The Widowed Parent Podcast

I had such a great discussion with Dennis Murphy for this episode. Dennis is a widowed dad in Des Moines, Iowa, and he's been raising his three teenagers by himself since his wife died almost two years ago. Inspired by the book "The Group: Seven Widowed Fathers Reimagine Life," Dennis started his own group for widowed dads in Des Moines.

Some topics Dennis and I discuss include:

• His family's journey with his wife's cancer;
• Putting his kids on the bus to the wrong school on Day 1 of widowed parenting;
• Taking a leave of absence from work and traveling with his kids;
• Deciding he needed to change his approach to parenting, and working to understand his kids better; and
• Reading "The Group: Seven Widowed Fathers Reimagine Life" about 5 months after his wife died, and being inspired to start a group for widowed dads in Des Moines.

I hope you enjoy my discussion with Dennis Murphy.

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I had such a great discussion with Mary Robinson for this episode. Mary is the founder of Imagine: A Center for Coping with Loss, which is in Mountainside and Newark, New Jersey. Mary lost her dad when she was 14 years old, and she struggled for many years after. She got into children's grief work, she says, "to make sure other kids don't lose years of their life to unresolved grief." Mary was honored as a 2019 CNN Top 10 Hero for her work in the field of children's grief.

Some topics Mary and I discuss include:

• Stepping up around the house while her dad was ill and after he died;
• Misunderstanding when her mom told her it would take a miracle for her dad to come home from the hospital;
• The importance of using plain language when talking with kids about illness and death;
• How she started skipping school and quitting activities after her dad died;
• How she was in her 40s the first time someone said "tell me about your dad;"
• Starting to get involved in children's grief work through volunteering;
• All about Imagine's programs at their centers in New Jersey;
• How grief is different from mourning;
• Why every room at Imagine has an elephant somewhere in the décor or artwork;
• Why she believes the world is driven by unresolved grief;
• Why she says that the saying "time heals all wounds" is a myth;
• Why telling your story is so important for the mourning process;
• Her tips for widowed parents regarding Father's Day;
• Messages that grieving kids need to hear from the adults around them; and
• Receiving the CNN Top 10 Hero Award from Anderson Cooper, who lost his own dad when he was just 10.

I hope you enjoy my discussion with Mary Robinson.

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Thank you sponsors & partners:

Audible: Get a FREE audiobook and 30-day free trial: www.audibletrial.com/widowedparent

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ENCORE EPISODE - originally published May 15, 2019

I had such a great discussion with Emily Irwin for this episode. Emily is a therapist and a mindfulness expert based here in Seattle. It seems that mindfulness is all around us these days, so I thought it would be interesting to explore how it might be useful for us as widowed parents, as well as for our kids and teenagers. [...]

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Thank you sponsors & partners:

Audible: Get a FREE audiobook and 30-day free trial: www.audibletrial.com/widowedparent

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I had such a great discussion with Heather Nesle and Maria Collins of the New York Life Foundation for this episode.

Heather discusses their new initiative – The Brave of Heart Fund – which provides monetary grants to the family of front-line healthcare workers and volunteers who lose their lives because of Covid-19. Please share this discussion with all healthcare workers you know – they or their colleagues may need it.

Maria discusses the New York Life Foundation's work in the area of childhood bereavement, including their new e-book download for kids, The Golden Sweater. It's free to download, plus they are donating $1 to childhood bereavement programs for each download. She also discusses the new documentary, Speaking Grief, and tells us how to watch.

I hope you enjoy my discussion with Heather Nesle and Maria Collins of the New York Life Foundation.

ENCORE EPISODE - originally published December 18, 2019

I had such a great discussion with Claire Bidwell Smith for this episode. Claire is a therapist and is the author of three books on grief, including her most recent, "Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief." Anxiety is a topic I hear about a lot from widowed parents, either in relation to themselves or their kids, so it was really great to have Claire on the show to discuss this.

Some topics Claire and I discuss include:

• How she started having anxiety and panic attacks around the time her mom died, and no one connected it to her grief;
• What anxiety is, and what are some symptoms;
• Why it's important to work through your grief in order to tackle your anxiety;
• If you're stifling your grief, it's likely to manifest in anxiety;
• Grief-related anxiety can be present right away or many years out from loss;
• Kids who lost a parent often have fear of additional loss;
• How guilt and regret contribute to anxiety after loss, and ways to process these feelings;
• Sometimes people hold onto the guilt as a way of holding onto the person;
• Finding other ways to hold onto the person's memory so you can let go of the guilt;
• Why writing is an important tool for processing grief, and tips for doing this; and
• Why telling our story of loss is important.

I hope you enjoy my discussion with Claire Bidwell Smith.

