4 Ways to Embrace Hope and Healing in Widowhood

self care and empowerment Jun 12, 2025

The loss of a life partner can catapult us into a world of unrelenting pain and enormous uncertainty. As we’re forced to navigate this new and intensely overwhelming chapter of our lives, just surviving can feel impossible let alone the idea of embracing hope and healing in widowhood. But as difficult as healing, indeed surviving can feel, it’s our responsibility - and ours alone. No-one else is going to do it for us. And so no matter how fractured and devastated we feel, at some point we need to confront our grief and work through it.

Although grief is a uniquely personal experience and everyone navigates it differently, there are things we can do as widows that will accelerate our journey towards hope, healing and happiness. In this blog, I’ll identify four of these strategies and explore how they can help us to ease our grief and re-engage with life once more.

Taking charge of our grief is not easy. It requires immense strength, resilience and courage. But if we choose to tackle it head on, if we choose to do the work - what we stand to gain is immeasurable. The heaviness of grief will begin to lift, we’ll enjoy brighter days and the little moments of joy these bring, we’ll be able to remember our loved ones with more joy than pain and we’ll finally start to re-imagine a life after loss.

#1 Prioritise self-care

When we grieve, what often falls to the bottom of our to-do list is looking after ourselves. With dependents to care for, a household to run, a job to hold down and the inevitable admin that comes with someone close to you passing away, self-care is seen as a luxury to be indulged in rather than a non-negotiable priority.

But what is self-care? And why is it so important for a widow to prioritise this? When self-care is discussed within my group, it’s quite often met with cynicism and discomfort. It’s a concept that’s done the rounds on social media and is often seen as a selfish and overly-indulgent act.

However, self-care particularly in the context of one’s grief journey plays a key role in our healing process. It’s how we meet our basic needs and regulate our nervous system and it’s how we gain respite and relief, albeit for a short while, from the gut-wrenching pain that grief causes us.

The term self-care doesn’t just refer to spa days and bubble baths (although that may form part of your physical self-care). It’s a holistic concept that encapsulates the mental, emotional, social, physical and spiritual elements of wellbeing.

This might include moving your body. Now, I don’t just mean running marathons or heading to the gym, I mean moving your body in a way that’s comfortable and meaningful for you. This might include going for a gentle stroll in the countryside, doing some light gardening, going for a swim or doing some yoga - something that eases your tension, releases your grief and restores you.

As important as it is to move our bodies, it’s also as important to learn to rest and give ourselves the time and space we need to repair and recover from grief. Grief, quite simply, is exhausting. We’re trying to do everything that we used to do in life and take on the roles and responsibilities of our loved one. In order to cope with these extra demands, getting enough sleep is paramount. Unfortunately our sleep patterns can become disrupted when we’re grieving. Even if we’re wracked with exhaustion, as soon as we lie down, intrusive thoughts and anxiety often take hold and prevent us from getting some quality shut-eye. Creating a routine before bed - such as sinking into a warm bath, listening to soothing music or engaging in a meditation exercise can help us shift into a calmer and more relaxed space and improve our chances of getting a restful night’s sleep.

Finding healthy ways of expressing what’s on our mind and communicating how we’re feeling is another form of self-care and an important part of the healing process. Whilst some widows may choose to open up in front of a group of like-minded peers, this may prove uncomfortable for others. Journalling is a great alternative – offering us the opportunity to clarify our thoughts, record memories and offload our deepest emotions and thoughts without judgement.

Self-care is deeply personal and what works for one person may not work for another. The important thing is to discover what works for you. Spend time exploring ways you can nurture, repair and protect your body, mind and spirit. It will pay dividends and have a massive impact on your healing journey.

#2 Allow your grief to be heard and witnessed

I think one of the most important things we need in our grieving journey is to feel seen and heard. Sharing our grief with others can help us to process what we’re going through. We want people to understand our despair and devastation. We want to know that our grief is acknowledged and understood. Feeling understood and supported is something we all crave in life, but it becomes even more important when we lose someone. Grief is such a uniquely personal experience, that unless you’ve been through it yourself it’s hard to truly understand. This can cause tension in relationships with friends and family and leave those grieving feeling misunderstood and isolated, which can set them back in their healing.

