Love, Loss, and New Beginnings: From Grief to Grace | Debbie K. Weiss

00:00
At first I didn't. At first I just thought, you've got to be kidding me twice. I'd lost my mom at 10, and now I was at 50 losing my husband and to male breast cancer, which I think one or 2% of the folks who get that, of the people who get that are men. So it was like, okay, you got to be kidding me. And then my other thought I had though was I was going to give this as much time as I needed to grieve. This wasn't like when I was a kid. I didn't have to push through this if I didn't want to. Today's guest is Debbie K. Weiss.

00:29
She's a former attorney and she just released her first book. Debbie's someone who knows all too well about the pain of loss. She lost her mother as a child, which was definitely an event that left a significant imprint on her life. It shaped her into this cautious, control-oriented person, always worried about what could go wrong next. But even in the midst of such fear and uncertainty, love found its way into her life in the form of George, a family friend who later became an indispensable part of her life.

00:59
Debbie and George navigated life's milestones together, building a life filled with love and mutual understanding. However, their journey took a tragic turn when George was diagnosed with metastasized male breast cancer in 2009. The illness took George away in 2013, leaving Debbie grappling with immense loss and isolation. Through the pain and confusion, she found strength. She channeled her energies into yoga and writing, leading to her first book about life after widowhood in 2022. Today, she lives with her partner, Randall.

01:29
and has completed yoga teacher training for her 60th birthday. She's also looking forward to starting a class combining teaching memoir writing with yoga. As you listen, we want you to remember while pain and loss are an inevitable parts of our lives, they do not define us. Instead, they can lead us to discover new paths, new strengths, and a renewed sense of purpose. Before we jump into the episode, I just want to thank all of my Patreon supporters. Thank you for all of you.

01:55
Believing in the show and supporting me and helping cover some of the production costs as you know, I do this all by myself So your contributions each month really help to pay for the software and the hardware and the hosting and all those things So that I can continue keeping these stories coming to you So thank you for that. If you are interested in directly supporting the show, please head to patreon.com/thelifeshiftpodcast and you can find all the information there. So without further ado

02:25
Here is my conversation with Debbie K Weiss. I'm Matt Gilhooly, and this is The Life Shift, candid conversations about the pivotal moments that have changed lives forever.

02:47
Hello, my friends. Welcome to the LifeShift Podcast. I am here with Debbie. Hello, Debbie. Hi, Matt. Thank you for joining me. And this is a fun fact. You know this. You've heard this a thousand times. But there's another Debbie Weiss out there that is also an author that has also been on the LifeShift Podcast. So this is a first that I have someone, the same first name and the same last name, different middle name. But thank you for being a part of this fun experiment.

03:13
Oh, thank you. Yes, I know the other Debbie Weiss. She's a lovely insurance agent and author out of New Jersey. She's really nice. We're actually both widows. So, yeah, I'm the blonde one. You're the blonde one. You are Debbie K. Weiss, and she's Debbie R. And such a human aspect of that conversation was just how lovely she is as a human, like, and just like how these hard times don't really define us and we can still carry through, carry on and become

03:42
and become the best versions of ourselves, despite the things that have happened. You know, for people that haven't heard this podcast before, and if you haven't had a chance to listen too much, this all really stemmed from when I was eight, my mom was killed in an accident, and, like, my life was completely different from one day to the next. You know, I lived with my mom, and then I had to then live with my father in a different state, and everything had changed. And growing up, I felt like I was the only one that had experienced that, and I knew I wasn't,

04:13
As I got older, I was like, I wonder if other people have these really specific pivotal moments in their lives in which everything that they knew was no longer and something new had to come from that. And so thank you for coming on this journey and being willing to share your pivotal moment that really changed your life. Sure. So I like to kind of have people kind of set the stage and, you know, kind of paint the picture of what your life was like.

04:39
leading up to your pivotal moment. But before you do that, maybe you can just tell us a little snapshot of who you are right now, who Debbie is in 2024. I am, I live in a small-ish town in Northern California called Venetia. It's water side, it's beautiful. I'm living with my partner, Randall. We've been together for five years. We moved in together a couple of years ago. That was actually a lot of fun. For my 60th birthday, I completed yoga teacher training, and I'm looking forward next, this week actually, I'm a little nervous.

05:08
starting a class combining teaching memoir writing with yoga. And other than that, I'm kind of getting over sort of the hangover of having had my first book published in September 2022 and trying to get over the fact that I am not a bookmarketer. I am I am a former lawyer. You're a former lawyer, not a bookmarketer. What did you not love about that process or did you find ways to love certain parts?

05:37
I found ways to love certain parts. I love interacting with people, hence I am here. Trying to look at numbers or figure out technology wasn't really my thing. Trying to get like sort of a claim as an unknown author was extraordinarily frustrating. Contemplating helping people and looking for signs that I was helping people with my book about life after widowhood was very rewarding. Yeah, I would imagine that there are a lot of people that felt very alone in their circumstance as well and by hearing your story.

06:06
reading your story, they felt a little less alone and that there was maybe some hope for them. And I think that's what's so beautiful about people writing memoirs and sharing these personal stories, same on podcasts. You were on the Eternal Optimist as well, weren't you? Yes. Me too. We both were on the Eternal Optimist. I love Matt. Me too. He's fantastic. And he's such a great conversationalist and...

06:32
like the optimism, like, I mean, obviously, his show is the eternal optimist, but like the optimism that he shows, despite all the things that he experiences well is really inspiring. So I hope you had a good time on that show. I did, he was wonderful. He's just really involved with his guests and he has such a positive view that he shares with people and you can see that he's created a beautiful life for himself. And yeah, I found him really inspiring.

06:55
Yeah, he was also on the life shift. So we have all these connections and somehow none of us knew each other before that. And it's beautiful to have these opportunities with remote recording to have you, who otherwise I probably would never have run into or bumped into to be a part of this show, you know? And so maybe you can kind of paint the picture of what your life was like leading up to this moment that it really changed things for you. I grew up in a small Northern California town, another one called Danville.

07:23
I actually lost my mother when I was 10 to a brief illness. It was a surprise. It wasn't my pivotal moment. I stayed in the same home. My dad, I have a wonderful father. He's a scientist. And over the years, I got thrown together with the son of family friends, George. He was four years older than I was. And his mom and my dad worked together. They're both scientists. So I would see George over the years.

