Love, Loss, and Making the Most of Life with Widow Squad Host, Kim Murray

In this episode of The Widow Squad Podcast, I engage in a candid conversation with my fellow widow squad host, Kim Murray. Kim is a remarkable caregiver who supported her husband through his battle with terminal brain cancer. This story is an emotional journey that touches on the challenges of balancing caregiving, parenting responsibilities, and managing her husband’s business.

Kim shares her experiences and struggles in maintaining a delicate balance between her husband’s medical needs, raising their children, and overseeing the family business during such a challenging time.

As her husband’s illness progressed, Kim faced the difficult task of explaining the situation to her children and helping them cope with their father’s changing personality. She opens up about the emotional hurdles they encountered and the lessons they learned along the way.

Kim reflects on the significance of allowing oneself to grieve and the importance of acknowledging and embracing emotions. She highlights the unexpected moments of vulnerability that have shaped her healing process.

Listeners gain valuable insights into the complexities of grief through Kim’s personal journey. Her story serves as a reminder that grief is a multifaceted experience, and understanding and embracing our emotions is essential to finding healing and moving forward.

Tune in to this deeply personal and inspiring conversation and find out about love, loss, and making the most out of life.

Listen to the Full Episode

Connect With Us

• Are you searching for emotional support, practical advice, and guidance on navigating widowhood? Join us in the Widow Squad membership.
• Follow us on Instagram and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
• Get all the widow wisdom you never knew you needed including exclusive content sent right to your email Inbox. Sign up here.
• Join our private Facebook group here.

Episode Transcript

Melissa: Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Widow squad podcast. I am super thrilled to interview my incredible cohost, Kim Murray.

Kim, I know that you have your own unique widowhood experience. Would you start by giving us a little background on your story?

Coping with a Terminal Diagnosis

Kim: So I became a widow in 2014. And back in 2013 on Valentine’s Day, no less, my husband was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. He wasn’t feeling well for a couple of days, and I thought maybe he just had the flu or was dehydrated or something like that. He had been in bed for a couple days, and things just weren’t getting better. He was lethargic. He wasn’t getting up or going to the doctor or anything.

So on Valentine’s Day of that year, he tried to write his name on a Valentine’s Day card for me and he couldn’t write his name. In the morning after I got the kids on the school bus, he said “something’s terribly wrong with me,” and he showed me the card. I saw where his name should have been and all I saw were squiggly lines where he couldn’t actually write his name.

We high tailed it to the doctor, but the doctor, our family doctor, took one look at him and said you need to go to the emergency room. We went to the emergency room thinking maybe he has a severe case of the flu or something, but they did a CAT scan, and it showed a massive tumor in his brain. The neurosurgeon on call that night, came into our room and said, “you have Glioblastoma. It’s terminal brain cancer and you have 12 to 15 months to live.”

So – wow – I always explain that we walked into the hospital thinking one thing and we walked out with a countdown to his death. He was given 12 to 15 months to live, that was it. There’s no cure for Glioblastoma. It’s terminal, no cure. We were just like, what does this even mean? What is happening? What are you supposed to do with this information? 

You’re in shock. We didn’t know what to do. The next steps were just to get that tumor out of his brain, so they did surgery to remove the tumor. I mean, they removed probably 95% of his tumor, but it always grows back. That’s why it’s terminal. That’s why there’s no cure. They can’t get it all out. I mean, when you’re dealing with your brain, you can’t cross certain lines in your brain, right, because you would just be rendered brain dead. It’s a very tricky kind of surgery. So, anyway, he went through with the surgery, and he came out okay.

And we really just spent the next year preparing because we knew there was no way that he could survive it. Of course, he had high hopes that he’d be the one to beat it. But it just kept getting worse. He did the clinical trials and the chemo and the radiation and all that jazz, but nothing worked.

The tumor came back.

Melissa: So the surgery was more for quality of life.

