Widows Support, Coaching for Widows

“When you stumble, make it part of the Dance”

Our local Jiffy Lube imparts weekly wisdom on its billboard, and this little tidbit stared me in the face as I dropped my daughter off to school this morning.

I was thankful when I read it because this month I really stumbled. I stumbled and stumbled and stumbled. I made scheduling errors, I was short with my daughter, (and she with me), I forgot my dentist appointment, lost my license, (again) and paid my credit card late. Finally, after once again having minor words with Anneke as we were making dinner this evening, I realized what was happening.

We are putting our beloved standard poodle down tomorrow. She has late stage osteosarcoma and we spent much of this month trying to figure out a way not to have to do this.  Instead of dealing my sadness, I became tense and anxious, all business and snippy. Stumbling.

So, while stirring the pasta, I found myself looking at Deboney resting on her bed, and I finally let myself really feel what was happening.  I let myself feel what I had been trying so hard, in my efficiency, not to feel. Anneke looked at me looking at Deboney, and allowed herself the same. Tomorrow we will say good-bye to our sweet Deboney, who has loved us and let us love her. We will miss her dreadfully. Anneke and I embraced as she also realized what we had been running from. We embraced Deboney and cried.

New grief has us remember old grief. It never fails.

I wonder, for those of you have been widowed for as long or longer than I, do you get tired of remembering?

I do. I am so tired of remembering. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t get tired of remembering Mike.

But I do get tired of this very familiar pain called grief. I know this pain so well that going there is like sitting on a like a greased slide. It takes little provocation.

The thought of Anneke going to college, a sappy chick flick, and now losing our dear family dog.  Not that loosing Deboney is anywhere near a chic flick, but rather I am saying how little it takes for me to feel this deep, deep familiar pain of loss.

I really don’t like this. I don’t like it for me and I don’t like it for Anneke. I want grief to be a feeling that I have to work at to get to. I want grief to be some distant memory that shows up maybe once every ten years. Sometimes, and I know that this really isn’t what I want, but sometimes, I just want Anneke to be shallow for a day and not to have known loss. Silly, I know.

I did not mind it as much when I was a new widow. Grief and missing Mike reminded me that I was alive.

Now, today, I don’t want it. Today, I want to send Deboney off to the next world with love and kisses, and happiness; She was so good to us.

But that is not how it is. I selfishly want to keep Deboney, I want her to be healthy, and I want her to live another 12 years. She was my husband’s idea, and she became my love.

Maybe they will meet again.

In the meantime, I will accept this sadness, as much as I don’t like it, and I will accept my stumbles, although others may not. I will understand, that where there are stumbles, there is always a reason; I will make amends when needed, and understand that it is my job, as it is yours, to have loads of self-acceptance on this long journey called life.

Blessings, Mie Elmhirst, MBA CPCC PCC   The Widows Coach

Coaching and Help for Widows

For a sample coaching session, please call 508-540-4421.

Last night it was cold and damp here on Cape Cod so I lit a fire in the fireplace and invited Anneke, my 15 year-old to join me. She had her laptop and I had mine. She did her homework and I did mine. It was quiet and lovely and I felt gratitude. I have come to a place of deep peace since my husband died. It took years and a lot of help.

But, every once in a while I forget that my daughter is 15, and I assume she grieves as I do. I forget how profoundly different it is to lose a father than it is to lose a husband.

When Mike died we lost our footing. Nothing made sense. I remember feeling as if I were caught up in a vortex and I wondered when we would fall and if we would land on our feet or if we would land, broken into little pieces.

Anneke grieved, because she was 7, in short, deep spurts, bereft one moment and playing happily with her friends the next. She was a child, and because children grieve so differently, she seemed to roll with it better than I did.

Although I could count on regular meltdowns from Anneke, especially after the rare occasion when I needed to resort to discipline, these meltdowns were brief.

I would go something like this…

Me, (after a minor transgression).  “Honey you need to go to your room for a little while and think about what you did (or said)…”
Anneke. “I waaaaant myyyyyy daaaaaddyyyyyy……”

It wasn’t simply that she was a manipulator and knew how to get me to soften.

We had been a three-person-household, instead of now two, and discipline from one parent always meant that Anneke had the other parent to lend support and balance.  I was the stricter of the two parents and Mike’s laid-back attitude was a wonderful stabilizing force for us. We relied on him for this. His absence was deeply felt by Anneke when she and I did not see eye-to-eye.

Now, eight years have come and gone since Mike died. Anneke and I see eye-to-eye more often than not. She has now known more years without him than she knew with him. Anneke has matured into a gorgeous, articulate, balanced young woman. I have no question that Mike continues to have a strong hand in her up bringing.

I want to put a period on this story. A period that goes something like this.

