Grief doesn’t follow rules, timelines, or tidy emotional stages, and Kim Murray knows that deeply. A young widow at forty-four with two children, Kim learned firsthand how confusing, exhausting, and disorienting life becomes when the world keeps moving but yours stops. She opens up about the early days of widowhood, parenting through grief, the pressure to keep traditions alive, the weight of other people’s expectations, and the process of learning to honor both sadness and joy. Kim also shares practical wisdom around boundaries, emotional permission, navigating finances during grief, and the mindset shift that helped her believe she was still allowed to live, love, and build a future. Through honesty, humor, and vulnerability, this conversation reminds widows they are not broken, they are not alone, and there is no “right way” to grieve — only the next step forward.

I am sharing my experience of loving the same man for 32 years, a mother to two adult children, a retired military officer, a breast cancer survivor, and my connections with others. 

Anyone experiencing suicidal thoughts should reach out to a suicide hotline or local emergency number in their country: Psychology Today Suicide Hotlines and Prevention Resources Around the World.

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Watch the episode here

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Crying + Trying: The Messy, Honest Work Of Healing After Heartbreak With Kim Murray

Voices Of Widowhood Healing Through The Holiday

Welcome to Voices of Widowhood, Healing Through the Holidays. Our guest, Kim Murray, is going to talk about boundaries, confidence, and bad financial choices during the holidays. Let us get into this conversation now.

Kim, welcome to the Widowhood.

Thank you, Tina. I am so happy to be here with you.

When you think of “Welcome to the Widowhood,” you think, “Thank you.”

Thanks for having me. I am so excited to be here. Don’t you hear that all the time? I am so excited to be here.

I know, but the circumstances, though.

It is a weird circumstance, but I am happy to talk to you. I am excited to talk to you, not because of the reasons that brought us together, but because of the topic.

That is the sense of this widow community at large. It is often said that the club that nobody wants to belong to, but the people are amazing.

They are very good people.

I want to say thank you for being part of this mini series, Voices of Widowhood Healing Through the Holidays, because you and I understand from our own unique perspective that holidays can be trash.

It is extremely difficult. Anybody tuning in, if you are going through a hard time over the holidays, it is normal. We have all been there.

Widow 411: From Young Widow To Resource Hub Founder

When you talk about being there, Kim, if you can share a little bit about Widow 411 and why you started that, and just your place in doing that.

I was obviously widowed in 2014. I was a young widow. I was 44 years old. My kids were 8 and 10. I ended up being a widow and a solo parent all at once. It was a very complicated, confusing, stressful, overwhelming time. I know that I had a hard time getting through a lot of those early days of widowhood. I assume that most widows go through the same experiences. I really wanted to start Widow 411.

It is a resource hub for widows to talk to other people and say, “I have been where you are. Here is what I learned in the process.” That is really what started the whole website and resource hub for me, was just wanting to let other widows know that it is going to be okay. It is hard in the beginning, but it is going to be okay. We are going to help you get there. That is really the reason why I wanted to get through my own grief at the same time, helping other people. It was a win-win situation for me.

How has that changed over the years, from the website you started to what it has evolved to now?

It’s evolved to, and tremendous resource for one thing, but I can see my own stages through grief starting from the beginning, and to where I am now. I am eleven years out of widowhood. I am actually a remarried widow now. I have another husband experience. I have owned businesses. I have raised my kids. They are adults now. There have been a lot of changes through the years. Grief never goes away. I just want to make that clear that you do not reach some point where you are never grieving anymore.

You remarried, you are over that.

You move on, you get over it, and everything is fine. It does not happen that way. We all know that. I just like to try to be realistic with other widows and say like, “I still have my moments.” Eleven years later, I still have my moments. I am still brought to my knees. I still cry. Even though I am remarried, my husband and I still talk about my deceased husband.

That never goes away. You just learn to make room for it. Over the years, I have seen how different phases of widowhood evolve, and how it goes from being, “I will never be happy again. My life is over, too.” I can make some changes and make some decisions in my life that make it better for me. You just get out of that dark cloud after the first couple of years. I am not saying there is a specific timeframe for people.