Kim: Yes, for quality of life. And I think that some people I’ve talked to have lived with Glioblastoma for three to four years. So it is a terminal cancer, but some people go a little longer than others. And some have more than one surgery. But, yes, the surgery really is for quality of life. And the chemo and the radiation, again, for quality of life. I’m not sure how much quality there is going through that because it was quite intense and awful. But I know that for Mark’s sake, he was like, I will do whatever it takes. I’ll sit and you can pump as much chemo as you want into me and, you know, zap gamma rays to my brain as much as you want. I’ll do it to just get a little bit more time.

Our kids were eight and 10 when he was diagnosed. They were still in elementary school and so young. I mean, he was only 53 when he was diagnosed. He died when he was 54. I was 44. I mean, we were a young family. 

We just threw everything we could at it. Surgery, doctor’s appointments, chemo pills, whatever it takes, let’s just do it. So we spent a really long time trying to fix something that’s not fixable.

Melissa: And how many months? It was a 12 to 15 months prognosis. 

Kim: How long did he live after the diagnosis? It was 12 months.

He kept getting progressively worse. So he had the surgery, and then they had the chemo and the radiation, and then we tried some clinical trials. But he had the worst mutation of the worst tumor, so he didn’t qualify for some of the clinical trials that they had. And the ones that he qualified for just didn’t work.

As the year progressed, you could see a change in his demeanor. You could see a change in his whole person. And I think the tumor, when it was growing back, it kind of encroaches on different parts of your brain, whether that’s affecting mood or speech or whatever. So, you could see the changes in him. And as it got closer and closer to the end of that year, he was getting a lot angrier and lashing out a lot more. And our kids, we didn’t tell them originally that his prognosis was terminal. We told them he had a brain tumor. We told them all about all of his doctor’s appointments. Every time he went to see somebody, they knew that, but we did not tell him it was terminal, and we wanted to wait until the last possible time to do that. Because as young kids, I didn’t know how to do that. And the burden that we carried knowing he was gonna die was huge. I just didn’t want to put that on my children. So, we waited.

But as the year progressed, that December of 2013, we knew we had to tell the kids. So, we did. That was a horrible conversation.

My biggest fear was that my kids were going to carry around guilt for being mad at their dad because he was yelling or, you know, being combative. His personality was different. And the kids were getting upset. Why is he yelling at us? Why is this happening? Why is that happening? I’m like, “we have to tell the kids.” I didn’t want them to carry that burden of guilt on top of everything else, and we had to explain to them this is why things are happening the way they’re happening.

So, of course, the kids have questions like, ”well, why can’t you fix this? Why can’t you go to a different doctor?” You know, typical, reasonable questions. Right? Why can’t the grown-ups fix this? And my older son had said before we told him the terminal part, he said, “I think you guys need to find a new doctor because this guy’s not doing his job, and he’s not he’s not fixing the problem.” And I’m thinking, you’re right. He’s not fixing it because he can’t. 

So we had to tell our kids because we knew that things were gonna be going from bad to worse. And we just tried to make that last year the best experience that a dying man could possibly have. I think we accomplished that with our family trips and spending time with friends and just making his life as easy and comfortable as possible.

Caregiver Responsibilities and Kim’s Unique form of Self-Care

Melissa: But I’m thinking about you too, Kim, because you’re the caregiver. And everything kind of falls on you now. You are taking care of the bills and everything and your husband and your kids and keeping everything running and all the plates spinning. What kind of support did you have before? And then also, what kind of support did you have while you’re grieving? Did you have a system around you? Did you have help?

Kim: I had help from his parents because his parents lived close by to us. When I was taking Mark to doctor’s appointments or the chemo or the radiation which was five days a week for six weeks, we were driving from our home to the University of Michigan Hospital, which was about 45 minutes away. So, his parents would help me on the days that I couldn’t or just needed a break. They would help drive them to some of those appointments and stuff. So that was super helpful.

We had community support, but keep in mind that we did not tell people that Mark’s cancer was terminal. You can’t just go around, you know, shouting from the rooftops or after you run into somebody at the grocery store because nobody believes it, to be honest with you. Right? They would say things like, “we’re going to pray for you.” Which is great. I mean, people can do what they want, whatever makes them comfortable. But we were the ones that knew where this was going to end.

