A Widowed Father: Reflections on Grief and Creativity

I had the incredible opportunity to chat with CJ Infantino about his experience as a widowed father, filmmaker, writer, and mental health advocate.

CJ became a widower after losing his wife to Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. He gets very candid about how he and his wife and kids faced the reality of her terminal disease. His honest talk about the tought stuff – grief, the struggles of being a young widower, and raising kids as a widowed father really hits home for everyone going through similar experiences.

Our conversation left a lasting impact.

Key topics in this episode include:

• The multifaceted nature of grief and how isolation is often misunderstood
• The transformative power of creativity as a means of processing emotions and healing
• The significance of sharing stories to foster empathy and a sense of community

Be sure to tune in to gain valuable insights, learn about the power of creative expression in navigating grief, and discover the impactful work CJ is doing to build a supportive community for those experiencing loss.

Listen to the Full Episode

Links + Resources From This Episode

• CJ’s writing can be found here:  unvoiced.com
• CJ’s podcast can be found here:  thedayafter.com (you can find CJ’s interviews with me on embracing signs here and the impact of service here).
• CJ’s merchandies can be found here: hopelessmope.com
• Find CJ on all social media platforms using the handle @cjinfantino

Episode Transcript

Kim: Welcome back to the Widow Squad podcast. I’m your host, Kim Murray, and I’ve got a special guest with us today. CJ is an ex-Silicon Valley engineer turned writer, filmmaker, podcast producer, fashion designer, and speaker. After losing his wife to cancer, he became a single, widowed dad to three children, which transformed his life and purpose, as we all know widowhood can do. Motivated by his personal journey, CJ left his successful tech career behind and dedicated himself to helping others navigate grief and loss.

We’re glad to have a widower on the podcast today to lend a slightly different perspective than what we’re used to hearing when we talk about widowhood from a female viewpoint.

Welcome, CJ. We’re glad you’re here.

To start, can you just briefly share your story with us and tell us how you got here?

New Realities: From Silicon Valley to Widowed Father

CJ: Thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it.

We lived in upstate New York, and we had moved our family out to California for work. We had three kids. They were all under four-years-old at that point. Our youngest was three months.

About two years into our tenure in California, my wife ended up getting diagnosed with Stage 4 metastatic disease. And at that point, we needed to come back home to New York.

She really wanted to make sure that the kids had a stable place to grow up when she passed and there would be no kind of chaos in an already chaotic situation, as everybody knows.

So that brought us back home in 2015. And then, for the next five and a half years, she progressed with her disease until 2020, when it ultimately consumed her. For most of the time, it was just battling it in her bones. And then at the end of 2019, right around Thanksgiving, the cancer had spread to her liver. All of a sudden, it went from her liver and bones to her bowels, lungs, and then 17 spots in her brain, and it was, like, overnight. And we tried to get her through the holidays.

Kim: When you say metastatic cancer, what was the cancer? Where did it originate?

CJ: It was breast cancer.

Kim: So, she was diagnosed as stage 4?

CJ: She was. We found a breast specialist out in California at Stanford who tested every part of her body to make sure that it hadn’t spread. And it was the very last test after about a month where it showed up in her bones, and at that point, it became Stage 4.

Kim: Did they tell you from the beginning she will not survive this? Or was there hope at some point that she would beat it? My husband had terminal cancer. We knew he was going to die. When it’s terminal and there’s no cure. That’s one thing, but I’m just curious what the doctor told you or what you thought the outcome was going to be?

CJ: That’s a good question. The oncologist wanted to treat her, almost like palliative, like, hey, we’ll do what we can. But we weren’t told she would be able to beat it. They gave her five to 10 years. Some people get 10 years. We didn’t know what we were going to get.

Kim: Is that because it spread to her bones?

CJ: Exactly. Because it is metastasized, which means you can’t stop it, it’s just going to keep growing. There’s no way to get rid of it. We don’t know how to fight metastatic disease.

