When Your Ex-Spouse Dies After Gray Divorce: Understanding Grief, Loss, and Moving Forward

[00:00:04] Welcome to the D Shift Podcast, where we provide inspiration, motivation, and education to help you transition from the challenges of divorce to discover the freedom and ability to live life on your own terms. Are you ready? Let's get this shift started.

[00:00:22] Hello, and welcome to this episode of the D Shift Podcast. Today, we're going to talk about something that is related to divorce, but isn't necessarily related to divorce. I know that sounds confusing, but we're going to talk about the whole idea of widowhood and how to build communities to support those who are going through this season or phase or stage of life.

[00:00:50] People that have been listening to the podcast know that I have both been divorced and I am a widow. So this is an area that's near and dear to my heart because I didn't know of all the resources that were out there. And my guest today not only recognized there was a need for support for widows in her community and area, but she actually created a whole ministry around this and has written a book.

[00:01:17] She's launching a podcast about this and her heart is really in helping those who are dealing with the challenges. And I'm going to say the upside sometimes of experiencing widowhood. My guest today is Carol McGee. She is the founder of the Vine Church Living Forward Ministry for Widows. She's also an author of Becoming a Widows Advocate.

[00:01:43] And she is, like I said, she's launching her own podcast, Serving Widows Now, which when the time this podcast goes out should be either if it's not on the air, it's going to be right close to being on the air. So Carol, welcome. Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity to be here with you, to talk with you and to share. Thank you. Oh, well, you are welcome. And I'm so glad that you're sharing this message. And it's so funny how sometimes you just run into people.

[00:02:14] Those of you who've listened, you know I do. I go to Podapalooza, which is this whole festival for podcasting, and I get to record with a whole bunch of people. And Carol and I connected on what they call a blind date, where as a podcaster, you just get a guest that comes in and waits to be interviewed or gets to be interviewed. And unfortunately, we didn't have enough time because this was late. So Carol and I got to talking, and her message that she talks about really resonates both in any time you're dealing with grief in life as a woman.

[00:02:43] And I see divorce is, it does carry that grief. There is that sense of loss. There's that sense of this is over. This person is no longer in my life. Not the same as the passing of a spouse, but it's a similar kind of experience. So Carol, tell us a little bit about how you got into this area, because this isn't something everybody thinks about.

[00:03:08] Well, and most people are surprised to learn that I am not a widow and never have been.

[00:03:13] And that makes this so unique in my own experience, because while I had had widowed friends and had literally spent really quality time with those friends just after the passing of their husbands,

[00:03:39] I had not ever thought about how could I widen that caring, that compassion. It was very targeted toward individuals in my own life. And my husband and I had gone through two stages of people losing their husbands.

[00:04:05] We had four, for example, about 12 years ago, just right in a row. And we live in a lovely spot on the beach. And several of these widows chose to come to our home almost as a retreat after losing their husbands. And that was kind of the beginning of at least trying to understand that journey.

[00:04:34] Then fast forward about three years ago, same sort of thing happened. We had about four or five ladies in our pretty close inner circle become widows. And I had the opportunity to actually fly out to Seattle and spend two weeks with our dear friend.

[00:04:58] And my eyes were really opened with that experience because it was 24-7 with her. And it was just about a month after she had lost her husband. And so she was in the midst of all the paperwork and the errands to the bank and to the lawyer and to the financial planner.

[00:05:22] And all of the things that are not the things you want to deal with when you're experiencing grief. And so we were laughing one minute and crying the next and exhausted the next and energized the next. So it was that whole rollercoaster ride. And I felt so honored to be able to spend that time with her.

[00:05:50] When I returned from that trip, I was literally in the foyer of our church one Sunday morning. And I just felt this download of inspiration that I was to start a widow's ministry. And I was kind of alarmed. I was sort of, what? Me? And it was almost like, why not you?