The Mindset Shift: Their Life Ended, Not Mine

Thank you for the idea that it does change. I would dare say it is not just a lapse in time. It is what you do during that process. I would say that if I stay in a place of isolation, bad coping skills, letting the what ifs run my mind, feel like the world attacked me by this happening, and I remain in that mindset. I am probably going to stay there for 2 or 3 years. It really takes leaning into the idea that their life ended, not mine.

That is the best perspective. You get to go on living because you are still alive. That is the best perspective to have. I thank you for saying that, too, because it is true. Your mindset does have a lot to do with it. It sucks. It is hard. It is overwhelming. Nobody understands you. That is all true. You also get to decide what you do with that. To your point, your mindset really plays a big role in how you evolve. I remember being in Facebook groups in the beginning few years. They can be helpful by all means, grief support, Facebook groups, all of that can be helpful.

If you get into those niches where it is just constant, woe is me? It is really hard because you do not want to stay there. I had to leave some of those groups. I cannot be here because I would hear widows that were like me, like eleven years out, still saying how they have never gotten past their husband’s death. I am thinking that is not how it works. I do not want my journey to be that. You get to decide. Even though it is hard and overwhelming and frustrating and confusing, you can still make a point to decide that you get to go on living because you are still alive.

I like the idea that those different groups have different places in our grief journey. Whatever that period is where I needed to be all of that, it is good to see other people. As I evolve to something else, I need to transition into another group that can meet me at that place of need. That is encouraging if you are a widow or widower supporting a group, and you see people transitioning in and out, you serve them for that moment. Now they need something else. That work should be a fluid process.

You should not stay forever, for sure. Even on my website, I have an email list. People subscribe and unsubscribe. I get unsubscribes all the time. They do not bother me, the unsubscribes, because that means they have gotten what they need and they are ready to move on. That is great. By all means, decide what is best for you. I did a grief support group with my kids when my husband first died.

It was a family grief support group for two years. After two years, I thought they were getting a little bit older, getting into their teenage years, puberty, which is hell. I thought this was not really working for us anymore, but it was super important for us in those first two years. After two years, I said, “We are done with this. Now we move on to something else.”

Non-Negotiable Boundaries: Surviving The Holidays On Your Own Terms

I want to talk about boundaries in your grief journey, and what does that look like? Maybe even more specific to the holidays.

The holidays are really tough because there are so many traditions that are linked to the holidays. My husband’s birthday was the day after Christmas. Even starting in November with my birthdays in November, then it was Thanksgiving, then it was his dad’s birthday, then it was Christmas. It was a very family-oriented, like, two months. I felt so obligated to continue on with those traditions because that is what we always did.

After he died, I was like, “We need to keep doing things the same way we always did them,” but they are not the same. I ended up becoming way overstressed trying to keep things normal when there really is no normal to go back to. I had to be okay with setting the boundary that I get to decide what is right for me in that moment, whether it is that year, whether it is that month. That changed from year to year.

Setting the boundary is what is good for me and my family if you have small kids or whatever right now, next month, or the month after that. What is good for me right now? It did change year to year. I had to learn to set the boundaries so that I was not overcompensating for my kids or my in-laws or anybody else because I wanted everybody else to feel better about the situation, but I was grieving too.

I had to get to the point where I allowed myself to have that grief over the holidays. That did mean setting some boundaries that I cannot attend your party or my kids, and I will not be at this particular function, based on how I was feeling at the time. One year, I actually had bunion surgery over Christmas, believe it or not. It was awesome. After all, I did not have to put the tree up or decorations or anything because I had a cast on my foot.

I literally planned it to be around Christmas because I did not want to do any of the decorations. Brilliant. I was like, “I am going to do my bunion surgery over Christmas.” My kids were teenagers, I said, “If you guys want to bring this stuff up from the basement and do the tree, feel free to do that.” They did not want to do it.