“I am in a good place, I am dating, I love my life (finally, due to some really good coaching), I am taking voice lessons, I have learned how to dance, I have a good job, I know that I will meet my special someone at some point and I have no big worries. Therefore, Anneke is fine also. Period.”

But that is not how it works. Yes, I am fine.

But last night, I got up from the fire and went to get ready for bed. After an hour or so, I called downstairs to say goodnight. Anneke’s response was a somewhat muffled “goodnight” so I knew something was up and I went downstairs to investigate.

Anneke’s grief continues in a way that mine does not. The man in her life who was supposed to tell her that she is a princess, that she is beautiful, that he is so proud of her musical performances that he might burst, and that she can do anything she wants to do, is gone. The man who was supposed to teach her about boys, to tell her that she is a desirable young woman and who was supposed to interrogate nervous young men as they came to pick her up for a date, is gone.

But her need for him continues. In fact, her need for him is greater now, perhaps, than when she was seven.

For teens, the missing of a parent seems in some ways to get harder. As the years pass, the events in their lives increase in significance and his absence becomes more profound.  But even as this is true, the world around these teens assumes they miss him less, that they are done with their grief.

My daughter, as many teens do, has a smile on her face most of the time. She would be described by anyone as happy, upbeat and positive.

But at night, when alone in front of the fireplace, she grieves. And there is nothing I can do. My job as a parent is NOT to hug those tears away, not to shove tissues in her face, not to make her feel better as I so want to do.

My job is to be with her if she wants me. To cry with her if I have to, but mostly to witness her. To witness and respect her need to grieve, even eight years later. And to let her know that this is just the process, that this will not be the last time she cries, that it will happen again, and that between tears she can and will live a full, remarkable life. My job is to teach her to not fear but rather accept her continued sadness.

I try hard not to be afraid of my daughter’s pain. Like all widowed parents, I don’t want her to have any. None. But he died, and she does have pain. My consolation is in knowing that at her tender age, she is learning a lesson that took me 47 years to learn; that no matter how hard she cries, she will laugh again.

Mie Elmhirst. The widow’s coach. Coaching, Support and Help for Widows.

Please visit www.widowsbreathe.com or click on ‘contact’ for more information about one-on-one coaching or call 508-540-4421.

Early widowhood was really the first time in my life that I gave myself permission to just let it all hang out, to stop worrying about what everyone else thought.

I gave myself permission for two reasons; the first was that even if I hadn’t given myself permission I would have blubbered all over the place anyway, so why not just make it OK.

The second reason was that I knew deep inside, if I tried to hold in my tears to prevent either others or myself from feeling bad, the opposite would happen. I would feel worse. Healing cannot be sped up but it most assuredly can be slowed. And this was one experience I did not want to slow.

So, I cried and I cried and I cried. I thought I would never stop. I cried at the grocery store, the lumber store, and the dog groomer, with my neighbors, my daughters principal, and the dishwasher fix-it man. I cried everywhere and with anyone. There were many days when I applied and re-applied my make up at least five times before lunch. Eventually, I just gave up and looked bad.
Who cared?

My coach assured me that every tear I shed was one less tear I would need to shed in the future so I welcomed them all.  My tears gave my daughter Anneke permission to do the same. She was seven years old, so her grieving was done in short, 2-3 minute segments, but grieve she did. The second reason was that I knew deep inside, if I tried to hold in my tears to prevent either others or myself from feeling bad, the opposite would happen. I would feel worse. Healing cannot be sped up but it most assuredly can be slowed. And this was one experience I did not want to slow.

One day, her best friend Timmy followed her into the house right after I had had my 10:00 AM melt down. He looked at me, horrified, as I lay flopped on the couch, in my nightgown, eyes read and swollen, copious amounts of snot coming out of my nose; at least 20 used Kleenex at my feet. Yes, grief is messy. Messy in every way.

Anneke, having seen much worse from me, said to her young friend, “Oh, don’t worry, that’s just my mom crying about my Dad. Wanna make a tent under the table?”

I mean really. What’s not to love? Anneke did her grieving in the early evenings, in my arms, when she was secure in the fact that I could be present to her tears, not lost in mine.

I was sure, in the very beginning, that someone/something must have invented the 10:00 PM – 2:00 AM hours as a special torture for new widows. I was my most hopeless late at night and I prayed for early mornings and a coffee machine that worked. Caffeine, (only one cup but I drank it in minutes like a full-blown addict) helped me forget the terrors of the night before and look on the new day with less fear, forgetting momentarily that 10:00 PM would come again, as it did every night. The daytime hours were not easy either but Anneke, my work, meditation (and Oprah!) gave me enough structure to make it through one day at a time until eventually I could see the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel and realize that joy was again going to be a daily companion.

If you are a new widow, keep in mind that it ALL PASSES. Eventually you will feel better.