Kim: That’s pretty rough. How old was your wife? How old were you?

CJ: Good question. So, we got her Stage 4 diagnosis on my 30th birthday.

Kim: Ugh. So freaking young.

CJ: Yeah. It was crazy. It blew my mind, and it was at that point that I was like, oh, now I know why we had our kids so young. You know? I felt so grateful because, for a while, I was struggling out in California. I’m living my dream, but our life was so drastically different from people our age in that area. And then I realized, this is why we had our kids. After she was diagnosed, we wouldn’t have been able to have kids.

Kim: Which is weird because that brings up a good point. My husband and I were together for 16 years and we were married for 12 of those. And we had our kids right away. We have two boys. And we did so much in those 12 years, just boom, boom, boom, boom.

And at the time we were really rocking the family thing. You know? We’re just doing all these things and just shoving in as much as we can. So, to your point, without knowing what the future held, that’s why we did what we did as well.

So, when you look back on it, you’re like, oh my gosh, we did everything we were supposed to do together because we had limited amounts of time.

CJ: Exactly. And we did that too. We were like, okay, we’re just going to live 30 years in the next 10 years. It only ended up being five years.

Kim: And to be so young. Not that death or cancer or anything is okay at any age, but to be so young, you’re just kind of forced to understand that holy crap, bad things happen to people. No matter the age.

You rarely think of a widower like you being young or a widow like me being young. People look at you a little differently when you say you’re widowed. I mean, what does a widow look like or what are we supposed to look like? You always think of somebody older. So, you kind of struggle with that concept too, and people kind of look at you like they don’t know what to do with you. It’s like, “wait a minute. Your wife died? She was only 30 years old.”

It’s a strange feeling when people just don’t understand what happened to you.

CJ: It’s very isolating, right? Because then you’re just immediately, like, oh, nobody gets it. There’s nobody that gets it other than those who’ve gone through it. We were 35 when she died, and I just immediately was like, holy shit, I am completely alone and completely isolated. Immediately, I was just like, I can’t relate to anybody in the world.

I lost my future because the only thing I wanted was to see my wife and I grow old together. When we were in high school, I remember the moment that I saw her. She was going to the vending machine, getting a Snapple, and I said to myself, I’m gonna marry that woman. I never even talked to her. I didn’t even know her name, and we ended up getting married.

So, for me, the only thing I wanted was to grow old with her. That’s all I wanted. And to have that ripped from me, especially at such a young age, I was just like, what is what is happening? What is going on?

Kim: Well, it throws everything into disarray, and you stop trusting things. You stop trusting people and things and the world because your person was ripped from you, and everything that you thought you were gonna have together in your future is gone.

It’s scary. I mean, obviously, from the female perspective, it’s like the safety feature is gone. But I can see how, from a male perspective, it could still be a safety feature for you as well because this was the mother of your children. Then you’re thinking, how do I mother my children? I’m thinking, how do I be a father to my children?

You’re left without a safety net, regardless of if it’s the wife or the husband who dies, especially when you have children. How old were your kids when your wife died?

CJ: They were 12, 11, and 8.

Kim: So young and such impressionable ages. Again, no good age for parents to die, but so young. Do you have girls or boys?

CJ: My oldest is my girl and then two boys.

Kim: So, you’ve got a girl barreling into puberty, and your wife dies.

CJ: Yes. And my daughter is heavily involved in cheer, which was the thing she shared with my wife, and now I have to take that over. We have another cheer competition coming up and I’ll cry. Every single time I cry. Now it’s the joke in the family.

Even at their physicals the doctor will say, “Okay, dad, is there anything you want to add?” I start talking about my kids, and I just start bawling my eyes out. That’s just me. It’s the big joke.

M wife was a cheerleader, so I was like, that was their thing and now I have to take that over. My daughter and I are super close, but I can never be that mother figure to her. Right? There are things I can help her with, but I can’t replace her mom and that devastates me because I know that I can’t. No matter how close we are, she lost that.

