Asking for Help as a Widow

On this episode of Widow Squad, I’m joined by guest Alissa Butterfass. We discuss the lack of support after a spouse’s death, and the importance of being comfortable with asking for help as a widow. 

Alissa shares her experiences of raising her children who are coping with their father’s death and creating a safe space for them to express their emotions. They also talk about the importance of milestones, and how small moments have a larger impact on them. 

Alissa talks about her experience of going on a family vacation after her husband’s death and how it helped them bond as a family. 

Alissa also talks about creating a supportive community through her Facebook group “Alissa’s Book List,” and how it has helped her cope with grief. 

Tune in to this episode to know more about Alissa’s journey of grieving and coping with her husband’s death.

Listen to the Full Episode

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Episode Transcript

Jen: Good afternoon, listeners. I have my amazing guest on today. It’s Alissa Butterfass. Now, I heard Alissa on another podcast as a guest. I loved her spirit, her attitude and all the things that she was saying, so I really wanted her to be here. Here she is. I’m so excited.

Thank you so much for being here today.

As I usually do, I just kind of jump right in with your story. Tell us a little bit about you.

How Alissa Coped with Her Husband’s Sudden Death

Alissa:  So I met Andy in 2001. In May of 2001, we were at a mutual friend’s birthday party and she introduced me to him. We spoke for a little bit, and I left the party. I told my friend if he asks for my number, you can give it to him. He called about a week later, and we went on a first date. We had a whole bunch of connections of people we knew. So we were together since May of 2001. We got married in March of 2003. So just under two years after knowing each other, we got married and had two boys. In December of 2019, he died unexpectedly. So that’s sort of a very condensed version of our life together.

Jen: Yes. Okay, so that is a big jump, but tell us, what did Andy do for a living?

Alissa: Sure. So Andy was an emergency physician. He worked in the emergency department. Over the course of our relationship, he was at two different hospitals. It’s shift work. So he either was working then there was no flexibility because he was on shift or he wasn’t working. He wasn’t really on call. So either we had his total attention or we had none of his attention. So I would say that because he worked nights and weekends very often. He used to work two weekends a month, six nights a month.

So I think we had a lot of good times together, but at the same time, I was also very independent because there were a lot of weekends, there were holidays, there were special occasions where he just couldn’t be present. Right. That’ll play into when he passed away, sort of how I coped. But it was a little bit of either he’s totally there or there’s no flexibility. He’s working. He’s not leaving early for the school play. Like, he’s either working that day or he’s not.

Jen: Right. He had a pretty stressful job.

Alissa: Intense. I was working at the time for most of our relationship. I was working at American Express. As much as it’s a high paced corporate Fortune 100 company, my bad day just had different consequences. Exactly. It put a lot of things in perspective for me.

Jen:  Oh, yeah. Yes, for sure. Okay, so the date that you were talking about with Andy when he passed away suddenly, he was not at work. He was at your home. He was at home. That was December 2019.

Alissa:  That morning. Right. So it wasn’t a New Year’s Eve thing. It was when we woke up the morning of New Year’s Eve that he had passed away. It was a shock. My kids and I were in shock. My parents live in the same town as me, so my mother was able to come over right away. My father happened to be in the city visiting my brother that morning. They both came up. Andy’s sister ended up coming over. I remember we went to my parents’ house while my brother dealt with the coroner. Okay. My parents and my brother really stepped in. I mean, they planned everything, I think. I just couldn’t. I don’t think I spoke to one person. I think that my mother and my brother handled phone calls. My brother and my mother pretty much planned the funeral and made sure to speak to the funeral home. They really did everything. I have an amazing support system in my family. Then later on friends as well just really stepped in and took care of us. I hate to use the word we were lucky because we weren’t lucky my husband died. But I think for someone in our circumstances, we had the good circumstance that we had to have a lot of support around us.

Jen:  Yes. So you said your brother did live close to you.

Alissa: My brother lives in a suburb of New York City. So, he came in 45 minutes.

Jen:  Pretty close.

Alissa: So he was pretty close. I mean, that was a Tuesday. By Wednesday, my cousin was up from Virginia. My cousin is like a big sister. One of my best friends was here, my sister-in-law, they were cleaning my entire house. So, in Judaism we do what’s called sitting shiva, where you spend seven days. Shiva means seven. It’s seven days after the funeral, you are sitting in mourning as people come to visit to comfort you. As I always joke, I’m clean, but I’m not death. So, my house is always a little bit of a mess. I always deal with things with humor. The big joke, I even said this in my eulogy, was somewhere Andy’s looking to be like, now the house is clean.

Because they came over literally the day after he died, they cleaned our entire house and got it ready because they knew that we’d be having all of these visitors. I mean, my sister-in-law knew that people would be bringing food. She cleaned out my entire kitchen. My other friend cleaned out my living room and made sure there’d be a place for people to sit. Again, I think I was all still in such a state of shock really just concerned about my kids that everyone was doing everything else. I really let them do everything else because my whole focus was, how are my kids doing? So how old is taking care of all the logistics? Because I couldn’t deal with it exactly.

Jen: How old were the kids at that time?

