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Joe Sanok 00:00:00  How long do you spend writing your progress notes? Every day. If it's over 30 minutes, you should check out describe. Describe is a HIPAA compliant. I note taking software that I and many of my students use daily. It saves me 1 or 2 hours a day on my documentation around consulting, and I know it's going to save you more in counseling. Also, it customizes exactly to my own writing style. I recommend that every therapist give it a trial. It's free. Go to describe how to get started for free. Again, that's describe Mediacom to get started for free. This is the practice of the Practice podcast with Joe. Session number 1202. I'm Joe, your host, and welcome to the practice of the Practice podcast. I am so excited that you are here. I am so excited about today's show. We have Krista Saint Germain, who is a master certified life coach, grief expert, widow, mom, and host of the Widowed Mom podcast. When her husband was killed by a drunk driver in 2016, Krista's life was completely and unexpectedly flipped upside down after therapy helped her unfurl from the fetal position.

Joe Sanok 00:01:26  Krista discovered life coaching post-traumatic growth and learned the tools she needed to move forward and create a future she could get excited about. Now, she coaches and teaches other widows so they can love life again, too. Krista, welcome to the show!

Krista St-Germain 00:01:42  Thanks so much for having me. Always delighted when anyone wants to talk about grief.

Joe Sanok 00:01:46  Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, I think it's it's interesting because, like, you know, your grief sounds like such a traumatic, disruptive, just like, explosion in your life. And I think that sometimes it feels like, not that there's a classification of griefs, but it's like, man, like, I don't. I feel like if I even, like, share my own grief or traumatic stuff that's happened. It's like, well. But her husband was killed in a drunk driving accident. How do you even have that conversation? how do you view when people maybe naturally compare their grief to yours, or compare their grief to other people?

Krista St-Germain 00:02:22  Yeah. I think it's such a natural thing for the brain to do to compare.

Krista St-Germain 00:02:26  And also, it can be such an unhelpful thing. And so we just really want to watch that. Right. Because everyone's grief experience is important and valid and unique. And the last thing we need to to be doing is to not give ourselves permission to feel how we feel, because we fear someone else has felt worse. It's just it's particularly unhelpful. But I get why we do it. And I've done it too you know.

Joe Sanok 00:02:52  Yeah. Well we have a ton of therapists here that are listening and a lot of us, you know, in grad school, heard about the stages of grief. And I know that's something you cover a ton, and it might, you know, you might be kind of sick of talking about that. but I want to quickly just start with, in grad school, we learned about stages of grief. And before we started rolling, one of the things you said that you're both sick of talking about, but also needs to be talked about, is how that stages of grief is outdated.

Joe Sanok 00:03:17  So tell me what you mean by that.

Krista St-Germain 00:03:20  Yeah. So first of all, I'll say it was the only grief theory I knew about when my husband died. So I also understand why it is the default. It's kind of the one that took over popular culture, but The Five Stages of Grief was, first of all, created in 1969, which it's been a minute. and it was a really important work in its day. Right. Nobody was having the conversations, that, that were so important to have. And Elizabeth Kubler-Ross came along and in her study of hospice patients, people coming to terms with their own terminal illness, their own mortality started noticing that there were these, you know, five things that people typically tended to experience. And so she wrote a book called On Death and Dying. And then later she applied that to grief in a book called On Grief and Grieving. And people kind of took those five stages, those five things. She was noticing denial, anger, bargain, depression, and acceptance and turned that into a formula.

Krista St-Germain 00:04:15  And we humans love a formula, don't we? We like to know that there are stages and we just have to go kind of check the box and we'll get through it. And maybe that gives us hope. but, you know, even later in her life, she regretted how people took her work and used it to make it staged base and formulaic and narrow. Right. And what we now know is that everyone has such a different experience of grief. It's it's you got to think about it like a fingerprint, right? Every grief experience is different. Every person experiences their grief differently. And there is no end of grief, right? There's integration of grief, but there is no end. And unfortunately, if we're looking to something. Like the five stages and comparing our own experience, we don't typically find that it matches. The experience we're having. And then sadly, what I see is that people either get frustrated and just, you know, don't look for any support or they use it against themselves and, you know, ask themselves questions like, well, am I angry enough or should I be more angry? Or, you know, is this what denial is like? Or have I come to a place of acceptance as though acceptance is actually a place? So it's problematic for so many reasons, and there's so much more good grief theory out there now that I wish we were talking about more.

