Widow's Permission Slips with Gladys Jean Ullstam

Somewhere in the middle of all this, you probably started treating your grief like a problem to solve. The books, the stages, the journal, the app, the quiet hope that if you just do the right things in the right order, one day you will wake up and be done with it. In this episode of Widow's Permission Slips, I talk about that day you keep waiting for, the finish line that never actually come...

Episode 1 — You Don't Have to Be Okay Everyone around you seems to need you to be okay. The friend who keeps telling you how strong you are. The coworker who relaxes when you smile. The part of you that has learned to say "I'm fine" because it is easier than watching someone's face fall. In this first episode of Widow's Permission Slips, I sit with you in the exhausti...

It has been a while now, and you can feel the expectation in the air. The sense that you should be further along by this point. Maybe someone has said it out loud, or maybe it is just the way the conversations around you have moved on while you are still standing in the middle of it. In this episode of Widow's Permission Slips, I sit with you in the myth that grief runs on a schedule. We look...

Sometimes grief shows up in ways that surprise you. Laughing at the worst possible moment. Feeling nothing at all when you expected to fall apart. A flash of relief that frightens you. Anger that seems to come from nowhere and land everywhere. In this episode of Widow's Permission Slips, I sit with you in the parts of grief that feel strange or even wrong, the ones that make you quietly wonde...