I did not do it. I said, “This is the way I am going to be this year.” It changed from year to year. Setting boundaries really means what is going on with you today or what is going on with you right now. You get to decide whatever feels best for your situation. That always changes, too. You do not have to do everything. I thought I had to do everything.

You do not have to do everything. You get to do as much as you can or want to. Some people love the holidays. They love Christmas. They love the decorations. They love the whole part of it. I am not a big fan of it. That is just me. If that is what you like, do it. If it is not what you like, do not do it. Trying to please everybody does not work. That is where boundaries come in. You get to decide what is best for you.

You also mentioned something, Kim, about trying to do everything the same when your husband was here. Your late husband’s name is Mark. If Mark is not here, how can we do the same things that when Mark was here? Why is that such a big pressure for people? Is there deep down, I feel like we are honoring them by trying to keep everything in place? What are your thoughts on that?

It is an honorable thing because think about the stockings on the mantle. You have got your name, your husband’s name, your kid’s name, and the dog’s name. When you go to put up the stockings and your husband is not there, “Do you still put the stockings up? Do you not put the stocking up? Do you put stuff in the stocking because he is not going to be opening it on Christmas day?” All these questions go through your head. What is the right thing to do?

There is a lot of crying going on just with one stocking.

Honestly, I did not want to put the stocking up. He was not there. It did not make sense for me to put the stocking up. I have children, so I should put the stockings up for the kids. The in-laws come over. That was their son. I should put the stockings up for them. It is a lot of, “What am I doing for everybody else? What am I doing for me?” Even with your wedding ring, for example, that is a big question. How long do you wear your ring?

I did not wear my ring. I took my ring off. That was my personal decision. That is what I wanted to do. I took the diamond out of my ring, and I put it into a necklace so I can wear it around my neck. To me, that is closer to my heart. That was my decision. Nobody else has to know why I took the ring off my finger. There is no reason for them to know why I did that. There is no reason for me to explain why I take a stocking off the mantle, either. Those are just my decisions.

Trying to make decisions for everybody else’s comfort is where you get into some real problems and spirals because you are not doing what you want to do. It is okay to do what you want to do because you are the one in the thick of it. You are the one in the middle of it. Everybody else gets to go home and deal with their own thoughts and feelings in their own homes. You are stuck with what you have. I put the stocking up in the first year.

Our dog died the same year that my husband died. I got the dog’s stocking, and his stocking. What do I do? I also talk to my kids. This is what I am thinking. What do you think? Anytime I would bring up to my kids, it was like, if they would have said, “That stocking has to be on the mantle,” but I want to put it back up. I did ask them, but again, it has to be what works better for us. We are in the house. We see it every day. We walk by it every day.

One more question about boundaries. The widow or widower, or maybe someone who lost their mother, and they are tuning in, “I do not have the confidence. I have never spoken up like that. This is hard. I do not want to be mean.” How did you find your voice, or did you have your voice before your Mark passed?

I do not know that I had the voice specifically. I am not saying this like out of the gate. I was like, “I am going to do what I want to do because it is a process.” It took time to get there because the feelings that I had of doing everything that I thought everybody else wanted me to do were so heavy and so antithetical to what I wanted to do that, after a while, you are like, “This is not working for me.” Everybody else is comfortable, or they are comfortable or satisfied, but I am not. It is a process to find your voice.

The more you practice it, the more you do it, the easier it is. It is not a simple thing. I am not just like overly confident, and I can just say what I want and not worry about it. I do worry about other people’s feelings. I can spiral into thinking about what everybody else is doing or feeling about a thing, but it is a process. Part of it is permitting yourself to do it. We, widows, do not give ourselves enough permission to have that voice, to say this is what I want to do, or this is how I feel. It is just a practice.

Conquering Guilt: Why Overspending Is “Super Duper Expensive”

Understanding that process, someone wanting to do that out of the gate, and understanding how they get there. Speaking of being a widow, the holidays, and finances can be another burdensome part of that. When you hear finances, holiday, and widowhood, what comes to mind for you?

