Widows Support, Coaching for Widows

The Coffee Obsession

Every morning at 6:00, while Anneke was still asleep in her bed, I locked up the house went next door to the coffee shop for 45 minutes.

When I was in the coffee shop the dishes in my sink and the unfolded laundry didn’t bother me and my dog Debs didn’t beg for hugs. In the Coffee Obsession I was anonymous, no one talked to me, no one wanted me. Sometimes I spent the 45 minutes writing, and some times I spent it staring and wondering how it could possibly be that I was a widow, sure that there had to be a cut off date.

The same people came to the coffee shop every day. Just like me, they came to wake up, and just like me, they were not interested in conversation. A smile and a short good morning recognized that we were all there for the same reason, to be alone among others.

They were my coffee buddies, whoever they were.

When Anneke reached 7th grade she started to get up earlier so I had to change my routine. I could not get to the coffee shop until 7:00 AM.

But at 7:00 AM, the coffee shop was different. No longer were grumpy patrons hunched over their coffees. By 7:00 AM, people were talking; newspapers crinkled, and real conversations could be overheard, cheerful conversations.

I was not happy. The 6:00 AM coffee shop was my refuge. The 7:00 AM coffee shop, social and animated, was torture. Alone at 6:00 AM had been acceptable. Everyone was alone. But alone at 7:00 AM meant I was really alone, no friends and no husband.

A lot of widowhood is about creating safe spaces for our new widowed selves. We look for spaces where we can be who we are without any pressure to be happier than we are, or even to be sadder than we are. Old relationships may no longer support us but new relationships have not yet happened.

I hear from clients how they switch churches, or move to new towns.

Me, I moved to a new table in my coffee shop.

I was about to abandon my coffee shop for good, when one morning one 7:00 regular beckoned me to his table. Insistently, he waved me over to join him. What could I do but move?  I was grateful that I was no longer so obviously alone, and yet everything changed. Now I needed to make conversation. It was painful but I managed, pretending that I wasn’t who was, that I wasn’t a widow.  More people gathered, and as more were added, I thankfully needed to talk less.

The next day I was invited over again, and then the next day and the next. As I became more comfortable, I began to anticipate my morning coffee group and after many months this new table became my table and the people became my friends. They were a motley crew of contractors, a massage therapist, a potter, a ferryboat captain, an attorney, a scientist, retirees, and me. And, an occasional visitor from out of town.

Now, three years later, this group still begins my day, five days a week. It is now My Coffee Group. While I mourned the loss of my 6:00 peaceful ruminations, I love my coffee buddies. They matter to me. And they love me back. I make them laugh, they make me laugh, and although no one talks about it, we are community. This group was the beginning of my new community.

Always, we widows must be aware of our need for community. We may deny our need for a while, when pain and loss are so enormous, but eventually, we must connect with our community.

What are you doing, wonderful widow, to reconnect?

Mie Elmhirst CPCC PPC Professional Certified Coach

Help for Widows

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

Help for widows

The Widow’s Coach

My 15 year-old daughter Anneke landed the role of Polly in Neil Simon’s play The Gingerbread Lady. In this play, Polly’s (Anneke) mother seems intent on self-destruction, and at one point in the play, Polly (Anneke) is moved to desperate tears, wanting her mother to be OK.

Anneke was unable to perform the scene. She could not cry on stage and she was unable to access that place of sadness. Thankfully, the very thoughtful and caring director changed the scene to accommodate Anneke.

At first I was surprised at Anneke’s difficulty. After all, her father/my husband, died when she was seven, and she has shed many tears through out the years. I have done my best to let her know that it is OK to have feelings and to cry. I have encouraged her to talk about her father and we speak about him often still. Anneke is very open and courageous.

So why did she have a hard time?

The loss of a parent is very different than the loss of a spouse. My grief was most intense the first few years after Mike died, and now, eight years later, life is good.

Anneke’s real grief work has yet to happen. Yes, her life is also moving along nicely, but there is an under current of incompleteness. At age 7 her relationship with her father was aborted, replaced by a space. The part of her that should have been fed by him and their relationship stopped developing.

