When the world crumbles around you, what's left of your commitments? With raw emotion, I, Linda Carter, take you through the labyrinth of grief after the loss of my dear husband, KJ. It's a solitary journey, one where commitments take on new meaning and sincerity in relationships becomes your guiding star. I share my personal narrative of tightening my inner circle, the power behind a deliberate 'no', and the unforeseen strength found in solitude. The heartache of loss extends beyond personal woes, touching the lives of children, an area that demands our gentle attention. Prepare to hear more on this as we open our doors to those who have stories to echo in future episodes.
This intimate discussion also offers solace to those who find themselves judged in their grieving. Healing isn't one-size-fits-all, and I recount the bespoke pathways I've carved out, from combating panic attacks to seeking solace in nature’s redbirds. The chapter closes with a candid moment, an apology for the brevity of our talk due to an untimely ailment, and a promise for richer, more in-depth conversations to come. Your contributions are the heartbeat of our next episodes, and I welcome your stories and topics as we continue this exploration of life, loss, and the commitments that shape us.
When the world crumbles around you, what's left of your commitments? With raw emotion, I, Linda Carter, take you through the labyrinth of grief after the loss of my dear husband, KJ. It's a solitary journey, one where commitments take on new meaning and sincerity in relationships becomes your guiding star. I share my personal narrative of tightening my inner circle, the power behind a deliberate 'no', and the unforeseen strength found in solitude. The heartache of loss extends beyond personal woes, touching the lives of children, an area that demands our gentle attention. Prepare to hear more on this as we open our doors to those who have stories to echo in future episodes.
This intimate discussion also offers solace to those who find themselves judged in their grieving. Healing isn't one-size-fits-all, and I recount the bespoke pathways I've carved out, from combating panic attacks to seeking solace in nature’s redbirds. The chapter closes with a candid moment, an apology for the brevity of our talk due to an untimely ailment, and a promise for richer, more in-depth conversations to come. Your contributions are the heartbeat of our next episodes, and I welcome your stories and topics as we continue this exploration of life, loss, and the commitments that shape us.
Welcome to Grief Sucks Life After Loss. I'm your host, linda Carter. I am solo today, which is really odd because I am procrastinating. When I came up with this idea to create this podcast, I definitely didn't think about doing it on my own, but here I am, so this week I didn't have a guest and so we're just gonna go with it. So I had asked on my Facebook page about requests and I had two one. Well, two people commented about how well I do with not committing I call it my commitment issues which I will cover that topic a little bit today. And then someone else asked me to cover kids and loss and how they deal with that. I want to do that in a separate episode because I think there's a lot there and, if anyone, I think I want to do it a couple times. If anyone would like to join me for an episode that has kids that have dealt with loss of a parent or parents, I would love for you to join me, because I think that's a huge topic and, as a parent myself who's gone through it, it's hard, so I would like to discuss that in a separate episode. If you would like to join me on that, please shoot me an email at griefsuckslifeafterloss at gmailcom. I would love to talk to you and get you on with me. And then another one pertaining to kids, because there's so many scenarios of loss that a child can go through and as a parent or a caregiver it's so hard to deal with those issues. And maybe one day I can get my sister-in-law on here to speak on that, because my nephew is very young and he has lost a lot of people in a short amount of time and that is just in death or just people walking out or whatever the situation may be. But I know that that was a big struggle for him, so I definitely would love to get her input on that. I think that would be very helpful. So we will cover those in separate episodes. And again, if you want to jump on with me and would like to share your stories, please reach out. I'd love to have you on.
Speaker 1:
So the last couple days I have talked about death a lot twice today, almost all day. Yesterday, yesterday, we took a road trip to Ohio which we were gone all day and got home late, and we actually went there for a funeral and then talked about our own issues and problems along the way, which is all great conversation, and I think we touched on several great topics. I do want to cover some of those today as well, as I spoke to a really good friend of mine this morning and then another this evening and just topics revolving around death that it just keeps coming up. So I think there's so much stuff that we can cover in grief and so many avenues and so many ways. So today we'll just talk about a few things. That's on my mind. It'll probably be a shorter episode and I tried to make a few notes, so there may be a little bit of hesitation today, but we'll see how this goes. Thank you to everybody who has listened thus far. I really, really appreciate it and I hope that this is something that has resonated with you all and I hope that it's truly helping and I would love to have any of you on to discuss things that have happened in your life and maybe that those scenarios or those situations or how you handle those could help other people. Let's start with my commitment issues. We're going to call them commitment issues.
