2561: Your Best Days are Ahead with Krista St-Germain

LifeBlood: We talked post-traumatic growth, the realities of dealing with grief, the power and importance of personal agency, choosing your thoughts and perspective, how to ensure your best days are ahead of you, and how to get started, with Krista St-Germain, Master Certified Grief Coach, podcaster, and creator of The Mom Goes On. Listen to learn about the five areas of post-traumatic growth! You can learn more about Krista at CoachingWithKrista.com https://www.coachingwithkrista.com/, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/coachingwithkrista/, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lifecoachkrista/, and LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/krista-st-germain-b46555b4/. George’s newest book is available! Get your copy of The Meaningful Few here: https://amzn.to/4qA26X9 Feeling busy but unfulfilled? The Meaningful Few helps you identify what truly matters, eliminate distractions, and live with intention and clarity. Learn more here: https://www.mymeaningfulfew.com/ Thanks, as always for listening! If you got some value and enjoyed the show, please leave us a review here: ​​https://ratethispodcast.com/lifebloodpodcast You can learn more about us at LifeBlood. Live http://lifeblood.live/, Twitter https://twitter.com/ourlifeblood, LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/lifebloodlive, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lifeblood.live/, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNQ9Gc4mMwCHZKUHjbt0-qA and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/lifebloodlive or you’d like to be a guest on the show, contact us at contact@LifeBlood. Live. Stay up to date by getting our monthly updates https://george-grombacher.aweb.page. Want to say “Thanks!” You can buy us a cup of coffee. https://www.buymeacoffee.com/lifeblood Copyright LifeBlood 2026.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:42Speaker 01

  Krista Saint Germain is helping widowed moms find love again. She's a master certified grief coach. She is a podcaster and the creator of the Mom Goes On program. Welcome back to the show, Krista.

• 0:55Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me. Always happy to talk about grief.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's great to see you again. So, refresh our memories. Tell us a little about your personal life, some more about your work, and why you do what you do.

• 1:06Speaker 02

  School of hard knocks, mostly. I lost my husband when I was 40. We had just recently gotten married. He was killed by a drunk driver and, you know, it just kind of went from a really high high in my life to kind of the lowest low I could have ever imagined. And pretty quickly realized that what I thought I knew about grief and the tools that I was getting, you know, around grief, I thought I had, just weren't really very effective. So, I had to kind of go and do all of my own research and figure out what worked and what didn't. And when I got through to a better feeling place, I decided, okay, you know, I want to help other people with this. I want them to have an easier experience than I do. I would love to change the conversations that we're having around grief because we're not having nearly enough of them. So, that's kind of how I got into it.

• 1:48Speaker 02

  And so, I've been working with widows specifically since 2018. Yeah.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  Long time.

• 1:55Speaker 02

  Long time.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm sure that there is heavier work, but it's gotta be some of the heaviest work. How does, how does that, how does it not weigh you down? Or maybe, maybe it does.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  It, it, it doesn't really. And that seems to surprise people. And honestly, it surprises me. That's one of the reasons I, I almost, I considered not coaching widows for a while because I couldn't imagine it not being so heavy. But it really doesn't feel that way to me. I think it's just such a, we all experience grief. We don't all experience bereavement, but we all experience loss. And it is a part of the human experience. And I think the reason it feels so heavy oftentimes is because we don't have enough normalizing conversations around it. And so it really is just normalizing a lot of what is normal and then helping people uncover what's in the way of loving life again. And that to me feels amazing. It doesn't feel heavy.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  It's not to say grief isn't heavy, but the work doesn't feel that way.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  I like, I love words and normalizing things that are normal is a good sentence.

• 3:01Speaker 02

  T-shirt material right there.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  The normalization of normal things.

• 3:05Speaker 02

  Normal. Yeah. I mean, people ask all the time, like, what's normal in grief? And it makes so much sense why they ask that question. And also, so many more things are normal than, than we're taught.

• 3:18Speaker 02

  You know, and so as a result of that, we tend to go through a grief experience and we assume that there's something wrong with us. When what would be a more accurate assumption is that we just weren't given accurate information about grief. You know, it's so much more normal, all these problems that we think are just us problems.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  And why would we? It's like, I love, love talking about just do it. It's a great slogan for sneakers, but not, if I don't know how to do it, then I can't just do it. So grief certainly falls into that.

• 3:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  And super normal, for sure.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  Super normal.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  So having better tools and to find our, find our way past it. It's a, I'm sure, very unique experience, but with the right tools, we can experience post-traumatic growth.