Alissa:  My oldest one was 13, almost 14. So he turned 14 in March. So he was just under 14. My younger one at the time was ten. He actually turned eleven the day we got up from shiva. This is actually a little bit funny. Again, you have to find the humor at the time. This is December 2019. The big issue at our school at the time was there was like, life going around. So we got up from shiva, went to his favorite restaurant because every kid had been in our house, that’s how we celebrated his birthday. Two months later, COVID came, we were all like, remember when we were just worried about life? That seems so quaint now. At the time, it was horrific, but that was how, unfortunately, he celebrated his 11th birthday.

Jen:  His birthday. What a poor baby.

Alissa:  Yeah, it’s not his best birthday. Again, I don’t mean to sound irreverent not giving gravitas to what experience has been, but also, like, humor is just a little bit of how I cope with things. So I look for the ridiculous in the tragedy.

Jen:  I want to go back to what you said earlier. You said that at the funeral, you spoke the eulogy. Yes, I always talk to people about this because not a lot of people can do that. They don’t have it in them to do that. So did you feel like you were still in shock because this was only a couple of days later. So what were you feeling?

Alissa:  So it’s very much in my personality. I’m a writer, so I like to write. So that right there is very much in my personality. This is going to make me sound awful. Like, I don’t mind being the center of attention. That doesn’t bother me. To get up and speak in front of people is not an issue I have. I felt like his parents weren’t going to do it. We ended up there were three of us who eulogized him, we had sort of different stages of life. So it was his sister, then a very close friend of ours was a college friend who was actually the husband of the woman who set us up. So it was her birthday, it was her husband, yes, then me. it sort of felt like such a good representation of his life, like his younger years, his college, post college years, then me as his married life. So I felt like it was a good representation. Writing it wasn’t hard. I mean, you know, you can’t get everything in, but you try to give just a little bit of a picture of what this person is like.

What was very hard for me at the funeral. I’d say there’s two things, probably more than two. But the two that come to mind one is, in terms of the speech itself, my sister-in-law, the friend who were both speaking so Andy’s sister then our friend Rob, who were speaking, had both said, do you mind if when we go up? So we call it a beam. It’s like the stage where you go to speak. Do you mind when we go up, do you mind? Josh is going to go with me. Rob said, Lisa is going to go with me. So they each were delivering their eulogies with their spouse beside them. I couldn’t that I would never have said no. I know that they didn’t see it that well. That was their form of support. But I also felt very as I got up there by myself, still now I could sort of feel that pit, that feeling to my stomach that was really hard to be there by myself when they were up there with their spouses. That was an awful feeling. That was really an awful feeling. My brother might have offered to go up with me. I’m sure he did. But that’s not what I wanted because that’s not your spouse. Right? Like, that’s not a great thing.

The other thing that really stands out to me, that was hard before even speaking. So very often at a Jewish funeral, the mourners are in a separate room. In the beginning, before people go to sit down, they go to this bathroom or wherever it is like literally it’s almost like a receiving line, but it’s before the funeral they sort of go hug each funeral hug each mourner say they’re sorry. Everyone comes up. I think because Andy was so young, it was so unexpected, he wasn’t sick it was a shock, everyone was just so upset in shock themselves. I felt, especially for some of his close friends, I almost felt like I was trying to comfort them, because they were also so in shock, I’m just exhausted, it was exhausting. You’re like, oh, it’s going to be okay.

I was very much like, I know, I know. It’s sad. It’s that we’re okay. I’m trying to do this while also watching out for my kids. Again, my number one thing was my kids. I think that’s true of any parent at any moment. That’s always your priority. But it was just the sense of, are my kids going to be okay. This was just something like, how are my kids doing? How are my kids doing? They’re two distinct personalities, so how are they each processing it? Am I even equipped to help them process this? I mean, every insecurity you have as a parent, because you’ve not been through this. Right, but that was hard. Being in that receiving line was hard.

So another custom in Jewish burials, again, people observe differently. So I don’t want to generalize for everyone, but this is one of the customs that some people do is when the coffin is lowered into the ground, the people take turns, they actually, rather than have people from the funeral home or from the cemetery cover the dirt, people help cover the dirt. It’s like an honor to help do that. To help do that. So watching a 13-year-old, he didn’t just take one turn, like then after everyone had a turn, it was like he was just doing it over and over. I mean, I was in tears. Just watching my 13-year-old bury, like, literally bury his father, that was a hard one. That was a hard one, too.

Jen:  Yes, really hard one.  That vision in your head, I’m sure, is there.

Alissa:  I mean, my 10-year-old did it too, but I just remember at the end when there were a bunch of guys, I’m sure it was my brother who was with some of his friends, but I remember Max just shoveling more dirt. 13-year-olds shouldn’t have to do that.

Jen:  No. Okay, so shiva is seven days.

Alissa:  Correct.

Jen:  You told me that you kind of felt like your grief was prolonged or kind of delayed because of that.

Alissa:  Yeah, people who observe shiva feel this way. So it’s an amazing thing that people do. It’s an amazing Jewish tradition. I think it’s very healthy in one sense in that you go through your mourning, whether it’s the people that you sit shiva for, there’s seven relationships: mother, father, spouse, sister, brother, son, daughter. I don’t sit shiva for my grandmother, but I would sit shiva for a spouse for you, god, for a child or whomever.

