COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT
Meet Our Community in Kansas City, Missouri
The Kansas City Modern Widows Club community was one of the first groups outside of Orlando, Florida. Starting 10 years ago as a small gathering of Wisters, we have grown to more than 350 members on our Meetup site. The Kansas City community is on its third set of leaders, building on a strong foundation of support and guidance.
Current co-advocate Nicole B. became a widow at age 36 when her husband of 11 years died of an undiagnosed cardiac condition. She had 2 young sons at the time who are now in high school and college. Over the last 11 years Nicole has worked to raise her kids as she healed from the trauma and grew in her own identity — aside from being a wife and mother. Recently, Nicole became certified as a life coach with a focus on working with widows to help them gain confidence in their unique identities outside of the widowhood label. Finding the women in Modern Widows Club and attending meetings in Kansas City has been a wonderful way of both receiving and providing support with other widows. It’s been an important way of sharing this experience with other women who understand the grief of losing a spouse and the emotions associated with moving forward through life after loss.
Current co-advocate Sarah W. became a widow suddenly in May of 2014. Throughout her journey she discovered that she had a passion to help other women in her situation. She joined Modern Widows Club as a member and eventually felt called to more of a leadership role. She has held leadership positions in the Kansas City area as she is in the events industry. This carried over to her passion to assist other women transitioning to widowhood.
Nicole and Sarah met when Sarah moved to a new home following her husband’s death. As it turned out, she moved onto the block Nicole lived on. They both have sons the same age (within hours of having the same birthday even!) and enjoy many of the same activities. They joined the Kansas City Modern Widows Club group at the same time and have been honored to lead the group for the last two years.
The Kansas City community regularly meets in person in a beautiful condo club room for social sharing and support. Their in-person meetings draw consistently between 23–30 Wisters. They also meet monthly for topic-specific Zoom calls. They have coordinators for food and beverage, hospitality, and activities. Through their fundraising efforts, they will have a group of Wister volunteers this fall at an outdoor festival promoting Modern Widows Club.
Besides their meetings, they regularly have social outings around Kansas City. KC is a sprawling suburban area and Wisters come to them from all over — even as far as Nebraska!
Thoughts from Wister members when asked what they love about the community:
“The sense of community I feel whenever I get together with my Wisters.”
“I love that we can be real with each other. Even though our losses may be different, we all have lost the love of our lives. We can be honest about how we are doing.”
“This is a group I never thought or heard about. I’m so thankful for it though. I have met some wonderful friends who get each other, and no judgments.”
“A wonderful group to be introduced to. I am thankful for meeting the group and grateful to be around such a wonderful widows community.”
You still have time to register for WEE 2022 Scottsdale!
Join us next week for our remarkable, one-of-a-kind event for widows and daughters of widows.
This is an amazing opportunity to connect with your widow sisters, create friendships, and be inspired by exceptional speakers who will help you heal, grow, and find purpose.
Our Widow Empowerment Event is where widows go to find extraordinary understanding, support, community, and education while rebuilding their life after loss.
MENTAL HEALTH MOMENTS
Internal Self Care
By Cyndi Williams, MSW, LCSW
This month we are focusing on self care, and we started off with a challenge to add just one new habit to your routine for the month of September. If you’re like me, you’ve probably missed a day or two. I am focusing on drinking more water and I cannot understand why this is such a challenge, but it is!
If you have taken on the challenge, I am so proud of you! Often we focus more on the outer or body-focused self care, such as getting our nails done, making time for a massage, or getting some exercise, and that is wonderful — but I want to invite you to also focus on some heart, gut, and mind self care for our inner self.
This is often a challenge for grievers. For inner self care, quiet time, time alone, and being still with our thoughts and feelings is the goal in order to re-center, to become more grounded, and to gain insights from processing. (Ouch…and I thought drinking water more regularly was difficult!) Widows find themselves alone and in a quiet home so often, we may avoid it in order to avoid that feeling of loneliness, isolation, and seclusion which may feel is an unavoidable part of our new reality.
In order for any activity to be a self care activity, it requires mindfulness, or making a conscious and deliberate choice to focus on yourself. To spend some quality time with our thoughts can turn a dreaded reality of loss into personal empowerment as you choose to gift yourself the attention you need to heal.
If you find that being alone at home can cause anxiety or depression symptoms, change your physical environment. Find a museum, cathedral, trail, or other scenic place. If quiet and solitude trigger the intense grief feelings, modify your inner self care and go someplace that’s not quiet where you’ll find other people, like a coffee shop, mall, or park. Then find a comfortable place to sit and focus on yourself.
Start by becoming comfortable with this practice by taking baby steps. Take a book or journal to turn to if your thoughts seem to be too chaotic to nail down, or just mindfully observe your environment without judgment. This may sound strange if you are unfamiliar or uncomfortable with the practice of mindfulness. Mindfulness is simply time noticing your own thoughts and presence without judgment. It can be a difficult practice to begin, as we are not typically taught as children to focus on ourselves, or taught to enjoy quiet introspection.
Click below to continue reading Cyndi’s article.
Widowed in 2013, Cyndi Williams, LCSW is a mental health advisor and contributor for Modern Widows Club. She has more than a decade of experience supporting families navigating grief and loss. She currently works as a mental health therapist at Family Life Counseling in St. Louis, Missouri. Follow her on Facebook at @CyndiWilliamsLCSW.