• 4:05Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm, yeah, 100%. And I like to think about it as integrating it, right? So it's, it's, we don't ever get to the end of grief because grief doesn't end, right? We're always gonna have thoughts and feelings about a loss. We can't undo the loss, we can't time travel, the loss will always be there, so we'll always have a response to it. And, and grief, my favorite definition is it's the natural human response to a perceived loss. So we're always gonna have it because we can't undo the event. The goal is can we choose and, and cultivate an intentional relationship with it, right? Instead of just being subject to all of the initial reactions that we have, can we choose our response to the way that we see what has happened and who we want to be after it has happened? So that's where post-traumatic growth comes in, right?

• 4:48Speaker 02

  It's not just that we're necessarily trying to get back to where we were in terms of quality of life, although that is an option, right? Post-traumatic growth says, actually, you can go on to report greater levels of life satisfaction after something that you experienced as traumatic, right? And not in spite of the thing, but literally because of it, because of what you decided to change about, you know, the way that you see the world, or the way that you see yourself, or the way that you show up, you can go on to love life even more because of what happened. Doesn't mean you're gonna be grateful that it happened, doesn't mean you're gonna like that it, you know, the way that it happened. It just means you always get to be the one in the driver's seat in terms of choosing

• 5:32Speaker 02

  how you see yourself and how you see your life.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  Which is a beautiful thing, having agency.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, 100%.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  Is that pretty common as people go through this process, through the grieving process, particularly of the loss of a spouse, that? You feel like you've an agency's been taken from you? I guess two to three has.

• 5:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it has. I think a huge part of it is like separating, you know, what you can control from what you can't. You know, I didn't choose to have that driver get behind the car and, you know, make that choice. And so I definitely couldn't control that. But I do get to choose what I want to think about my life. You know, I do get to be the one who decides to believe whether my best days are, are behind me or not. And for a long time, I didn't know that. Right? I thought it was just a fact that he died. That was the love of my life. Best days are behind me. Yea, verily. Right? And somebody had to point it out to me that, oh, no, that's actually, you don't have to believe that if you don't want to. There's nothing wrong with you if you do, but you don't have to. Surprise.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  It is, um, once you know it, it seems so silly that once I realized that I get to choose that, nobody else does. I get to choose how I think and feel about all the different scenarios in my life at any given moment. But before that, it was just, you know, my thoughts are my thoughts or that's, that's me. I don't separate those things out.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. And I think some of that, some of post-traumatic growth can even happen without you fully realizing that, to be honest. And I think it's helpful if you do realize it, but I think sometimes it just happens in that. So post-traumatic growth is typically experienced in five areas. So greater appreciation of life. Right? That often just happens. You don't necessarily have to choose that. When, when something has been taken from you that you cared about so very much, it kind of tends to make you appreciate the things that you have more than you did before, you know? For me, I was just kind of going through life on what felt like a little bit of autopilot, you know? Midlife, doing the things, going to work, taking care of the kids, doing the things that you do.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  And then whoosh, like he's gone. And all of a sudden, you kind of look around and you go, holy crap. Like if it can be taken this fast, like now I kind of appreciate things that maybe I was just not paying attention to before. I was taking them for granted. So greater appreciation of life just often happens without us trying. Improved relationships sometimes happens whether we like it or not, whether we're trying or not. So, you know, you have a big loss or something that you experience is traumatic and you kind of quickly figure out who's showing up for you and who's not. You know, and maybe the people who aren't showing up for you are people that you now go, hmm, maybe I don't want to invest that much in that relationship. Maybe I want to invest more in these other people who did show up for me.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  Or maybe it's really clear to me who I am in relationship with that is aligned with my values and who's not. Right, and so I make some decisions based on that. And I don't even have to know that I have a huge sense of agency to do that. I just kind of naturally do it.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. Increased personal strength is about realizing that you're maybe stronger than you thought you were, that you can handle things that maybe you didn't think you can handle. People always say when, when, you know, they're talking to widows, I can't imagine if that were to happen to me, I would just fall apart. Well, yeah, I know you think that, but then you get there and you, you may fall apart temporarily, but you keep going. Most of us do. And you realize, oh, I didn't think I could get through something like that, but here I am and I'm getting through it. I see myself as stronger than I thought that I was before. That perception changed.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  Spiritual growth often happens, whether we like it or not.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Sometimes that means that we are railing against the beliefs that have been handed to us. Right now, they don't make sense anymore. They don't actually fit our life experience. And so we go back and do an inventory of like, wait a minute, did I choose this for myself? Is this what I actually believe? Do I need to do some wrestling here and some choices for myself? So sometimes, you know, people's spiritual paths get moderated slightly. Sometimes they completely change and they choose a different way for themselves. You know? And then the fifth category is new possibilities. And that often happens as well. That's what happened to me. You know, it's not that my job wasn't a lovely job. It was paying the bills. I like the people I work with, but did I love it? Did I feel like I was absolutely making the difference that I wanted to make?