So mourning we had Andy’s parents, Andy’s sister, brother, me and my two kids were all officially sitting shiva. We held it in my house. I’m probably the most observant of that group, we held it at my house. It’s lovely. You’re not expected to return back to your normal life. You have a week where people bring you food. I mean, in my house, we have a very strong support system through my school. My kids are in a Jewish day school. I mean, I joke, but it’s not even a joke. There was a factory in my house. I mean, there were two people who showed up every morning before shiva to make sure we had breakfast to set up. Two people were in charge of just making sure me and the kids ate. People were making sure that the food was being changed. There were always drinks out. People brought over all the paper goods, people cleaned up afterwards. I mean, there was a whole schedule. To this day, I’ve never seen it, but there was always someone taking care of us, making sure every need was met.

So many people visited. I think again, when it’s a young person, just so many people came. I mean, one of Andy’s friends who lived in Colorado flew out. He couldn’t make it in time for the funeral. He flew out for that weekend. So that Saturday night he could be there. I mean, the funeral was Thursday. We sat till Wednesday morning. You don’t sit on Saturday, but you sit Saturday night. Saturday night, there must have been 200 people in my house. I mean, it was almost like a party. One of my kid’s friends, when he went to a shiva, like a couple of weeks later, his family was explaining, we’re going to shiva. Remember, you did that at Seth’s house? He said, oh, it’s going to be a party like at Seth’s, because there was all this especially for the kids. The kids had all their friends over. I remember saying to them, which I think was, in retrospect, a good parenting thing, I did give myself a little bit of credit as this was happening. I said to them, you could have people in the playroom, you could have people upstairs, you could have people outside. Your bedrooms are just for you. You might find that you want a time when there’s people over, that you want to be by yourself or you want some quiet time. So for this week, your bedrooms are only for you. Don’t invite your friends to play in your bedroom because that needs to be your quiet space, your safe space. So we did that, but they were watching games. There was a sad atmosphere, but also lively because we were all together.

Again, I think part of it is I was still in shock, so I think I was a lot like an extrovert, so I really get energy when I’m with people. So my house was full of people. I was full of energy because of that. I think that it was very good that I was social. I felt the love I felt for people taking care of me. But then you go from a very full house, then you’re alone, then you’re dealing with the grief, at least for me, because I’m an extrovert now. There’s no one in my house, my kids are back at school. I wasn’t working at the time. you just really felt alone. I feel like that’s what I really sort of also was a little bit holding myself together for the kids. I’m very aware of showing emotions to my kids letting them know it’s okay to be sad, it’s okay to be angry, it’s okay to be frustrated, it’s okay to be happy. Even all these emotions are valid. So it’s not that I was hiding my emotions for my kids, but at the same time, there’s some things you just want to deal with when they’re not around. That was finally my time to just sort of process my thoughts not with them in mind, both myself in mind.

Jen:  Yeah, I know. You have all these people, all the food. I was about to say with the food, it’s like everybody’s bringing food I’m like, I don’t feel like eating. Did you even feel like eating anything?

Alissa:  I have a sweet tooth, but I’m a chocoholic. I said to myself, I’m not eating any of the cookies or cakes or those sweet things at the shiva, because if I have one, I’m going to have it all. Actually, I lost five pounds over shiva. My joke was, of course, again, I deal with humor, but I remember like, I lost five pounds. I was like, oh, my God, nine more husbands, I’ll be at my goal weight. But I will say once that ended, in the three years since, I have more than made up for it. Like I’ve been eating my emotions way more than I should, my loneliness, things like that. I think my sweet tooth came back. So that week I was very controlled, but afterwards, I think that sometimes when you don’t have your person to bring you happiness. You rely on the Kit Kat to bring you happiness. It’s not the same, but it’s human nature.

Jen:  Yeah, it’s true. It’s true.

Alissa: So not proud of it, but I’m being honest here.

Taking the Planned Vacation

Jen: So in that time after, like, those first few weeks the months after you mentioned it earlier, how Andy was kind of gone a lot of the time anyway, so in a way that you were kind of used to him not being there a lot.

Alissa:  I think it was hard for it to hit us because it kind of just felt like Andy missed another family occasion, like, he wasn’t here. Andy’s at work, or it feels like a weekend he’s not here. It was the endlessness of it that was different, but on any given day, it wasn’t so different from what we were used to. So we had a weekend where it was just the three of us. I mean, we had two weekends a month when it was just the three of us. I think it took a while for that. Sort of like, oh, this isn’t a weekend, this is forever. It definitely took a little bit for that to hit. It was more interesting. I think people were more conscious of the milestones and how it felt on milestone dates, like a birthday or anniversary.

But for me, again, there were times we didn’t celebrate our anniversary together. He was working or I was on a business trip, we would just celebrate a different day. Death itself didn’t matter, right? I learned not to get hung up on that. But it was little things. It was reading something that’s funny, wanting to turn to your person to share with them, then your person’s not there or watching a TV show, your person’s not there to laugh with you or something with your kids. I mean, my kids are lucky. They have so many people in their life who care about them, but it’s not the same as their father when you’re sharing things about them.