07:49
Eventually I went to college, you know, subsequently law school. But when I was 17, I needed a date to my senior prom. I was a geek. And George, at that point, was a senior majoring in engineering at Cal Berkeley, UC Berkeley. And we got together, we started dating. From there we went on to our lives. He became an engineer. Ultimately, he was Mr. Quickened into it. He was an amazing engineer. I became an attorney. We were in love. We moved in together. We were together. I quit practicing law at 40.

08:17
My life is pretty much George. I'm a very cautious person. You know, I'm an only child. And having lost my mom, you know, I like to keep an eye on my dad. You know, make sure the other parent wasn't gonna vanish. You don't know. You said you lost your mom at a young age, but also that it didn't really... I mean, I guess it probably affected your life a lot. It did. It wasn't necessarily the pivotal moment, but I'm sure your life really was altered because of that, even in the sense of, like, thinking of your father and, like...

08:46
there's this piece of like, is he always going to be here, which we know obviously that he's not, nobody is, right? But did you have a sense of, you said you were kind of like a nerd, but you were like maybe you had your own bubble of people. Did you grow up, I did, feeling like at any point someone else could abandon you in the way that like an abandonment of a parent dying, did you ever have that feeling of like abandonment?

09:11
I was very, very fearful. I was very cautious. I stuck close to home. You know, my dad traveled for work. His parents, my grandparents lived nearby and I was always worried something was gonna happen to the three of them. I have a real small family. I'm an only child. My dad's an only child. And yeah, I'd worry. And he'd go away for work. He'd be in Washington, DC, or he worked in Europe for a month out of the year sometimes. And I think, you know, I didn't think about it at the time, but being a single parent man at 42 probably wasn't, you know.

09:39
having full-time custody of the kids. You know, this was 1973. This isn't when men raised kids on their own. And it certainly wasn't common where I lived in a very traditional suburban area. And suddenly he had a household and, you know, he was cooking and being a scientist, you know? I mean, I didn't think about that as a child. So yeah, I did worry that something would happen to him. I kind of wanted, like I said, I wanted to keep an eye on him. You know, I liked it when he was home. He was it. And I was close to my grandparents and, you know.

10:10
So yeah, I did have a lot of fear about that and I was pretty quiet and kind of withdrawn. And you know, it's weird. You probably had this too, Matt, where you're like, you know, you're a kid and you're like, well, what's gonna go wrong now? What can go wrong? Because now the unthinkable has happened. So anything bad can happen at any time. So how do you cope with that?

10:32
It is a challenge and it kind of seeps into adulthood if you let it and I let it, I certainly let it for a very long time. And I've forgiven myself for that now because I didn't know better. I didn't have the tools, which you probably didn't have the tools at 10 years old to even grapple with the idea that someone could be here one minute and like we understand death, but also we don't understand death, right? Like how did that happen? She was probably young. I mean, if your dad was only 42.

11:01
Yeah, my mom was 32, my dad was 37 when he had to become that like solo parent and they were divorced. So he wasn't even like playing part of it, you know? So I can totally relate with that story. And I wonder if some of the things you did moving forward are relatable in it just in my own experience of losing someone so young. Yes, very much. The things I did in my life, I can trace back to that. The way that I lived, yeah. Did you take a lot of risks or were you very like...

11:29
Oh, I was very cautious. I was very cautious. You know, I also became very much a control freak because, you know, I was bullied in junior high. I didn't realize, again, this is 1973. Kids didn't get counseling. If a kid looked like they were functioning well, you left them alone. That was the thinking of the time. So I was like in the mentally, you know, gifted kids program. That's what they called it then. I know that's ugly.

11:57
But we didn't have good terms back then. And suddenly, I couldn't figure out a lot of stuff, like math and stuff. And I thought, where's my brain? And I didn't realize that my energies were grieving. I didn't have that. So I became very cautious and I wanted a life I could control, a life without dodgeball. You should not have children play dodgeball when they've lost a parent. You should not throw balls at children.

12:24
So, you know, I went to law. I mean, so I looked at this pretty practically and I was a lawyer when I was 24. I graduated from UC Davis. I was with my then my husband, George, and we weren't married, but we were, we'd been together since my senior prom. So yeah, I, you know, no, I didn't wanna see the world. So it was combined both caution and yuppiedom. I'm from the yuppie era. I grew up watching LA law. And at my, you know, we were in California. People were, everybody was buying houses.

12:54
And we were really like prematurely middle-aged. We were like these middle-aged people in our 20s. But you were happy in that space. You were content in that. Do you feel that there was a happiness in that control? In that, I mean, choosing law and even for George, this engineer, there are definitive to it. There are rights and wrongs and black and white in a lot of those cases. Were you happy in all that space or were you...

13:23
were you just trying to exist? I was pretty happy. I mean, we had two good jobs. We had an apartment, we bought a house, eventually a little later than I'd wanted, but I was saving up. I mean, I'm a nester anyway, I'm a homebody now, even many years later. But I was kind of happy to be getting on with my life and being with the person I loved and assuming we would have a family life together. I started out a little bit ambitious, then realized law. You know.

13:52
for a kind of law environment really isn't me, but you don't know in your twenties. So yeah, I was happy and I was certainly very lucky, to have a great supportive dad and the privilege of being able to do what I want. Law school at UC Davis back then was about $5,000 a year for a resident. So a house was, all these things were attainable.

14:20
I wasn't very creative with what I wanted, but it was attainable. And I was very happy to be moving forward in my life and to have some measure of independence and control. And while the control part is certainly interesting, and I can relate to it a lot. I also like it sounds like you maybe thought of like there was a checklist for life. There were certain things that you had to achieve, certain milestones, even like you said you didn't buy the house as soon as maybe you had wanted to. But there was some kind of

14:48
checklist that some of us kind of attach ourselves to, to like, you know, you have to graduate college by this age, and then you have to have a good job, and then you have to get promoted and then get married and you know, all these things, and you kind of follow through. And then at some point, you're like, Oh, wait, none of that really matters. There isn't actually a checklist. But did you kind of follow that same kind of guideline? I did feel that way. Yes. I mean, Davis, again, the world was so different than, you know,

15:13
All the good firms came to my law school and interviewed. If you had reasonable grades and all, it was pretty hard to graduate without a job. So yes, my goal was to get decent grades, graduate, I didn't do that great, but graduate, get a job that I wanted close to home, because again, the whole parental leaving, don't wanna get into that. And George's parents lived very close to my family. We all lived in the East Bay in California, San Francisco Bay area. Yeah, so that's kind of what I wanted to do. I had...

