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Dating After Loss · Let's Ask the Mamas!

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  We got a question for American Mama's. Dear Mama's, I heard your segment
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  on parents remarrying after the death of a spouse, but can you back up
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  a bit, how do you help your parents get back out there and start
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  dating again after a loss? Well, let's ask our American mamas. Mama
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  Mama joining us now our American mamas Terry Nederville and Kimberly Brotherson. I think
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  it was last week we were talking about, you know, how difficult it
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  can be, you know, after you've had a parent that died and then
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  the surviving parent eventually goes out and remarries, and how jarring that can be
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  even for adult kids. This question is, Okay, look, I've had
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  someone die. If I had a parent die, it's been a while,
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  my other parents not yet going out, and how do you start that whole
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  process. I was shocked at the response that we got with this. I
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  could not believe the number of people that reached out to talk about their own
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  situations. But what we were hearing is that so many people were like,
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  well, how do you start again? How does older people like, how
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  do we get back out there? Because we're so lonely, we're so sad.
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  So we actually asked my mom and her husband, Ralph. We interviewed
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  them and asked them about their own situation and some of the things that they
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  were sharing we had never heard before ourselves. And when we were talking to
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  Ralph, Ralph was suicidal after he lost his wife of thirty years. Wow.
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  He had no children, no family, so he was so isolated,
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  so alone, and he went to a grief counseling group and it was somebody
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  at the grief counseling that became his circle. They suggested he go to a
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  senior citizen dance and that's when everything opened up for him with dancing and then
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  mom and Mom said, she said that one of the things that she decided
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  to do for herself was not only to start saying yes to life, but
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  to be okay with going to things by herself. Yeah, and that's a
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  hard thing to do. And she said, and she made this point that
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  I thought was so interesting too. She said that when dad was alive and
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  she had to go to things by herself, at least she had him he
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  was there. It's kind of like me, I go to a lot of
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  things by myself because of my husband's job. She said, there's a difference
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  when you lose the spouse and you're a widow and you go, you feel
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  extra alone because you are you feel alone in this world. So she said
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  that she started going. One of her friends, her childhood friends, was
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  in a band, so she would go buy her blue dressund like a bluegrass
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  and go listen. And she said she was She said she was shocked.
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  She actually used the words my mouth hit the floor because she went to watch
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  this band and then she saw all of these senior citizens get up from the
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  table, eighties and ninety year old and start dancing. And she was like
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  stunned. And this five year old man who knew how to dance said,
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  you know, let me, you know, may I have this dance?
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  And she couldn't believe it. It was a whole new world. So so
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  she and my aunt, who was also a widow, started going to all
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  of these senior places. Well, she said, they didn't even know they
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  existed. She said, when I thought of dancing, I thought bars.
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  She said, I didn't know that there were local legions that had senior citizen
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  dances where there was no alcohol, there was no smoking. It was just
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  good, wholesome, fun music. And dancing because that's what she wants to
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  do. She didn't want to be in a bar scene. And so she
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  said they're everywhere and everybody has so much fun, but she didn't know that
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  they existed. And then she talked about how you know, nowadays there's a
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  whole group and it's growing every day of pickleball, the yet yes, the
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  elderly crew, you know, the boomers, they're getting into pickleball and they're
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  meeting each other that way too, having a good time. That way,
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  they're having a great time. And I thought it was interesting to hear Ralph
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  talk about and I loved it when he you know, he found solace in
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  his grief counseling group and it was there that they were kind of helping each
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  other find avenues outlets to go because he said, the worst thing that you
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  can do is be by yourself. He stayed on his farm by himself for
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  a couple of years, and like Kimberly said, he didn't have He and
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  his wife Rien and they don't have children, so he felt so alone.
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  Whereas Mom said she had the four of us kids and all the grandkids,
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  so her grief was different than his. She never felt that you said I
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  could share my grief. Yeah, when you can share your grief, it's
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  easier to move forward than it is to grieve alone. One of the things
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  that's the theme here with what you guys are talking about is something I see
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  in a lot of different things. The enemy tries to isolate right that if
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  he can get you alone, with just you and your thoughts, and he
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  can invade your thoughts, then he can start putting a whole bunch of nonsense
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  into your head, and a whole bunch of fear, a whole bunch of
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  doubt. But if you go out and you actually find connectivity in one form
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  or another, and it almost doesn't really matter what it is, just go
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  be with people, connectivity, talking to folks, that opens doors. That
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  is so true. It's so true about how the devil can use the isolation
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  to get into your mind and you start thinking terrible thoughts. But as soon
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  as you say yes to life, it's just you say, I'm going to
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  choose to do this. Doors open. The sin entered the world because he
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  got evilon right right. Oh, interesting all by yourself. I've never thought
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  about that, but I think about it all the time, and especially when
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  you're going through grief, and you're already going through not just any kind of
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  grief, I mean really any kind of greed. It can be so healthy
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  just to find someone or a group of people that you don't have normal ahead
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  of time, just go yeah, exactly. It's liberating. I feel like
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  Dascar. American Mama was a question. Go to our website American grounderad dot
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  com slash mamas and click on the ask The MoMA's button turned out of a
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  really brothers and think so much. Thank you,