It runs the gamut. I am not an overspender. I know people who are overspenders. Gifting is not my love language. Other people do have that love language. My mother-in-law, for example, loves to give presents. I do not need a lot of the things that she gives, but that is what makes her happy. That is what brings her joy. She is not going overboard and spending money she does not have to spend. It is really hard again for the holidays when it comes to finances, especially when you have kids, you feel like you have to give them more. Something like compensate. Somehow, a present is going to fix something, which it does not fix.

“Dad is not here, but I can really hike you up on the Christmas gifts, but he is still not here.” Hearing that out loud can liberate someone from thinking, “I do not need that burden on myself, especially if I have been left with a two-income life on one income.” Not everyone has life insurance. Everyone is not in a financial space, but guilt, which is another part of it, can lead to making bad financial expectations.

Guilt is super duper expensive. You cannot afford guilt. It is too expensive. Those are mindset things. We go back to your thoughts and the way you think about things. A present is not going to make somebody love you or not love you, or is not going to make somebody grieve or not grieve or be happy or not happy. It is an inanimate object. It is a thing. It is our thoughts about the thing that makes the difference. The gift is not going to make you happy or not happy. The thing that you give somebody is an object. It does not have a feeling.

It is the meaning that you make about that that has the purpose or the drive. If you think you are going to give your kids gifts that are going to make them happy or relieve their grief or whatever, it does not work that way. Can you be generous and give your kids things that you know they want? Yes, of course, that is all fine. If we are trying to overcompensate with, I am going to do this because it is going to relieve some kind of a feeling that you are having, it does not work that way.

A lot of times, as I said, is way too expensive. We cannot afford guilt because we overspend and think that that is like a dopamine hit. That is going to make us feel better about buying those gifts. It just does not. I was pretty standard with my kids as far as Christmas was concerned. I have never been a huge gift-giver. We do presents, but it is not like I go overboard with them. I was honest with them, too.

At the time, it was like, “This is what we can afford. I am not going to, I cannot afford any more.” They were 8 and 10, and my husband died, but then they got into their teenage years. A lot of things that they wanted, they were able to save money and buy for themselves. You teach them independence of learning how to save and delayed gratification, and save for their own things, and that helps too. I just think that sometimes people go way overboard, thinking that it is going to fix something that it never really fixes.

Quite a bit of time to learn that lesson. If this conversation can push someone off from going, “I am not going to do that. I am not going to make that part of my story. I am going to pause because it is not going to change anything.” When you talk about delayed gratification and teaching your children fiscal responsibility, I will say. Our son, a long time ago, like when the PlayStation first came out, I saw the cost of that, I was like, “That is a toy.”

He wanted it so bad. I was like, “You are going to have to save up for it.” He became proactive. He was saving his birthday money, Christmas money. He finally was able to go to the game store and had all of this money. He was unrolling. I remember this woman walking by me. She said, “You are making your son pay for his video game.” Meanwhile, her son looked like he had facial hair, and she just pulled her wallet. I was like, “I will waste no words on her.” He was so proud of himself.

Of course, he was.

They said, “Do you want insurance?” He was like, “I do not.” I was like, “I had the money for that.” He was about to just pull on. The fact that he still has that until today.

Which is not surprising because you do not appreciate things you do not earn. Giving kids gifts serves literally no purpose. It is not helping you deal with your grief. It is not helping them learn how to appreciate what they earn.

That same appreciation comes from the process of leaning into our grief. It is painful. It is also rewarding because I would dare guess that if another widow is listening to this and she says, “She is right there at eleven years,” not that it is a comparison, I would ask you to say, “What are you doing during the time of your grief journey? How are you leaning into this very difficult, or have you decided that you want to remain stagnant?” In this place you have decided you want to be, you are bearing your cross there, then it will look like that. Not that dating is the resolution for grief, but dating during the holidays and being a widow, what do you say to that?