And my wife was Korean, so my kids are biracial. So, the only connection they had to that part of their life is gone. So now I’m like, how do I relate to them? I grew up as a white male in a society that we all know, like looks kindly on white males. I can’t relate to the struggles that, crazy enough in 2023 and 2024, they’re actually dealing with because of their racial makeup.

There was so much that my kids and I lost when I lost my wife. To this day I still don’t know how to handle it.

Kim: Well, there’s no good answer there.

CJ: I feel like I’m failing.

Kim: Oh, no, you’re not failing. You’re not able to replace the dead parent, obviously, but you do a crap ton that you don’t even realize you’re doing. You’re knocking it out of the park. We are so hard on ourselves because we can’t be what we think our kids need, but we actually are what our kids need.

I struggled for years thinking I was a terrible parent. That I was a bad mom and made horrible mistakes, but looking back now, hindsight’s 2020.

I can honestly say, I was the parent that my children needed. I just want to tell all the parents out there that you’re you are exactly who you need to be for your kids, and it’s all going to be okay. I know it doesn’t seem like that because I’ve been in that struggle, and it’s a horrible place to be, especially with the teenagers. It’s extremely difficult, but we do not give ourselves enough credit for what we do.

CJ: It was your example too, which I think we talked about the second time you came on our podcast where you were talking about how your son didn’t want to play piano for his dead dad anymore. After our interview, I immediately went upstairs, and told my kids they were done with violin. No more. There’s no more playing for your dead mom because that was the thing that they did with my wife. I like that example that you shared with us. It just blew me away. So, I appreciate you sharing it.

Kim: Just so you know what we’re talking about, CJ and his cousin, Ashley, have a podcast. I was a guest on his podcast, and we were talking about dealing with the kids. My son played piano because my husband had our kids start taking piano lessons at a very young age. I wanted nothing to do with it because I didn’t want to have to practice with them all the time. So he took that all on himself until he got sick, and then I had to take it over.

When my husband died, I was still taking my kids to piano lessons, and it was hell. It was hell. I hated every minute of it. I’m sorry if his piano teacher is listening but I hated every minute of it. It was very, very difficult to do.

So long story short, my older son was 13, and he didn’t want to play anymore. And in my mind, and I’m sure in your mind, you’re like, the dead parent said so. Like, you’re thinking to yourself you have to keep doing this. It would be horrible if you stopped doing it.

At one point my older son said, “how much longer do I have to keep playing piano for my dead dad?”

And it was on that day driving home from piano lessons that I said, “you don’t. You’re done. You can stop.”

So CJ is saying that after the interview, he decided his kids didn’t have to play violin anymore.

We try to keep things the same because we can’t make sense of the senseless. Right? We can’t make sense of what’s going on. We try to keep things the same even if it sucks. Even if we hate it, there’s still some semblance of normalcy there.

So it’s hard after you make those decisions because you’re like, what have I done?

I’m going on ten years widowed now, but in the beginning, I would always feel like I was somehow not honoring him if I made a decision that he might not agree with. But after a while, I don’t know how many years you guys, I had to decide that I’m the one still living, and I’m the one still parenting.

So, I get to make decisions based on the information that I have right now. Not what the deceased parent would have wanted because things change. Right?

CJ: Everything you just said is so powerful. It does change. But we live like they’re still here. I’m thinking hey, Ariana what should I do? But she’s not here. I’m the one that has to deal with this now. And it’s like we’re working with both our hands and our feet tied behind our back. There is only so much we can do.

Kim: You also have to do what’s best for your mental capacity as well.

I mean, I took on a ton of extra responsibilities that damn near sent me on a nervous breakdown, but that’s what I thought I had to do.

Part of the idea with these podcasts and talking to other people is to let the listeners know you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.

If you’re looking for permission to stop doing something, here’s your permission. Stop doing it.