This space should have been filled with the growth that comes from baseball games, challenging authority, hugs, fighting and making up, and camping. It should have been filled with words like “you are the most gorgeous girl in the universe and I will do bodily harm to any young man who might transgress”. This space should have been filled with the many experiences with a father that support the healthy development of a young woman.

So, yes, she misses him. But that is too easy an explanation. It is much more than that. For a child the space left by a deceased parent does not get filled in.

Instead there are question marks. Would he have liked me? Been proud of me? Approved of me? Would he think that I am pretty? No matter what I tell her about her father, and what I am sure he would think of her now, the question marks remain.

When Anneke cries, regardless of what brings it on, it ends up about the space. It might start out as an upset over a test she hasn’t studied for, or an audition that scares her. But it ends up being about the missing reflection back to her from her father’s eyes that was supposed to help her know who she is.

So, Anneke cannot cry on command. Fine. There are worse things. She hates to cry and I don’t blame her. It is too much damn work for a 15 year- old. Yes, someday, she will have to do the work. But not now, and not on stage.

Mie Elmhirst The Widow’s Coach

Help for Widows

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

What was really wonderful about your husband?  What were those qualities that brought out the best in you? What was it about him that attracted you in the first place? What was it about your union that really worked? What was it that made you say, way back when, “This is the man for me”?

It took me a while to remember what it had been like in the early stages of my relationship with my husband. This is because cancer showed up two months before we were married and most of the 10 years of our marriage were snatched up by surgeries, chemotherapies, and other treatments so bizarre and painful that the fact that he agreed to them speaks to his great love of life.

(Interestingly, his buoyant personality did not change as he navigated these various treatments. He remained always positive and hopeful.  My personality, however, was not so lovely. I became ultra-serious, and mildly-to-not-so-mildly, neurotic. I was scared to death and compensated by trying to make life perfect. But, this is a topic for later.)

With the help of photos and my daughter’s elephant-like memory I have been able to recall those early years. I was surprised to remember that he actually had hair! And I remember when we climbed mountains we could go for hours not speaking, enjoying the smells of the damp earth and wet leaves, the sound of the wind whistling in the trees, and the breathtaking views. I remember how we loved the fact that the two of us were together, alone in the woods, in the quiet, doing what we loved the most.

I remember even 10 years later, his smell, the way that he put those little stays that I thought were so weird in the collars of his dress shirts, and how he got on his knees every night to thank his God for the day. And I remember waving him off to work in the morning thinking what a handsome man he really was.

Yes, I can remember some really good stuff.

Spend some time remembering for yourself. It is important to do this.

Here are the next questions. Not so much fun, but equally important to answer.

What was difficult about your relationship? What drove you crazy? What were the challenges to your relationship? What was not so wonderful about your marriage? What was it that made you look at other marriages and wonder if they had the same issue(s)?

My biggest challenge was myself. When Mike got sick, I took on the role of emotional caregiver. He did not ask me to do this. How I had been raised, our societal values, my lack of self-esteem and fear all conspired together to thrust me into this role. As emotional caregiver I put his needs above mine for the whole of our marriage. I did this so successfully that it seemed at times, that he forgot I had any needs at all. I am not blaming, I am simply stating what was.

So, just in case you think that I have sanctified my husband – think again.  Mike was no angel. For one thing, he had a way of poking fun that made me crazy. And he could not understand my sensitivity. This was a frequent topic of heated conversation.

Why is it necessary for a widow to look back, especially if it is painful to do so? Am I suggesting this simply for the sake of airing dirty laundry? Why must we who are left behind acknowledge anything that wasn’t positive?

There are many reasons – but the most important are the following:

We must understand our challenges, our tendencies, so that when we are again in relationship we will be ready respond to our new situations rather than react to them because of old unhealed wounds. If we don’t acknowledge the truth about the past we will be owned by it. And therefore, bound to repeat it.

If there is pain that we don’t acknowledge, it affect us. Just because it is not addressed doesn’t mean it isn’t there, festering.