Widowers (MEN ONLY): Tonight at 8:30pm ET you’re invited to join Modern Widows Club’s virtual Widow[ers] Community for a Zoom meetup!
Our special guest is author, tech entrepreneur, and fellow widower Tom Pisello, Founder of Growth Through Grief. His topic is “Regrets, Guilt, and Self-Forgiveness.”
If you’re a widower, please join us to learn more as Tom shares about these important topics. There’s no cost to attend.
To receive a Zoom link for tonight's meeting, email widowers@modernwidowsclub.org as soon as possible.
GUEST CONTRIBUTOR
Giving Yourself Permission to Take Care of Yourself
By Melissa Pierce
I could talk about self-care for days — it’s a topic near and dear to my heart and it’s a practice that moved me through the darkest parts of my grief. It got me to a place where I eventually had hope for the future.
It’s been 10 years since Dave’s sudden death and sometimes I am brought right back to that time of shock, sadness, and loneliness. That time of barely hanging on until I hit rock bottom and I knew in my gut that I had to start taking better care of myself so that I could take care of my sons.
Here’s what my path on the way to rock bottom looked like:
Avoiding my feelings and not processing my emotions around Dave’s death. (Who has time for feelings? Not me! And it took some time for me to believe he was not coming back from the dead.)
Not eating and losing so much weight that my wedding ring fell off my finger.
Working a full-time job, running the household (paying bills, grocery shopping, walking our dog, etc.), and the care and feeding of my kids — doing all things solo-parenting after Dave’s death.
After kids are in bed, settling in with a glass of wine (or 2 or 3 — you see where this might be going) to “help” me sleep.
I tried, but I couldn’t keep all the plates spinning. How could I? I was last on the list of “things to do”!
After several months of haphazard “plate spinning” I was going downhill and the kids were going with me and that was not going to happen!
So I made a big decision. I made a commitment to myself to place my needs at the top of the list.
It’s like when you’re flying on a plane and they tell you to put the oxygen mask on first before assisting your child with theirs. I knew I couldn’t help my kids process their grief if I wasn’t dealing with my own.
Click below to continue reading Melissa’s article.
Melissa Pierce, widowed in 2011 after the sudden loss of her husband Dave, is the Founder of Filled With Gold. She interviews guest experts on her weekly Filled With Gold Widow Podcast, providing support and insight into the widowhood journey.
INSPIRATIONAL VIDEO SERIES
Nurturing Your Soul and Spirit
We're talking about self care all month long in September. It's generally acknowledged that there are six types of self care: Emotional, physical, social, practical, mental, and spiritual.
In this video, Modern Widows Club Program Support Manager Cindy Toledo shares her thoughts about spiritual self care and the importance of connecting with and nurturing your true, authentic self.
GUEST CONTRIBUTOR
Me, Myself, and I
By Paula Renninger
The alarm bursts through the silence to tell me to get up and start another day. I was not asleep anyway. I do not want to start another day. But, I hear the cat meow for breakfast, feel the dog jump off the bed, and know the kids will need breakfast. Once again, I drag myself out of bed and mindlessly dress myself for another day of the lonely grind.
I gently awaken my children and encourage them to get ready for school. Through groans and grunts they stumble around getting dressed, brushing their teeth and whining that they do not want pancakes for breakfast. I tell them pop-tarts are not nutritious and they need to eat the pancakes. The cat is still meowing. I open his food and put it on the floor for him. The dog is patiently pacing, waiting for me to take him outside to relieve himself.
I grab a coat and walk outside with the dog. The brisk fall air smacks me in the face and I look around. The world is doing its routine. The sun is rising. The darkness is fading. The birds are tweeting. The lawn is covered in leaves, fog, and dew. The dog is sniffing around and sounds from the morning routine inside are muffled to me.
I sigh. This is hard. Solo parenting, solo providing, solo traveling through this journey called life. I did not sign up for this. And I am not sure I want to keep doing it. I close my eyes to this reality. I am startled by someone screaming “Mom!”
Sadly, losing our spouse does not give us a pass to lose ourselves. Regardless of whether or not you have children, grief does not mean we dissolve into self-neglect. Sure, we are allowed to sit on the couch in our jammies staring at nothing or crying or screaming — but we cannot stay there.
Why, you ask?
Because you are alive.
You are a part of the community called the human race. You must go on. You must move forward. You must find you and take care of you! No one else is here to do it for you. And, even when your spouse was here, they could not do it for you either.
So how do you do it?
Do the next thing.
Click below to continue reading Paula’s article.
Paula Renninger lost her college sweetheart after 25 years of marriage and three children. She strives to spread the love they shared with others.
ASK A THERAPIST
Self care means taking time to do things that help you feel good, increase your happiness, and improve your physical health, but it’s important to remember that practicing self care also means taking care of your mental health.
One way to care for your mental health is to work through your feelings and emotions in a safe, judgment-free space. This can be extremely beneficial in helping you identify new ways to think about your anxieties or fears.
If there’s something you’ve been wanting to ask a licensed therapist, you can ask one anonymously by clicking the button below to submit your question.
Cyndi Williams, our mental health advisor and contributor, will answer questions in future issues of Inside Look. She’s worked with families facing grief and chronic and terminal illnesses since 2012. Although we can’t guarantee that all questions will be answered, she tries to reply to as many as possible.
modernwidowsclub.org
844-4-A-WIDOW
insidelook@modernwidowsclub.org