15:42
I mean, I remember buying my first nice car as an attorney with my own money and being like, yeah, this is it, I've got my junior executive car. You hit all the milestones, but you were also finding love. You were enjoying the love aspect and kind of creating this additional component of your life in which there was even more love. Before it was you and your dad and your grandparents, and now you've brought in another person into the fold.

16:10
I know he played a very important part of your life for a while. Oh, since I was, yeah, for 32, yeah, since until I was from seven years, I knew him since I was seven years old. Wow. We were dating when I was 17. We were together from then on. And how did that relationship develop? Did it hit your milestones? Did it hit the things that you were hoping of that? Or did you kind of let go a little bit and see where it went?

16:38
Well, he and I both wanted the same thing. Well, he was dominant. I mean, we kind of did what he liked to do. He was a great cook. We spent our weekends cooking these fancy meals. We were both introverts, which turned out to be very difficult when he passed. We were both alone. We both weren't very social. You know, this was the 80s. Again, some of our friends still stayed partiers and we abandoned that. That wasn't working for us. We weren't doing that. So, I mean, we were just, it was all kind of working out great. I mean, I loved him.

17:08
We were together, we expected to be together for the rest of our lives. We worked at our jobs, we had our families. Probably the hardest part was he had a lot of family demands and I didn't, and that was tricky, but that's pretty small, especially looking back. Thinking it's like you said you both were introverts and you had found each other, which probably made this a lot easier to be an introvert, because if you have each other and you can find your own space, but also you can come together and do the things that you like.

17:37
and being together that can be really isolating when one person is no longer part of that. You've mentioned being a widow and mentioned moving in with someone new. So I'm assuming something fairly pivotal happened in your life in which the cards all fell. The house of cards was no longer. Can you tell us a little bit about where that brought us? I can. Yeah, I retired from practicing law at 40. So that was around...

18:07
Not good at years, which is funny. Around 2020, 2021, 20 years ago, I quit practicing law. So in 2003, I guess, yeah, 2003, I hung out. I was, you know, I was thrilled. Law was ridiculous. We build in six minute increments. It was crazy. Oh gosh. So I stopped and I was just kind of hanging out, doing a lot of house stuff, exercisey stuff. And George, it was working very hard when we were kind of living our lives on our own,

18:37
And then in 2009, he was diagnosed with metastasized male breast cancer. And it looked like a death sentence. He kept me out of it. He said, I'll be fine. Don't worry. I don't want to share a lot with you, but I have to go to Google. And I was looking at such and he lasted really well for four years. In this about mid 2012, he started to decline, which was expected metastasized. And he passed in April of 2013. And at that time,

19:06
I didn't know what I was gonna do. I mean, he was my life. I had so few connections. Most of my hobbies, the things that I did were completely tied up with him. And that mostly there were things we did just the two of us alone. So I didn't know how I was gonna get through the rest of my life. I was almost 50. And I...

19:33
your entire life was basically changed in that moment. It was. And I was so alone. I lived alone. I don't have any siblings. George was an only child. At that point, my dad was having some health issues. So he wasn't terribly present, nor was my stepmom. That's kind of my whole family at this point, my dad and my stepmom. And so I was just alone. And George had died. He was in denial when he died. So it was kind of an ugly death. He hadn't thought he was dying. He'd excluded his parents.

20:04
which was very painful. And I was just left with a lot of guilt. Why did you assume the guilt or what was the guilt from? Caregiving. He turned down a lot of outside care. So I was trying to take care of him and I didn't think I was doing it very well. He turned down outside help, palliative care. So we did it ourselves. He didn't think he was dying. And again, excluding his parents, terrible about that. So, and you know, we didn't have a goodbye.

20:34
and we hadn't really talked about what was I gonna do next. I mean, he was an engineer. I couldn't even turn on the darn television in our living room, his system was so complicated. Yeah, and I only asked that question about like what guilt, I wasn't sure what kind of guilt you would assume and I can see why someone would assume some kind of guilt like that. It's not necessarily like, I wouldn't say that you should assume that, but I can see why you would. No, I mean, I shouldn't have, but I did. And I was so alone.

21:02
Yeah, you were alone and also like early in your life, you probably were not provided tools on how to process these things appropriately. I know I wasn't and it took me a long time to figure out what my grieving process looked like and how I could forgive myself for things that I assumed guilt for that weren't mine to assume. You know, when I was eight, like I blamed myself that my mom died in a motorcycle accident because when I had my last phone call with her, I didn't try hard enough to get her not to go.

21:32
And it's like, you were eight, nobody's gonna listen to an eight-year-old, but also it sounds like your husband maybe was a little bit stubborn in that sense of like, he could handle this. He's like, I'll compartmentalize this and I will move forward. And you don't have enough room to help, right? Very much so, yes. I didn't have good things from when my mom died because I got in the sense of, don't be weak, just get through this, move on, do what you need to do.

22:01
And yeah, I'd had some guilt because I thought if I'd helped more around the house, she wouldn't have gotten tired and died. Yeah. You know, which is ridiculous. And then when he died, yeah, I didn't, I didn't really have skills and I was all alone and it was like, I don't know. You know, what do you, what do you do? And I, you know, as a former lawyer, what I could do is I could do all the paperwork and I got all that straightened out very quickly.

22:26
Which is kind of the opposite of what a lot of people do, right? Like they can't handle the paperwork. They can't do all these things because they're trying to help themselves. And you were like, I can do this. This is a check mark. This is something that I can make happen. But that might, did that serve you? Did that help you because it was like a distractor? It helped. And yes, it helped because yes, it did help. One, I love a good to do list. You know, I like I like, you know, that's.