Dating & New Love: Finding Worthiness And Letting Go Of External Pressure

I am going to tell you very transparently, I was extremely lucky with my in-laws. They were very accepting from day one. I do not have the horror stories of in-laws. I have actually amazing in-laws, which I am still very close to. A lot of people go through difficulty sometimes with dating. Especially with the holidays, because there are lots of family get-togethers and there are lots of parties and gift exchange and all that stuff.

I did not have any issues with that. I cannot speak to somebody who is not getting along with their in-laws or somebody who is not accepting. Again, it just goes back to your decisions. I appreciate that my in-laws were accepting, but it does not really matter what other people think. Even though it is easier said than done. If you are at the point where you are dating and it is the holidays and you are bringing someone around, you do you.

If they do not like it or they cannot handle it, it is fine. Do not go there, or do not hang out with them. There is no need to make excuses or rationalize your decisions. Once you make them, if you are dating, date. If it is the holidays, take them around. If other people cannot handle that, then make new decisions and go somewhere else. It really comes down to your comfort level, not other people’s comfort level. Go back to that. What is your comfort level? Not other people’s.

It seems like we are back at the place where we started with boundaries. You have decided you want to date. Was there any navigating in your own mind in this place, of these are the holidays where Mark showed up before, and now this new person, and how is their role placed in this process? Was there any of that that you had to navigate individually, and how was that for you?

No doubt. I decided that that was something I wanted to explore. We dated for six months before I introduced him to my kids. Let us just set expectations. I was not going to introduce my kids to anybody that I did not think there might be a future with. We waited for six months and brought them around the other people in the family, too. Again, we go back to the guilt. There is always the guilt. Even those of us who sound like we have it all together or that we made all the right decisions, we did not, we do not, and we did not.

We deal with the guilt, we deal with all the feelings. We are human, and we all have the same human experience. I went through all those emotions as well, but I still felt like it was okay and I was worthy of love again, and it was okay for me to explore that. In my case, my husband was the first person I dated after my husband died, and we got married. I know that is unusual. That is not how it usually works. Is that how it works for you, too? There are two of us who have worked for.

My late husband’s name is Mark.

That is great. It is just how it worked out, but you have to have the mindset of “It is okay for me. I am living because I am still alive. I am worthy of another relationship.” You make the decisions to do what is best for you at the time. Now, who is ready? When are they ready? How many years? How many months?

Those are all questions you cannot answer. It is individual for everybody. There is no timeline. There is no specific rule book on how to do it. It is just whenever you feel like you are ready, but you are never really ready. The one thing I tell a lot of other widows, too, is if you are in a position in your life where you are not crying every day, like you are not, so sad and so overwhelmed every single day, you might be at the place where you could consider the possibility.

You just take those baby steps of, “I could consider the possibility, and then maybe next month, next year or whatever, I put myself on a dating website. Tell my friends that I am ready to go.” It is like baby steps, but it is different for everybody. Some women say, “I will literally never date again.” That is fine too.

I want to make a statement. I would like you to respond. “I thought you loved your husband. I cannot believe you are dating.”

Here is what is so interesting about that. Love is infinite. There is no level of love that you reach. It is infinite. It can go on and on. You can have 1,200 loves in your life and be okay. There is no one-and-done. It is not that I loved my husband, and that is all I get. I have never believed that. We can love whoever we want, as many people as we want. It is infinitely what we want. Yes, I loved my husband, who died.

Yes, I love my husband, who is with me right now. It is just like with your kids. You have one baby, and then you have another baby. Do you love your second baby any less? No, your love grows because the love was so intense with the first one. You realize it expands as you love more. The love just keeps getting bigger and bigger. It is like that with relationships, too. You can have more love. It does not decrease, it increases.

The Duality Of Grief: Choosing Joy While Still Being Sad

How were you able to find joy in your current life and still be sad that Mark is no longer here?

It is a choice. I do get sad still. I have to be very transparent and tell widows that I do still cry. Things hit me. Things just out of the blue, which you do not ever expect. You drive by a restaurant you used to go to, or a song comes on the radio. Simple things. I was driving the other day around where we got married. I am not usually over in that area. It was under construction. It took me on a different route.