[00:06:18] You have some administrative abilities. You have a care and compassion for these ladies. Go for it. And so we just started in a lady's home with eight widows and myself and another, what we call a widow's advocate, another lady who is also still married, but really has a heart for widows. So we started very, very small.

[00:06:47] And in the beginning, there was really actually no connection necessarily with our church. It was just that I happened to go to that church and there were a few widows that came from our congregation. But quickly, they asked if they could bring their friends. And they knew of somebody who had just lost their husband.

[00:07:12] And so we have embraced anyone and everyone that wants to come into our group. And unfortunately, and you'll know what I mean, it's grown to about 58 women now that are on our mailing list. Yeah. And, you know, that is one thing that I do want to mention here. And first of all, Carol, thank you for what you're doing.

[00:07:40] Because there is, you know, when I lost my husband, there was a lot of support for two weeks. And then everybody, you know, everybody's, and I don't expect people to put down their life to deal with anything. But then it's kind of like, okay, but there's still all this stuff that needs to be done. Right.

[00:07:59] And so, yeah, I love the idea of ongoing support because that's, you know, and where people can come and feel confident and comfortable in talking about the realities. One thing I do want to say, and I want to put this out here, although it's a very depressing thought. I tend to work with women who are going through what's called the gray divorce. So they're 55 and up.

[00:08:22] We know statistically, and I think you have some numbers to share too, but the older we get, the more likely it is that your male partner will predecease you. That's just, that's just statistically. That's what the insurance companies, you know, that's how they do their formulas. That's how they charge for life insurance. All of that stuff goes in there. Right. Statistically, it's there.

[00:08:45] And I have worked with women who have been either in the process of divorce or been fairly recently out of divorce and their partner has passed away. Then at that time, their ex-partner or their almost ex-partner has passed away. And they, you know, that can bring back a lot of guilt, a lot of all the emotions come flooding back again.

[00:09:07] Even if it's years out of the divorce, if you've stayed friends or you've stayed fairly amicable, it can be, it doesn't matter that he is not your partner at the time that he passes. You're still going to go through those experiences. So. Absolutely. Tell me a little bit, if you don't mind. And I would like to go into what you see as the best way to help and support widows and how you got this started. But you also wrote a book called Becoming a Widow's Advocate.

[00:09:36] And I've heard you use that term a couple of times. What do you sort of see as the role of a widow's advocate or who are these people? Right. This is the cover of the book. And it sort of shows you what I think a widow's advocate is in the silhouette.

[00:09:55] A widow's advocate is anyone who comes alongside of a widow to show care, to show respect, to show comfort, to show, to give hope, to assist in moving forward. Any way that a widow needs help, an advocate is someone who, the word literally means come alongside.

[00:10:25] Right. So come alongside the widow. It can be men. It can be women. It can be other widows. It can be children. Anyone who is there to provide help and support. One of the chapters in the little booklet is about a hundred page booklet. It's not very long.

[00:10:49] One of the chapters is how men can minister to or serve widows effectively. And that can be a little tricky. And so I did want to address that specifically. But one of the things that we have developed now in our particular group is something called the care team. Now, this group of people happens to all be, well, that's not true. Some of them are not from our congregation.

[00:11:19] We have a collection of people. There are about, I think there are now about 48 men and women on this list who have volunteered their services to our ladies whenever they want to call. And we have them doing, you tend to think of handyman type work or that sort of thing.

[00:11:45] But there's that, there's financial advice, planning. There's a gentleman that will go and buy a car, help a widow buy a car. There's another that volunteers to come to their home when they are expecting someone to come and give an estimate, say for a roof job or something, because you get a whole different estimate when a man answers the door. Yes. Unfortunately.

[00:12:15] But errands, rides to doctor's visit, rides to the airport, just any game nights, get togethers, someone to have lunch with, a friend to just call. There's just a variety. We have a whole little directory, 10-page directory of the things that these people will do. So all of them are advocates.

