Parables of Grief
The Parables of Grief podcast is for anyone who has lost a spouse. We discuss the common everyday lessons learned in this journey of suffering when your best friend and confidant is dead. We address the loneliness, the secondary losses, and the hope that lies ahead on this path. We look to the Savior as the master healer in every episode, and we focus on the light he brings to our darkest hours. We cling to His promises, especially his promise that, “I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you,” which is found in John 14:18.
Parables of Grief
Parables of Grief--When Words Fail: How Presence Matters More Than Advice for the Grieving
We all want to say the perfect words to comfort someone who's grieving, but what if the most powerful gift isn't words at all?
After my husband died unexpectedly, I discovered that true comfort often came from the most unexpected places. There were neighbors who showed up with "grief groceries" – practical items like paper plates and toilet paper when I couldn't think clearly enough to shop. There was the friend who texted daily for months without expecting responses. And there was the beautiful moment when someone shared Isaiah 54:5 with me: "For thy maker is thine husband, the Lord of hosts is his name."
Through these experiences and many others, I learned a profound truth about mourning with those that mourn: presence matters more than perfection. Like the rabbit in the children's book "The Rabbit Listened," sometimes the greatest gift we can give someone in grief is to simply be there – not to fix their pain or tell them how to feel, but to witness their journey without judgment or comparison.
In this episode, I share what helped me most as a widow, what didn't help (like being asked "Are you over it yet?"), and how we can all become better companions to those walking through loss. Whether you're grieving yourself or supporting someone who is, these practical insights will help you understand that healing doesn't come from perfect words but from genuine connection that helps the grieving not feel so alone.
Join me, Mama Bear Wendy, as we explore how to truly walk alongside each other in grief. Share this episode with someone who might need these insights, and visit mamabearwendy.com to learn about my upcoming grief support groups and companion sessions.
If you would like more grief support please see my website at Mamabearwendy.com for upcoming grief groups and 1:1 opportunities.
Although your experience and path will be unique, there is hope ahead in this path and you are not alone. I can see your pain and we will walk this road together. Here is a big bear hug from Mama Bear Wendy, your fierce support in the journey of grief, until next time.
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"Wendy has a beautiful way of sitting in the deep end of the ocean with you. Her presence alone is healing. She meets you where you’re at and doesn’t push you any further than where you want to go. She gently nudges you into new places with new perspectives. She is highly intuitive, sensitive and compassionate. She brings a depth to the table you rarely see. Her experiences have given her an extraordinary level of understanding and a safe place to walk to as she is a safe harbor fill of strength and integrity. She is raw and real and beautifully vulnerable and she is exceptional at conveying the words that are hard to find. She is a rare one." Christi D.
Hello friends, this is the Parables of Grief podcast and this is your host, Mama Bear Wendy, I'm here to share some love and light with you on your journey through grief and loss. I hope, as our healing paths connect for the next few minutes, we can walk together and find strength for the road ahead. One scientist suggests that what the grieving need most is to have others witness our pain and help us not feel so alone. I hope in our time together, you will find the companionship and understanding that you need. The intention of this podcast is to use parables of grief to find the Savior and His promised healing in the daily and commonplace, to see how we are truly never alone and to find, like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, the Savior by our side, even if we didn't recognize him at first, because he showed up in unexpected and common ways. Also, there is much coming soon to help with your journey. The Parables of Grief book will be coming out by Christmas of 2025, and there are opportunities to join me in online grief groups and one-on-one companion sessions. Please check out my website at momadbearwendycom for more information. Today, we are going to talk about how you can mourn with those that mourn and several of the things that are a blessing to those who are mourning and those things that are not a blessing.
Speaker 1:I think we have a fun podcast today. Doesn't it sound fun? Probably not, but today we are going to talk about some of the ways that people showed up when my husband died. I've also got some things that really helped other widows that I know, and that's going to be our topic for today. So first we're going to start off with a quote. This is a quote from President Thomas S Monson, november of 2013. I will not forsake thee, fail thee or forsake thee, sorry. Our Heavenly Father knows that when we learn and grow and become stronger as we face and survive the trials through which we must pass, we know that there are times when we will experience heartbreaking sorrow, when we will grieve and when we may be tested to our limits. However, such difficulties allow us to change for the better, to rebuild our lives in the way our Heavenly Father teaches us, and to become something different from what we were, better than we were, more understanding than we were, more empathetic than we were, with stronger testimonies than we had before. So one of the needs that the grieving have is to have a witness and there is actual relief that comes from being heard in our grief.