It was, for me, more the little things that you want to share than the big moments, because the big moments people are really conscious of, it’s those little moments, they’re also unexpected. Like, I know when my anniversary is coming up. I know when my birthday is. I know when Mother’s Day is. You don’t know when you’re going to have that little moment of like, oh, I remember that.

It must have been soon after, because it was before we closed for COVID. So within the next month or so, there was something at my school. There were two different days you could go. I thought parents were only going to one day or the other day. First of all, it ends up all the moms went the first day. But the second day, the moms and the dads were there. Seth was the only one whose father wasn’t there. Pretty much, I was like, oh, again, it’s very possible he wouldn’t have been there anyway, because would that be something that he would have requested a day off for or not? For a 1 hour thing at the school? He might not have planned his schedule around that, but it was just so noticeable to me. Is my son affected by this? Again, he might have been like, no big deal. My dad often misses things, or he might have been like, oh, everyone else’s parents are here, I just have my mom.

Jen:  Right. I know when you talk about those little moments, the thing that sticks out for me is my memory has always been bad, I guess because I would find myself, like, trying to remember the name of a restaurant that Brent and I had gone to, then I would go to turn to him say, babe, what was the name of that restaurant that we went to?

Tell us about this vacation that you guys had planned for. It was for February 2020, right?

Alissa: So for February, my kids have a week off for February break.  Very often when we take vacations, we would go with my parents or maybe my brother or with friends. This happened to have been a vacation we had planned for just the four of us. I remember as we were sitting shiva the kids asking, are we still going to go on vacation? I said, I think we should. I said, we can either be really sad in the cold snow, or we could be really sad in the sun on the beach, so let’s be sad at the beach.

We actually had a lovely vacation, I feel like it was interesting. So as I mentioned, you don’t sit shiva on Saturday. You sort of take a break. But my cousins were over, my parents were over. You know, I had some family just hanging out, we were all in my family room watching either a game or a TV show or something. My mother, my cousin or I are all in the same room, but on a group chat because you don’t want my kids to hear. My mother said, are you still going on the break? Should Daddy buy a ticket? Should we get a hotel room? Should we come with you? I was like, no, I don’t think you should.

I said, this is a family vacation, we’re a family. Three of us are now a family. I remember a friend of mine who had gotten divorced saying that we’re a family of three. Families go on vacation. So that was really my attitude. It was all inclusive like it was the easiest thing to do because we just had to show up and it ended up being really great. In some ways it was a change of scenery. It was just relaxing. We had no responsibilities. I was also whatever the kids wanted to do. Sometimes when you have two adults and two kids, then there’s four opinions of what we should do. With one person taken out of that picture, no matter who it is, it just makes it a little bit easier. You don’t have to worry about him wondering if you want to go to one restaurant. Is this whatever the kids wanted to do? This is like, I don’t care. Whatever they want. We’re sitting at the pool and they decide, no, we want to go to the water park because the hotel water park is great, I’ll pick up my crap, go to the water park. They’re done with the water park. Ten minutes later we got to go back to the beach. Fine. Decided I wasn’t going to let that bother me. Even though I could sit in front of a pool or a beach for 3 hours without moving a muscle, I was going to do whatever they wanted to do. That made it easier.

Then in retrospect, I feel like we are so lucky we did it because a month later the world shut down. Having to wait two more years to take that first vacation together would have been much tougher. I think the fact that we did it six weeks later made it so much easier because we couldn’t even think about it like it was already planned. We just wanted to go do it. So I’m glad we did it. I’m really glad we did it.

Jen:  You should be so proud of yourself for doing that. I mean, that was really brave. That was really something.

Alissa:  In retrospect. Yes. I don’t know if I would have if we hadn’t had anything planned.

Juggling Responsibilities and Adjusting to Change

Jen:  Yes. Good choice. I want to talk about Facebook groups. This is one of the things that you talked about on the other podcast that I originally heard you on.

Alissa:  Yeah.

Jen:  But the Facebook groups that you found, did you find that they were really helpful for you? Were you getting a lot of guidance from those?

Alissa: I wouldn’t say I’m usually an active participant. I read a lot just seeing what other people are going through and it helps you feel like you’re not alone because there’s other people who are going through this that can relate to some of the things that maybe other people in your life can’t relate to. Luckily, I don’t have a lot of people who’ve been through this, so I’m glad they have not lost their spouses.

But it was what gave me a group of people that I could just read every once in a while. But I wasn’t a big poster. I feel bad for these other mostly women, I’m assuming also some men who the loss of their spouse really impacted where they’re going to live, their financial situation, supporting their kids, having terrible relationships with the in-laws, being blamed for death. There’s those things that people have gone through. I’m not glad that they’ve gone through them. But I will say reading that just gave me perspective.

I did at one point ask my kids if they wanted not to live here anymore. I mean, this is the house where their father died. They were very adamant they wanted to stay here. They did not want another big change. So it’s now been three years, we’re still in this house, no plans to move. I did speak to them about that, but I didn’t have to worry about putting food on my kids table. I didn’t have to worry about losing my house. There were definitely frustrating things that were horrible and terrible. But I was never worried about my safety, my well being, my kids safety, their well being. I think I got a lot of that perspective from these boards as well. Unfortunately, that’s an unfortunate thing because it means that there are people who are really in some dire situations that thankfully I’m not.