[00:12:42] And so when we put that team together, we made sure that each one of them had a copy of this booklet, because it does take the person who's not a widow and try to help them understand the journey of the widow, what things not to say. There's plenty of things not to say. Right.

[00:13:06] In fact, you can literally search engine or Google ChatGPT, things not to say to widows, and pages come up of things that are awkwardly said and that don't help. And then we talk about practical help and so on.

[00:13:26] And so the book was originally, to answer your question, written for those of us who are not widows and haven't been through the experience and need to understand what that's like, how to behave, how not to be awkward in the setting, and how to be there for a widow.

[00:13:46] And it's been very helpful that way, which has surprised me, in hindsight, not so much, but initially is that widows themselves who read the booklet say that they are served by it because it expresses things they've been through,

[00:14:10] and they thought they were the only ones that felt that way, the only ones where people were saying and doing things inappropriately. Right. And so it's actually served both audiences. But the original design was for people to learn. Yeah. And to grow. Yeah. And that'll be a little bit of the podcast as well, is how do we learn about this journey? It's a very unique journey.

[00:14:40] And how do we, how can we most effectively help? Yeah. And so when you were saying that, I just had this flashback. I was driving a car and got T-boned by a semi. And I was fine. I got up and walked out of the accident. They wrote the car off, but it was just one of those things. And I got up and walked out other than a little bruising on my arm. That was it.

[00:15:07] But all of a sudden, you know, the police get there, the ambulance is there, everybody's there. And everybody's like, who do we call? Who's going to come and get you? Because I was like 35 miles from home in this small little rural. There's no Ubers. There's no nothing. And I was like, who can I call? Like, who can I call? I don't have any family where I live. So it was like I called. I was able, thank goodness for having these devices because I actually had my neighbor's contact information. So I was able to call her and her and her husband came and picked me up.

[00:15:36] But like it's things like that that catch you off guard when you, you know, you can't. Now I know. I have two or three names in my phone that I can call if I get stranded somewhere. But until it happens, you don't really know. And I just cannot imagine how comforting that is for people to have that directory. Even if they never use it, they still know it's there. Exactly. That's going to be amazing.

[00:16:02] It's been kind of funny because the ladies were very hesitant to use it at first because they thought, I don't want to bother anybody. I don't, you know, they're offering their services. I can get along with that. Once they got in the role and once they learned and heard others were doing this and how effective it was, now it's full blown.

[00:16:25] But it's so wonderful because the care team members themselves are being blessed by helping these women. Some of them will call me and say, nobody's called me in forever. Is everybody okay? And they will then on their own reach out to different ones and say, hey, you know, anything you need. So it's really been, it's a developing of a community is what it is. Right.

[00:16:53] And it's a helpful, supportive, loving community. Well, and I love that it's not transactional. It's not like, you know, and I've got to say, I had hospice for my husband only for a week before he passed. But the hospice people were like that. They would call, they would check, they would take me outside and say, are you doing okay? Like, what, you know, are you feeling overwhelmed? What can we, who can we bring in to support you?

[00:17:20] And so sometimes though, I got to say, it's hard to even acknowledge that you need help because we're sort of brought up that we're supposed to be able to do these things on our own, you know? Right. Oh yeah. Yeah. The whole, the whole control factor. So Carol, I love this. I really, I love what you're doing. I love where you're coming from, where you're, you know, the whole premise of what you're doing.

[00:17:46] Have there been any, um, had there been any challenges that you've experienced in getting the, the, the support going? If somebody's listening in and they're thinking, gosh, I'd like to reach out to Carol. I'd like to find out how to do this in my community. But what might be something that has been, um, maybe a challenge you've had to overcome or something that, like you say, that surprised you maybe that you weren't even considering?

[00:18:12] Right. Um, there've been, there've been issues where sometimes members of the care team wouldn't call the person right back or something. Well, then I find out that they left a voicemail and then I find out that the care team member never got the voicemail because that's the way our devices are sometimes.