To move forward we need to stay in reality. To look at the whole picture, rather than just the convenient, easy, fun part. If we are grounded in the whole truth, we are then available to share our lives with a special someone, if that is what we want.

Closure happens when we are at peace with our memories, the good memories and the not so good memories. Closure is when we are willing to acknowledge the whole picture; that he was a very real human being, a mixed bag, and that he was capable of making us happier than we thought we had a right to be, and he was also capable of disappointing and hurting us. Just as we were capable of disappointing and hurting him. Closure happens after we have done the work, and usually when we are not looking. It is that very quiet moment when we are finally at peace with what was and are capable of looking ahead with a sense of anticipation.

We are then free to love once again.

Mie Elmhirst MBA CPCC PCC.  The Widow’s Coach

Help for widows

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

And now, back to one of my favorite topics, (and I know most of you will agree with me), men!

I am unendingly fascinated. I am intrigued by both the nature of men and by the nature of women and I am amazed at how we women continue to resist accepting the very obvious differences. (I include myself here.)

Many of my clients are widows who are returning to dating after a 25-30 year marriage. If women want to date and enter into new relationships successfully, they MUST be ready to acknowledge the differences between men and women.

Men are not like women. They are built differently, they think differently and they act differently. (Thank goodness…who really wants her man to be a woman?) You may think that this is obvious, right? Yet we women often look to our men to react as we ourselves do. We want them to be sensitive, to want to talk about the relationship, and we want them to show us that they understand us.

Forget about it.

Now I can hear a good number of you saying, “Not true! My husband was a wonderful conversationalist and listener and loved talking about the relationship…”

Good for you. But trust me – you are in the minority.

If we assume that men think and react as we women think and react, we are setting ourselves up for disappointment.

Men do not think like we do, most of the time they don’t enjoy talking like we do, and if we try to change them, if we try to get them to think and act like we do, we will be frustrated, they will be frustrated and our relationship will not be supported.

Men have much to offer a relationship. But our strengths are not theirs and their strengths are not ours.

If we ask our man to talk, especially about the relationship, it is like asking him to speak Taiwanese. He might try to fake it because he knows how important it is to us, but it will be just that. Faking it. It has nothing to do with how he cares about us. Talking like a woman is not in his skill set. And, if he could talk like a woman, I am pretty sure that we would not be interested in him! We want a man.

This doesn’t mean that we don’t get to talk about our relationship – but rather than going to him and asking him to do what he can’t or doesn’t want to do, we are better off going to our girlfriend. Or better yet, our Life Coach! We don’t have to deny our need to talk. We just need make a better choice and go to someone who is as good at it as we are.

A year or so ago I watched a PBS special that beautifully addressed the differences between the female brain and the male brain. And there were even MRI scans to back up their claims.

Men are not naturally empathetic. Although there may be a few men who are, and another few who can adequately fake it, women have a much larger ‘empathy center’ in their brains. It is why we are the first to make chicken soup, react to a baby’s cry, and cry at commercials. Women are more global their thinking, more intuitive, and easily overwhelmed. We are easily overwhelmed because our ability to think globally allows us to see all of the difficulties and ramifications in a situation. Hence – overwhelm.

Men are generally (not always) more competitive, one-problem-at-a-time oriented; they are able to separate themselves from problems more than women. When faced with a problem, women with think it over, talk it over, and share it with others before arriving at a solution. Men will be compelled to offer a solution, and quickly.

What does this mean for relationships?

The first thing it means is that we need to go to men for the things they are good at. Among many things, they care for us, protect us, fix things, solve problems in a wonderfully linear fashion, and smell good. (And a whole lot more…) But talking about relationships, especially theirs, is not what they like to do and is not what they are good at.

Just like women need conversation, men need appreciation. And they need it from their woman. So, rather than focus on what he can’t give us, (female-like conversation and understanding) we get to appreciate what he does bring to the relationship.

Don’t go to Bloomingdales for milk. Go to Bloomingdales for clothing and Stop & Shop for milk.
Go to men for the richness of what they have to offer. They will be happy and feel appreciated.

And go to your friends, or your life coach, for the rest.

Mie Elmhirst.  The Widow’s Coach