So, you just don’t offer that information to everybody. There were probably one or two friends that I could be completely honest with who weren’t trying to tell me, “try this,” or “try that.” I confided in one or two people who are like, “okay, this sucks.” And they were like, “I don’t know what to say, but tell me what to do and I’ll do it.” So I had support, but most of the supporters were trying to find ways to fix the unfixable.

The kids were in elementary school. We had a lot of elementary school families who knew us and would take the kids for play dates and stuff like that. But the way I handle things when I’m under stress like that is just to do everything. I just do it all because I can control that. If somebody else has a piece of that puzzle, I can’t control that. So everything was spiraling out of control in my life. I was just hanging on to whatever slivers of control I could have. I just wanted to do all the things. Control the chaos. Control the chaos, and then I could get it done.

I took over running Mark’s business because he was self-employed, and he couldn’t run his business because his mental faculties were compromised. So after his diagnosis, I will never forget this. He is sitting in the hospital before his surgery, and he’s got a yellow legal pad, and he’s writing down formulas for his chemical supplies company. He sold chemicals to the metal processing industry in Detroit, okay? I won’t try to explain what all that is, but he had formulas for his chemicals. So, he’s in the hospital with the yellow legal pad, head down, writing formulas. I have no idea what any of this means, and he’s telling me in a 275-gallon tote for the oil you put this, this, and this. And he’s writing it all down, and I’m in the hospital thinking to myself, this is insane. I’m doing math right now? No. I don’t do math. Okay? But he was afraid that after he got out of the surgery, he might not be able to talk. They might have nicked something where he couldn’t think or speak or whatever. So he’s furiously writing these formulas down in the hospital. And I’m like, I don’t even know what this means. I don’t know what to say. I’m just saying, “okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.” Believe it or not, I still have those yellow pieces of paper. I didn’t know it then, but it all makes perfect sense to me now because I took over running his business, and I learned all the formulas. But back then, I didn’t know any of it. I was happy that he wrote everything down, though, because then I could use that a cheat sheet to go back to and go, “ok, the 275-gallon tote has 85% of this, 15% of that. He was afraid that was all gonna die with him. Right? So, he wrote all that down.

Melissa: Oh my gosh.

Kim: As he was able, he would help me learn parts of the business in that last year that he was alive. I remember after he got out of the hospital he said, “you need to take over running the business.” And I was like, I would rather scratch out my eyeballs with a hot stick because I’m sure it would be less painful than taking over running a chemical supply business.

Melissa: Plus, you are taking him to doctor’s appointments. You are making sure your kids get to school, and everybody gets fed. And I’m overwhelmed right now. Just hearing the story. But how did you take care of yourself during that time?

Kim: I don’t know. I don’t think I did. I mean, it was just too many things going on, too many things to do. And this is gonna sound really crazy, and maybe I was a little bit crazy. But when I get in situations like that, the more I do, the more productive I am, if that makes any sense.

I’m not the kind of person that can just say, “okay, take away all my tasks, I need a breather. I need to sit down and relax.” That’s not how I operate. So, all these things that were happening were keeping me sane, believe it or not. Learning how to run the business, taking all his accounting and electronically filing it. I got QuickBooks and did all this stuff for him. That’s what kept me sane. I also had a friend who was working for a company who needed someone to edit online training manuals they were trying to distribute throughout their company. Well, guess who volunteered to edit their online training manuals in the middle of all this? I’m thinking, yeah, I have a few extra hours, I can do that.

For several weeks, I did that. But the reason why I did that was because I could not sit with death every single day. I just couldn’t. Yes, I knew my time with my husband was limited. But we spent a ton of time together that last year, and there were some days I couldn’t sit with that death.  And I had to do something else. So editing those online manuals took me away from all of that. And all I could do was look for grammatical errors and, you know, links that weren’t working, and it just took me out of everything else. 

Melissa:  I can see that. I can see it might be soothing for your brain. I’m not talking or thinking about death. I’m thinking about whether this semi-colon belongs here? Is that proper grammar? And so that’s your form of self-care, which is I need to shut it out for a little bit.  

Kim: Yes, that was my form of self-care. Some people thought why would you do that? And they would tell me, “You know, you don’t have to do it.” And all I could think was, don’t tell me what to do. Don’t tell me how to do it. Nobody knows what they would do in a situation where your husband has a countdown to death. So that was my self-care. Adding extra work to my day so I didn’t have to think about chemo pills or anything else.

