Widows Support, Coaching for Widows

I can still remember and I can still feel it, deep in my gut, how hard it was to go on after Mike died.

Until I hired my coach who was my main source of support and who eventually became my friend, I was alone. I am so grateful I found him. I cannot imagine walking this walk by myself.

Because that is what it feels like, once he is gone. The isolation of grief is compounded by each relationship, each friend who can not understand.

I wondered.

• Will I ever sleep soundly again?
• Will I laugh again?
• Will I look at a sunset and feel joy again?
• Will I ever again be happy at weddings?
• Will I ever want to cook a good meal?
• Will I be genuinely happy at Anneke’s milestones? Or will I always think about who is missing?
• Will the sun make me happy?
• Will rain on my face feel like rain instead of tears?
• And when I asked my friends, I did not trust their answers.

Please. Ask. For. Help.

Ask for help from me, therapists, clergy, friends, other widows…

This is too hard and it takes too long to go it alone. It amazes me, even after doing this work for 8 years, how many men and women deprive themselves of help.

Isolation is bad for the heart and for the soul.

Call or email me for a sample coaching session. It is free.

Blessings, Mie

Help for Widows

The Widows Coach

Ahhh, Valentines Day.

I had a blind date set for tomorrow… but thankfully, when he realized that it was Valentines Day (both of us were clueless) he balked at the prospect of standing in line surrounded by couples gazing into each other’s eyes. I am so grateful for his foresight and we are meeting today instead.

Valentines Day is so memory laden!

Mike gave me my first cell phone on Valentines Day. In those days they were ‘car phones’. The package was huge because car phones came in briefcases way back then…and as I held it, wondering why he put my earrings in such a large box, he dialed the number from the house phone. Of course when the still-wrapped package rang, he practically danced a jig at this amazing piece of technology, positive that I was as excited as he. While I kissed him in gratitude I quietly wondered why on earth I needed a telephone in my car. The next snowstorm gave me my answer.

Then there was the year we were tight for cash and decided no gifts. I was fine with our agreement.  But the ladies who worked for Mike convinced him that I really didn’t mean it and that if he came home gift-free, he would pay. And pay, and pay and pay…

So at 5:00 on Valentines Day he stopped at the florist on the way home from work and bought the last piece of flora in stock. It was the hugest, greenest, and most magnificent exotic plant available on Cape Cod in the dead of winter. I swear it was bigger than me. Heck, it was bigger than our dining room and I used a Radio Flyer Wagon to wheel it from room as I searched for its final destination.  I think Mike took out a second mortgage to afford it. Of course, I had nothing for him and I quietly cursed the ladies.

Then there was the year of the Sea horse earrings that were so long they practically reached my armpits and I couldn’t turn my head without lifting them…he had my daughter pick them out. She was four.

And the year of the dolphin earrings…she picked them out also.

The year of the lighthouse earrings…. yes, Anneke again. Obviously too young to understand diamonds.

Ahhh Valentines Day. Memories so sweet.

At first, I could not think of past years without a searing pain through my heart.

But now, when I share these memories with Anneke, we laugh. She loves to hear, and I love to tell her. No pain. Just a simple joy at remembering that we were very human beings doing our best.

Mie Elmhirst

Coach for Widows

Call 508-540-4421 for a sample coaching session.

I fell this morning.

It began as I stood at the kitchen sink washing dishes. I turned to the right to watch my puppy Bear rip apart a toilet paper roll that I had smeared inside with peanut butter to make it more desirable than my pant leg. Which up until then had been her chew toy of choice.

I was wearing Anneke’s crocs and that is important only because they are made out of a very hard rubber, probably recycled automobile tires. They don’t turn well on linoleum, or at least not with me in them and as my body turned and my feet did not, I felt myself tilt, slowly and unnaturally, to the right.

I don’t go down without a fight, so when my feet finally unstuck from the floor I began a clumsy galloping across the kitchen. My head lead the rest of my body by about a foot, and as I unwillingly entered the dining area, still galloping but a lot closer to the ground, I heard my inner voice say something like “I am not going down I am NOT going down…dammit I WILL NOT go down…”

I could not abort the descent.

I connected loudly with the dining room table. Bear barked a prolonged high-pitched alert that was as startling as the noise made by three of my dining room chairs as they hit the ground with me.

No one heard of course, and as I lay taking stock Bear quieted down and decided that this episode was just a prelude to play, finally happy to have me at her level. She jumped on my side, nipping playfully. She is no Lassie.

Slowly and carefully I stood up. There were no broken bones.  My right hip took a bit of a hit but thankfully it is well-padded and although my right shoulder doesn’t feel quite normal I am sure that whatever was slightly stretched will regenerate in a day or so.  I am not worried. Mostly, I was stunned.

And when I calmed down, as most widows will understand, I began with the “what ifs”.

What if I had broken my wrist, or my hip or even my vertebra?

What if I had fractured my SKULL?

Is fifty-six too young for Lifeline? You know, those little things you wear around your neck that make “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” less deadly.

My father refuses Lifeline saying it is for old people. He is 87.