Krista St-Germain 00:05:30  So yeah, I'm happy to be happy to talk about it so that we can stop perpetuating it and we can start talking about other, more helpful models.

Joe Sanok 00:05:38  Yeah, I know that when I was going through my divorce, during 2021, you know, our family had gone on a road trip during the pandemic, lived in national parks and a camper, and, my ex decided to leave the family and stay in California. And then I came home alone with the girls. And you know, there's a lot to that story that I don't talk about publicly, especially because I don't want my girls to someday be like, why did you say all that stuff? Yeah. So figuring that out. But my therapist, you know, you know, I'm still in therapy, around just kind of all that comes up from from that stuff. But he talked about reverse labor pains that it's sort of like, you know, at first it's just you're grieving so hard, and then it's sort of like they start to space out, but you don't always like you'll have these triggers.

Joe Sanok 00:06:23  It could be a certain temperature outside. It could be, you know, a thing you find in the garage that you haven't, you know, thought about in ten years. And it just kind of brings those things up. And for me, that was just a really helpful way of thinking about it, that it's like it doesn't you don't know when it's like going to just stop, like what you said. Like it's not like there's a goal to, like, I need to stop feeling these things. for you, I imagine, you know, the whole drunk driver side of it. and the the blame and the anger. It just seems like. Not that it's necessarily more complex, but it just seems like it'd be so heavy to even, like, live through that. what was helpful during that time, you said in your bio that that you got therapy, and I think that therapists always love to hear, like what? What worked? What did that person do really well that helped you? How did they join you? what was it during that time when you did enter into therapy that the therapist did that you found especially helpful?

Krista St-Germain 00:07:18  Yeah.

Krista St-Germain 00:07:19  So I already had a really great relationship with her. She had helped me through my divorce before marrying Hugo. And, so I already had a great level of comfort, and, you know, primarily what she did is she just let me talk, and she just validated my experience. It I needed to be able to talk about it with someone who wasn't trying to make me feel better, and someone whom I didn't feel like I was burdening. And it's really difficult to get that with friends and family. They care so much and they don't really know how to be with you in that pain. And sometimes they try to minimize it because they feel so uncomfortable with it and they don't really know what to do with themselves. And she just didn't do any of that. She just let me say whatever I needed to say and didn't try to make me feel better. And there's so much value in just that I think.

Joe Sanok 00:08:05  Didn't make me try to feel better. Oh my gosh, I love that. when she was sitting with you and wasn't trying to make you feel better, I think sometimes therapists can feel like they need to fix it.

Joe Sanok 00:08:18  But I'm hearing you say there was there was nothing that she could have done to fix it. That really joining you in it and allowing your process to unfold was the most valuable. how did how did that carry over outside of therapy for you?

Krista St-Germain 00:08:32  you know, I think the more someone else validates that how you feel is okay, and it's not a problem to be fixed, then the more able you are to validate yourself when you're surrounded by other people who aren't validating that and when you. Because when you go back into the real world, right. And you've got all of these friends and family and they mean so well, you know, when they're saying, oh, they're in a better place, and don't worry, you're young and you'll meet someone else and, you know, at least you had them while you had them. And, you know, they're just saying all these things to try to make you feel better because they just don't know how to feel good when you don't. Right. it can be easier to hear that without taking it on.

Krista St-Germain 00:09:12  Right. and so I really appreciated that.

Joe Sanok 00:09:16  Now post-traumatic, growth. tell me about that.

Krista St-Germain 00:09:21  post-traumatic growth. Yeah. It's kind of one of those terms. Like for me, anyway, I remembered hearing about it and thinking, wait, what? What did they say? You know, everybody talks about post-traumatic stress disorder, but not so much post-traumatic growth. So post-traumatic growth was a is a phrase that was coined in the 90s, mid 90s by a couple of researchers, last names, Tedeschi and Calhoun. And kind of prior to their work, it was really thought that the best you could hope for after something traumatic happened. And to put it in context at that time. The understanding of trauma was really more big T little t, you know, it was kind of like subjective, I mean, objective certain things are traumatic, other things aren't. But the idea was that, you know, the best you could hope for after something traumatic was that you would just return to the baseline of wellness or life satisfaction that you were experiencing before the trauma, you know? So it was either you're going to dip down and you're going to stay there, or you're going to dip down and you're going to bounce back, but that's as good as it gets.