Speaker 1:I have several stories of things that people did when my husband died that were a great blessing to me, and many of these stories are stories of people who acted without asking or without figuring out if I had a specific need. When my husband first died, I couldn't have told you my name perhaps. I was very confused, I was very disoriented, I was very kind of reeling from the reality of my loss and so questions, decisions, all of that felt insurmountable. So there is a thing called grief groceries, and if you haven't heard of it, then what it means is there are things that you need to run a house and those things become very unimportant to the grieving.
Speaker 1:When my husband first died, I had two different neighbors bring me grief groceries. The first one brought me paper plates and toilet paper and paper towels a giant Costco version of all of those things and I was out when they were delivered. So I walked into my house with them sitting on the front entryway and it made me cry. And it made me cry. I cried over toilet paper. Yes, I did. It was such a representation to me of people solving problems for me because I was so unable to think that hard Toilet paper represented all the mundane daily things that needed to be done that I was incapable of doing at the time. And to have someone think about that for me, with all these people coming to my house for the funeral, was such a blessing, such a blessing. The second neighbor apparently went to Costco and prayed as she got there. Please bless me to know what to bring and what to buy and what would be a blessing to this family. She brought, oh, so many things, and again it's Costco right, so there's like 400 of everything.
Speaker 1:When my husband first died, eating was almost impossible. Everything tasted like ashes and just disgusting and I couldn't put things in my mouth. It was just too gross. It was surprising because in every other trauma time of my life, food was a great blessing and a solace. So to have it be so opposite, so taken from me, that I could find no solace Usually sleep and food were great ways to turn to to find the solace that I needed, and there was no solace in those things. Sleep was almost impossible, food was terrible. But this sweet friend brought two things to my house that day and in her prayers she was, I hope, inspired to bring us red vines, that big box of them, and the Kraft macaroni and cheese cups. That was one thing I could eat. My children were like dancing around the house when they saw the red vines, so that was for them, but the Kraft mac and cheese cups were one thing that still tasted good and were such a blessing.
Speaker 1:I also received flowers from a friend of my son's who is not a member of our faith, and she sent a scripture that I had never heard or seen before. It's in Isaiah 54, verses 4 and 5. Fear not, for thou shalt not be ashamed, neither shalt thou be confounded, for thou shalt not be put to shame, for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth and shall not remember the reproach of thy widowhood anymore. For thy maker is thine husband, the Lord of hosts is his name, and thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, the God of the whole earth, shall he be called. And the quote that she put in the flowers was Jesus Christ will be your husband. Now that your husband is gone, and it meant so much to me to have her share that with me at that time it was such a comfort.
Speaker 1:I had one friend. We weren't very close but she, unlike many others for months, would text me almost daily. It was never an expectation that I had to respond, which was very gratefully received, because responding to many people was really hard for me but she would just every morning, without needing to be reciprocated or commented or anything else. She would just send me a happy message or I'm thinking about you or praying for you. Today it was so meaningful to me to have her, even months later, still remember me, still think about me, still pray for me.
Speaker 1:I have a friend who is really good at serving and she had a goal for many years to do Meals on Wheels. And she called me probably three months after my husband died and said I've had this goal to do Meals on Wheels. How would you feel about that? And I was at the time looking for ways to get out and to be active and to do something without huge consequences if I failed or couldn't, and so that seemed like a really good thing. I had no idea the lasting blessing that would be. We called it our therapy session, because her and I are busy go-getter women and to find time that we could both sit still and talk to each other would be really difficult. But because of that Meals on Wheels thing we would get four hours in a car together and we were serving other people but we were also getting to grieve together. She was the one who walked me through being able to drive again. It was very hard for me to drive at first. It was very frightening for me to try to be present enough to drive and she would encourage me. We would pull into people's houses and have to back out and she would be the cheerleader saying you can do it, turn this way, do that, you can go a little farther that way. It was such a blessing and it was funny in the two years to go from being so confused and so emotionally fragile with her encouragement to outgrow some of that and her kindness and her listening ear through. That was such a blessing.