If it affects your mental health, if it’s not worth it to you, you get to say no. We don’t really realize that in the beginning because we’re so overwhelmed with grief and sadness and everything else. If we did something we think the deceased parent wouldn’t do, that’s a lot of guilt. That’s a lot of heavy emotion, and we do it to ourselves.

So I’m just saying with some time, you start to figure out that you get to make your own decisions. I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do. It takes a while to get there sometimes.

CJ: Yes, it does.

Open Conversations: Embracing Grief and Healing as a Family

Kim: So, at the end your wife knew she was going to die.  

CJ: Yes.

Kim: Did you have those conversations with your kids? Were they aware of what was going on?

CJ: We shared everything with them from the beginning. We involved them right away. We told them mommy’s sick and it’s not going to go away. It’s going to progress, and we’re just gonna keep fighting it. I don’t know the exact words we use, but we tried to be as honest as we could and frame in a way that a child would understand.

When she would have a treatment and her hair would fall out, we would make it a game and they’d pull her hair out, trying to make some light of it. And the beautiful thing was my wife was so strong. We joked about it. Comedy became everything to us. We laughed about it. So, to answer your question, when we knew that it was over because the cancer spread, we did have a conversation where we sat our kids down and said this is it.

We told them we’re going to try to get mommy through the holidays, but it’s over. And I remember that moment. I actually pulled my phone out and took a photo because I wanted to capture it. It’s very interesting to see the reaction on each of the kids’ faces and how they started to process their grief.

We talked, and we cried together, and we held each other. Immediately afterwards, we put on a stand-up show. And that’s the duality that we existed in, the dichotomy of this powerful, insanely difficult grief. We handled it with humor. And it was like that until her last breath. We were literally laughing and crying our way through the whole thing.

We were extremely upfront with our kids. Now I don’t hide anything from them. I have to just let them know what’s happening. I’m like, “hey, this is how I feel right now. This is what’s going on with me.” Because I don’t want them to ever feel like something is wrong with daddy but he’s telling us he’s fine. Like, I don’t want them to doubt their instincts. That’s I choose to be open and honest with them.

Kim: That’s super powerful for your children because you’re modeling for them how to express their emotions. You’re letting them know it’s okay to be sad, happy, glad, mad, or whatever. To see a parent doing that is everything because they’re watching you, and they’re learning from you.

So, when you say to yourself, well, I kind of suck at this. I’m not doing it right. I say BS. You’re doing it right. Just by showing them that you’re human.

Sometimes we have good days, and sometimes we have bad days. A lot of times we try to protect our kids from the world because the worst thing that could happen happened, but they’re not dumb, and they know what’s going on, and they can read between the lines. The more honest I think we are with them, the better.

I was not that honest with my kids in the beginning. I was so overwhelmed. I didn’t even know what I was thinking or feeling anyway. To actually vocalize that to them was beyond my ability. But after a couple of years, it became apparent to me that they need to know that I don’t have it all together, and, and we all struggle at some point.

So, to be able to be that role model for your kid is huge. So congrats, dad. You’re rocking it.

I mean, we have a lot of things that we do right, a lot of things that we do wrong, but we do the best we can with the information that we have at the time. Some people are widowed because their husband or wife had a sudden death. Then there are those of us who have to tell our children that their parent is going to die. It’s like I still can’t breathe sometimes when I think about that conversation. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever experienced.

The worst thing that can happen to your kids already happened. But the strength and the resilience they get from that is huge. I’m not worried about my kids. They’re going to be just fine. They’ve gotten this far. They’ve gone through the worst thing that can happen to them. They’re going to be alright.

So how are your kids doing now? How are they adjusting?

CJ: It’s funny you say that they’ve been through the worst thing. That’s a conversation that we have often. If we’re around other people and they’re talking about something that’s so horrible, we just kind of shrug and we’re like, we’ve already been through the worst thing.