Jen:  Well, okay, because you said it was what you were addressing about asking for help. I love what you said.

Alissa:  If you could tell us that what happened was you had heard me on the podcast of someone who I’ve met online who had met her through writing groups reading groups, we had some common friends, she has a podcast about friendship. So I had approached her with this situation, which was what led me to be a guest on the podcast. The situation was that a lot of people in these widow groups would complain about the fact that immediately after their spouse’s death, they might have had support. Like, people just disappeared, they had no help, they felt very alone, they weren’t getting the support they needed.

Part of me was like I would never say this to them because they’re all mourning. I’m not obnoxious. I don’t want to say this to them, but in my mind I was thinking like, is it just me? I feel like my friends are here. I can’t expect them to know what I need, but I feel like I have friendships where if I ask them, they would love to help me. I think that one piece of advice I gave on this other podcast about friendship was for the most part, again, I don’t know everyone else’s situation, but for the most part, I think people want to help but can’t read your mind and don’t necessarily know what you need. It’s very hard to ask for help. I think a lot of us who are independent mature adults want to feel like we could handle everything ourselves, it is hard to ask for help. But I think that if you sort of switch your mindset, say, these people want to help me, if I can ask them for something I give them the opportunity to help me because they can’t do what I need. They can’t bring back my spouse, but they can make sure my kids have their favorite cereal, they can make sure that I’m not cooking this week, they’re bringing me meals. They can make sure that I don’t feel well. They can run to CVS to get me some tile, I’ll cause them out. People want to do it. I think that people want that opportunity to help, but they have to know how.

I think that part of being someone who’s going through grief or mourning or if you’re sick. I had gone through a health issue a few years before, so I unfortunately have practice in this. Like, people want to help, but you just have to be able to get comfortable with asking because in most cases, people want to help, that was the case for me. And, I mean, some things are easier to ask for from others. So it is really easy. When someone says, I’m on my way to Whole Foods. Do you need anything from me? Like, oh, my gosh. Yes, I’m out of apples. Can you get that? They’re happy to drop off some apples. It was harder. You have different friendships and relationships with different people.

So I can’t tell you I’ve said this to everyone, but what I have said to some close friends is I really feel my widowhood. On Saturday nights, people go out as couples. People make dinner plans as couples, I’m sitting home alone because I’m not a couple anymore. There were a few people who I’ve said, if you are comfortable with it, I’m comfortable being a third wheel, a fifth wheel, a 7th wheel. Like, if you’re making plans, please think of me. Like, my kids ignore me. I’ve got two teenage boys at this point who completely don’t want to talk to me unless I’m feeding them or driving them somewhere. They’re doing whatever their thing is. I would say that some people do, some people. I still spend a lot of Saturday nights at home, 100%. There are some lonely nights, but there’s also other people who are like, we’re going out, Alissa. Come with us. Whether it’s a couple or two couples or I definitely have the people who do think of me. it’s really around the couples because I’ve always been good about girls nights, right?

So, again, my husband worked a lot. Like, I knew I would always have someone to have lunch with, a girlfriend to have lunch with. I knew I would always have someone to go out on girls nights with. I had my book club, things like that. But it’s the Saturday nights when people go out mostly as couples that I really very much felt it still does. I mean, I’ve asked for help, the few people I ask for are good about it, but not everyone is.

Jen:  Oh, my God, Alissa, I know exactly what you’re saying. Everyone is feeling that. Everyone is feeling that vulnerability, you don’t want to ask for that. You can ask for the physical things to give my kid a ride. But me, how I am feeling, I feel alone, I don’t want to feel alone. That is so freaking hard to ask.

Alissa:  For that it is. Like I said, there’s probably just a handful of people that I’ll have mentioned it to, those people are usually pretty good about it. But that’s hard. That’s hard. You lose your spouse, you kind of lose your social life with it, too. I also said on this podcast, I think there’s two things. I think there’s one, the two points I wanted to make on that specific podcast, which maybe can help with your audience as well, is one is you can’t assume people know what you need. You have to ask. You’re going to have to make yourself vulnerable. Ask. It’s not always going to happen, you might have to do it over and over again.

But it’s okay to ask for that help. It’s okay to ask for that help. There’s times where you’re going to be alone. That’s okay, too. There was something else I was going to say. Just let my mind know that I’ll come back as we’re talking.

Jen:  Okay.

Alissa:  Sorry about that. You were talking about your memory. Mine’s the same way. I know.

Jen:  I want to ask about this other change that’s happened in your life. You started working full-time. You went back to work just about a year ago, right?

Alissa:  Yeah.

Jen:  Okay, so what has that been like for you? That’s a big change.