That’s why for many widows, bereavement support groups are one of the best sources of support. Connecting with those who have had similar experiences, thoughts and emotions can help to legitimise and normalise what we’re feeling. We’ll start to feel nurtured and understood and we’ll find it easier to open up without fear of being judged or questioned. In a supportive community, nobody will try to fix us and we’ll be given the time and space we need to work through our grief at our own pace. Unburdening grief and pain in a safe, supportive and like-minded community can be so cathartic and transformative and can set us on the path to healing and personal growth.

In those early stages of grief, if joining a group feels too overwhelming, there are other ways of feeling understood - such as grief podcasts. Hearing hosts or guest speakers engage in powerful conversations about their grief, share their experiences of loss and discuss their coping strategies enables us to build a sense of solidarity and feel less alone. They can help us to get more familiar with our grief and discover coping strategies and personal development tools that take us from the darkest of places to much brighter days. If you think you may benefit from listening to a grief podcast, check out The Widow Podcast, where each week I explore emotional and practical ways to navigate the trauma of grief and create a life of peace, purpose and balance after loss.

#3 Be patient with yourself

In today’s world, we struggle to wait for anything. We live in an ‘always-on’, must-have-it-now’ culture, where we are able to get whatever we want whenever we want. However, grief doesn’t work like that. It’s not a problem to be fixed or a linear process with a definitive beginning and end, that we can accelerate through. It’s messy and complicated and it takes time to process - a long time. There will be days that feel lighter and easier – days where we’ll feel we’re making progress and then there’ll be days (often anniversaries or special days you shared with your loved one) where we’ll feel our loss more heavily. Essentially, grief is something that has to be felt and worked through and given time and space to be understood. Placing unrealistic expectations on ourselves and about where we should be on our grief journey, will only hinder our recovery.

Grief is also highly subjective. There’s no ideal or ‘text-book’ way to grieve, so as well as releasing our own expectations, we must also avoid comparing ourselves to others. Comparing our grief experience to other people’s is completely counter-productive, as we have little understanding of the nature of their loss, the depth of their grief, their support mechanisms or their capabilities - all of which could differ wildly from our own.

If we can let go of that timeline we’ve subconsciously created as a coping mechanism and stop comparing ourselves to others, we’ll avoid the disappointment, shame and guilt that comes from realising we’re not further along in our healing journey.

If we can instead stay present and allow ourselves to feel our grief, if we can familiarise ourselves with our emotions and regularly focus on what we need, we can learn to meet these needs with compassion and patience and start moving towards a brighter and more fulfilling future.

#4 Let the glimmers in

In a previous blog, I wrote about glimmers - tiny moments of joy that we experience throughout our grief journey. Such glimmers may include the warmth of the sun on your skin, the sound of birdsong in the garden, the first sip of coffee in the morning, or the overwhelming rush of emotion you feel when your child slips their hand into yours.

Introduced by world leading trauma expert, Deb Dana, glimmers are often seen as the opposite of triggers. They not only help to build our strength and resolve but play an important role in soothing and regulating our nervous system, which is often in a state of overdrive during grief. By bringing our bodies into balance and helping to move our minds back into a place of serenity and safety, they provide us with some much-needed respite from the chaos, trauma and anxiety that engulfs us when we grieve.

However, when we lose a loved one, it’s easy to push away these fleeting moments of happiness, to block out what’s good in our life, because quite simply it feels wrong to enjoy them. Somehow, it feels like indulging in them diminishes our loss.

However, savouring these moments, in no way minimises the love we hold for our person. In fact our grief is proof that we loved them deeply and that love is not going anywhere. Grief is a life-long companion. We carry it with us and learn to live alongside it, but as we do, we must also learn to let in the moments of joy, to be open to new experiences and opportunities that may present themselves to us during our grief journey, for they are integral to our healing. By building a life around our loss, we can embark on a journey of personal growth and discovery, whilst still honouring and remembering our loved one.

Conclusion

Whilst grief can feel unyielding and chaotic and make recovery feel impossible, there are plenty of things we as widows can do to take charge of our healing.

If we choose to invest in ourselves and prioritise self-care, if we allow our grief to be heard and seen, if we can remain patient with ourselves and open to moments of joy, our grief will start to feel lighter and more bearable. Healing takes courage and strength - it requires regular moments of introspection and requires us to be honest about what we need.