They’re doing exceptionally well given the circumstances, and I say exceptionally well because, from my perspective, I am beyond proud of how they’ve handled their grief while I have struggled.

We were a such a close family, and the role that I had in their lives was I was the one that was with them at bedtime and would talk to them about their feelings. I’m the one that’s super into in his feelings and crying, and my wife was very stoic.

After Ariana died, I was overwhelmed, and just trying to survive. You know? I’m thinking I have to get up and cook dinner. Oh my gosh. They have to eat. But we all splintered, and we all retreated into our own little caves of grief, and we have slowly started to come back from that.

I’m proud to see how they’ve navigated all of this. They’ve navigated me dating. They’ve navigated me not being able to get out of bed. They’ve navigated this shift in my career, and I’m just so proud of them for sticking with it and listening to me and hearing my perspective of what this is like while they have every right to be like, I can’t hear this because this is overwhelming for me.

In that regard, I think they’re doing exceptionally well, and they’re each handling it in their own ways. One of my kids doesn’t want to talk about it at all. Another talks to me quite a bit about it.

My uncle who lost his wife told me something that really helped unlock this for me, and he said, “you will grieve the same in the sense that what we experience remains constant for the rest of our lives. But for children, because they’re growing and going through all these different changes, they’re going to re-experience their grief in new ways, and you have to be prepared for that.”  It’s not like you just get them through the first year, their grief will change and morph, and you have to learn to adapt to that. So that really helped me prepare as much as we can.

Kim: Well, that’s a great point. They’ve got all the milestones to get through that we adults have already gotten through. But it brings up a good point about grief in general. We don’t get over it. Right? We don’t move on from it. We move forward.

It’ll be ten years for me tomorrow that my husband died. And I can still drive down the street or go to certain places that brings me to tears. After all this time, I still feel guilty about some of the things that happened during that last year that he was with us. I shouldn’t feel guilty, but I’m just saying, like, things come up in all these years later, and I think a lot of times people think we somehow just stop crying about it, and we don’t.

You’ll never stop crying about it because this person was a big part of your life, and that’s never going to change regardless of how long they’ve been gone.

But the same thing with the kids, they’ve got milestones to go through. We have anniversaries and other things that remind us of our spouse. My husband died on February 2^nd and I always say my new year doesn’t start until after February 2^nd because it’s like that grief season for me every year between Thanksgiving and February 2nd with all the hoopla going on.

CJ: I feel the same way.

Kim: Yeah. It’s that time of year when things are just off, and it doesn’t matter how many years have passed, it still feels off.

CJ: There’s something about it that we hold in our bodies.

Sharing the Unspoken: The Power of Storytelling in Navigating Grief

Kim: So, we met in this grief space, and you have a podcast. And I was interviewed on your podcast, and, obviously, you’re here on our podcast today. You’ve also done a lot of writing and just kind of getting your stuff out there. Obviously, your wife’s death inspired you to write, but some people want to say words, they just don’t want anybody else to hear them or see them. What inspired you to get your message out there?

CJ: Good question. I had been writing before she passed. I’ve struggled with my mental health for as long as I could remember. We got married in 2007 and she got pregnant, and that was when my depression took a turn and it got really bad. I was dealing with a lot of a lot of things were coming up for me.

I remember being in our living room and it was Christmas time. It was my wife’s favorite holiday. Like I said, she was very stoic, not emotional. And I remember looking at her. She was on the couch, and I was on the floor and I said, “I don’t know why you would be with me. I’m just completely broken. I’m a broken man, and there’s no reason for you to stay with me.”

She jumped off the couch, grabbed me by my face and said, “you’re not broken. You’re not broken. You’re not broken.” She helped me through that really dark time, and that kind of put me on this path to therapy and self-discovery. And I realized everywhere I go, it seems like everybody has it together, and I know this is a common experience that we all have. And we think, how are they doing that? I’m dying over here.