Krista St-Germain 00:10:15  And they came along and started noticing that there was actually a third group of people who were not just bouncing back to their baseline, but they were bouncing forward and not in spite of the trauma, but because of it. So they were reporting greater levels of life satisfaction in some key areas because of what they had been through and the choices that they had made afterward. And so really just kind of blows up. I think what most people think you can create in your life after you go through something that you experience as traumatic, and there's just a lot of possibility in it. Not that you have to be grateful, of course, that the trauma happened, not that you have to have wanted that to have happened, but that as humans, we have agency and we always get to decide, you know what we want our relationship to be with anything that happens to us and who we want to be in the face of it. You know.

Joe Sanok 00:11:06  I think that's an interesting differentiation that I think is important that you don't.

Joe Sanok 00:11:10  You can say, oh my gosh, I could never have got to this point had it not been through this terrible thing that happened. And I can also say it freaking sucks that this happened, that like, I don't have to be like, oh, good, good thing that happened. Like, because it got me here that we can have both of those things. It doesn't have to be some binary thing, that it's either good or bad. I think that when I think about my own growth, like, I feel like the, the divorce and then, you know, for three years, being the primary parent where, you know, having, you know, sole physical custody and all of that that came with it that was so unexpected. it really like, you know, I feel like it got me to deconstruct things I wouldn't have deconstructed otherwise. are there things that during that time, whether it be beliefs or ways of thinking about the world or friendships or different things that you deconstructed as a result of that trauma.

Krista St-Germain 00:12:08  So much, it was such a time of brokenhearted openness, and it was the strangest mix of sadness, but also or for me. So I will say, first relationships you. I got pretty clear on who I wanted to be spending time with and who I didn't. And, you know, something like that can really show you, maybe what you didn't know about certain people. Some people kind of ghost you and fall away. Other people you never would have expected. Rise up for you and champion you, and it's just such a time to kind of reconsider. Who am I spending my energy investing in? And is that really what I what I want to be doing? Also, for me, I had a huge impact to my career. All of a sudden, I had kind of always known that my career at that time, I was in project management for a company that built planes, and my husband lived and breathed aerospace. Right. He was an engineer, tried and true. He absolutely loved what he did.

Krista St-Germain 00:13:11  I was just there because it paid well. And, you know, the people were nice and it was mostly fun, but it was not satisfying. And so another thing that happened for me was just this realization that, holy cow, life is incredibly short and precious. And, you know, if it can be taken away this quickly, is this am I spending my days the one the way that I want to be spending my days, you know? Am I making the impact that I want to make? Am I living in alignment with the values that I have? And so that was a really big shake up for me, to realize that I got to make a change here. and so, you know, that's what what ultimately did leave me to to leave that career and pursue grief work, although that really wasn't that really wasn't what I was thinking for about the first year. I couldn't really have imagined doing grief work that early on.

Joe Sanok 00:13:59  But were there other things that you left or other things you began, as you started to think through, hey, life's too short.

Joe Sanok 00:14:06  I need to do things that I enjoy or that give me fulfillment or are more value aligned. Other things that you left or other things you added?

Krista St-Germain 00:14:14  Yeah, a lot of the things that I left were not big things. You know, when you zoom out and look at them. But they had a big impact. And by that I mean a lot of things that I realized I was doing for external validation, a lot of things that I was, you know, doing because I had some good thoughts, people pleasing kinds of patterns, boundaries with certain people saying yes when I really wanted to say no. I think I just kind of became a better advocate for what I wanted and made made choices accordingly. I also think I just became more open and honest with the people that I wanted to be open and honest with. Like connection became more important to me. Yeah. There was there's a lot. It felt like a period of big change. Also, spiritually, I think just philosophically, my eye was more open.