Speaker 1:
When my husband, kj, was alive, he was a people pleaser. He loved to be around people, he loved to be involved. He was very much the social light between the two of us. I was not by any means, but it seemed like if it was going on, we had to be there. If it was an event, we was there. If it had to do with his business in town, out of town, whatever he needed to be there.
Speaker 1:
Even then I didn't attend all of the things because I struggled with fake people and bullshit. So I stayed home a lot of those days and after he passed I just got to the point where if you're not in our everyday life which my circle is tiny, it's always been small, but now it's tiny If you are not in my everyday life and it's something that is important to you, I don't commit to it. I appreciate the invites but I don't commit to it. I don't want to tell you that I'm going to be there. And then I wake up that day and I'm like I don't feel like doing shit today. I don't feel like being around those people. There's just so many different scenarios that I just don't commit to anything anymore. And I don't feel bad for it either. And I think a lot of people struggle with saying no or feeling like they have to participate in everybody else's adventures and in their life.
Speaker 1:
The other part of it for me is if I don't hear from you, if you don't call and check in, if we don't speak often with the exception of a few people then I just simply I'm not going to take the time there's especially since my husband's been gone there's been several instances where you know somebody will call and say, hey, so-and-so is coming in town or so this is happening or that's happening. They would like to see you. And in my mind I'm like if you didn't reach out to me and say, hey, I'm coming, you know I'll be around, let's do the dinner or do this or that, if you didn't take the time to do that and we haven't talked, I'm not going to take the time out to spend with you because I don't think it's sincere and I've gotten really good at picking out the sincere and the not and I'm simply not going to waste my time because it's too precious. Life is too short to do things or try to impress people. Spend your life the way you want to and don't feel bad about it. You don't have to tell everybody yes, you don't have to attend to all the things you know, even the people closest to me. Even some of them laugh. They're like, well, I'm going to do this on this day. You want to go, and I'm like you ought to know the answer. And they're like, yeah, I knew that was coming, because I may or I may not, but you can't feel bad about it. You just simply cannot Do you be, you live the life you want and don't feel bad if you're not saying yes all the time, because, to be honest, once you get there it feels great. You're not obligated to anybody and I just want to make sure that everybody knows that it's okay to say no. I don't know how I've gotten okay with it. I don't know how I've gotten good at it, but apparently some people think that I've gotten good at it, but maybe it's just because I don't care If I'm pissing people off. I don't care if they're talking about me because I don't show up. I simply don't care and I know it kind of makes me sound like a bitch, but also I'm okay with that.
Speaker 1:
So, as we were traveling yesterday, a couple of things came up, and one of those was the funeral that we attended was for someone whom my husband loved dearly. They were good friends. My sister-in-law also was good friends with her. She was well known in the business that we were in, that my sister-in-law still in, and it was kind of funny to see how many people from that showed up, which, as we were there yesterday, it wasn't a whole lot, it wasn't what you would think for who she was and what she did for some people.
Speaker 1:
And we came across the topic of how social media or, I guess, society in general plays such a big part in either making people feel a certain way about death or expectations. So you have, you know, some people, someone will die, and it might not be someone as close to them or it may, and they post over and over and over and maybe it makes them feel better and maybe it makes them people feel sorry for them. Some people may think, if you aren't posting about those people and the death, that maybe you didn't care, maybe they weren't as important to you. There's so many different things and I think at the end of the day, really it's just people judging you and you can't really give a fuck about them people. You can't care about what those people think.