ENCORE EPISODE - originally published May 8, 2019

"As activities or writing projects come up, gift-making for parents around these days, we can help prepare our children for what is the language you want to share. And even help a child come to an understanding that, yep, you've still got a mom, your mom's not walking on the earth, that her body has stopped working. She died. And it's okay to honor that she's your mom, and what she looked like, and how darn much she loved you, and that she really liked Skittles and daisies and whatever it might be, that you all used to sing this one song together. It's okay to still call her your mom and it's okay that you cry when those activities come up and it's okay to make her a card, and it's okay to include her in pictures where you're drawing a family picture. In the same way any of us claim relationships, you can still claiming these relationships. It's still your relationship."

- Dr. Tina Barrett

I had such a great discussion with Dr. Tina Barrett of Montana's Tamarack Grief Resource Center for this episode. Tina is a nationally recognized specialist in outdoor-based grief support programs. She co-founded Tamarack, and has run grief programs and camps for over 20 years. With Mother's Day and Father's Day right around the corner, I invited Tina to speak with us about ideas for approaching these holidays, and so much more. We talked about:

• Tina's dissertation and research findings on how outdoor-based grief support can be beneficial for grieving youth and adults;
• Programs offered by the Tamarack Grief Resource Center, including grief groups, youth overnight and day camps, Women's Rendezvous, Men's Retreat, and Family Camp;
• Why both Father's Day and Mother's Day might be hard, whether it's mom or dad who died;
• Practical ideas for honoring Mother's Day and Father's Day, whether you have young children or teens;
• Tips on approaching school activities around Mother's / Father's Day, such as writing assignments and art projects;
• Different grief styles, and how important it is to understand and recognize that people, including kids, grieve in different ways; and
• The difference between self-care and self-indulgence.

I hope you enjoy my discussion with Dr. Tina Barrett.

I had such a great discussion with Julie Lythcott-Haims for this episode. This is one of those episodes that is not grief-specific, it's for all parents, and it's also not specific to any age group of kids. Julie is the New York Times bestselling author of "How to Raise an Adult," and she was kind enough to come back on the show after coming on recently to talk about parenting older teens and young adults during this pandemic. This time we talk about her terrific book, and about how as freshman dean at Stanford she observed the rise in helicopter parenting and it effects in the young adults she worked with.

Some topics we talked about include:

• Julie's analogy that kids are more like wildflowers to be tended than bonsai trees to be molded and sculpted;
• Observing in her role as dean of freshmen at Stanford that many students' parents were involved in the day-to-day running of their lives;
• How we want our kids to emerge from childhood with agency, resilience, and compassion;
• How we need to let our kids experience mistakes and curveballs;
• "Life's beautiful F-words" – failing, falling, floundering, and fumbling;
• The importance of chores for developing work ethic in kids;
• The four parenting types: authoritative; authoritarian; permissive-indulgent; neglectful; and
• Julie's Four…Three…Two…One…Go! method for raising adults.

I hope you enjoy my discussion with Julie Lythcott-Haims.

I had the loveliest discussion with Elke Thompson for this episode. Elke is a widowed mom in Scotland – originally from Germany – and after her husband died, she couldn't find any books to answer the many questions her then-three-year-old had about his dad's death. She decided to write her own … but there were many twists and turns on the path to getting that done. If you've ever wondered whether you should be honest with kids about difficult topics, you'll want to hear what Elke has to say.

Some topics Elke and I discuss include:

• How she explained to her husband's heart attack to her three-year-old;
• Going to the bookstore looking for a book to explain death to her young son;
• People saying that her son was too young to understand; The questions her son asked which led her to understand that he was not too young;
• Deciding to write her own children's books about grief; Falling in love again, and navigating the new relationship with her kids;
• Being diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer a few years after her husband died;
• The importance of being honest with her kids about difficult topics, including her illness; and
• Why she ends both of her books with the message that it's ok to be sad and it's ok to be happy too.

I hope you enjoy my discussion with Elke Thompson.

Thank you to Buffy Peters of Hamilton's Academy of Grief and Loss, at Hamilton's Funeral Home in Des Moines, Iowa, for speaking with me for this pandemic special episode.

We originally planned to talk about children and funerals during the pandemic, but it ended up being a broader discussion that will be useful to anyone thinking about what you can do when you can't have a funeral during this pandemic.

This discussion was recorded April 16, 2020.

I had such a great discussion with Leslie Barber for this episode. Leslie is a widowed parent in Portland, Oregon, and is the founder of Grief Warrior. In this episode Leslie talks about losing her husband, Steve, when her daughter was almost 7, and about their experiences with grief since them.

Some topics we discuss include:

• Dealing with physical symptoms of grief, both in herself and her daughter;
• Her daughter moving into her bed after her dad died;
• Relocating from the Bay Area to Portland a year after her husband died;
• How her daughter maintains a relationship with her dad by texting his old number;
• How the first two years were more about grieving "Emily's Daddy," and then it was Leslie's turn to grieve losing her husband;
• Developing the Grief Warrior box as a way to help people help their grieving friends;
• Why she doesn't believe in sending flowers to someone who has lost a loved one; and
• How she was able to use a vacation donation program at her company to take several months off after her husband died, rather than the three day bereavement leave that was standard.

I hope you enjoy my discussion with Leslie Barber.