22:54
I'm a lawyer, this is what I do. I like having something to do, it kept me busy during the day. It also taught me that I could be competent. I mean, I was pretty lost as a person, but I was competent. I could deal with all these calls, I could deal with all this, I could even raise a legal argument if I had to. I can interact with these people and I could get it all straightened out. And it was also helpful for me realistically to see, okay.

23:20
The house is paid for. This is good. This is in my name. Now this is good. This is what I have. These are the assets. These are the liabilities. This is how I fix it. Yes, this was all very good. The hard part was that I was so lost that at night I was just lost. I mean, I would just play George's records on the turntable, order out food, drink bourbon or whatever, Chardonnay or yeah, you know, Manhattan's I always made a nice drink. But I was just at night, I was just like, who am I? What am I doing? What is this house?

23:49
You know? Who, like, yeah, who am I without him? Right. Because so much of your life was attached to having him by your side and in your circle. And, you know, what did that, how long did that, that, I don't know what we can call it, fog in a way of how long did that period of time where like, you didn't know who you were? How long was that for you? Well, OK, it went down in stages. If you, I mean, like at first I was like so lost and

24:18
Just I could do that, I could visit my dad. He lived 10 minutes away from me, which was great. I could do that. I didn't know who I was without George. Things got a bit better after about, you know, a few months, six months somewhere in there. I got therapy, grief therapy, which was extremely helpful. And my grief therapist gave me a chore. She'd say like, okay, like I was going to yoga. She's like, okay, tell one person in yoga you're widowed. Go to one activity you haven't been to before.

24:46
So I started to join some groups. And even if I wasn't good alone, I could go to a group, I could get myself there, I could interact with people, I could see there were people. You know, it's weird stuff. I lived in the suburbs. So I joined, I had my late husband's sports car, so I joined a car club. I am not a car person, but we had breakfast every Saturday morning. So Saturday morning, I knew I was going to breakfast and then engaging in some often car related activity.

25:14
or I joined Rotary. I am not a Rotary person. That's great though. I mean, I think it's important. But I would, you know, once a week we had dinner. So I was getting out and then after about a year, a lot of the fog was gone. I'd cut back on, you know, I was no longer drinking lots of bourbon. I was taking care, you know, my health was good. I was no longer stick thin. I was, you know, I was.

25:39
Looking at what I was doing and at that point I was writing again and I was in a writing class in a writing group which was The most helpful for me. So after about a year things things were significantly better But I was going to tell you it's three years before I really had my full Mentally gifted minor brain back. Oh really? Yeah, I would say three years before I was really I mean, I think that's normal. Yeah, I think it is a huge loss

26:07
Especially as an adult. Like I've had, I mean, I guess there's some parallels here in my story. We both lost our mother at a young age and then like kind of like didn't have the opportunity to grieve properly, to do the things that maybe served us in our hearts and our minds and everything so that we could understand how we best do it. And then my grandmother became like my best friend. She became like my mom. She became the person that, you know, she filled in that role and she was diagnosed with cancer.

26:37
in 2012 or something along those lines. She ended up passing in 2015, but when she was diagnosed, I was like, now's my chance. Now's my opportunity to do this right, to move through this properly. And the thing that I noticed is that I understood passing. I understood death a lot differently as an adult than I did as a kid, and it allowed me to do things in a different way. So...

27:04
I guess it's not exactly the same, but the idea of facing these two things at different parts of our lives and understanding it in a different way, it affects us totally differently, right? But in some kind of way that, you know, we see the growth, whether that's even just a tiny little bit or a lot. Did you notice there was a difference losing him because everything was so tied up? At first I didn't. At first I just thought, you've got to be kidding me twice. You know, I mean...

27:33
I'd lost my mom at 10 and now I was at 50 losing my husband and to male breast cancer, which I think one or 2% of the folks who get that are the people who get that are men. So it was like, okay, you got to be kidding me. And then my other thought I had though was I was going to give this as much time as I needed to grieve. It wasn't like when I was a kid, you know, I was retired from work. This wasn't like when I was a kid. I didn't have to push through this if I didn't want to. If I had bad days, that's fine.

28:01
I could stay in bed, I could watch TV, I could have the downtime I needed. That's big. And I could not have to rush through this process because I feel like we treat grief like it's an illness, right? Are you over it? Are you better? If you're a widow and I was again 50 and healthy, have you moved on? Are you dating somebody else? Which I think is just bizarre. We don't tell married people, are you having sex? Is this working for you? So I think it's kind of infantilizing.

28:31
I did ultimately have a sense of that. And I also had a more of a sense ultimately, and this is probably my pivotal moment of agency. Was which part? The part that when I realized probably about six months in as I was sitting on the floor that miserable alone, that I had choices, that I was healthy, I was only 50, I was a young 50.

28:57
probably really in 50 because my husband and my father had taken care of my life in the past. That I had choices that I could be alone, that I could wither, that this could feel like a quote unquote leftover life or that actually I was pretty lucky. Again, I owned my home. I was financially okay. Unlike a lot of widows, I didn't have to go back to do anything. I didn't want to. I had a father who would help if necessary.

29:24
and that I lived in a very nice area, it was very safe, there were people around, I didn't know them yet, but that I could do something different, that I could get up off the floor and do something. Do you remember if there was anything that triggered that thought of like, oh wait, I have control, I can do whatever I want, and if I wanna have a bad day, that's fine, but I can take control of this. Do you remember, was there anything that popped in your head and you were like, oh, this is it?

29:54
You know, part of it was that I'd taken care of all the administrative stuff. And it was like, I could do this. You know, I could fix this. I could get our, you know, I could get this fixed. You know, at first, you know, he died inconveniently when the taxes were due. I could get an accountant and fix it later. I did my own taxes with TurboTax. Yes. I mean, I could do things, you know, I am not an incompetent person.

30:17
I believe it was when everything was done and I was sort of thinking, well, actually that I was pretty lucky. You know, I'm Jewish and if you think about the history of the Jewish people, I know this is weird, but that was what kind of what went through my mind was I was actually very fortunate. Here I am in a nice safe house, in a good place, in a safe community with my family, what's left of them okay.