Alissa:  Sure. So I had to give, like, context. I have my MBA. I was working at American Express. I was a working mom till 2012. I don’t want to say it was a midlife crisis, but on my 40th birthday, I said, I just can’t work anymore. I also at the time, my youngest child was going into the twos, it was kind of, if I’m ever going to be a stay-at-home mom, this is it. He has a couple more years before he’s in school full time. So I, with a lot of conversation with Andy, decided I was going to stop working outside the home. I was doing that, it was really good. It was great. It was good, especially with Andy’s sort of stressful work life and his stressful schedule. It was really hard to be in the corporate world and always have to be the flexible one because he had no flexibility in his schedule. Right. So if a kid got sick while he was working, he couldn’t leave early. He was the only doctor in the ER. So it’s very hard to be a part of the corporate world and have that home stress on you. So it was a great situation. It was working well.

About 2018, a very part time job literally just fell in my lap, but it was working from home, it was doing research for a consulting firm that consults only the nonprofits. I called Googling for dollars. A lot of it was fundraising. The client would give a list of potential donors, I would research as much as I can about them so they could know how to position the ask. Then I did other types of research all in the nonprofit world, it was all from home very part time, a few hours a week, whatever worked for my schedule. So it was very flexible and it was great. But when Andy died, I don’t know how it is, if this is a national thing or just New York, but you can have Cobra for three years for your health care.

So Andy died on December 31, 2019. I had all 2020, 2021, and 2022, but I was going to lose Cobra at the end of 2022. So I knew I needed to have a job with healthcare. Unfortunately, at least at the time, the firm I was working for, they didn’t have the work. Again, remember, this is all in the middle of COVID so they didn’t have the work to sustain me on full time with benefits all that. so very openly, they knew I was looking, they knew why I was looking. They were extremely supportive at that same time, the year that Andy passed away. So 2019 to 2020, then 2020 to 2021, those two school years, I was very actively involved as a volunteer at my school, working very closely with certain members of the administration, and got to know them very well. It so happened that a job opened up at the school doing just the type of work I like to do. So I’m a marketer by trade, I did marketing at American Express, I love to write, and a director of communication spot happened to open at school. I went through the interview process, but I think that they very aware of my work. I was aware of their work, it was really just the right fit at the right time.

Jen:  Yes, that’s perfect.

Alissa:  So logistically it’s obviously amazing because I’m on my kids’ schedule. So for example, this week they’re off, I’m off, I have school vacation. I will say it’s a twelve-month job, so I don’t get my summers off, but it’s a little lighter in the summer. We get sort of the school vacations, December, February, April, plus additional vacation to take. I’m on my kids’ schedule. It’s eight to four, so I can drive my kids if I need to, although my kids are doing after school. But it was really just, again, as I say, for someone who’s had bad luck, I’ve got good luck again. I said this to my boss at the end of our school year, it was officially July 1 to June 30, June 30, the head of my department took us all out I said to her afterwards, I’ve had some really crappy luck in my life, but this job was good luck. This job was just what I needed, the right type of work with the right people for a cause. I care about just the right time, I’m very lucky. That said, boy, is it an adjustment. I mean, I was not working. I was not a solo parent. Now I’m a solo parent. I’m working full time. I’m on a schedule. Dinner still has to be made. Kids still have to get from one sport to the other.

Jen:  I know.

Alissa:  That’s what I was going to say.

Jen:  How do you juggle all of that?

Alissa:  I mean, I know this is a big change. It’s a big change. I mean, life would be easier for kids to never have to eat dinner. I think that any parent would say that, no matter if they’re solo or not. I hate to cook to begin with. I mean, actually, this is a funny story, a true story. The day Andy died my brother was dealing with the coroner, I went with my kids to my parents’ house. I will still picture this. We were walking. My parents have a playroom for the kids downstairs. We were walking downstairs on the stairs, and one of my sons turned to me and said, “oh, my God, mom, you’re going to have to learn how to cook,” because they know Andy was the cook. If Andy wasn’t working, he would make dinner that night. Like, I am not the cook of the family.

I feel like there are things in my house that are not getting done because I just don’t have the time. I can’t tell you this is going to sound like this doesn’t make me look very pathetic, but I will put this out there, be vulnerable. I can’t tell you how many light bulbs in my house right now are out. My kids finally, last weekend, went around counting each type of light bulb, what type, how many we needed. But I still have not made it to get the light bulbs and have my son help me put them in. So things like that are falling apart. I’ve got a pile of bills that I probably need to get through in a pile of mail. Even this week, I’m on vacation, I had a huge to-do list of which I’ve done nothing. But I feel like I’m holding it together at work, I’m holding it together with my friends. I definitely have friends at work at home who say, you’re so together. You’re handling it so well. I’m like, I’m glad you think so, but let me tell you about all the things that aren’t getting done. That’s life. You’re one person. You just do the best you can. I know.

Jen:  It’s such a struggle to keep up with everything. You realize, like, how much that other person does.

Alissa:  Oh, yeah.

Jen:  That the light bulbs would have gotten changed. Probably.

Alissa:  Andy was like, borderline OCD. I don’t mean to joke, because OCD is a real thing, but if things weren’t exactly perpendicular on the table, he would fix it. We would never have gone this long with light bulbs not working. We would never have gone this long with just a bunch of things.