After we told the kids about the terminal part, they asked me every day, “Do you think it’s gonna be this week, mom? Do you think it’s gonna be after dad’s birthday?” I mean, the anxiety of that. The anxiety! “Do you think we’re gonna have Christmas together?” I mean, it was just like, oh my gosh. No. I don’t know. I just don’t know!  

So we had to go through all of that and then everybody’s asking me technical questions I don’t know how to answer. Just because I’m the wife or the caregiver does not make me omnipotent and all knowing. I have to learn just like everybody else has to learn about how this goes. But people were constantly asking me questions, I couldn’t answer. But the craziest ones, which I didn’t understand why people thought they needed to know this, were really technical questions about the tumor. Why do you need to know that? Why are you asking me to explain if the tumor originated in the brain, or did it spread from somewhere else?  I don’t know!  I’m not a doctor. No. They didn’t know how to handle the information or what to say or what to do. 

Adjusting to Solo Parenting and Seeking Support

Melissa: So Mark died in 2014. Right?

Kim: Yes, in February 2014.

Melissa: Can you walk us through just your new reality of now you’re a solo parent. You’re a solo mom. You’ve got your kids. You’re still running Mark’s business, I’m assuming. What is that reality like for you?

Kim: Well, it was really scary. When he was alive and I had a question about the business, I could ask him. And then he died. And I was like, holy crap. This is 100% on me now. I can’t ask him. What do I do in this situation?

So, the weight of that really became clear to me after he died because I thought, okay, either I do this or I don’t. I mean, I had a choice. I could’ve chosen not to continue running the business. But that’s all I knew right at that moment. That’s all I knew. So the thought of actually trying to figure something else out was way too overwhelming. Running the business was overwhelming, but thinking about doing something different was like, no I can’t even go there right now.

My customers would say, “you know, you can take some time. You don’t have to fill this order right now. It’s okay.” And I’m like, nope. This is what I need. Again, working was keeping me sane, keeping me on schedule.

I was just scared. I was extremely scared. And then my kids are also trying to figure out their new reality. Like, now Dad’s not at the dinner table. He’s not coming down the stairs. He’s not coming into the house after work. He’s not at my baseball game. He’s not anywhere. My youngest would just cry every night, I mean, every night. And it was always, and I’m sure many widowed parents can appreciate this or understand this. You could go the entire day without a temper tantrum or a tear or anything. And the instant that child gets in bed, or you get in bed, that’s when they want to talk or that’s when they want to process or cry or whatever. You’re exhausted.  And you’re like, oh my gosh. I can’t even. But that’s when their time comes.

So, it’s just that up and down and all around, especially if you have more than one kid. Somebody’s doing okay today. Someone’s not doing okay. Someone’s better tomorrow. Someone’s not. But you’re still in the middle of it trying to keep all the plates spinning like you said before.

It’s just terrifying, and I just didn’t know what to do when I had this business that I didn’t want to run. But I felt like I had to. I felt like it would be disrespectful to my husband if I didn’t. So, I just kept following along, but my customers were very supportive. They loved Mark, and so in turn they loved me even though they didn’t know me until I walked in the door, and he said “she’s taking over the business.”

They were very gracious. And they could’ve said we’re not going to buy anything from you anymore. This isn’t working out for us, but they didn’t. I give them a ton of credit for kind of helping pull me through. They taught me things. I’m supposed to be selling them chemicals and they’re telling me how it works. And that was really amazing.

Melissa: It’s kind of testament to Mark. Like you said, they loved Mark. So in turn, Mark loved you, so they love you.

Kim: Yep. And they welcomed me with open arms. There were two customers who just listened to me weekly. I’d go see them every week and tell all my stories, and they listened. We would talk about what a cluster my life was and how awful it was and how I was trying to handle it, and they listened. And I just think to myself, who does that? Like, a customer who’s buying products from you just wants to buy products from you. But they listened to everything. And so I ran the business for 8 years. I went in to see them every week, and they heard every single solitary story of every single thing that happened, good, bad, or indifferent over those years.