30:44
And, you know, my dad had picked himself up after losing my mom. And so it was very much a sense of trying to realize, even if I didn't believe it then, that I was actually very fortunate. And if I couldn't, and it was kind of up to me to make a life that I could, if I didn't enjoy that, at least I could live with and feel somewhat fulfilled. No, I think it's important. I think sometimes when we get ourselves wrapped up in

31:14
in a comfortable life that we're enjoying, and then suddenly something changes, we have to realize that we also have this control to do the things that can get us back to a place in which we feel a comfortable, happy life that we can do on our own if we have to. And I think sometimes we forget that because grief is so heavy. Yes, it is so heavy. I love that you said, and I think this is big, is when you are okay.

31:43
with the fact that you have a bad day, and that's okay. If you don't wanna have a productive day, that's okay. And you let yourself feel however you need to feel at any moment in time, and all of that is okay, because that's part of the grieving journey. Like you might even have a day where you laughed, and you're like, I shouldn't have, you know, and then you're like, oh no, I shouldn't laugh, I should be grieving, and then we kinda shame ourselves, but if we just allow those things, I feel like everything smooths out a lot better in the end. I agree, yeah, I dealt with that a lot in my book.

32:12
Yeah, when I was writing my book, I was dealing a lot with the guilt and how it had limited me and how I kind of got over it because there were definitely times as I was moving on through this where I would be someplace and I'd be having a good time or I would have a life transition and I would think, but George's life ended at 53. He doesn't get to have anything anymore. And then I'd have to think, but it's okay to change your life. You don't have to stay in a house you don't like anymore because he can't move.

32:41
Or I could, you know, it's okay. You know, when I traveled, it was the first time I traveled to a place, it was like, it's okay to enjoy this even though we can't. But those were things that came up. And I think it's important to say out loud. I think there's a lot of people that probably have that guilt or shame or something about feeling those ways. But by you putting it in a book, saying it on podcasts, doing all these things, I think you help give permission to other people that maybe just need that permission from someone else to be like,

33:11
This is all of it's okay. You're a human being. There's no telling what you're gonna feel or do at any moment in time, but it's yours to do and feel. I feel that very much. I think that the hardest, the first hardest part, right, is the loss. And then the second part is that we judge ourselves for the loss for how we're grieving, right? So first is that we're grieving. And then the second part is that we judge ourselves. And it's like, eat the damn cupcake. If you don't watch the television. I have days now where I decide to take a day off and just zone.

33:40
And it's not because I'm grieving, it's because that just feels good to me. Hopefully not too much, I'm trying to do better with that in the new year, whatever. Yeah, I feel like part of what's so hard is that we judge ourselves, right? When I was widowed, I felt like I was widowing badly. I wasn't recovering fast enough. I wasn't dating effectively. I wasn't whatever it was. I had to hire somebody to do things.

34:07
with electronics that a smart person should have been able to figure out, but I couldn't figure out my garden lights. I'm happy I left that house and the garden lights. Yeah. Well, also, it's so interesting that you thought, because part of me is going to pop culture here, but you were thinking, oh, you're not dating fast enough, you're not doing widowing right. And then in my mind, this is what I'm picturing, is women in black veils all the time just in morning, right? And then we...

34:34
We've seen this growing up and we're assuming like, well, that's how she's got to live the rest of her life. And it's not like this is your own life. You should you should live all of it and not just the portion in which you were with someone else. And so I'm sure that's a hard hump to go over, especially with visuals like I just thought of. It is because at one point I started to I was writing for some magazines and when I was writing about widowhood and see, that was very positive at that point because I was I was I could get published and I was like, well, OK. I mean, you know.

35:04
I'm not just a retired lawyer. I could say maybe writer, writer, imposter syndrome, but writer. But all the pictures that if you illustrate an article about widowhood, it's like a bench, right? It's like this bench and a woman sitting on one half wearing a black veil and there's the empty bench. Or there's this one, it's all black and white. We widows do not live in color apparently. It's half a bed. It's a bed, right? It's like a double bed. And there's a pillow right over her face, right? And there's the empty half of the bed.

35:34
Now, I understand that this has to convey widowhood, but it would just crack me up to see these articles. And it was like, you know, my stories got illustrated. It was these, you know, generic, like, Getty image, widow photos. And my God, just give it up now. Abandon all hope. No, it's almost like you're trying to redefine what being a widow is. You're just, you know, you're existing beyond someone else and it's not necessarily like your fault that you can continue to live your life. And I think there's...

36:03
I feel like that word, do you feel like you're taking ownership of that, of being a widow? Yeah, and I think it's important. A lot of us are widows out there. If I'm in a group of women, I'll generally find someone who's been widowed and they're living a good life now. They're fine. They have hobbies. They have interests. One thing I find very helpful is I feel like the paradigm has shifted from when I was younger to now.

36:31
And that being a single woman, a single midlife woman is not viewed as being a pariah or not being able to find a man. I feel like being a single midlife person is being seen now as a reasonable alternative and not an interim stage while you're looking for that midlife mate. And that I think is extremely helpful for widowed people. Yes, I think that's important. I think there has been definitely a shift, especially like your father.

37:00
was a widower for a very, you know, like at a young age. Earlier than you. He was 42. Yeah, he was very young and could still live and do the things I'm sure that he did before. He was not a widower. And I think that to your point that I think maybe back then there was more, the wife does this, the husband does this. And now I feel like.

37:26
everyone can do whatever the heck they want and all of that is okay. And everyone can have their own agency to determine what their life looks like. And I think that's way more accepted now than maybe it was even 20 years ago or 30 years ago. So I would agree with that. Yeah, I think so too. Cause I'm reading a lot of articles these days about single women who are, they're single, they're happy. They're good. I have some friends like this. They're happy, single.

37:53
Yeah. And they want to be. They want to be. Yeah. This isn't, this isn't while they're looking for somebody. This is their life. They're very happy. They're not going to die alone. They have a plethora of friends. Their life is very full. They're not, and they're not with the wrong person and they're not wasting their time. I did a lot of online dating, which was very much the subject of my book in part, but yeah. So I find that helpful in terms of looking at kind of how to reconfigure a life after you've lost a partner. Yeah. I would, I

38:22
just knowing who you are and finding that independence and the ability to do the things that you need to and the things that you can't do. Like you said, you hire someone to do that and you have the ability to do that and know that you can exist in this world with or without someone, you know, and that all of it is okay. And however you choose to do it should be okay as well. Do you see the therapy portion of your grief journey to be a really impactful moment because it seems like they kind of...

