You found us. I'm so glad you did.
But I'm sorry that you had to. Who are we?
I'll tell you what, we're not. We're not old, we're not boring,
and we're not giving up. So come on into our widow
circle, where trauma meets humor.
And we remind you that you can not only survive, but thrive.
This is every Widow thing. Hey everyone, thanks for joining
us on Every Widow thing. Today's episode is a really good
one. I'm super excited.
I started listening to Anderson Cooper's new podcast and it's
all about grief. He his mom died in 2019.
He had to go into her apartment and and close it up basically,
and he was shocked at how much grief he was feeling.
And at the same time, he finds things from his father who had
died in 1978. He found things regarding his
brother who had committed suicide at 21.
So there was a lot to literally pack and unpack while he was
going through his mother's apartment.
And so he decided to do this podcast.
Now the episode that really caught my attention was one, it
was the 2nd episode and it was about being grateful for your
grief. And I thought it was a really
interesting topic. So I asked the other ladies to
listen to that episode so that we could discuss it here on the
podcast. Because one of the things that I
have said early on in my grief and still continue to say is
that I want to sit in gratitude. I want to find the blessings in
it. But I know that that is not easy
for people to to do #1. And for a lot of people, it's
not even easy to understand what that even means.
How can these terrible things be gifts?
So I just wanted to say, like, right off the bat, what did you
guys think overall about the podcast, about the episode?
It was really good. I listened to it twice.
You did. It made me cry, yeah.
I cried too. Stephen Colbert's had a tough
row too. I mean, two brothers and a
father died in a in a an airplane accident and the raw
vulnerability between the two of them.
But also Anderson Cooper's always keeps it pretty together
and a he has his own show on CNN and then he, you know, he does
other things. But so you see him as this kind
of news guy. And then on this podcast, I was
amazed at that he went there. Bawling his head and.
So it was. Refreshing because it's like 2
men having. And they were both.
Emotional. Exactly.
Two men that could actually go there.
It just showed me what we already know.
There's no time limit on grief. I mean these guys are in their
late 50s and they're crying about their fathers who died
when they were 10. You know or or also you know
their brothers were who died were they were younger.
So it there you can bawl your eyes out 20 years later, 40
years later. You know what, it took me to our
kids. That's what I thought about when
I was listening to it. I thought, what if this is our
boys and girls all these years later in their 50s?
What will they say is the thing that they remember?
Because I asked Ryder that he said I don't remember much and
I'm like I, you know, I don't know.
I don't. I think right now in his mind
because he's so happy and life is good living his best life.
But there's about there are bound to be things that in his
later life when he has his own children and like our kids, have
their own. Children talks about when he has
his daughter and how that made him think about just the
fragility, belt the belt, the fragility of life.
Yeah, he talked about his brother's belt.
So Stephen Colbert had this belt.
His brother died when he was 10. He had this belt in every house
that he lived in. He put it in every closet that
he had, but he didn't really even think about it.
And he never wore. It.
And he never wore it until one day his own kid, who's happens
to be named after the brother who died and it's his belt,
needed a belt. And he asked if he didn't know
it was his brother's belt either.
Yeah, he didn't know the story behind it.
Right. And so it it just goes to show
if I want to keep my husband's clothes or take something and
take it with me everywhere I go. That's not weird.
It's not weird at all. Colbert did it.
And Kira is having an issue with the the mic right now if.
You go right into. Her.
My mic is. Getting private hot mic.
Literally hot mic. That's funny.
I like the fact that he, the belt thing came up because I
love the fact that here's another person that keeps
because I had one therapist, the one that I never went back to.
She thought it was weird that I kept his clothes.
She wanted me to give him the goodwill.
And I was like, I'm so glad now. I didn't listen to her.
I listened to my own instinct. Which one can judge that exactly
what works for you and. I use it as opportunity.
So a lot of my kids have, they've all kind of grabbed
T-shirts of Frank's and you know, they'll the girls will
sleep in them or Thomas can wear them now that he's 18 and
doesn't. It make you.
Happy to see. And I sometimes will like, if I
see a photo on my phone, whether I'm looking back for something
or if something pops up and Frank is in that shirt, I'll
just text to the kids. I mean, now we have all this
technology where you can just say like, hey, look, here's your
dad in that shirt. That you.
Left to sleep in. And it just kind of brings him
into the present and it kind of includes him in some way in our
daily life. You know I'm going to text you
this. And it would make Frank smile to
see his kid in his shirt like he's big enough now to wear his
clothes. Yeah, it's fun.