Krista St-Germain 00:15:05  I read, well, I had trouble retaining information for quite a while. Thanks. Grief fog. But, when things Fall apart, was probably the most powerful book I've ever read in my life and came to me, you know, at the exact time that I needed it. And so I think I softened, softened into some philosophies that I wasn't, say I wasn't open to before. They just had a different impact on me then because I had a felt experience that connected me more.

Joe Sanok 00:15:36  Yeah.

Krista St-Germain 00:15:36  So yeah.

Joe Sanok 00:15:37  That idea of it wasn't big changes. I mean, obviously like leaving your career and trying something new. A lot of people would say that was a pretty big change. But, you know, I think for myself, even thinking about being more honest with my parents and how often I would just, you know, they'd say something that rubbed me the wrong way, didn't feel accurate. I felt like I was walking on eggshells. And it's like to me, the divorce and just like blowing up of my life, I'm like, you know, if this can happen, like, I don't want to live misaligned.

Joe Sanok 00:16:07  And it was interesting to see how there was like a shake up initially because, you know, Joe's the firstborn. He's the peacemaker that makes sure everyone's doing what they're supposed to be doing. And like, easygoing or whatever narratives I had for myself. But to now be able to see what the relationship is after three years of being often more honest and probably a little murkier than I should have been. But it took a little like new language learning with them, whereas, you know, with other people, I can be open and honest and clear and straightforward and for some reason there was like a barrier there. And it's amazing because most people would say, okay. Being open with your parents like that, that's a smaller thing. But for me, that felt like such a big shift. Like, you know, if I'm living in this, you know, kind of post marriage world where I get to really decide what that looks like differently than maybe the narrative I thought that I was told I needed to have.

Joe Sanok 00:16:59  It was interesting how it opened up so many questions of like relationships. Like, do I feel like I need to get married again? Or could I be in a committed long term relationship, not married? Or could I, like, do I have to follow the relationship ladder that everyone gives you where you date for X number of months or years, and then you move in, or then you like get married or whatever order you think you've been told. It really shook things up to say, like, what do I actually want my life to look like? very intentionally, for you, as you are looking at that, it's not. I'm hearing you say yes. So I'm assuming you resonate.

Krista St-Germain 00:17:32  With some of that.

Joe Sanok 00:17:33  Why do you why do you resonate with that? And then also like, I'm interested in that shake up, just like kind of how you maybe tested or tried new things or like, what kind of philosophies you had that guided you. Like, what does that bring up for you?

Krista St-Germain 00:17:51  yeah.

Krista St-Germain 00:17:51  I mean, so much of what you said, right? I just, I think there for me, it was also a process of just starting to look at ways that I had been socialized and, and that's that's ongoing. Right. That keeps happening, of course. And the more you know, the more you kind of see it. But yeah, so much of like, am I living the life I've been told I'm supposed to live? Am I wanting the things I've been told I'm supposed to want? Or am I right? Is it coming from inside of me? And there was a lot of also what I noticed. A lack of letting myself receive and letting myself have a lot of like. Like it took me forever to even. Even though I had the money to, like, let someone help me with my house. Let someone help me with my yard. Right. Because I had these stories about. Well, you should be able to do that. There's no reason you can't do that, right? just some of that stuff that I learned about what? What? The proper ways to spend and save.

Krista St-Germain 00:18:48  Oh, my gosh, all of the all of the drama that I had to work through with getting life insurance money and all of the mixed emotions I felt about being happy that I had that money and being angry about how it came to me and worried about losing it and, you know, honoring him with it and just all of that. You know, there was huge growth in that. Yeah, there's just so much.

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Joe Sanok 00:19:56  Com and receive a special two month trial. Absolutely free. Again that's therapy notes. Com and use promo code Joe on the website. If you're coming from another EHR therapy notes will also import your demographic data quick and easy at no cost, so you can get started right away. Trust me. Don't waste any more of your time and try therapy notes. Just use promo code Joe at checkout. So at what point did you start going through the coaching program and starting the podcast and and really like having what you went through be something that you also identified with in your work.

Krista St-Germain 00:20:35  Yeah. So I had been listening to a podcast that was that I had found to be very helpful the whole time. It was, you know, just something I had been interested in having nothing to do with grief, you know, well before that. And which.

