you should.
And I also have a coloring book, an adult coloring book that
helps with anxiety, and that'son Amazon and that's under the
Positive Widow as well.
And then I also have been akeynote speaker at many grief
events and I created a programthat I'm so proud of.
(32:50):
It's called the Positive WidowGrief Relief Group Coaching
Program and it's a very smallgroup.
I have to keep it small becauseit's a very personalized grief
coaching program and I call itthe hope seat instead of the hot
seat.
I do some teaching for about anhour and then I have grief
(33:12):
experts come in to do grief bodymovement exercises and then I
do the hope seat and that'swhere the magic happens and
that's where the sisterhoodconnections happen, and I offer
that throughout the year.
So feel free again to email meor you can Facebook Messenger me
.
You can find me anywhere atsocial media under the positive
(33:33):
widow or Christina.
Napoleon Sounds great.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Sounds great.
Thank you so so much.
Absolutely so, kelly.
Did you have anything you wantto insert before I wrap?
Speaker 4 (33:44):
it up.
I just want to say thank you,christina, for coming on our
podcast today.
I learned so much from youalready, and it's only been it,
so I look forward to talking toyou again and I'll be emailing
you.
That's so kind.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
Thank you so much for saying that.
It means so much to me.
Thank you, it was such apleasure to meet both of you,
and I would love to come back.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
Well, I think our friendship has only just begun.
I think so too.
Our paths are going to cross afew times here.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
And that's the beautiful thing about what we're
doing, absolutely.
We meet such wonderful peopleand our bonds and connections
are so strong.
Yep, I love lifelongconnections.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
I believe that I believe that I believe that
completely.
So, listeners, it's time onceagain for me to wind down and
say again thank you, thank youfor taking the time out of your
day to listen.
Whatever activity you may havebeen doing in addition to
listening is fine.
The fact that you listen iswonderful, listening is great.
I hope you have heard somethingthat has piqued your curiosity
(34:52):
and that you either reach out toChristina, maybe to ask a
question or ask about herservices or to purchase her book
, and if, for some reason, youare not able to afford a book,
ask your library to get a copy.
Ask your library, let them knowyou heard this great podcast
and make sure you tell them thename and this book was talked
about on it and you think it'dbe a great addition.
(35:14):
Did you know?
Can I offer something?
Speaker 3 (35:16):
free to your listeners, Sure go ahead.
If they want to send me an emailto thepositivewidowatoutlookcom
, I can email them three freeGreek guides.
Wow, yes.
So for any of your listeners,they're wonderful guides.
The first one is how to survivethe holidays after a loss.
And then, because of my financebackground of 25 plus years, I
(35:40):
also did a financial referenceguide for me with oh, and that
one is the most sought afterguide.
And then I created a hopefulmornings and a peaceful evening
practical checklist.
I love checklists, I'm achecklist girl and, as widows,
as caregivers most especially ifwe're entering widowhood, as a
caregiver we're so exhausted soit's little things that you can
(36:03):
check off, like remembering tobrush your teeth at night.
That's cool.
Yes, it is all centered aroundthe words hopeful and peaceful
Nice, I like that.
Well, feel free to send me anemail and I'll be happy to send
those free grief guides to you.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
I'll have to try to remember to put that in the
podcast notes as well, forpeople that maybe didn't listen
all the way to the end.
Yeah, I know sometimes thathappens.
I'm just Alrighty.
So I guess I've talked enough.
Now it's time to let Christinago, let Kelly go, but to say to
everyone thanks so much againfor listening.
(36:41):
Please take care of yourselvesand come back again next time,
as we all continue to live ingrief.
Thank you, christina.
Thank you, as we all continueto live and grieve.
Thank you, christina.
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Thank you so much for listening with us today.
Do you have a topic that you'dlike us to cover or do you have
a question from one of ourepisodes?
Please email us at info atasiliveandgrievecom and let us
know.
We hope you will find a momentto leave a review, send an email
and share with others.
Join us next time as wecontinue to live and grieve
(37:14):
together.
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