It's so like I said, the underlying, I think message or
or the conversation that they were trying to have was about
grappling with this gratitude with grief.
And so I wanted to know what you guys, what you think about that?
What was your take away from that conversation?
Do you believe that you can be grateful for it?
Are you grateful for it? Crickets.
I I was really impressed because I think it's so much easier to
go to the dark side, right? It's it's easier to be sad or
angry and depending on where you are in your journey or like what
people have, you know, recommended for you, whether
it's a therapist or you know, sometimes it's good to go into
the dark side and kind of delve into it.
I had a a delayed kind of grief reaction because of my injuries
from the car accident. And so I had one therapist that
said to me, you know, this was months later, you know, you
just, you just never grieved. You just pushed it down and you
never really grieved. And you've got to, if you've got
to do it now, you got to do it. You got to get in there and so
sometimes. When you're trying to get your
health back and then you're worried about your children.
So it's kind of doesn't give you a lot of time to focus on.
I mean, I. Don't think anybody blamed me
for that. I mean, I did.
I did what I had to do to to move forward.
But I really took that and then went into some of those moments
where when if I got sad about something, I would stop what I
was doing and take a minute and just go cry and just have the
moment. But what's nice about Stephen
Colbert is like he he's just super positive.
He talks a lot about beauty, though, about how beautiful life
is, the good and the bad, the painful and the joy.
Well, I sent you guys something this morning.
I do. I meditate every morning and
just so people are clear, it isn't like 30 minutes.
I can't I have ADD or something because I can't sit still that
long. But sometimes it's only 5
minutes, 10 minutes. But I've made that a practice
for a really long time and there was this one particular
devotional that was about asking for God to to so that I could
see him. I needed to feel lighter.
I needed to not feel so heavy. It's the holidays.
It's what's happening in my family with my mother and things
changing and my son going to college, it was all of it was
weighing on me so much. I could just feel like I can't
handle this anymore. And a listening to that podcast
yesterday that made me feel a little lighter.
And I was like, OK, you've got to, you've got to do the work of
finding the good because it's a lot of work to find good in
something that's so painful. And then this morning and all
day I've had the best day. It's so crazy.
And I think it was part of the podcast.
So kudos to those two guys and for Whitney for turning us onto
it. But the other was that I felt
like I was asking God to please just give me some lightness.
I mean, you could. That's the least you can do
today. And it worked.
I was lighter. I love what Stephen Cabrera said
in the in the conversation. Something like if you're going
to be grateful for your life, you have to be grateful for all
of it. And that is that means the good,
the bad, the trauma, the highs, the lows.
And so when I try to look at the the gratitude and my trauma, I
will go to things like, well, I'm grateful that I loved that
deeply and and so now that grief is going to be deep because that
it's it it's it's equal to the love.
Somebody said it was the actor. Andrew, Andrew, whatever the
actor, is it Spider, the British guy, Garfield.
He said something that the the tears that I'm crying are just
the UN, not unresolved grief but.
There's no way for me to put. There's nowhere for me to put,
no one, no one to tell anymore because they're gone.
But I feel my love. Yes, it's still the love.
And so that I'm grateful I remember this story.
I may have told you all this story before about the kind, the
family who lost their kindergartner.
And my mom was a teacher. And I remember this story and
this was years and years and years and years and years ago.
I had no idea that I would need to to draw on it.
But this family in the school where my mom taught, they lost
their kindergartner. The kindergartner died, and she
was talking to me about how the family was handling it.
And she said it's just so incredible to watch because
instead of lamenting over all the time they're going to lose,
they're sitting in the gratitude of the time that they were
given. I don't know.
Grateful. That is amazing to.
Me. But that is also a practice, you
know, It's a practice. And they must have been doing
that before they had the tragedy.
And yeah, that's a way where I could find gratitude in, in the
grief, You know, I don't like that he's gone.
I hate that I lost him, but I'm grateful that I had him.
I'm grateful that I loved him. We can walk into a room now much
more acutely than before and feel people's sad and Gee.
Yeah, they touched on that much. More profound.
The value of having gone through loss and that you can have
compassion for somebody that is going through it.
Like, I mean it was kind of the same like when Gabe's friend
died and we had to go see his parents and Gabe's like, I I'm,
I don't know if I can do this. And I said you've done the
hardest thing you've ever had to do.
You can do it And we walked in the room and it, you know it
went as well as could go. I mean.