Joe Sanok 00:20:49  Podcast was.

Krista St-Germain 00:20:50  It? It was a Life Coach School podcast with Brooke Castillo. and she happened to launch. It was like this very strange timing. I thought she happened to launch a a program that was a pretty affordable price point, kind of a group coaching program.

Krista St-Germain 00:21:06  And I had never invested in anything like that. And I decided and also I could hear Hugo's voice in my head saying, don't do it. It's snake oil like you would. You would not have been into it at all. but I put myself in that program and it really didn't have anything to do with grief. It was really just life coaching tools and just, you know, kind of. How do you. How do you like your life more? And it was really, really helpful to me. And at the same time, I was talking with my therapist about changing careers, and we had pretty much decided that therapy was where I needed to go. So I had enrolled in an MFT program. I was waiting for it to start. I needed one abnormal psych credit because I didn't have that in my undergrad. And so at the same time, I was taking this class, waiting for the MFT program to start. My plan was to keep working my full time job and go through the program, you know, at night and work my way through it.

Krista St-Germain 00:21:57  And by the time August came around, when the program was supposed to start, I had fallen. So in love with coaching that I decided, I don't actually think I want to be a therapist, I think I want to be a coach, and that felt really big and scary because first of all, I live in Kansas and I mean, it's better now. I've been coaching for, you know, years, but nobody in my life knew what I was talking about. Right. and everybody kind of thought I was a little bit out there for wanting to leave a really nice paying corporate job, but that's what I did. I went through that. I went through her training program, and six months later I actually got a job offer from the Life Coach school and left my job to go and work for them, which thankfully did not work out. And I ended up a couple of months later just deciding, okay, I'm not going to go back to my old job. I'm going to figure out how to make this work as a coach.

Krista St-Germain 00:22:47  And it was then at that point that I decided, okay, I think grief is what I want to coach. I want to work with widows. Before I didn't, I thought it would be too heavy. I also disqualified myself, because Hugo and I hadn't been married very long, and I just had some stories about how. Who was I to help people?

Joe Sanok 00:23:07  how long were you guys married?

Krista St-Germain 00:23:08  Only three months. Wow. We'll see. April, may. June. July. Okay. Almost five, I guess. It fell short, but yeah, very shortly. We had been together for, you know, a couple of years, but only married briefly, and it was like the redemption story for me, right? I had gotten through. I was married to my first husband for a long time. We had two kids together and that ended in flames and not well. and so he was just kind of like the. Oh, you can be treated the way you want to be treated.

Krista St-Germain 00:23:39  You know that, like, best days are ahead of you, life's finally working out kind of story and then boom, gone. And but yeah, I had a lot of stories about, well, you know, how are you going to help somebody who's been married for 25, 30 years to the same person when that was not your story?

Joe Sanok 00:23:56  Yeah. How did you how did you figure that out?

Krista St-Germain 00:24:00  I mean, I just realized that my experience doesn't. They're not looking for me to to tell them what to do. Right? They're not looking for me to tell them how to feel. They're looking for me to help them get whatever is out of their way so they can feel how they need to feel and do what is right for them to do. And, you know, become in touch with the wisdom that they already innately have, and so I know enough about grief to speak to it. but that doesn't that doesn't mean I have to know enough about everybody's grief. I, I won't go into details, but I'm going through something right now that is extremely grief and disruptive in my life.

Krista St-Germain 00:24:34  And it's it is wildly different from the grief experience that I had with Hugo. And, you know, it just we just got to keep reminding ourselves our grief is not someone else's grief. One grief that we have is not the same as the next grief that we have, but the but the principles are the same of can I learn to feel my feelings? Can I learn to question the stories that my brain offers me about what this means in my life? Can I exercise agency where I have it? Can I separate what I can control from what I can't? You know, all of those things. Those are the things that that people need help with.

Joe Sanok 00:25:11  Yeah. Now when you think about just like kind of starting the podcast, getting that going. Was that starting at the same time or was that something different?

Krista St-Germain 00:25:22  No. I waited to start the podcast until I had been coaching for about a year and a half. I was almost two years. I waited quite a while. I was actually working with Brooke at the time, and Brooke's recommendation was, don't start a podcast too early.