38:51
pushed you a little bit at a time to do the things that maybe you might not have chosen to do on your own? The therapy helped tremendously with the guilt because I felt very, very guilty. And it really helped to have my therapist who is this older woman. She was like this tiny woman, she was like a modern dancer, but she had this power to say, you know, George turned down everything he could have turned down. This isn't your fault. You did the best you could.

39:18
And also, honestly, I was at that point when George died, too soon I got into a relationship that wasn't good with a younger guy because I just couldn't be alone all the time. I was having anxiety attacks. I had PTSD because I'd been waking up to try to help him through the night with ammonia capsules and nebulizers and oxygen tanks and all kinds of stuff I didn't feel very qualified to deal with. And I was stressed to the gills. I was on prednisone because I had just terrific hives. I mean, I was falling apart.

39:48
And so after he died, I got in this relationship, so I didn't have to be alone at my house all the time. And it was very helpful. And I felt responsible in some ways for that. And it was very helpful for her to say, this guy was kind of using you. You're a new widow. He's kind of taking advantage. And I got out of that situation. Yeah. Well, that's helpful. So the therapy was very helpful. I mean, I'll be honest, I had really bad anxiety and I've had therapy. I have therapy now. I don't...

40:17
I think I'm fine, but I love having therapy for anxiety. It's great. I think it's great to see therapy as a maintenance thing. I don't think it has to be in a crisis, but at the time it was extremely helpful when I really needed it. Were you someone that had done therapy before that moment, before this loss? Very infrequently. I mean, I'd gone once or twice, I'd met with a therapist about anxiety. And once or twice, honestly, because George was a workaholic.

40:44
and that wasn't working for me, particularly after his diagnosis, I was having a real tension with the fact that our time might be limited and he was working harder than ever. Looking back, I'm reconciled because that was his legacy. Leaving the best version of Quicken he could was his legacy. And that's, but at the time I was like, we don't have that much time and you're working even harder. So I dabbled in it a little, but I didn't have nothing consistent.

41:12
Yeah, I think therapy is really important. I didn't really discover it until I was like 30 something. And 30, and those moments, trying to find the right person was such a struggle. And I think I went through like five people, I'm like, is this even worth it? And I just want everyone to know it is. When you find the right person that hits the right marks in which you need at whatever moment you are, it's so worth it. I had, for so long, I was living a way

41:42
eight-year-old had experienced, right? And I went to this therapist and she was like, you realize that every decision that you've made since you were eight years old is out of fear as that eight-year-old? Wow. That eight-year-old is afraid. So you're making all the easy decisions. You're choosing all the things that you know you can be successful at because that eight-year-old is afraid that if you mess up, someone else is gonna abandon him. And I was like, you know, the clouds parted and the curtains rose. And I was like, oh.

42:09
So you mean I can, it was kind of like your agency. Yeah, agency, that's, yeah. You know, like, oh, I have control over this. It's not this little eight-year-old that is now walking with me, but rather like, I can make these decisions for myself. And if I mess up, so what? That totally makes sense. Yes, you can take a risk. Yes, exactly. That makes sense to me, very, very much so. And making decisions that aren't like, yes, like I need to preserve.

42:37
exactly how things are at a certain age or make sure that nobody's mad at me because of this situation, because you're a vulnerable child who's lost a mom. We have a lot more strength now in choices. And yes, being able to see that is very powerful, I think.

43:00
Isn't it fascinating though that we can be fully formed adults and functioning in the world and being successful and checking the boxes and getting jobs and whatever. And then we have these moments where we're like, that we have to be reminded that we do have control over the things that we do. We're smart people, we can make all the right decisions, but still can't realize some of these little things. We do, you can, you can control your life.

43:28
you are allowed to do it and you can enjoy it in whatever way you want to. Yes, I agree completely. Yes. I didn't really, I didn't get that until after my husband died. I, you know, I didn't catch that till I was 50. Right. And you've existed in the world and you've been successful in the world, according to whoever or in yourself and whatever that may be. But it's like things like this where, where we have to have, maybe hopefully we don't have to have, but sometimes we have these, these really,

43:55
impactful moments or these specific things that happen in our lives that wake us up to the fact that oh wait No, we can do this Yes, very very much. So yeah, I mean at that point I could start yeah with each You know a few years after as the years passed since his death, you know, you could figure out I was like hey I could do this and I can do that and it doesn't matter if people don't like me and it doesn't Matter if I try something that I don't succeed at

44:20
And it, you know, that type of thing. And it doesn't even matter if I wear clothes that he would have hated. So yes, it took a while. Do you feel like a different person now, like this version of you and the way you approach things in the world than you did when everything was good in your marriage? Oh, very, very different. What's the biggest difference? Oh gosh, everything. For one thing, I didn't, I was really shy and I was nervous talking to people.

44:49
So there was that, I was very, I don't wanna say status conscious, but I had a lot of things. We lived in a small house that was chock full of things. And when he died, I realized that I was left with fewer experiences than I wished we'd had together and a lot of things. So I started to do different things. Probably the biggest difference for me was realizing I didn't care what people, I didn't care that much what people thought of me. So that led me to do the writing classes and writing workshops.

45:18
And I went back to school at, I think I was 54 and I got a master's, I got an MFA and wrote my book and put it out there. And I decided, you know, I can do this or all these podcasts. I've never done anything like this until I put my book out and I'm teaching writing now. So yeah, it was just kind of like, yep, talk to people. It's cool. It's all fine.

45:40
If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out, and you try something new. And that's cool too, because you're learning something new. There are new experiences. So much of your story I can relate to. We didn't have, besides the fact that our moms died when we were younger. Yeah. It's just weird how I think some of it stems from those experiences that I can relate to some of your stuff. Earlier you said when you started writing, it was a real shift in things, in the healing journey for you. It was.

46:10
Was it like a cathartic kind of experience? Were you intentionally writing the book or were you just writing to write? It's shifted. It took me some years to write the book. I want to say around five, but I started just writing vignettes. At first part of what I like to do is, I'm very cautious. I'm still always going to be cautious. I think that's my nature. I'm a lot like my grandma, Miriam. She was very cautious. We both have the worried gene. What happened was...