I just needed to voice what this looks like because I know I’m not the only one. If I had a one-on-one conversation, people would open up. So, I just started writing publicly online. I’m like, this is my struggle. This is what this looks like. This is insecurity and just sharing. And then she got diagnosed, and I was like, oh, now I’m really gonna talk about what it looks like to go through this. And the beautiful thing is, like, she helped me into life, like, out of my darkness, and I got to help her in her death, and it was like this very beautiful full circle thing.

That moved to, grief is isolating, and it’s in the shadows. I need to expose it, and I need to be a voice for that. And I’m going do that through my writing because it’s a very cathartic thing for me. It’s something I enjoy. Although I always say writing is like homework Where it’s like you just don’t want to do it. Then once you’re done, you’re like, oh, this is beautiful. It feels so good to get this out.

Kim: It always feels good to get it out. I don’t know about you, but when I hit send or publish, that’s when I start having all the doubts in my in my brain, you know? Thoughts like,

nobody wants to hear what I have to say.

But you’re right. Nobody has it all figured out. We really do ourselves a disservice when we look around at all the filters, whether it’s a literal filter on Instagram or figurative filter in in life, nobody has it all together. When you’re decimated after your partner dies, your spouse, the father or mother of your children, and everything is ripped out from underneath you, there’s no way to cover that up. You can try. You might think you’re covering it up, but you’re not. Because there’s no way to do that.

We have to expose it, and we have to tell people about it so that they know they’re not alone. That’s why we do what we do here. This is why you do what you do on your podcast. You’re writing, you’re getting the word out there on your podcast called The Day After. You and your cousin are interviewing people who are wide open with their grief.

What a what a phenomenal thing to do – to let other people know they’re not alone.

CJ: Yeah. Yeah. A 100%. And that’s it. You’re not alone because storytelling is like that base of being human. It’s in that primal part of our brain, and it’s how we build empathy and how we relate to people. Storytelling helps us build empathy with people that we don’t know.

That’s why movies are so powerful. That’s why we’re drawn to certain things. So, for me, I’m like, in everything that I’m gonna do, it has to be about storytelling, And that’s the base of every endeavor that I do. What story are we telling, and are we gonna bring that story out of those shadows so that way people can hear it and empathize?

Kim: I’ll hear stories from other people, and I’ll think to myself, damn, I thought I had it bad. I mean, they just are like horrible, horrible stories. But when we share them and we bring it to light and expose it, then it becomes a little less isolating or awful. I had a lot of problems with my older son in high school, and, when I would share a story, inevitably, somebody would be like, “oh my god. I’m so glad you said that because this happened to me, and this happened to me.”

I always think, my gosh people, would you just tell us what’s going on? Because people aren’t perfect. Okay? Our children are not perfect, and we’re not perfect parents, but it’s always that look on the people’s face, and I can see it in my mind’s eye right now, like, oh my gosh, I’m so glad you shared that because now I can share this. This enormous burden is released. That’s huge. Getting that off your shoulders.

And you’re interviewing people on your podcast too, so you hear different stories. And so some are heartbreaking, heart wrenching. You just see this this huge spectrum of this grief that nobody gets to avoid.

We joke sometimes about the blissfully ignorant souls who have yet to experience this kind of devastating, monumental loss. I know lots of blissfully ignorant souls, and I would love to live in their world for just, like, a nanosecond. Right?! I just want to peek in there and just see because

I don’t know how some of these people can go through life without anything bad happening.

CJ: I have a friend who just experienced loss for the first time this year. The first person I watched die was when I was in high school. And it’s just been one after another after another. Obviously, my wife was the biggest one, but it’s wild.

Lessons in Grief: Unanticipated Challenges of Widowhood

Kim: What were a couple of things that you wish you knew about widowhood or solo parenting before you were thrust into it? What do you wish you knew before this happened to you?