Krista St-Germain 00:25:38  Go figure out. Go, coach. Get get a lot of hours of coaching. Go learn what what people need help with, and figure out how you're helping them and get your coaching skills solid. And then you will have so much to talk about and help people with. And I'm really glad that for me, not that that's the way everyone should do it, but for me, I'm glad that I did it that way because by the time I started, I had a mile long list of how I wanted to help people.

Speaker 3 00:26:05  yeah.

Joe Sanok 00:26:05  Okay, so one other question I have is so I have a friend, Dana, who I've had on here, she has the forced Joy project, and her husband was diagnosed with cancer and I don't remember exactly how long. It was like 3 or 6 months from diagnosis to. To death. And, during that time, he and she decided that they were going to force joy on themselves, even though it was a really tough time. And so they kind of did this personal, what they called the forced Joy project.

Joe Sanok 00:26:35  And, and now it's it's years later. She has like a podcast. She does retreats for widows that, primarily, have had a husband die, through some sort of chronic illness. And we've had a conversation around, just having your brand identity be paired with something you went through and how, like, does that kind of get you stuck in that grief or stuck in that identity of being a widow? when, you know, maybe years later, like, you aren't as kind of stuck in that and, and just like, kind of having conversations around, it's been a conversation we have kind of over the last few years, and I'm interested in your thoughts on that. When you make your kind of brand be around, you know, this trauma you went through. Do you ever feel like it kind of forced too much cement on your brain around that? Or how do you handle that, maybe, like maybe rather than have a judgment around it. How do you how do you handle that, having your brand be paired up with something that you went through to help yourself keep growing?

Krista St-Germain 00:27:41  Yeah.

Krista St-Germain 00:27:41  I mean, I guess it really has never bothered me. I get I get so into it. What I have found for me is that it just keeps evolving because, I mean, I used to think I'm just going to get to the end of this and then I'm going to move on. And then of course, you realize, no, that's not actually how it works. You know, you you're you're going to be experiencing secondary losses for the whole rest of your life. And, I don't feel like talking about that weighs me down at all. It I actually find it helpful. So I get I get why some people do feel weighed down by it or boxed in, but for me it doesn't really feel that way. Also, I think my focus is so much on helping helping people love life again that to me grief feels like the the doorway that they come through. But it's it's not, you know, it's a portion of what we're talking about, of course. And everybody who works with me came to me for that reason.

Krista St-Germain 00:28:40  But but what they're there for is because they don't know how to genuinely love life again. And that's what they want for themselves. And I'm so convinced that we deserve that. And we can create that, that it is. I just love doing that. And I love the community that comes with it, and I love the support that comes with it. And yeah, there's just not really anything I don't love about it. And I'm constantly growing too. And it helps. Some of my clients are they've been clients for years, so they'll, you know, come through my initial program and then stay for my, upper level programs just for people who just want to keep going and growing and, they are like my, my playground, right when I'm creating things for them. It's what am I? Where am I growing? You know that in in other ways. And how can I incorporate that in and teach them and and so that allows me some playfulness and some expansiveness that I wouldn't do with someone who's, you know, has just lost their person and is in acute grief.

Speaker 3 00:29:40  Yeah.

Krista St-Germain 00:29:41  But I think because I've structured my offerings in that way, I don't feel boxed in because I have a wide variety of types of ways that I'm working with people.

Speaker 3 00:29:49  Yeah, yeah.

Joe Sanok 00:29:50  I think that's great. I love the idea of kind of working with your current customers to develop the thing that you're interested in and see where there's overlap with them. I feel like too often creatives will say, oh, I have an idea for an e-course, and they build the whole thing, and then they video it and spend thousands of dollars only to have crickets instead of what are people interested in? How do I beta test this a little bit? How do I just have fun and kind of sandbox it? So I love that. I love that so much. Krista. the last question I always ask is if every private practitioner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know?

Krista St-Germain 00:30:22  Yeah, I would want them to. If they find that they struggle with wanting to make their clients feel better, like the writing reflex is strong, which I think it is for a lot of us.