• 10:02Speaker 02

  No, I didn't. You know? And I went, hmm, okay, if it can be taken this quickly, is this how I want to spend 40 hours a week? Nope. New possibilities, new careers, new things.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  Beautiful things.

• 10:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, beautiful things. Does any of that make me grateful my husband died? No.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  For me, it's a big misconception about post-traumatic growth. They have to be grateful that it happened. It drives me crazy.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  I was actually thinking sort of not necessarily the opposite, but I don't want to allow myself to do that because I'll feel guilty.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  Yes, that too. Yeah, like, what does it mean about my love for them? If I go on to report greater levels of life satisfaction? Does it mean something? Yeah, we have to kind of realize that like both can coexist. We can be tremendously sad that it happened, you know, and also still not lose our agency in deciding how we want to live life. We can acknowledge that they died or this thing happened and we are still living and our quality of life matters. But yeah, guilt can hold us back in a big way and often does.

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• 12:13Speaker 01

  Is there a right time, an appropriate time to start to think about what you want your life to look like moving forward?

• 12:23Speaker 02

  Well, I would say there was a point for me, and I see it often, where if someone had started talking to me about post-traumatic growth, I would have wanted to throw punch then. So that's probably not the right time.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Too soon, too soon.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  Too soon, just too soon. So, but I also think that there was a, there was a part of me that knew even very quickly after he died, that I was going to make some sort of meaning out of this, you know, having, I don't know, it's different for everyone, but that definitely happened for me. And I say, you just don't, you don't need to rush it. It's not morally superior to grow after you experience loss, right? It's not a should. We don't want to add it to our to do list. And so if ever it feels like a should, or if ever it feels misaligned, then we can just not pursue it. And then maybe at a later date, it won't feel that way. Or maybe it always will. And that's okay, too.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Right. So as we are, you, you have on your website, the healing grief spiral with three steps, settle the storm inside, choose your thoughts intentionally, and then take meaningful action. So choose, choose thoughtful, or choose thought, choose your thoughts intentionally. It seems like that's in a lot of ways, what it is that we're talking about. I get to choose, and then I get to choose the future that I want.

• 13:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes that's hard to do before we have settled the storm, right, inside. And I see this spiral as something that is in constant repetition. So we might notice that it's stormy, or we're dysregulated, you know, different language for similar things. And we're not really able to think about our thinking at that point. So the first thing we need to do is settle the storm, right? Get, get ourselves back into a grounded and centered place. And then, when the higher part of our brain is, is available to us, and we actually can think about our thinking, which can be really hard to do if it's not, or if we're in acute grief, and the grief fog is intense, it's very difficult to think about your thinking in that place. But when you get to the point where you can think

• 14:37Speaker 02

  about your thinking, then you get to say, okay, wait a minute. Do I want to believe that my best days are behind me? Because that feels really real. But I can see that I keep, if I keep believing that thought, my brain is just going to keep finding evidence for it. It's only going to show me the truth of that thought, right? How the best days are behind me. It will hold me back from seeing anything that doesn't line up with that thought. And I'll always just keep proving it true. So if I don't find it particularly useful, then I get to be the one who calls BS on it, right? And gets to choose, wait, do I want to believe that? What if, what if that's not the only way of thinking about my life? What else is available to me? It's possible that my best days aren't behind me. It's possible that my best days are ahead of me.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  And then, once I do that work of choosing my thoughts with purpose and intentionally, then the actions flow from that, right? What is a person who believes that her best days are ahead of her, or at least doesn't believe that her, you know, her best days are behind her? What type of action does she take that, that creates more of what it is that she wants? Repeat, repeat, repeat.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  And I imagine, as we try to do anything that's worthwhile, difficult, just need to take small bites.

• 15:56Speaker 02

  I prefer it that way. I think it's an easy way to get ourselves unstuck, right? Is what's the next smallest step I can take? And especially if we're looking at doing things that are outside of our, our current confidence or our current ability, which is often the case after something big happens, right? Like for me, starting a business and becoming a coach, I didn't know how to do that, right? But I was pretty determined I was going to figure it out. And so it's, what's the next smallest thing that I can do that feels aligned? And then I start getting some traction because I keep just doing the next smallest thing.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  Which helps to develop so many wonderful things. You're proving to yourself that you're capable of doing it and executing on what you told yourself that you would do. And you start to develop, obviously, you learn how to do the thing. And so that gets easier because being a beginner is, is exciting in some regard, but also terrifying and anxiety producing in others. But you just, that's, I think how you develop willpower too, is just do it a little bit at a time. And then that willpower is going to bring you from where you are to where it is you really want to be in the future.