[00:18:35] Right. And so there, there've been little communication issues, which have initially caused a few, a bit of angst. And yet with some realization and some education about, okay, ladies, and, and I tell the care team members this as well.

[00:18:53] I said, when you, when you reach out to a care team member, do so in at least two ways, both email and text, leave a voicemail and text call it, whatever. Right. Right. But our devices are such that, and, and people's reading of emails are such that you may not get a direct response.

[00:19:17] If you just try one avenue, if that's our worst problem, we're in great shape. We really haven't experienced very many trials at all within this group. These ladies are, first of all, they're just amazing, courageous women.

[00:19:40] These are not women who are sitting around feeling sorry for themselves. Yes, they will have moments of tears coming and grief when they're sharing about something. But on the whole, they're, they're about, okay, I need to discover my new purpose in life. My purpose had been this.

[00:20:07] I was in this environment with this relationship, but that's no longer there. So now, where do I go? What do, what do I become? And those are the things that are so powerful in that they're helping each other discover that. And we're doing different things within our group to promote that. We did a, for example, a gifts assessment. You know, what are your gifts?

[00:20:36] What are the things that are come naturally to you that you can then use to help others? Right. Because I think we all know that when we're in a bad place, one of the best things you can do is reach out and help somebody else. Yes. And so we do things like that to help really educate. And the ministry, as you said at the very beginning, is called Living Forward.

[00:21:05] And the ladies themselves named the ministry. Oh, I love that. It is about living forward. Yes, there are going to be bumps. Yes, there's going to be a step back every so often. But that's the idea. Yeah. And I imagine the ability to sit down and meet with other women who have gone through the same experience, even though everybody is unique.

[00:21:32] There's also, there's a sense of I can talk safely in here because these people, these people understand where I'm coming from. Exactly. And more on just, not just on an intellectual level, but on a lived experience level. That's got to be so powerful. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So when they, they may not be even be talking about the loss of their husband or anything related to him. Right. But they might be talking about they're interested in doing X, Y, or Z.

[00:22:00] And it's so hard to, to get going in that. Well, everybody in the room says, I know exactly what you're talking about. You know, some mornings I can barely get myself out of bed and get dressed.

[00:22:15] And so, so they do, they relate on, you know, a wide level of experiences and it's, they have told me that, that, that, that they feel so safe to say anything they care to say in that group.

[00:22:33] And that there's not any other group where they can feel that kind of understanding or that kind of empathy because every, every one of them except me has been through it. Right. And, and of course I try to relate as best I can, but knowing full well, and that's something I really want them to know is that I know that I don't really get it. Right. And, yeah. And, and that's okay. Okay.

[00:23:03] But I can do what I can do. Yeah. And you were asking about people, how could people maybe think about doing something like this in their own community? We actually have in our community, some of the funeral homes actually have outreaches for widows. And there, there's several different organizations with, within our community, churches, very few churches, interestingly.

[00:23:32] Um, but our church has our widows ministry and now supports it as a, a, a set ministry of, of our church. Right. Uh, and give support to that in many ways. But, um, anybody can put together any kind of support group. And, and I hate to call it a support group. A community. Community. For widows. Right. To, to gather. Yeah.

[00:24:02] And, because when you say support group, it does sound like everybody's sitting around and telling them. Talking about how bad everything is. Yeah. But it's, it's not that. So our, we have really kind of three components. I've talked about two of them are, are gathering. It's, it's, it's, for us, it's typically a Bible study, but a lot of people will do more like a book group kind of thing. Study, study a book of some sort. And then we have the care team. The, the third aspect is the social aspect.

[00:24:31] And so we organize activities all the time to get together and do, we've done some pretty interesting things. Actually, we've done pontoon boat rides and, and so on. And somebody talked about skydiving. I don't know that we're going to actually do that, but, but in any case, there's that, that's purely social component where you can just get together with like-minded people and, and do things.