46:36
I started to write and I got some community with writing, a writing class, a writing group, writing friends. That was amazing. And then from there, what helped me was getting some stuff published. I remember I put something in the Huffington Post about my guilt as a caregiver. And within a few hours, I had 80 comments with people saying, hey, I've been there or it's okay. Don't feel bad. You'll be fine. To realize I wasn't alone. When I was writing, I realized I wasn't alone.

47:04
And then when I was writing my journey, thinking of some stuff and getting some stuff published, I realized I wasn't alone in this. And that was extremely helpful to not be so alone in all this. And that made me feel, and it was also something to do and connect with people. And then ultimately when I was writing the book, there was a shift because to write a full thing, it was really hard. I'd only written like a 1500 word essay. It's what I write as essays.

47:31
So then I can't write fiction, I'm not creative enough. So at some point it had to be good. I mean, I wanted it to be good. And at that point it shifted from a bit from like, what am I trying to express, am I expressing this well? And from that was when I went back to school and got the masters and hired a really good editor and learned and looked into editing it and looked for a publisher and tried to.

47:58
At that point, it shifted kind of from psyche to craft. And once it shifts to craft, it's a whole different thing. It's a whole other game. It's not so much cathartic, but rather there's a process. There's things, which probably spoke to that other side of you. It's great for the brain. It's good brain work. It is. It's really good brain work to try to do that, yes. The reason I asked about the writing component, obviously I know you have this book out, and we'll talk about that in a second. When I was 16,

48:28
I was in some kind of honors or gifted English class, and we had to write a narrative. And it was the first time that I wrote about my mom. And it was the first time that I allowed myself to actually cry about it, to actually break down and process something. So that was an eight-year period in which I was bushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, and writing this, it wasn't very long, but writing whatever this was. I wrote about the time

48:58
like the exact time that she died and like the week after. And writing that out, it just helped me process so much and it really like kicked off the start. I mean, I didn't get very far until my 30s, but it kicked off that start of like allowing myself to feel certain things in a way. And it was all just the writing. Cause I think in your head, it bottles up in a weird way, but when you put it out on paper or you get it out and you say it out loud, it allows you to process it in a different way than when it's just sitting up there.

49:28
I agree. No, I agree completely. Yes, it helped tremendously to write the things that were on my mind and even to share them. I mean, I got rid of so much of my guilt by sharing things or talking about things. And it made me a much less judgy person. Before George died, I was a very judgy person. And I could see like, these are the depths. I was in real depths. I mean, really yucky depth stuff. I didn't do crazy things because that's not me, but I was someone I could have. And it really...

49:58
And then writing about that was really helpful. And it also, I think, helped me to see a kinship with other people. You don't feel so alienated, right? I mean, it's not like we're failures. It's like we're all sort of human. I do a lot of yoga and that kind of connection is very helpful. That is really helpful. And I bet putting your book out there, putting on the Huffington Post and getting comments and modern love, you have something in modern love as well, right? Some years ago, yeah. And there's hearing back from.

50:25
Yeah, hearing back from people though, it validates your experience. Like, oh, like I'm not weird for thinking that way either, because other people have also felt this or this or, you know, whatever it may be. And that's so validating and helpful for like processing all of that stuff. Very much so. You know, as humans, we take shame, like I shouldn't be feeling this way. But other people said it. They do. And so now I can and be OK with it.

50:49
Yeah, I know, because when I started dating, I mean, I was really shocked. A lot of the guys I met and I was like, is this me? Am I doing this badly? Where are all these schmucks coming from? How do these people function in the world? And why do they think they should be with the women? And it was really helpful to hear from a lot of women who are like, yep, been there, done that. Yes, it's surreal. Yes, it's awful. No, you're not. It's really hard to find someone.

51:17
with the kind of depth or morals that My Late Husband had. And a lot of other widows were finding that as well, and they were finding this, is this a clean podcast or no? Are we clean? Whatever you want. It was a real shit show. I wasn't alone in that and I wasn't incompetent. And that was somewhat helpful as well. So kind of different pieces of this, like the guilt here or the dating there, or just the loneliness, which for me was probably the hardest part, was very helpful to not.

51:47
to get a sense of not being alone in this and to share it and put it out there, which again helps with shame. I have a dear writing friend who has had a very tough adventurous life. And he said, when you put it out there, you kind of get rid of the shame because some things are just kind of are, you know? It's not your fault, it just is. Exactly. Most of our life just is, you know, it just is what happens. What's the title of your book? It's called Available As Is.

52:16
There you go. That's appropriate, right? You know, what on release day, what was that feeling like when now this and all your thoughts and all the things that you talked about in your book and it was out there for strangers to check out? What was going through Debbie's body and mind on that day? One, my father cannot read my book. No, not an option. Two, terrified. Three, you know, I didn't.

52:45
Somehow I kind of put a little bit blinders on when I was writing it. It's really personal. It goes there. It's really honest. That's people have said. It's really authentic, which I'm really grateful for. I think as I was writing it, I just kind of forgot about it. Forgot that... I mean, as I was writing it, I went as deep as I could. I had an editor who would be like, okay, go deeper. MFA, we say that. You did this because. Okay, why? It's like talking to a five-year-old. Why? And as I did it, I sort of forgot that...

53:14
this was me and this was my story because by the time I'd finished it, I'd tried to make it good as well. So I sort of thought of it again as my story, but also in terms of craft and ideas and sort of forgot that people are going to say, oh, she did that. And so I think I was a little bit blinded myself, put blinders on. Yeah. I mean, I could be a little protection too, in a way of like protecting ourselves. Cause I'm sure that

53:40
by putting something out there so personal, when you meet people that have read your book and they don't know you other than reading your book, how does that feel knowing that they know your story? Is that a good feeling? Is that a feeling, like a scared feeling? So far, you know, it's been fine because I've heard from people, including men, that it's been helpful. Good. So that's good because I was afraid it was a little too, um, hmm, mis-misinterested, a little overly misinterested. But no, I've heard from men and women who found it helpful.