I remember air with tires, I would try to do it myself. I’m like I’m independent. I’m going to do this to this day, I need someone to help me put air in my car tires. I cannot do it. I’ve tried. I push it. I’m like, I’m doing something wrong. I know I am. I don’t know what it is. People have shown me I can’t do it. I’m like, oh, he used to just take my car with all the tires, right? Things like that. Like I said, it’s little things. Whether it’s little errands or little jokes that you want to share or little memories you want to share, it’s the little things. Like, I’m okay around my anniversary. I’m okay around my birthday. People give me lunches. For my 50th birthday, my mom threw this beautiful lunch. Actually, this was really sweet, because after, again, COVID started two and a half months after Andy died. So my mom had really wanted to take out all my friends who really helped so much during shiva afterwards. She’s like, your friends are amazing. I would like to take them out as a thank you to them, from her, from my mother to my friends. Then COVID happened, that never happened.

So for my 50th birthday, she came up with this idea and said, I want to throw a lunch for you, but I really want to throw it with your friends. It was really beautiful. That was this past May, it was really just a way to thank everybody. One of the things I did was my mother had asked a few people to speak to surprise me. So my cousin spoke. Two of my friends spoke, then I said to my mom, I want to go around thanking everyone and say a little bit like what they mean to me. It was sort of like I knew I wanted to do it. I didn’t have it right now. It was sort of off the cuff. I just went literally around the room. My idea was, like, if I don’t have something to say about these people, they shouldn’t be invited. Whether it was a memory of our friendship or something to thank them for something specific or do something like, I really wanted to thank the support network because they’ve really been incredible. It’s noticeable in the sense that people who are not from my community, so other relatives or friends, not who are parents at the same school, they’re like Alissa, you know, not everyone gets this ingrained. It’s part of the culture of my school. It’s a very communal school, so it’s part of the culture. They really just wanted to recognize people for all that they did.

Jen:  That was amazing. That is so amazing.

Alissa:  Really lovely. So it made me feel very good. Whereas God bless my brother, because this was definitely so nice of him to offer at one point, he said, Your 50th birthday, why don’t we throw, like, a cocktail party? His wife threw a cocktail party, like, one night, it’ll be at school, we can’t do that Saturday night, but one on a Thursday. It was like he was definitely well intended, but it made it feel like a pity party. I know that wasn’t a cocktail party, it would have been a couple’s party, it was a weekend. This was like a lady’s lunch. I didn’t feel, again, going back to that. There’s a lot of situations when you feel like you notice your spouse, a lot of them are, like, social parties, things like that. Even though my son’s bar mitzvah was in December of 2021, we were just coming out of COVID kind of we lucked out. One week later, Omacron hit. So, like, one week later, we knew people canceled the bar mitzvah. We got in. But one of my instructions to the DJ was, no slow music. I don’t want one slow song. I said, my song that I actually danced to, he said, “What are you going to do with the mother-son dance? Dance with your son?” I said, yes, he’s going to dance with me to one of my favorite songs. I don’t know if you’re an 80s fan, but, like, we danced to A Little Respect by Erasure because I wanted, like, fun. There was not one slow song. I love it. That’s what you feel when people are slow dancing. You don’t have someone to slow dance with. I was like, not one song. so I felt like what my mother did for that luncheon, or this lady’s lunch, where it was really people who had supported me, it just felt very like a pity. It felt like a celebration.

Jen:  That is oh, I love that idea.

Alissa:  Thank you. I’ll tell her it was her idea. Your mom is fantastic. I love it. She’s really been wonderful.

Alissa’s Book List: A Haven for Book Enthusiasts and Recommendations

Jen:  Okay, I have a couple of questions before we wrap up, but please, please.

Alissa:  I could talk forever, so I feel bad.

Jen:  What is something that you are extremely proud of yourself for accomplishing? I mean, you’ve done a lot. You’ve done a lot.

Alissa:  I’ve got two nice kids. Listen, they’re not always behaving like everyone. They’ve got their ups and downs. I don’t want to say they’re perfect. I scream and yell a lot. But at the end of the day, I think they’re two nice kids. Other people will point out that my kids are nice kids. So of course I’m proud of that, I’m proud that I haven’t hidden my emotions from them, because I think that all I want to do is be able to say it’s okay to feel your emotions, I want them to. They don’t talk about their father a lot when we bring them up. It’s not in the context. They really haven’t talked to me a lot about his death. They’ve talked to me like, we’ll be at Disney. They’re like, oh, Daddy would have gotten so sick on this ride. Daddy would never go, like that type of talking about him. Or, Daddy took us to this restaurant, or can you take us to the water park? Daddy used to take us. But that’s it. They don’t really talk about how it feels not to have their father in their life at this moment.

But what I’m proud of is that I’m trying to show them that when they are ready to talk about it or if they have anything that they’re feeling that’s valid, that’s okay. It’s okay to be sad. It’s okay to be happy. It’s okay to be frustrated. It’s okay to be angry. All of these when you’re grieving, it’s three years on, but I think you’re going to a little bit. It’s their father. They’re going to miss that their whole life. Any of those feelings are valid, I hope that they’ll get to a point where they’re able to process it more. They’re not quite there yet, but I hope I’ve left the door open so they know whenever they do want to, however they need help doing it, I’m there for them. Yeah, here’s a good story about that. We were on vacation in December 31. You can’t miss the day he died, right? It’s December 31. So we were on vacation, December 30, as we were going to bed, I said to the kids, this is just this year. I said to them, listen, you don’t want to talk about Daddy, but I just want you to know if at any point tomorrow you want to talk about it, you’re feeling sad. I’m here, you could talk to me. I won’t bring him up, but I am here, if you want to talk about him, you can. My little 13 year old from this bed goes, mom, that goes for you too. I mean, that’s amazing.