But that that has given you and I or all of us an opportunity to
use that grief to help other people who are grieving, you
know, that's that's something to be grateful for.
Yeah, because before Toby died, like I I wouldn't have known
what to say, like, to any of you.
Right. I don't even said that.
Even being a widow and someone else ended up being a widow.
I even thought to myself, I don't know what to say to them.
I thought you're so crazy. Of course you do.
But it's once you've gone, I'm 12 years in, the acuteness of
his death is not with me as much anymore.
My grief comes from other things that are piled on not as much
about. I guess that's the beauty is
that when you do the grief work, when you do the therapy, when
you have friends, when you have meet three other ladies that
have been through what you've been through, that can relate to
your story and the hard things that it it does get a little bit
easier over time. You learn to live with it
better. And one of the thing, another
thing that Stephen Colbert said that I love, I know, well, we're
supposed to be talking about the I feel like I'm like, in the
book group and I'm the only one that read the book.
No, I'm just kidding. I have notes, dude.
I read the. Book.
I have one of those that goes to book club that doesn't read the
book. He says that grief can be, and
this is sort of to your point. Grief doesn't have to be a cave.
And you can, you can visualize grief instead as a tunnel.
So there's a you do have to go through that dark time to come
out the other side. And that really resonated with
me for some reason, because I think, you know, there's all
moments where you feel like you're in a cave, you feel like
you're alone, it's dark, it's sad, maybe you're angry.
There's no, you can't see the other side.
And for me is visualizing. You know, when I'm in those
moments, I just love that analogy of like, turn The Cave
into a tunnel. You're going to get through the
other side. And I just love that.
I thought that was so positive and smart, funny, helpful for
me. What?
He used another analogy that I was curious what you guys
thought about it. He said his grief was like a
beloved tiger. Tiger can hurt you, but it's
your tiger. I just thought it was
interesting. He's just trying so hard to help
everybody. I'm.
Going to stick with the tunnel one, You can have the tiger one,
the tunnel one made sense to me. The tunnel.
Maker I don't know. The tunnel means that you'll
you'll get through it. But like the Tiger, you're
always going to have that beloved tiger sitting next to
you. I always feel like that
represented rage, but maybe that's not what he meant.
But for me, a tiger is like rage.
And that's kind of what I thought of is the tiger that
won't let go is that rage stays with you on some level.
Can't remember who said it, but he said anger is the armor
against how you really feel. You have to go to a very
vulnerable place. Anger is kind of the easier
emotion. But it's the most propelling.
To other people covers up the pain, yeah.
That's what I took away from the the tiger part was that it's the
rage. And that rage really represents
pain, enormous pain that's not been dealt with.
I thought it was interesting how both of their mothers handled
their own deaths. So Anderson Cooper is going
through her his mother's apartment, and she's left little
note. Everywhere that was just.
When your person dies, you're the only one left to hold on to
them. So Anderson Cooper's mom left
little notes all around the apartment.
Polly, tell us what Steven's mom did that, I thought.
Was so great and the reason she did this is so all the siblings
would get together and they went to her house and they.
It was in her will that they had to do this.
Yes. And they drew a number and then
they, you know, could go pick what they wanted and then they
would talk about each item. I love that.
That's a great tradition, and we've touched on it a little bit
outside of the podcast, and I think we'll, we'll do an episode
on it. But part of what I felt was
lacking when Hunter died was I didn't know what to do to honor
him, or to heal or help the kids, or in some instances, I
know, Holly, you were like, I don't even know how to bring him
up in conversation. Not Hunter.
Toby Hunter gets around. I was get too early on when we
were younger and now I talk about him, yeah.
I feel like Americans or people. I don't know a lot of people.
There are no traditions in place.
Well, that's why I love the Jewish tradition of sitting in
Shiva. It's a beautiful way to do it it
it tells you basically what to do, but it gives you time to
honor the dead. It's.
Just like our society is so like people don't talk about death.
Well, that's what I loved about Anderson Cooper said that, he
said. I can't.
I couldn't believe under any circumstance that I would have a
podcast that would be discussing this, he said.
But he couldn't not not do it because of all that was
happening around him and I think having his own children now made
him it changes how you view everything.
Well, it's a universal thing. Every single person on this
planet is going to have a loss, even the loss of like a divorce
or a job. I mean, they're all different
kinds of grief. Talking about traditions, in the
olden days you dress in black for a long period of time.
About that too, where like years ago that you would?