Melissa: That’s just being a good human being. You know? And there’s a lot of good human beings out there. So it sounded like you kind of had some informal support there with Mark’s customers.

Kim: Totally informal support. Now here’s what’s interesting. Two of my customers just listened. One of them kind of went the other way. So, I know that there are not always people who can take all the information that you’re giving them and one of them couldn’t, which I understand. It’s a lot. I mean, it could take years to tell everything that went on, you know, after Mark died. But two of my customers listened and one of them didn’t. But that’s fine. There were these huge things happening in my life. I could not not talk about them. Right?

So, again, everybody’s different. Some people don’t say anything and don’t share anything. I shared all of it. I even told the bank teller what was going on in my life. I would go to the same bank teller every time I would go deposit money or whatever. And she asked me questions. Well, I’m not gonna lie about it. This sucks. And I used to have a customer who bounced checks all the time. So, I’d see her at the bank and I’m like, “got another bounced check.” And I would just tell her everything that was going on. And that’s, again, how I process things was not keeping it secret. It was my life. I’m not keeping it a secret. But I think I may have shared a little too much with some people.

Melissa: But that’s what you needed. You know? It’s like that was you needed to get that out, to express what was going on in your life, so that was kind of your informal support. Did you find that you tapped into any formal support, like grief counseling or groups or in 2014, was there anything like that? I don’t know. 

Kim: I didn’t find a lot of groups to tap into, but we had a group that I actually found before Mark died. I had a little file folder of things I knew I could investigate for the family after he died. One of them was a family support group locally here in Detroit, and so I called them after Mark died.

It was a great group because they had a lot of activities for the kids. So you go as a family, then they would break you up into different groups. The adults would go into one room, then the kids, based on their ages, would go into another room. They had all kinds of activities for the kids to do. Whether it was drawing or dancing or they had support dogs they would bring in that played with the kids. That was every other Thursday, and they served pizza. So I knew every other Thursday, I didn’t have to worry about dinner because they had pizza. We went to this support group for 2 years. And then we stopped going when I thought we’d gotten what we needed out of it. But, it was nice for my kids to be around other kids whose parents had died, too.

Melissa: Because there’s a tendency to feel like I’m the only one in the world that this has ever happened to. Even as adults, we think that.

Moving Forward and Embracing Vulnerability

Melissa: So, you’re rebuilding your life. What kind of things did you do? I think the listeners kind of want to know what did Kim do? What helped her move forward in life?

Kim: Oh, that’s such a good question. I didn’t really think about it as, you know, rebuilding my life, like I’m doing these specific things because you don’t even realize you’re moving forward. You’re just always taking baby steps. You’re just taking one step after another. So, I don’t know that we’re really thinking about it as rebuilding, but I just tried to move forward, I guess, for lack of a better term.

Melissa: Well, can I back up then? Was there a point where you were like, I don’t want to move forward, or I don’t feel like getting out of bed or because you had kids that’s just not an option? 

Kim: Not really an option. And, again, in order to process things, I have to be productive and do things. So for me, lying in bed was not an option. That was not something that would have brought me any, you know peace or anything. I just wanted to keep moving.

I just tried to keep things the same. I tried really hard to keep things as normal as possible for my kids with the exception of their dad not being there. And so, I would just do all the things we used to do. I had a customer who was a big hunter and fisherman, and every year, his church would have a wild game dinner, and my husband, Mark, would take the boys to the wild game dinner where they got to eat all these things that people don’t normally eat, like alligator or whatever. So after Mark died, I was like, well, I guess I have to take them to the wild game dinner. I mean, I didn’t have to do that. Right? I mean, when I look back on it now, I thought I had to do these things. I had to take them to a wild game dinner, I had to continue running my husband’s business. I had to take them to their piano practice, and I had to do all the same things the same way as much as possible. So that’s really what I tried to do. We went to the Wild Game dinner, and it was kind of gross to me. They loved it, but I was like, I don’t want to eat this food. But I did.