Please visit www.widowsbreathe.com or click on ‘contact’ for more information about one-on-one coaching.

Mie Elmhirst, The Widow’s Coach

Who knew how hard it would be to ask for help? Or, how important it would be? I learned the answers to these questions Christmas of 2000, two weeks after Mike died.

Christmas morning my seven-year-old daughter received from Daddy/Santa a model of a robot-arm. Mike’s idea behind this present was that he and Anneke would make a project of assembling it and in the process, Anneke would learn all sorts of real neat things about screwdrivers, wires and batteries etc. It was to be a bonding experience; they would grow closer, and she would learn those things that I could not teach. Great idea, in theory.

So Mike died and there we were, Anneke and I, with this robot arm. Or rather, the many unrecognizable components of the robot arm. (What had he been he thinking? This gift had not been my idea.) And yet, like most newly single mothers, I desperately wanted to be a good parent to my child, especially now that she had lost her Daddy. I had the somewhat distorted idea that I should now be mother AND father. So this robot arm assembly was something that I should not only tackle, but also complete successfully and triumphantly. Like a man.

On the other hand – I remember looking at the box filled with of what seemed like a million and a half parts and thinking that that there was no way that I was going to be able to pull it off. No Way. And, that this must be some sort of cosmic joke. Payback for all of those little household tasks that Mike had completed and for which I had not been adequately grateful.

But my daughter’s beautiful blue eyes looked up at me, full of both hope and fear. Hope that I could still be her mummy who would be there for her no matter what and fear that I might just dissolve in my tears and disappear in my heartache.

So I mustered my courage and declared that yes, we would indeed put this thing together. Not only would we assemble the robot arm but also the successful completion would serve as proof that we would be OK. It would be a sign. A sign that Anneke and I would not be defeated by the loss of our beloved father and husband. It became a point of honor for both of us – a sort of ‘we against the odds’ that we put it together and do it without outside help. I brought up a large worktable from the basement and put it in the middle of the living room, ready to receive the millions of itty-bitty parts and the book of directions that seemed thicker than the Bible.

Now, Anneke and I had (and still have) very similar temperaments. Prior to this we had not done well on projects we’d attempted together, possibly with the exception of baking Betty Crocker brownies. Hence, our first step was to make some agreements. My hope was that these agreements would insure not only a completed robot but also an intact relationship. The following agreements were taped to the living room wall.

1. This was going to be fun (damn it).
2. We would not ask for help (damn it). (Okay, I left out the ‘damn its’ – she was only seven.)
3. If either one of us was to get hot under the collar, we would both walk away until the next day when we would be calm enough to try again.
4. We would only work on it as a team.

Weeks passed. Between tears and everything else that needed to be dealt with, we found time almost every day for our robot. Seemingly, all went well. The robot was finally completed. It was time to push the buttons and make it do what it was meant to do. Pick up stuff.

Anneke pushed the button. Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. How can this be? “Try again. Push it really hard.” Nothing. “Come on Anneke, REALLY push it.” Lots of quiet. Anneke did not look well. As a matter of fact, she looked scared. We were supposed to be able to do this, and we were supposed to be able to do it without help. If we couldn’t put together a simple a robot arm, how would we make it as a family? Were we doomed?

Finally, and very meekly, “May I call Dan?” I asked. I could tell by Anneke’s expression that she thought this was a very good idea. Dan was our neighbor who could do anything, and I mean anything. I made the call, and he was over inside a minute. He did the troubleshooting for our robot in two minutes, and our robot was picking up stuff in three. Anneke was happier than happy.

My enormous lesson was this. Asking for help did not diminished Anneke’s sense of accomplishment one little bit. Nor mine. This is key. Asking for help does not diminish you. When you ask for help, everything becomes easier, there is less pressure, less fear and shared responsibility. You are not in it alone. For the most part, people are happy to help. They just need to be asked, and they need to be given specific tasks. If you think there is no one to ask, I’ll bet there is. That old fellow down the street you never really spoke to, a teacher at school, the teenager across the way.

Asking for help requires that you let go of what others think of you. Asking for help is a courageous act. Model this for your children. Who knows when they might really need help? The more willing they are to ask for help, the more they will understand their own need to offer help when they are able. They will realize the blessings of giving and receiving. Yes, you may have been brought up to be independent. We live in a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps country. That does not mean it is necessarily right.

If you are getting offers of help, great. Take all the help you can get. If people are not offering help, don’t wait for them to offer. And don’t bother being mad that they didn’t think to ask. It is a waste of your precious energy. No one knows what you are going through. They don’t understand because they have not had the experience. They can’t understand it. You may not like it, but it is your responsibility to ask for help. Go after it.

Please visit www.widowsbreathe.com or click on ‘contact’ for more information about one-on-one coaching.

Mie Elmhirst, The Widow’ Coach