• 17:08Speaker 02

  For sure. It's also helpful, I think, to connect to a really solid why.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  You know, if we can, that definitely helped me is I actually had a picture printed out of a woman who I imagined was a widow. I didn't even know that she was, but I just had, you know, her picture printed out of like, this is the woman I am trying to reach. She is out there. Like, what's her day like today? What are her struggles today? And that kind of helped me get over my own nonsense of like, hey, you know, get over it. You need to, you need to create some content for social media or go live. Do the thing you're scared to do because your why is bigger than the fear that you feel.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  I'd love to see that picture.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I don't have it in my office anymore, but I could show it to you. It was black and white. I just pasted it on the wall right above my computer.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  How did you figure that out?

• 18:02Speaker 02

  I don't know, honestly.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  Because I'm certainly a fan of, of just connecting with some human being that is doing what it is or has the thing that I want to prove to myself that it's, that this person did it, be it fictitious or a story that I had, have made up. But I looked to this person, I realized, hey, Stacy or Suzie or John did this or is doing it. Therefore, I can as well.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  I love that, right? And I think that was a much easier thing to do in terms of looking around and seeing, oh, there are people in helping professions, you know, serving other people. I wasn't seeing that so much in the widow space. So, you know, that's kind of why I just picked a woman and imagined. Just imagine, like, also, I imagined, where would I be if I didn't have the tools that I had? What was the potential change in trajectory there for my life? And so then it's easier to imagine, wow, okay, if I, what's the cost of me not sharing what I know?

• 19:05Speaker 02

  It felt important.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it turns out you were right.

• 19:10Speaker 02

  Turns out, people actually do want help.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  Not everybody.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  I say, I say that kind of like laughing at it now, but there was a time where there was a lot of drama in my brain about getting over my own stuff. Even after I had coached one-on-one and like filled a practice and had all the clients I could handle, it was still hard for me to switch to coaching in groups and serving widows in that way. Cause the brain drama, thoughts that needed to be chosen intentionally, right?

• 19:42Speaker 01

  Just you thought it wouldn't be efficient in a group setting?

• 19:44Speaker 02

  Well, I, I was just afraid they wouldn't be comfortable in groups. I was afraid they would, they would only want one-on-one, that they wouldn't want to come to a group. But I also kept coming up against the same frustrating wall, which was that I was having repetitive conversations and it was difficult to get them to believe that I wasn't a special unicorn, right? Instead, when I can get them in a group and they can see themselves reflected in other women, then they go, oh, it's, it's not just a me problem. It's not a character flaw. This is, this is grief. This is widowhood, right? And it wasn't just the coach saying it, which is why I now, you know, I'm so passionate about getting people into community. Cause I just think we make progress faster, because we can normalize stuff faster with

• 20:29Speaker 02

  the right coach or facilitator.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  Right?

• 20:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  It's almost a living example of what we're just talking about with the picture of the, picture of the person. Now, not only have we identified some other human being on the internet or whatever, but we're actually interfacing with them on a, on a consistent basis.

• 20:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I love to have people in, in my programs that are in different places. So that there's always, you know, there's some, something to aspire to, someone who's been where you are, that you can see they are where you want to be, and they are encouraging you and you are aspiring to, you know, be them and it works.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  It's one of those virtuous cycles you hear about.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. Yeah. It feels so good. Yeah.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  That's awesome.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  Well, this has been another wonderful conversation, Krista. I appreciate you coming back on. How can people learn more about you? Tell us how people can find you on all your programs.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I'm a podcaster. The Widowed Mom Podcast is the name of my podcast. So welcome to come and listen. Even if you're not a widow, feel free to come and listen and just learn about grief and post-traumatic growth. And then CoachingWithKrista.com, it's K-R-I-S-T-A, is where everything else can be found.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Excellent. Well, if you enjoyed this much as I did, show Krista your appreciation. Share today's show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas. Listen to the Widowed Mom Podcast, wherever you listen to your podcasts, and then go to Coaching With Krista, it's K-R-I-S-T-A.com, and check out all the programs and everything else that we've been talking about today. Thanks again, Krista.

• 21:59Speaker 02

  Thanks, George.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  Until next time, remember, do your part by doing your best.

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