So, yeah, I just don’t know that I was really thinking about anything other than getting things done on my to do list, checking off things that needed to be done and taking them to their practices. They had sports. They had a piano. We had schoolwork. We had things going on at the school, whatever it was, maybe a spring fling or whatever the case may be in the elementary and middle schools, you know? That’s all I did. We kept doing those things. So, I wasn’t thinking about healing or getting better or anything. I was just getting things done. 

Melissa: Okay. But did that catch up with you at some point where you’re not really grieving or actively grieving? Tell us about that. 

Kim: Absolutely. I avoided feeling sad at all costs.

Melissa: How did that work for you? Did that work at all?

Kim: No. It doesn’t work. But if I look back on it now, hindsight being 20/20, I really believed that if I flipped that switch to feel that sadness that it would literally never stop. So, I didn’t want to start feeling sad because I thought that was just going to be the beginning of the end.

Melissa: The floodgates open and…

Kim: You can’t shut it off. I avoided my feelings for a long time. It doesn’t work. You can’t avoid your feelings. And those of us that have tried, we make a really good concerted effort, and it just doesn’t work. So, yes, it caught up with me.

And whether it was manifesting in physical ailments or mental confusion, I just finally realized that I actually had to feel the feelings. I had a lot of self-help books and I read all about grief. And I was really taken aback by something I read about how our feelings, a lot of feelings like anger, are really masking other feelings. We’re not allowing ourselves to feel things like sadness. So when I saw that, I was like, oh my gosh. Because I was angry a lot. And I thought, okay, maybe that’s because anger is masking my sadness. So, I had to get good at feeling bad. I had to learn how to feel bad, allow myself to feel it, and then not make it mean anything other than I’m a human being, having a human experience. 

Melissa: You’re having an emotion. You’re not gonna have that emotion 24/7/365.

Kim: Yes, however, I didn’t know that. I had to learn that. And so when you learn your feelings aren’t right or wrong, they’re just feelings, and they don’t mean anything about you as a person, then you’re like, oh, okay. I get to feel all the things. It doesn’t mean anything about me. Doesn’t mean that I’m grieving the right way the wrong way. It doesn’t mean that I, you know, don’t love my husband enough or any less than I should. All those things that we all go through. I’m sure all the widows that are listening have the same feelings at some point. Once you realize that, yeah, you can feel the things, and it doesn’t mean that they’re gonna stay and stick around all the time, you can move through that a little easier.

Melissa: So if you were to go back to that time shortly after Mark died, what advice would you offer yourself? Is that it – feel your feelings?

Kim: I think you learn that. I mean, that is not intuitive to a lot of people, and it certainly was not to me. Like, I had to be told, “you get to feel your feelings.” And the one thing that I had to learn was that we create a lot of the meaning in our lives. So, your feelings are just feelings unless you’re making them mean something else. And so when I was angry, I thought my anger meant that I was an angry person. You know, maybe Mark’s death is just gonna make me an angry person for the rest of my life. That’s just the way it’s gonna be. I drew a shitty hand of cards, and now I’m just gonna be, you know, an angry woman for the rest of my life.

Well, that’s not that’s not true. I mean, you can have feelings of anger, but doesn’t mean you’re an angry person. It just means you feel something. And you can let it flow through you, and it doesn’t have to mean anything about you as a person. But those are the things that I was assigning meaning to about myself. I was bad. I wasn’t handling it well. Somebody else would have handled it better, right? I’m not doing it “right.” That’s a big one – not doing it right. And, of course, you have other people that don’t understand what you’re going through. “Well, Kim, it’d be nice if you just smiled a little bit more. I really wish you were happier.”

Melissa: Yes. Well, first, never start a sentence with why don’t you just…

Kim: Don’t. Don’t ever start a sentence like that. That’s terrible. It’s true. I always say the other one you don’t start with is “at least…” because that’s the worst. 

So, I’ve related stories before about how I would literally sit in a chair in my living room not doing anything. I would literally sit in my chair and just be like, okay, we’re gonna feel the things, bring it on. I wouldstare at the clock, stare at the window, start thinking about things, read books, look at pictures, cry, hear sad songs, whatever it takes, just to let the feelings flow. And like I said, I had to get good at feeling bad. I know a lot more now than I did back then. 