Krista St-Germain 00:30:32  You know, I would just want them to consider what is it that they've come to believe about emotion and, you know, can they question and challenge that that writing reflex so that they can be a witness to someone's experience without trying to change it? Because I know it can be terribly uncomfortable if you have internalized the idea that how someone feels is good or bad, and you take that on as your goal to try to help them feel better. And maybe that's not the point, and maybe that's not what they need. And if we would just pause and question, how can I get more comfortable with with their discomfort. And how could that be in greater service to them? I think there would be so much value in that.

Joe Sanok 00:31:14  So awesome. you know, I always see on TikTok these ads for things like, you know, when I'm gone and it'll be like, you know, kind of like a seven Wishes kind of thing or things like that of preserving memories. they're always like 30 or $40.

Joe Sanok 00:31:30  you're giving away your memories that matter. Journal prompts. I want to hear more about this. I, I can't believe this is free. And it's so cool that you're giving it away to the audience. but tell me a little bit about, kind of what that is and what people experience and what their clients will experience. if they opt in for that?

Krista St-Germain 00:31:49  Yeah. I was so worried after Hugo died that I would forget. It's so human of us to forget, certain things. And so I did a lot of journaling in the early days, and I would write to him, and I would just write down all kinds of things about him that I wanted to remember, and about our relationship and how we met and the things we laughed about. And you know, just what made what made us unique. And so later I decided to to expand on that. And I created this Memories That Matter journal, which is got 100 prompts in it just to help someone remember their person. I think there's a lot of it's it's healing to write it down.

Krista St-Germain 00:32:25  And it's it also brings a sense of peace to know that it is written down. And so yeah, and that's coaching with Christa Poppy. People can pick that up for free.

Joe Sanok 00:32:37  So awesome. any other links we want to give them? in regards to following you, learning more about your work?

Krista St-Germain 00:32:43  Well, sure. They're welcome to listen to the Widowed Mom podcast. I know that sounds incredibly niched, but I just it's good for general, you know, grief, post-traumatic growth stuff. And of course, if they know any widows that are struggling, send them the memories that matter. Journal. By all means, you can get it printed. Send them to the Widowed Mom podcast.

Joe Sanok 00:33:03  So amazing. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Krista St-Germain 00:33:07  Thank you so much for having me.

Joe Sanok 00:33:16  You know, I actually just got back from vacation. and we recorded this months in advance. And so, in Northern Michigan at the time of this recording, it's really chilly, which. But during that time there, it was interesting.

Joe Sanok 00:33:29  We went to Guadeloupe, which is a French island on the Caribbean. and to just have such a slow pace and to see how the French people live their lives, it really got me thinking about that thing of, like, what Krista just said. you know, what is she personally learning? And for me, for a long time, you guys know I did slow down school. I've done a lot around slowing down, and that's really been to forced myself to slow down. because I am such a kind of active person, and a go getter in a lot of ways. And I've identified with that over the years. but just thinking about, like, what does it mean to be a better human, to be working on yourself? And so, probably by the time this is out, we'll already have done it. But I'm brainstorming, and I'm worth saying it to put it out there, for myself to have a little bit of accountability. the idea of just creating some free webinars around just pursuing being a better human to being a better person, things that I'm learning and to share that with the community.

Joe Sanok 00:34:29  And so, those sorts of things, whether it's that or other kind of ideas that we're launching, make sure you're checking out practice and practice regularly. and especially if you're in our membership communities, you'll know about these things right away. so if you're in the memberships over a practice of the practice for membership, you'll see all the things that we have going on for different kind of tracks, for your private practice, for your life, for different different things. So, a lot of, a lot of great things going on in our communities. a lot of great things going on on this podcast. You know, we also couldn't do this show without amazing sponsors like therapy notes, therapy notes is the best electronic health records out there. They will help you switch over from your current EHR. They also give you two months for free or just money off if you use promo code Joe at checkout. They are phenomenal. They help with automated billing. It's going to make it easier to outsource your billing. So many reasons to switch to therapy notes.

Joe Sanok 00:35:26  Just head on over to Therapy notes. Com. Read about it and at checkout just use promo code. Joe. Thank you so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have a great day. I'll talk to you soon. Special thanks to the band. Silence is sexy for that intro music, and this podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the producers, the publishers or guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.