It passed me right by where we got married. I was not going there for a reason, but I ended up there. I pulled in. I took a picture of the chapel. I sent it to my kids. I was crying, of course, because I was like, “I did not expect to be here today. This was not my plan,” but that is how I ended up there. It is a choice. I had to learn to live with all emotions, happy and sad. Everything is a duality. It is never one or the other. It is always both.

There are not these five easy, clean stages of grief, and then I got to acceptance, and I am done?

No.

When you talked about that, I live relatively close to the home that we brought our children home from when they were born. I had to do some changing out of different things. My son has not been there since he left at two. He has no memory of that house at all. He is walking through the house and going to different rooms. I am doing all I can to hold it together because the house is like 30-something years old.

A lot of the pictures were being taken down. I was remembering when we put them up. It can hit you from out of nowhere. The idea, looking at those things, can have a way of snatching your confidence. You are with the holidays, and you are dealing with everything else. What are some recommendations on how to regain your confidence in this process?

Just give yourself extra grace that you are going to have those moments. You are never going to be one or the other. You are never going to reach a level. There is no end. There is no destination. This is a journey. I know people hate the word journey, but it is a journey. You just have to give yourself extra grace of being a human who is having a human experience, and you have all the emotions. You run the gamut.

Some days are good, some days are bad. That is the same way that it is with grief. I think that grief gets lighter. I really do believe that. It does not go away, but it does get lighter. If you can just give yourself that grace to have those days when you have them and be happy or be satisfied or joyful when you have the lighter days too. Just do not expect that it is going to be either one or the other, because it is not.

Flipping The Script: Recurring Widowhood Themes

I believe this conversation made a good effort in normalizing grief, that sometimes it is just all over the place, but to some extent, it is what we make of it. I have asked you a lot of questions. Any questions? Sometimes I like to give people the opportunity to flip the script, and you become the podcast host and the questioner.

You are doing a lot of shows and talking to a lot of widows. What are the things that keep coming up in your conversations with widows about how to handle widowhood? What is the recurring theme that you hear on your show?

It is harder than most people expect it to be. Most people are not aware of the depth to which grief impacts you. The concept that I know I will be sad for a little bit, but the idea that I will be tired, the idea that my mind will feel like it is slipping, you expect maybe I will eat, or I will not eat, but the widow fog, the widow fire. The idea that, and it is like, “That can happen.”

Thank you for talking about it, though. If you are going over all those topics on your show, then you are doing a tremendous service for widows by at least normalizing this and letting other people know that they are not crazy. You are actually not crazy. We have all had the same thoughts.

That concept is actually what led to the book that I recently wrote, The Five Widows Club. It is going to be released in May 2026. Having all these podcasts, having all these conversations, grief support group coaching, there is so much of this journey that is not normalized, that there is a stigma, that there is shame.

It is like, “My whole spouse died. How dare you put your mouth to any of that?” The other thing is when I hear other widows try to dictate another widow’s grief experience based on what theirs looks like. Those are the things that I have found a lot of conversation about. Maybe some private more than public, but those become the topics of conversation.

Good for you for bringing it to the forefront. This will help a lot of people. I am sure a lot of your podcasts are very positive for widows who are like, “I did not know. I am so glad I am not the only one.”

Yes, no, yes. Thank you so much for this conversation. I am going to allow you to close this out with any final remarks or words or things maybe you thought we should have talked about, or how people can reach you, also.

I am at Widow411.com. You can sign up for the newsletter. I send a newsletter out every Saturday. We just talked about all kinds of grief topics. I just go back to my other comment of just give yourself extra grace because no one knows how to be a widow until she is one. This is a learn as you go process. Give yourself time to learn how to live in this new world, not of your choosing.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

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About Kim Murray

Kim Murray is the founder of Widow 411, an online space offering hope, help, and hard truths for widows rebuilding after loss. After losing her husband to brain cancer in 2014, Kim turned her grief into guidance by creating honest, practical tools that help widows feel seen and supported. Her topics revolve around grief, solo parenting, identity shifts, and what healing really looks like behind the scenes.