Speaker 1:
And so, for an instance, when KJ died, I didn't post a whole lot on social media about it, for was nobody's business. And then other people would post every day, all day. So I could see how it would be easy for somebody to look and be like, oh well, this person's posting all day, every day. They must really be hurting, but she's not posting shit about her husband dying. So you know what kind of person is she. I could totally see how that that would go, but at the end of the day I didn't give a fuck. It was nobody's business what I was going through and we all grieve and deal with our issues differently. Excuse me, so don't let them world of social media or general standards of society or whatever it is, get to you or make you feel some type of way about whether you are talking about it or not talking about it, or talking about it too much or not, because at the end of the day, those people that are judging you, they don't matter. They're not your people. Sorry, I am throat scratchy today.
Speaker 1:
A conversation that I had today involved a good friend and some of her family members that had just lost someone very close and the family dynamic isn't fabulous and they're worried about someone but they don't know how to help, and sometimes I think that, as somebody who has lost someone so close to them that you nobody can really help if that makes sense Like there's no words, there is nothing anyone can say to her to make her feel better about her situation, there is nothing anyone can do to make her feel better, just to go through this and learn how to grieve it and learn how to get through it. And sometimes you're in that mindset but it doesn't matter what anybody says or does. Some of my best friends just showed up and sat and that worked for us. We didn't need to talk about it, we just sat there. And another part is I told her that when we lose someone so close to us and it I mean close to us could be anybody right For me. I had to learn how to reach out and say, hey, I need help, which that's something I didn't ever do before. That wasn't me at all. But I mean, when you're going through that you're almost like sometimes you feel like you're losing your fucking mind. For me it was panic attacks a lot and sometimes I had to call somebody and talk to them all the way home to make me feel better, to make sure I was okay, and then sometimes I had to call somebody and say hey, can you come sit with me just until I feel better, because the panic attacks was real after I lost KJ and I think you have to learn how to ask for help.
Speaker 1:
You're going through these things alone and I know that everybody says you don't have to go through it alone, but some situations that's what you're doing. There's nobody that can help you, nothing that can be said, nothing that can be done, so you truly are going through it by yourself. Even if your best friend is sitting next to you, you still feel like you're going through it by yourself. So just have patience with those people that you don't know how to react or you don't know how to help. You don't know what to say. It's easier to not say nothing. Send a text, say hey, I'm thinking of you, if you need something, let me know. Or just something. Let them know that you're thinking of them and those little things do help. But at the end of the day, you have to figure out how to get through it.
Speaker 1:
And when you're seeing someone go through things, I think some people today it come up was is it normal? What's normal? What's normal to me may not be normal to you, but you can't judge because you don't know what that person's going through. You have all may have lost, sorry you. You could be in a situation where everybody has lost the same person, but everyone, every person, is grieving that person differently. The situations are different, the relationships are different, so normal, everybody's gonna have a different normal. I guess that's what I'm trying to say, and so you shouldn't try to judge what is normal. Or if you see somebody who's grieving, you know doing something that you're like, what the fuck Like? Is that okay? Should they be doing that? Let them be. I mean, you got, you got to give them time to get through their things because, look, sometimes I walk through the house talking to my husband, sometimes I cuss this ass out more than once and I look for redbirds every single day. To some people, that shit was not normal. They're probably looking at me like this bitch done, lost her mind. That's okay. That's absolutely okay.
Speaker 1:
Sorry, I was trying to go back through my notes here, see what else we were gonna talk about. You can hear my dog. I apologize. I had came upstairs and then suddenly he wants to start barking. He's been asleep all damn night. Well, apparently I didn't take enough notes, so this is a short one today because, to be honest, I was not prepared and I do apologize for that.
Speaker 1:
We were sick for almost two weeks, so that putting behind on a lot of things. I hope that this is helping everyone. I will get back to a regular schedule of three leasing every other Friday when I'm solo, I have better notes so that it's not a quick podcast, and then if you guys have things that you would like me to cover or you would like to join in, please shoot me an email, join our Facebook page. I try to stay active on there and other than that, I'm gonna go ahead and end this because my throat is scratchy and I have to get this uploaded. So I hope to. I hope you all will join me on the next episode and I look forward to hearing your ideals and seeing what you would like to talk about.