Episode 98: Confessions of a jealous widow
2/12/25
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You are listening to the Life Reconstructed podcast with me, Teresa Amaral Beshwate, grief expert, best-selling author and widow. I’m so glad you’re here because in this and every episode, I shine a light on the widowed way forward.
Hello and welcome to episode 98. In this episode, I take a close look at jealousy, widowed style, why it’s perfectly normal, and offer practical tips to help.
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If you’re listening to this episode as it’s released, it’s nearly Valentine’s Day, a day that makes many widowed people gag. And it’s a good time, I think, to talk about jealousy.
As a widowed person, it’s impossible to not notice couples. Clearly some couples can’t stand each other and don’t try to hide it. But it’s the seemingly happy couples that can be tough.
Have you ever watched couples walk hand in hand and feel jealous? Maybe it’s an older couple, living out the life that you and your person had planned.
Or maybe it’s a couple of any age, and they’re together, laughing, loving and….. living.
Have you ever been annoyed when your friends seem to be flaunting their alive husbands?
I don’t know about you, but I have wondered many times why it was my person who died, and not the serial killers. And to be honest, I’ve more than once looked around and thought, “my person?” and not “that person?”
Not that I’d wish death on anyone, or widowhood on anyone. But, full disclosure, I have found myself questioning, “Why him, and not them?”
And then there’s always the feeling guilty for thinking such a thought. I bet you can relate.
If you’ve had any of these thoughts, and if you’ve ever felt jealous, I want you to know that it’s perfectly normal. Our brains are designed to offer thoughts, and the thing about thoughts is that they happen on default. They play like an unattended juke box in our brains. Some thoughts are not true, some are not nice, some are not useful. Some are completely random.
We humans have about 60,000 thoughts a day, researchers say, and 80% of those thoughts are negative. And 95% of those thoughts are redundant, on repeat, like a broken record.
There’s nothing wrong with those default thoughts. You aren’t those thoughts. You simply observe them. Juke boxes sometimes play sounds you don’t like. That’s just the way of it.
So the first step is to notice whatever your brain is offering you. Then make it normal, because brains offer thoughts. There’s no guarantee that they’ll make any sense at all, or be in line with your character, or consistent with your morals. Not the default thoughts, anyway.
It’s the next thoughts that we can choose, on purpose. It’s when we tell the jukebox what to play – those are the intentional thoughts that we get to choose.
Because probably you’d rather not feel jealousy because it doesn’t feel great. It adds to the already insanely heavy burden of life after loss.
So the default thoughts cause you to feel jealous. That’s normal and okay. Notice and normalize it. Then, choose true and useful thoughts, on purpose.
With practice, your brain will defer to those chosen thoughts quite naturally.
Today I look at older couples walking hand-in-hand and decide that they’re probably both widowed and found each other late in life. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but we never know what’s true about people we don’t know. So I just choose a thought that makes me feel happy for them.
Our thoughts cause our feelings. Thoughts are not inherently “right” or “wrong,” “good” or “bad” or even “positive” or “negative.” I think what’s more useful is to label thoughts as default (or sometimes I say unintentional) or chosen (intentional) thoughts.
It may help to think of it as the “first thought” versus the “chosen thought.”
They probably cause a very different feeling. And that’s how it works. Thoughts cause feelings.
And it’s okay to feel any feeling.
These concepts are just one part of my Life Reconstructed group coaching program, which is open right now. The doors close on February 25th 2025. Click the link in the show notes to learn more.
If this episode was helpful, please share it with a widowed friend. And remember that I believe in you, and I’m here for you. Take care.
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