So how do we, I'd love to explore with you, how do we begin giving ourselves permission to experience joy without feeling that we're diminishing our loss?

That's a great question.

And we all struggle with that so much.

And I encourage clients to think about this in this way.

That person was part of your life.

You shared your life with the person.

We know that we adjust our lives to make a relationship work.

There we

I'm sorry.

Yeah.

No, no, that's good.

But about at the end of that time, I just kind of... got it together and I thought gosh I have all the skills I have been doing helping people through crisis crises what's plural for for years and years and years and I can help people through this because nobody should have to go through it alone it just you know is one of those things are people kind of hunker down and and become a hermit to some degree when they're going through it And then they isolate themselves, which is the last thing that we should do because you don't heal alone.

You heal in community, whether that's one person or a number of people.

So I just thought through it and kind of looked back and said, okay, so what did I do? What worked? What didn't work? And I created...

a program for women.

that's important.

Can you please, uh, take us back to that season and share what life looked like as you navigated such overwhelming grief?

Okay.

Well, going back, my mother was in Cal- in Florida, and there were three hurricanes coming straight at her.

So I called my older brother and said, "Go get her." She was 100 years old at the time, and I, I didn't want her down there.

And so he did, but when he got her to his house, she fell and broke her hip.

So I went down and stayed a few weeks, and then brought her back to live with us, and she lived with us until she passed at 106, which was pretty amazing.

And, you know, that-- we had formed such a bond during those six years, and we were close before, but this was, like, really close.

So what are some of the struggles people rarely talk about after the initial grieving period has passed?

Can you share your personal story and what led you to become a grief and resilience mentor?

Okay.

I'd be glad to.

Um, a little bit about my professional life.

Um, I have, uh, a doctorate in organization behavior and leadership, so I spent, oh, over 40 years helping people overcome issues and, uh, be the best that they could be, and I was an executive coach for about 30 of those years.

Uh, so I have a good, good understanding of human behavior, and, um, and it has, it had stood me in good, uh, good place for years and years.

And then all of a sudden, within a three-year span of time, as you said, I lost my mother, then I lost my little brother, and then I lost my husband, and all of them were, um, were really surprises.

How did grief affect your daily life during most early months?

So Lynn is a grief and resilience mentor.

Yeah, unfortunately, you have to have gone through it to really understand the depth of it.

But my professional life before I retired was as an executive coach in a big financial services firm.

So I had the opportunity to go all over the country and work with partners to help them with leadership behaviors and leadership.

and help them with issues, communication, all that kind of stuff with their staff.

So I have been a coach since before coaches were coaches.

I have a doctorate in organization behavior.

So if not, you would have kept going and going and going and never really had the time to confront what was there.

It takes time.

There are.

It takes time.

Your brain is very instrumental in all of this because just think about how...

Getting up in the middle of the night, most of us don't need a light.

We can get to the bathroom or where are we going? Because our brain has made a map of what it's like, where we live.

And it has done that about us too.

Do you think it's good for a widow to be a part of a grief group? And how would you say, okay, what do you different as a coach, as a grief expert helping widows?