There is a club that no one wants to join after your husband or wife dies. It’s called the widow/widowers club.

When my husband died, I vividly remember being very angry when a well-intentioned elderly woman approached me and said, “welcome to the club.” I wanted to scream at her that I was too young to be in her old lady club! I wanted to deny it, but the truth was the day he died, I was indoctrinated into “the club.”

The sad truth is that being a member of this club means you have a higher rate of mortality, loneliness, depression, isolation and decreased life satisfaction.

Say Yes To Life

How do you survive a club that seems to be out to kill you? You have to make a decision to either shrivel up and die or say YES to life and fight. You are fighting for your future, for your happiness, and even for your life. The rest of your life is waiting for you, but you have to accept the invitation with a definitive yes.

Stay Curious

Staying curious allow you to find the path for rejoining life. You don’t need an end destination in mind. You don’t actually need to know what in the world you’re doing! You just have to keep your mind in a space that says, “Ok, I’ll bite. What is this…..”

See Where the Path Takes You

By staying curious, you are able to walk down a new path without any attachment to an outcome. You tell yourself, “let’s see where this path takes me.”

What does this look like in action? It looks like going out to lunch with a giant man that looks like a viking but makes you laugh. It looks like joining a widow/widowers social club from an app like Meet-Up, and finding new friends! It looks like taking a new class at the community college, or the rec center. It looks like YOU being brave and having courage to turn again to life.

If you want to talk about how to survive your new, unwanted club, how to find your path, or how to stay curious, I have a program called “Navigating Widowhood” that may help you.

You can do this!!