I guess it would look bad if I had one and he didn’t.

I know that I am not the only widow that understands this element of having once had a spouse and then not.

The first time I had a cold, one of those bronchial, lots of phlegm colds that make even your best friends run in the opposite direction, I deeply felt the loss of that person who cared enough to bring me soup, and then, of course, gleefully order take out for himself.  What if I coughed myself to death in the middle of the night?

I have a good friend, a bit older than I, who emails her other good friend every day, at 7 AM, just for security. If the email is not answered within 15 minutes, it is followed by a phone call. etc.

No, I am a fit, healthy woman and obviously not ready for lifeline or even an email pal. I enjoy dating, but I do not have a forever partner.  Although I am really beginning to wonder, I just can’t imagine that this gorgeous, bright hunk-a-female will be on her own for the next 25 years.

Yet, I am also a realist and the statistics are abundantly clear. Women out number men. By how much, I am not interested in knowing, but I think it doesn’t bode well.

My plan all along has been to have a partner. Not a marriage partner, but a partner.

But lately, every once in a while, I remember that my plan is not always THE plan.  Even disregarding the statistics, I am pathetically picky.

What is hard for me and I know for many of you, is that we don’t have a crystal ball, we don’t know what lies ahead and for women who have suffered trauma and the resulting deep sense of insecurity, we sometimes feel strongly the need to KNOW, especially, the unknowable.

I am so very tired of the phrase “living in the moment”, probably because I am ridiculously bad at it.

But isn’t that the ultimate challenge? To accept the gifts that come our way, without always trying to manage or change them. To be grateful for what is rather ungrateful for what is not. As I write this I realize how much I have grown, and, how much I still have to learn.

For now, no broken bones, one chair that needs re-gluing, a puppy useless in an emergency but full of love, crocs that will be used in the garden and not in the kitchen and good friends, both male and female who care, and if I can get to the phone, would be here in minutes.

Blessings, Mie Elmhirst

Coaching and Help for Widows.

Cal 508-540-4421 for a sample (free) coaching session.

I am trying to write this week’s blog with my new puppy at my feet. She demands instead, that I instead pay attention to her. I pick up one of her many balls and roll it, encouraging her to “gogettheball”. She just waits.  Instead she wants my pant leg. And since I am wearing the last pair of pants without itty-bitty puppy teeth marks in it, I cannot ignore her. I get down on the floor and play. Little Bear asks little of me; she wants to cuddle, play fetch and hopefully, get a treat. The treat I give her is the same puppy food that she gets three times a day but it seems that eating it out of my hand instead of her bowl makes it better. Like when Anneke and I eat pizza on the floor in front of the fireplace. Its just better that eating it at the dining room table.

So, I love my puppy. I know this. I will do anything for her. I loved her the moment I laid my eyes on her. But of course, for most of us, a puppy is not enough. We are social beings. Most of us want some sort of companionship.

How do you know if what you feel for your man is love? You know that it is better than that bone-crushing loneliness you had before you met him.

But is it love? Or is settling, or obsession, or a diversion?

Rather than asking yourself how you feel about him, please ask yourself the most important question of all.

How do you feel about yourself when you are with him.

Do you feel marvelous? Happy to be you? Appreciated and celebrated?

Or do you feel slightly on edge? Anxious. Like you have to prove something. Maybe  you feel that you are just a little bit less than who he wants. Maybe you should wear different clothes or maybe lose a couple of pounds…Or maybe, and this is really a bad thing, he lets you know in a vague sort of way that you don’t quite satisfy him the way a better or sexier woman could. Talk about a spirit killer.  It is mean and cruel, and yet women put up with it.

Do you remember the movie Murphy’s Romance? I saw this movie in 1985, and even back then, with little dating experience, its very simple lesson made sense. Of course I had no idea that it would be useful to me now, in my fifties.

Sally Field’s character becomes friends with an mature, older, and respectful man played by James Garner and eventually there flows an attraction between them.  Yet, when her smooth talking, immature ex-husband returns, she allows him to move in with her again.  He is disruptive and creates chaos in her life as he simultaneously, preys on her sympathies and emotions.

James Garner’s character, watching this transpire, finally has enough and lets her go saying something like ‘when you are ready for a real man… let me know’.

What is a real man? And, is the man you are with, a real man?

This is what I absolutely know about men and real men..

If, when you are with him you feel great about who you are, he is probably a real man. He wants you to feel good. He celebrates this.

If his actions, not just his words, are honest and respectful at all times, then he is probably a real man.

And if, at the same time he also pays attention to his own needs, (he respects himself), He is a Real Man. Pay close attention to this man.

Oi Vey. I finally get it. At 56 years old, I understand the difference between a man playing at being a man, and a real man.

The biggest danger for a widow is that she accepts less that she deserves. Sadly, I did this myself and called it love, and I know a good number of you have done the same. I know this because I speak to you almost every day.

Please call me for a sample coaching session. You have a chance, again, to ask for  and expect…the best.

Warmly, Mie Elmhirst  508-540-4421

The Widow’s Coach

Widows Dating Again Teleclasses…call 508-540-4421