Jen:  So sweet.

Alissa:  So I’m proud of that. 

Jen:  Good, kind people, good hearted kids. Yeah. Wow. So sweet. So tell us about your Facebook group.

Alissa:  Sure. So one of the things I did, if I just had time during the pandemic or not, but I love to read, I always had thought about putting together some sort of social media thing with book recommendations, I decided to call it Alissa’s Book List. So I made a Facebook page. A Facebook group. The reason I called it Alissa’s Book List is I’m definitely a friend that people come to when they want advice on what to read. But when people ask for recommendations, I can never give just one because I always have, like, ten different books on my mind. If you’re in the mood for this, or do you want this? Or I like this one for this reason, but this one for that reason. I never will just recommend one book. It’s too hard for me to choose, like choosing between kids. So I called it Alissa’s Book List, started with my Facebook friends, people who I knew loved to read, then they invited their friends so on and so forth. We shared book recommendations.

One of the people who was participating at the end of 2020 said we should do a book challenge. So I made a book challenge with 24 different categories. I will admit I never finished the challenge because I don’t like my reading to be so prescribed. But for some people, they loved the challenge of different types of books. So we’ve had one now in 2021, 2022, now 2023. Some categories we repeat, some are new. I get recommendations, ideas. What categories did you like? What categories didn’t you like? We’ve done some book clubs. So where we did one of the things we started last year was we all read the same book or ended up however many decide to participate. A bunch of us read the same book, then we held a book club conversation over Zoom, that was great. So it’s just sharing my love of reading. That is just pure joy for me. It’s not anything professional or anything like that. It really is just a way to share books that I love, get other people to love them, and then also find out what books they like and what to read. So it’s just been fun. I invite anyone who loves to read to join and have fun with us.

Jen:  There I am signing up because I am obsessed. Like, if you would see the side of my bed right stacks of books. I am crazy obsessed. There’s not enough time in the day for me to read everything that I want to read.

Alissa:  It’s out of control. One of the things that I realized as I use Goodreads, I always add books that I want to read to my two read list, I was like, I’m going to die never getting through this, because I add books that I want to read at such a faster pace than the books that I have read. I’m like, there’s no way I’ll ever get to all of these. So one thing I will tell you, I’ve done a bit of advice, I don’t know if you’ve gotten to this point in your life. If I don’t love a book, I’ve given myself permission to not finish it. I never used to do that, but that is life changing.

Jen:  That is good advice.

Alissa:  I know some of them are kind of…I hate to say it, but it’s kind of painful getting through it, you’re like, no, I got to finish this book.  Yes. In fact, I just had one where it was so slow reading for me, it’s a good book, people love it, but it just was really slow for me. But it was for my actual offline real World Book Club next week, so I had to finish it. But I love reading, I know other people do, too, so it’s just a nice way to bond with people to share recommendations to learn about new books, it’s been a fun sort of thing to just do. Again, when you ask me about things you’re proud of, I’m really proud that I took time to just go for it. I kept thinking, who wants another book? No one needs this. There’s so many book things out there, I don’t know if you felt that when you started a podcast about widowhood or started anything like that. There’s so many resources already. But one more thing, if it didn’t work, it didn’t work. There was no skin off my back, so I decided to try it, it was fun.

Jen:  That’s awesome. Okay, so it is Alissa’s book list. I’ll put that link in the show notes, then we’ll put that in the description of everything so everyone can go sign up. Yeah. Love to extend it to people. Yeah. Thank you.

Okay, well, I have to ask. Any accomplishments as far as cooking? Have you learned how to cook anything good?

Alissa:  Okay, so we have first of all, my son’s joke. He’s so funny. One of my sons one day is like, mom, you’re like one of those really fancy restaurants. There’s only five things on the menu. I have two different types of meatballs, like the Italian meatballs, then, like, the sweet sour meatballs, lemon, chicken. It took me ten times on lemon chicken, but now I have lemon chicken. Perfected. They love lemon chicken. Last night, I made something new that my friend gave me. This is cooked salami. It sounds gross, but it’s actually delicious. they said it’s not an every week thing, but maybe every two weeks. Oh, nice.

Jen:  There we go.

Alissa:  I’m trying. I still hate it, though. I mean, I still hate every minute of it. I would much rather be doing anything else but cooking, but they’re getting fed.

Jen:  There you go. This has been awesome. Well, Alissa, thank you so much for talking to us today.

Alissa:  Thank you for reaching out to me. This has been a pleasure.

Jen:  Many other things that I could talk to you about, like, a million different things. I know, but you are seriously a breath of fresh air, I love your energy. I love your energy, I love your attitude, you’re doing a freaking fantastic job with your kids.

Alissa:  Thank you.