CJ: That’s a really, really good question. I think the first thing would be isolation. I wasn’t expecting it because I had family support and people were there, and then after that support was still there, but the parameters changed. If I knew it was OK for grief to be so isolating I wouldn’t have doubted myself and wondered what was wrong with me. Also knowing that most people in your life will not know how to react to you and learning to enforce some boundaries. Because I have had pretty nasty things said to me about my grief, and I did not expect it. I’ve had an amazingly beautiful things said to me, but I think most of what’s said to you is going to just be wrong. And then there’s gonna be 5% that’s just batshit crazy and harmful.

Kim: The pitiful platitudes people like to repeat. They just want to keep saying the same thing over and over again because they are the sound bites they hear from other people. They don’t know what they mean. It just sounds good because they’ve heard it before, so they’ll throw them out there.

The isolation, I think, is big because it’s almost like you should be isolated. I mean, your brain isn’t working at its optimal capacity. Right? So, I think being home alone or with your kids, but being in your own house by yourself, it’s probably the best thing for you in the beginning to just kind of process and figure out what’s going on. After the casseroles and the meal trains and everything is gone, the blissfully ignorant souls go back to their lives. And we’re left to pick up the pieces.

But, again, it’s important to give a voice to that and let other people know you’re not alone if you feel the same way too because people don’t know how to react to you or help you. We talk about this a lot too. People don’t know what to say or do, but the more that we can, I don’t want to say educate them, but just kind of bring them into our world, the more we might dissipate some of these unknowns of grief by just letting people know what it’s like.

I wasn’t good at that at the beginning. I got better at it. But expecting people to know what to say or do is fruitless because they don’t. This is not their experience. You can get mad. I was kind of mad in the beginning too, but after a while, you’re like, yeah, this is a recurring theme here. But the common denominator is me. I can either change the way I’m looking at this or continue to be mad because nobody knows the experience unless they’ve had the experience.

CJ: I actually just posted the other day that I’m not a single parent. I’m a widower, and it’s different. There are elements of single parenting versus widowed single parenting that are the same, but it’s also completely different. I know people are genuinely trying to help, but they don’t know how. In the beginning, I’m just like, stop talking to me.

And now I recognize this for what it is and they’re just trying to help.

Kim: Well, that gives you some peace. That’s really all you’re aiming for is your own peace. I’m not trying to be the grief police. I am not trying to go out and give citations because you said or did the wrong thing. That’s gonna continue until the end of time. I’m not trying to change that. But just at least in your inner circle, maybe letting them know how you feel or what’s going on and asking for help.

I mean, the solo parenting gig is no joke. Right? We’ve had that conversation many times. We can argue with our divorced friends who think it’s the same, and it’s not. The exhaustion, making every single solitary decision every single day for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week is, I mean, there are really no words. I wish I could explain what that’s like. You can’t explain what that’s like.

Did you go to therapy, or did you go to support groups? Or what was helpful to you in the beginning to kind of process those emotions?

CJ: Yes. I was in therapy beforehand as well, doing things to help prepare myself for it, working on other things. I continued in therapy, and then I had experimented with different modalities of therapy. So, therapy yes and finding people that I trusted. Like I said, I had my uncle whose wife died. And he was a resource too where I’m like, “hey, I’m having these crazy thoughts.” And he’d be like, “they’re not crazy. That’s normal.”

Kim: What a great resource.

CJ: Yeah. So, he was he was a great resource and then for me what worked was pursuing creative outlets. Somebody on our show said this phrase and it stuck with me. I feel bad because I use it all the time now, and I’m not trying to steal it from her. But she said, “creativity is the antidote to grief.”

That is so true in my life. I just think I’m going to draw or write or film something. Even if I’m terrible at it and, like, 90% of what I do, I’m terrible at, I don’t care. It’s just externalizing that emotion so that way I can see it outside of myself.

Kim: Absolutely.

CJ: But specifically with therapy, one of the most profound impacts that I had was called somatic therapy.