Speaker 1:After my husband died it felt like all of the relationships around me changed and to some degree it felt like I no longer belonged. It was very painful. So not only did I lose my husband but I lost a lot of the relationships that I had through my being married. But I had one friend who started having lunch dates every month and the women that had been my friends that were my married friends, included me in those lunch dates and allowed me to share my heart that they could not understand, but they just listened and encouraged me and saw the effort I was making, even if I didn't do a very good job of it. I had a friend who heard about it, heard about my husband's accident, and that night she got on and in a group that I had through business, she started a GoFundMe. My kids had mentioned maybe we should start a GoFundMe and I had told them no, we don't need it, we don't need other people's money, we don't need anything. And they had said, mom, it's the only thing they can do for us. That's the only thing they can do right now is give money. Let them do what they can. And I was so grateful that she had done that for me, that I didn't have to decide it, that I didn't have to beg for help or anything, that she had just started it for me. I was so grateful.
Speaker 1:So here's some things that I've learned that don't help, and the first one is judgment. I think this is probably easy for everybody to see, but unfortunately it is sometimes hard for us to do, and that is things like are you over it yet? Yes, I've had people say that to me. I have had people judge that I'm doing well, which makes me assume that they've probably judged when I'm not doing well. Certainly I have judged myself when I feel like I'm not doing it well. Any kind of judgment words, they just are not helpful.
Speaker 1:Comparing, comparing doesn't help. One friend said that somebody said to him I know just what you're going through. I lost my dog. Now I lost my dog as well, and I love that animal, but it does not compare in the suffering of my loss of my husband. And so, to some degree, any comparison. Again, this is not the Olympics. There's no award for being the one that gets the highest jump in grief, right, nobody cares if I win. But any comparison just takes away from this need that we have to be heard and ministered to and understood.
Speaker 1:And then the last I'm going to share is an idea from one of my favorite picture books. This picture book is called the Rabbit Listened In the A murder of crows comes and knocks his castle down and he has multiple friends who all come. The chicken comes and says let's talk about it, and the bear comes and growls and wants to be angry and all the different animals come with their different solutions to this young man's problem. The different animals come with their different solutions to this young man's problem, but each one doesn't serve the need that he has, because they A are judging and assuming that they know how he should feel and in that assumption and pressure, even to feel the way they feel he is lost and unable to express himself. Well, soon a rabbit comes and the rabbit comes and sits by him and he doesn't say anything and he can feel the presence of the rabbit and the warmth of him. And because the rabbit listens only and doesn't talk, this young man is able to be angry and he's able to talk about his feelings and he's able to do all the things the other animals were trying to do for him. And because the rabbit just listens, this young man is able to heal.
Speaker 1:I think that when we talk about mourning with those that mourn, at least in my life, I have always wanted to be the one that said the right thing, the perfect thing. I wanted to be the hero. I wanted to come in and be the one that they said oh, I'm so grateful you came, because you said just what I needed to hear and what I learned is that what the grieving need most is someone who doesn't talk, who knew that what we really need is just someone who will listen and let us talk and witness our pain and our suffering and be with us and be warm, for it is so cold. It is so cold to be grieving and the loneliness and the sorrow and the separation from others can be so heavy, from others can be so heavy. So my suggestion is there are three things that we should not do when we are trying to mourn with those that mourn. The first one is do not judge, do not put shoulds on others of where they should be right now or how they should feel or how they should handle the situation. Number two do not compare.
Speaker 1:Comparison has been said to be the thief of joy, and I would say it is the thief of connection. In this case, comparison makes both parties feel less than, and that's not connection. And then, last but not least, more is not better when it comes to talking to those who are mourning. Sometimes the best thing, the most healing and beautiful thing you can do for someone, is just listen, just be with them, just sit with them. Again, the connection, the desperate need, is to not feel alone because it is so lonely. All right, that's our podcast for today. Thank you so much for coming. If you would like more grief, support, please see my website at mamabearwendycom for my upcoming five pillars of resilience group and one-on-one opportunities. Although your experience and path will be unique, there is hope ahead in this path and you are not alone. I can see your pain and we will walk this road together. Let's take a deep breath together and here is a big bear hug from Mama Bear Wendy Until next time.