[00:24:57] So in the booklet, I actually do talk about the nuts and bolts of how you can begin a ministry or some sort of organizational community around widows. I talk about that, but I'm very interested. I can't emphasize it enough. And people literally getting in touch with me and talking one-on-one about how they can do what they need to do in their community.

[00:25:25] I have now helped probably not a lot yet because I'm just getting started in this, but I've probably person to person helped about 10 or 12 people in different communities all over our, all over the United States get things started. And they, they, they end up looking different and that's fine.

[00:25:53] You know, you need to make it for your community. That's why I like to talk person to person because it's not, it doesn't need to be a carbon cutout. Right. It needs to be tailored, but I can give the, the bare bones ideas and thoughts about how to take, how to go from the beginning. Yeah.

[00:26:16] The other thing that people will, they'll read the book or they'll, they'll talk to me and they'll say, but, oh, it's so big. And it's so, oh, I said, look, we started with eight ladies in a living room. Right. So that's where you begin. Yeah. Yeah. Now, Carol, you have a gift for everybody. Can you tell us a little bit about that? And then we'll make sure all, all the information for how to reach Carol to, if you want to find out more about what she does, that's going to be in the show notes. So.

[00:26:46] Great. Yeah. I, I compiled, it, it sounds, sounds maybe like, I don't know if this would be very helpful, but I've, everyone that has seen this list of resources has said, whoa, never realized there was so much. That's out there that could be helped. So I, I like to offer this list of resources that are really for, they're both for widows advocates and for widows themselves.

[00:27:16] And it's everything from podcasts to books to devotionals, songs, music that is helpful. And, and just so a wide variety of resources that you could, as a widow, you could take advantage of yourself.

[00:27:39] Or if your friend is a widow, you could say, you know, this is something that I'd like to share with you and give you. And, and whether it be one of the books or, or a web or, you know, podcast link or whatever the case might be, but it's a really extensive list of really powerful resources. That is fantastic. Thank you. That's very generous of you, Carol.

[00:28:02] And I can, you know, it's something that if you, if you are like me and of a certain age and you're dealing with a lot of friends now who are starting to have spouses who actually are, are passing away or in failing health or whatever. This could be a great thing just to have, like you say, to be able to say, have you, you know, I've got this great, these great resources. Can I share one with you? And, and that's, that's a nice gentle way, I think, to say something like that.

[00:28:33] Carol, you have shared a wealth of information and it's so clear that your heart is, is in this and all the amazing things you're doing. What is one kind of golden nugget of wisdom you'd like to leave everybody with today? I think that really a sense of understanding that the widow's journey is quite unique.

[00:29:02] It's, it's 99.9% of the time, um, not something the widow would have chosen. It's, it's, it's something that's thrust upon her that completely sends her reeling. Uh, there's something very real called widow's fog that people don't understand it.

[00:29:31] And, and, and I, I devote some, some ink to that because it's, it's something that people need to understand what widow's fog is, why it's there, how to help people in that situation. But more importantly, I want people to understand that these are women who are hurting, but not women who are finished with their lives. Right. Yes.

[00:30:01] That there's so much more for them to experience, to be, and helping them realize that and helping them get to that place to me is one of the most important things we can do. Carol, thank you so much. One last time. What is the name of your, if you wouldn't mind just sharing the name of your website and the name of your podcast, because they're the same, right? Right.

[00:30:29] It's servingwidowsnowatgmail.com and servingwidowsnow.com as a website. Thank you so much. Carol, thank you for sharing this. I know this is a very difficult subject and I, I love the way that you did this so compassionately and so gently, um, uh, for doing all of this work that you're doing. So thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate that opportunity.

[00:30:58] More than you know. I'm glad to have you on here and thank you everyone for listening in. Please reach out if you know somebody who is, is a widow or you just want to have the resource. Um, if you do run into somebody who's been a widow, please reach out to Carol and get her list of resources. Thank you all for listening in to this episode of the D-Shift and don't forget to tune in to the next one. Thanks for listening and supporting the D Shift podcast.

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