This isn’t talk therapy. It’s body work. We have the logical and the emotional sides of the brain that help us diagnose and troubleshoot and learn and grow from. And then you have all that trauma and everything that’s held in the body. I was first exposed to somatic therapy at a men’s weekend.

I remember showing up and thinking nobody knows what I feel like, and I hate all of you already even though I don’t know you. My head was down for the whole first day. I won’t go into all the details to save time, but basically, I got called to the center, and we went through this exercise and I just broke down and literally collapsed into this man’s arms. And it was like 30 years of therapy in three days. It broke through for me to where then I came back home, and I was like, I need to find somebody who does that work.

Kim: Were the other men having the same kind of breakthroughs as you were at that conference?

CJ: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. It was one of the most powerful things I’ve ever experienced and witnessed in my life. It was palpable. I have lifelong friends from that now. It’s my support group that I have where I don’t need to say anything. I could just be like, “hey, can we get on the phone?” And I could just sit in silence with that type of friend.

Therapy was huge. Writing was huge. The somatic therapy was huge, but I’m on a quest to try everything and anything.

Kim: We’ve had podcast episodes about the different modalities people can try just to put it out there for people to understand. We’ve talked about somatic pain. That’s one of the things you don’t realize about grief is how much it hurts physically.

CJ: That’s right.

Kim: I love the quote that creativity is the antidote to grief. After my husband died, we went to a family grief support group, and they had these kids constantly doing art exercises of one kind or another. If it wasn’t an art exercise, they were banging on drums or making music.

You don’t have to be publishing your writing or commissioning your art, okay? We’re not Picasso. We’re not trying to sell our paintings.

CJ: Nope.

Kim: I don’t care if you paint rocks. It’s just getting that creativity out of you.

CJ: That’s right.

Wrap Up

Kim: So, we talked about your podcast, which I love. I’m curious if that’s your main focus today, or are you branching out into other things? I would like to know where if any widowers are listening to this podcast, where their support is? Where can they go? Or what have you found that you can do as a widower? We’ve got all kinds of things going on for the for the ladies. But what do men do when they’re widowed?

CJ: That is, a great question, and the answer was largely nothing.

There were very few resources. There were very few groups. I tried looking for groups. I tried looking for groups locally, and I’m sure there are little pockets of it if you dig hard enough, but it’s really hard.

So, that’s part of why I needed to start creating things for people who are in my situation.

My focus is just what can I produce for people that they can find solace in? Whether that’s writing with my company called Unvoiced that’s really focused on making sure that the griever is not alone in their journey to healing. Or whether it’s going out and speaking. I’m filming a documentary because I want to show the different sides of grief. I think that’s really important.

Kim: Super important. Can’t wait to see it.

CJ: I started preproduction, now. So, it’s like just building those resources and building that community because I couldn’t find it. I want that community for us. I like, what you’ve done and it inspires me to see other widows and widowers who are like, yeah. I’m gonna take this pain, and we’re gonna build this community.

We have our podcast called The Day After and we’re going to be producing more shows so we’re looking to produce shows that are grief specific. And then, and then I have the fashion line or the clothing brand, which is grief and mental health. So that’s, like, literally wearing your emotions on your sleeve and building that community.

So many people struggle with mental health and grief. Like, don’t be afraid to expose yourself to that and say, like, this is just how it is right now.

Kim: I’m so excited to see all these things come to fruition. I’m so excited that we’re friends and we’re in the same space so I can watch and see you grow because I think it’s all just amazing. And the more we can do for the grieving community, the better. I am very supportive of all that you’re doing.

Where can our listeners find you specifically?

CJ: There is unvoiced.com, the dayafter.com, hopelessmope.com. Everything is linked off my  Instagram.

Kim: Okay. That’s awesome. Well, we’d love to have you back again. Once some of these things get going, maybe your documentary is out or whatever’s going on, we would love to follow-up and see how that’s working out for you.

Thank you so much for joining us today. I really enjoyed this conversation.

CJ: Thank you.