So, yeah, the advice that I would give my newly widowed self is just to give yourself some extra grace for learning how to do this thing that you’ve never done before and feel these things you’ve never felt. You might have felt sad before, or angry before or guilty before, but those feelings are magnified by about a Gazillion when your spouse dies. You don’t know how to feel those feelings because they are so big and so heavy. And it’s so confusing. It’s confusing and overwhelming. But I think the main thing is your feelings don’t mean anything about you as a person. It just means you’re having a human experience. That’s really all we have. We all have feelings. We all have thoughts. Probably the same thoughts. And even if you’re thinking you’re the only one who’s ever been that angry or been that sad or felt guilty or whatever, you’re not because we all go through the same thing.  

Melissa: And I like how you had a specific exercise or something specific, I am going to sit down with my notebook or pictures or whatever, and it’s time for me to feel my feelings. And so you had a real specific thing to do because it’s easy. It’s easy for us to say, hey you gotta feel your feelings. But, like, how do I actually feel my feelings? I don’t even know what I’m feeling right now? Do I even identify what I’m feeling?

Kim: That’s the other part. I mean, you can read all the books and go through the feelings wheel and do all the things. You know? But there were feelings I didn’t even realize I had until I was digging a little deeper, maybe doing some journaling and stuff too.

I went to a therapist about four years after Mark died, and I’m all about the business. So, I’m telling him what’s going on. He’s like, “you haven’t cried. I haven’t even heard a creak in your voice as you’re telling the story.” Like, what’s going on? I’m like, “well, I told you the story. Like, what do you want me to do?” I’m thinking, I’m not gonna sit here and cry in front of you. I mean, why would I do that? That doesn’t make sense to me. I’m not gonna cry in front of you, strange man. But I heard that more than once, let’s just put it that way. So I had to take that information as, I guess I do sound kind of not feeling. I’m talking very businesslike, matter of fact. I said this happened and then that happened. And he died, and then here we are. And people were like, “maybe you want to dig a little deeper into that.”

So I had to do a lot of work. 

Melissa:  It does take work. This is the most profound experience of your life, I would have to say. It’s the most profound experience of my life. It changed the trajectory of our lives. Absolutely.  

Kim: You never expected it. So, with all of this, if you think you know what you would do in a certain situation, you don’t. You don’t know until you’re in it. If you would have asked me prior to my husband getting a terminal diagnosis, I would have thought I knew what to do. And I thought I knew what to do after he died. I did what I did, what I thought was right, but it just got me to the next place.

Melissa: But I have to think that somebody listening to us talking here and saying, “I might try that thing that Kim did. I might go sit and stare out a window and am I feeling my feelings.” I think this is super helpful to be able to talk about this, and how you moved forward. The things that you did to move forward, I’m sure, is gonna work for somebody else or they might try it, which might lead them to a different way or to a different book or something to move themselves forward.  

Kim: And we’ve talked about that before too. I would get to the point where I couldn’t cry anymore. I would have to find something whether it was reading a note Mark wrote or looking at pictures or hearing songs to make myself cry. Sometimes I had to purge those tears. And it’s shocking how much better you feel when you purge. When you’re trying not to cry it’s not good. It takes more energy to not cry. I have to get that out. So sometimes if it’s been a while since I actually cried, I’m like, oh, I might need to do a little cry therapy today and read something sad or look at sad pictures and just get it out. It’s a process, and you learn what works for you. 

It’s just a matter of allowing yourself to do that, though. It comes down to being vulnerable. That was not something that I was prepared to do in my life for anyone at any cost. I was like, no this isn’t happening. Well, things changed. Right? Life has a kind of different trajectory like we said. So, I have also learned over the years that vulnerability isn’t a bad thing. It’s actually a good thing. I think it’s shocking to some people who’ve known me a long time too to see that change. They’re like, this is new. Who is this vulnerable Kim we’re seeing? We don’t know who this is. Who is this, Kim? But we change. We do. There’s no way around it. You changed. This changes you. It does. It cannot not change you.

Melissa: Well, you know, you and I are friends, and we work together. And every time we talk, I feel like I learn just a little bit more about you. And so thank you so much for sharing your story and your vulnerability. Thank you so much, Kim.