54:09
and people who found it entertaining. It's a pretty, it's entertaining, and I specifically wrote it to be entertaining and not a fast read, but something you could read like on the beach or something. I wanted it to feel really accessible and a little, not fun, but humorous. I'm a humor writer, so I did that. So actually the feedback, while it didn't do what I wanted it to,

54:35
The feedback and things I've heard have been positive enough that I felt very good about it. I've heard from some people that it's been helpful. When I look at it, not in terms of an objective kind of success, but as was it a good experience for me and did it help people, then I feel pretty good about that. Did it help you? Yes and no. Okay. Start with a no. I'll start with a no. Okay. I'm in for the independent press. She writes press. It's curated.

55:05
It has standards, it's award-winning, all that stuff. But being out there as an indie author, maybe any kind of new author these days and trying to get attention is extraordinarily difficult. You know, I did not get the reviews or the things I wanted. My small town gave my book a lovely review in our local thing. My local bookstore has done wonders with my book. But in general, I don't know what the heck you do. I've tried.

55:34
And some of that was hard. Probably the best thing I did was get an article in Huffington Post about it and some other few magazines. The good part was I loved the process. I mean, going back to school with all the young folks was a neato. The workshops were neato. The people I met were cool. The people in the writing cohort were neat. I loved that I could put together what I consider to be a well-written book or at least the best book I could write. That's pretty exciting as a former lawyer.

56:02
I was actually reading pieces of this morning, so I'm trying to decide if I want to put any more money into promoting it or just give it up. That's another thing, I've lost money on every sale. You want to promote a book, at this point it's basically throwing money, part of it is throwing money at it. And extraordinary amount of work, I am technologically challenged. But the positive part was the experience of writing about it. I'm happy with the finished product. It looks beautiful, she writes is really good with covers and all that. So, you know, it's a mixed bag, but it was a cool thing to do.

56:32
doing some volunteer and a little memoir teaching, teaching writing, which I love. So that's kind of the next step is kind of, trying to kind of put the ego part of it aside and then looking at like, what do I want to do next? This past summer, I expunged the book by becoming a certified yoga teacher. There you go. And now you're gonna mix the two worlds and you're gonna do something. So I think, you know, it brings me back to the idea when you said that after your husband died, you were left in this health.

57:01
with a lot of things and not a lot of experiences. You've just given yourself this experience that a lot of people will never, ever experience. And so I think there's a lot of value in that. That's something that, like, you can hang your hat on, that you wrote a book, you published a book. It's out there in the world for people to see. I think that's just, like, amazing, and what an experience to go through. You also did your MFA, which...

57:26
probably at this point in your life with the experiences that you've had was probably so much more valuable than if you had done it as a 20 year old. You know, like I feel like you approached it differently, I'm sure. So much better. You know, I was the one who'd volunteer. Sure, I'll read first. You know, I don't care. Exactly. I mean, if you don't think I'm, you know, I didn't care. I thought that people in the class, how it's different views were so interesting. Yeah, and it was so neat to just do it. Like, this is cool. This is fun. Not, oh God.

57:53
What if I don't get a job? Because when I was in law school, I was really worried. What if my grades be good enough? What if I pass the bar? Would I get a job? Yes, all that was fine. But it was nice to be able to do this just from the point of just loving the experience. Yeah, like who gives a shit? Like I can do whatever I want. Yes, who gives a shit? You know, like it's what it is as is, right? You know, available as is. You do your life the way you need to. I love to kind of wrap up these conversations with a question. And I'm wondering if...

58:24
If you could go back knowing all the things you've experienced now since he passed and you could go back to the version of you after he passed sitting on the floor, just kind of like in this fog of sadness and despair. Is there anything that you would wanna tell her about what you know about what's coming up for her? Definitely, yes. Do not date for years. You are not ready. This is a harsh environment. Definitely that.

58:53
Second, don't worry so much what people think of you. You'll be fine. Third, you're very naive. Most men will not, do not wanna be just friends. Very rare. And fourth, stop dyeing your hair red every four weeks. It's a major hassle and it's not worth the upkeep. You are a humor writer. So there is this element coming in here. I think those are valuable life lessons for anyone. Like don't dye your hair red every four weeks. There's a lot going on.

59:21
It's kind of like bleaching your hair every four weeks. It's a lot of work. A lot of head burning. Yeah, I'm a hiker. So at one point it all just faded and I hike and I found something super low maintenance and I'm like, yes. If people want to like get in your circle, learn more about you, connect with you, maybe tell you their story and connect on that level. Yeah, I love hearing people's stories. What's the best way to like find you or be around you? Oh, the best way to find me.

59:49
Well, come to yoga in Venetia, please. But assuming that's not going to happen. I'm Debbie Weiss author. That is my website, Debbie Weiss author. I am not Debbie R. Weiss with the brown hair. I'm blonde. That's a picture of me on the beach. I'm California. She's in New Jersey. So I'm Debbie Weiss author. I believe the contact form on my website works. I'm getting a lot of spam. I'm also on Facebook as Debbie Weiss. That friend me and message me. I'm in there.

01:00:16
I'm on Instagram as Debbie Weiss writer or author. So you can definitely find me there. And my book, the easiest way is just to find it on Amazon, is available as is. It's actually available as is, A Midlife Widow's Search for Love. And you can find my book on Amazon, better as a local bookstore. Awesome. Well, we will put the links to your website and to your social media, just so it's easy access for everyone listening so they can connect with you, get in your circle.

01:00:44
We'll put the Amazon link. And if you are someone that goes to your local bookstore, go there first, because obviously that is more helpful to help the bookstore, but also help these independent authors. Thank you for sharing your story and allowing me to ask questions and go back to this mom moment and the connection that we have in that way. Thank you. Thank you, Matt. And everyone listening, thank you for listening. As Debbie knows, as an independent author, as an independent podcaster, someone that does this all by himself, any kind of

01:01:13
sharing of this episode. If you know someone that's gone through something that like Debbie has, and you think that something that she said in this episode would resonate, please send this episode to them. And maybe that will help them feel a little less alone in that experience. It will also help us to kind of spread the word. And thank you for listening. And I will be back next week with a brand new episode of the Life Shift Podcast. Thanks again, Debbie. Thank you.