People knew you were grieving. For like a year or what was?
It called black days. I don't know, grieving.
I have no idea. What is it called?
You're in mourning. Mourning.
Is that? Now you.
Wear black to weddings, which used to be like you did not do
that, and now that's. Complicated.
Now, you don't wear black to funerals.
What did you guys feel about that?
Because I feel like I've felt this way at times, because my
brother passed away, which I haven't really discussed on the
podcast yet, two years before our accident in which Frank
died. But Anderson talks a lot about
how he just feels completely alone now that everyone's gone.
His whole immediate family is gone.
And where do those stories go? What happens to those stories?
And just the weight of carrying all of those memories on your
own and not really even being able to.
I find I've had times where without Frank, I'm sure we all
have. I haven't been able to cross
reference like right, remember that time when you know Thomas
fell and you know Thomas will be telling some story about him
falling and hurting himself or something when he was younger.
And I I can't look at Frank and say I don't remember how that
happened. There's no terrifying details.
What house was? Your three children.
Yeah, nobody. Else talked to about the births
of your. Children.
Yeah, I didn't have anyone. No one was there except for him.
And I thought that was an interesting piece and just to
segue to sort of ideas that I was, I'm looking into for my
parents and I have a friend in Pilates who exactly is doing the
exact same thing for her parents.
Is getting that one of those storyboard.
I did it, yeah. One of those books where you
send it to them and they can write it all down and then you
know memories that they have. I guess there are prompts that
come every week. Yes, it's an amazing I gave it
to my mom, my my in laws. I gave it to a couple of friends
and they've given it to their parents.
Yeah, you you either write your own question and it's a year
process. So every week they get a
question. I've never heard of this and
they can. And then they have a week to
answer it and then the next question comes, yes, they e-mail
it to them and you can go in. And actually this is just story
worth. I don't know how it is.
Yeah, and other people. Carmen is doing a different one,
so there's a few different ones if you want to, with different
styles if you want to shop. Around, yeah, but I think that's
a great way and even do it for your anyway taking.
Advantage of all this technology that we have now, Because back
then, you know, Colbert was talking about how he didn't even
have any recordings of, I think. Was it his brother's voice?
Yeah, it was his brother. And then he found an old tape
recorder. He had recorded him and his
brother talking on this tape. Fascinating.
I will keep voicemails. Now this is kind of morbid, but
of like my mom leaves me a voicemail or my in laws or even
my children, I save I. Have way too many.
I do too. But I'm like, so afraid.
I don't want to lose their voice.
I agree with you. Trying to leave us a voicemail
and it's full, that's why. Well, I have all those videos.
I'm sure all of you have iPhone video too, but I was listening.
I took writer into the living room one day because I finally
got the DVD fixed. It was such a poignant thing to
was he had never seen them because writers now almost 19
and never seen any of him when he was little and his dad
obviously died 12 years ago. So it's been a long time.
I haven't heard his voice in a long time.
So I had it put in and I can and he came into the room and I
said, well, what do you think about that?
And he said, wow, he sounds we sound sort of similar, but it
was just a weird feeling because I had so much emotion attached
to it and his voice. But I think it's a smart thing.
Like what Anderson's and Stephen Colbert's mothers did.
I mean, what a beautiful way to help them in their memories of
the things that they could no way, no possibly be aware of.
Yeah, I really encourage everyone.
I haven't. Have you all listened to any of
the other episodes? I haven't.
I haven't either, but I'm going to because I think it's really
interesting to hear other people's stories.
Obviously that's one reason why we're doing.
Like Holly, I like that it was men.
I love. Men, we're vulnerable and we're
sharing. Feelings.
It's unusual talking about their grief and get and and sharing
some enlightening views that I hadn't really thought of before.
So it's called Anderson Cooper. All there is is the name of the
podcast. And yeah, the episode that we're
talking about is grateful for grief.
All right. Well, thank you for listening
in. Head on over to Instagram, shoot
us a little text, let us know what you're thinking, what you
need from us. And on a future episode, we are
going to be sharing some widow confessions.
Things that maybe you thought or did or wanted to say.
Feelings that you may have had that you just didn't feel
comfortable owning up to. We want to hear about it.
Don't worry, we won't share your names.
But we do want to share your confessions to let everyone know
that anything is normal. You can share those confessions
by DM ING us on Instagram or sending us an e-mail to
everywidowthing@gmail.com. Thanks so much.
We look forward to hearing from you.
All right, we'll see you soon. Bye.