What does it really mean to move forward—not just move on—after unimaginable loss?”

In this heartfelt continuation of last week’s episode, AJ Coleman returns to The Widowhood to open up about his journey as a single father after the devastating loss of his wife, Cory. With rare vulnerability, he shares the quiet strength it took to raise his daughter alone, the moment he found his voice, and the surprising way writing a book helped him heal. We talk about grief, growth, and the pressure to find purpose too soon. If you’ve ever questioned how to start again, this episode reminds us: healing isn’t linear—and you don’t have to rush your way through it. Let’s dive in.

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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From Heartbreak to Healing: Life After Loss With AJ Coleman

Our guest for part two is AJ. We are talking about his journey of being a single parent, how to determine the right time for dating, and his concept between moving forward and moving on, and a book he’s written. Let’s get into this conversation now.

AJ, welcome to the show. I should say, welcome back to the show.

Yes, great to be back, and thank you for this wonderful opportunity.

Thank you. The conversation we had. They’ll listen to it, but they understood like all the knowledge you had from the catfish and everything else. This conversation is focused on your journey, which has made what you do and how you show up so passionate. Thank you for taking the time twice to get together and have this conversation. I want to start with something we were talking about a little bit in the pre-conversation. I want to just say thank you for bringing your voice to this conversation because I believe, and tell me your thoughts, it’s really hard for men to make themselves vulnerable and just transparent and share something as personal as this. What are your thoughts on that?

The Challenge Of Opening Up About Grief & Loss

I agree. At the time, it’s very rare when I first started speaking about my grief loss and being a widower at such a young age, with my wife’s passing, the brain cancer, and raising my daughter as a single dad. Many people just didn’t talk about it, especially men, because we have that idea that we’re supposed to be macho, we’re supposed to have all the answers, we’re supposed to have these even-toned feelings.

We learned over time. Perception changes that the social media with the amount of resources becoming available where men, like myself, that find it’s okay to talk about the feeling, it’s okay to talk about the losses and join different groups of people to help each other through these tough times. Back when my father was little, this was never a discussion point. It was not even a thought. It just became part of society.

That generation as they continue to mature and eventually into the adulthood is they would carry that same notion that we don’t talk about anything. It’s not proper. Today, I think it’s healthy. I think it’s a very important attribute that everybody talks about the feelings. Right or wrong, different or not, it’s important because that’s how you heal, especially during a grief loss.

That rings so true to me. My question is, how did you go from the mindset that you were raised under to that first time that you started talking about this? What was that pivotal point? What did that look like for you, starting to articulate this?

At the time of my wife’s passing, I did not know that I was pretty much preparing my whole life to handle different grief losses. Only it wasn’t a grief loss of a loved one. It could be a loss of companionship, could be a loss of an ability. It could be a loss of just having anxiety or something like that. How I prepare is just internally, is that sometimes you don’t know what you’re made of until the unthinkable happens. That’s where you start building up that self-esteem, that confidence.

Sometimes you just throw everything out the window and say, “I need to talk about this.” As I continued on my journey to self-healing, I realized it’s not necessarily about me anymore. It’s about helping others overcome and cope, and eventually take steps forward within their lives so they can influence others. When we go through these types of unthinkable losses, there’s just something alive that comes in within you. I think a lot of that’s just personality-driven experience, but also being comfortable in who you are and where you want to go with it.

Thank you for sharing that, and your wife’s name if you don’t mind us honoring her.

Sure. My wife’s name is Cory.

Have you always been comfortable with who AJ is?

No. I had lived a very sheltered life about who I was. In a sense, I had grown up with a loss of an ability, which is a hearing impairment, not understanding how it would impact me not only as a child, but as a young adult in the workforce, and who I am. I chose to keep my entire life private. One of the things Cory taught me over time was that nobody cares. Nobody thinks that we are our own worst credit of ourselves.

We get it into our mindset that everybody’s talking about it. Have you ever go to a room and you walk in and people are engaged in conversation, and the conversation stops. People look at you, and then the conversation resumes. Our first thought is “What are they saying about me? Do they not like the clothes I’m wearing? They do not like how I look.” In reality, they just acknowledge your existence, and they’re going back to the conversation that they were engaged with and had nothing to do with you.

That’s something that she taught me over time. It wasn’t until I wrote my book, Keep Those Feet Moving, where I thought I was writing for my daughter to help her understand who dad was. It actually turned out to be very therapeutic for me to express myself further. As the book was released, I had some reservations of what would people think. How would people react? People who’ve known me may not have known certain things about me, and the area I became comfortable in is just getting uncomfortable. Realizing my work is much greater than me.

The Importance Of Self-Healing Before Helping Others

I want to circle back to something you mentioned about when you first started speaking about your pain, helping other people. As I hear you talk about the book, it was the first place the work needs to start is with ourselves. I want to circle back to that because you probably have heard the catchphrase, turning my pain into purpose and doing all these things.

I feel like it can put an unrealistic amount of pressure on a new griever to think I’m being selfish if I’m thinking of myself, “I need to figure out how to make purpose out of this. I need to be helping other people with my pain.” I would say, take care of yourself for as long as what that needs to look like and let life tell you if and when that time may would set up to help someone else.

My husband, when he was dying and I was at the end of that hallway screaming into a phone to my sister, and the medics were helping him, I was not thinking of a podcast. This evolved six years later out of a feeling like God directed me to do. I feel like people hear conversations, look at what he’s doing with his grief. He wrote a book. Look at what she’s doing. This was not the Genesis of our grief. What would you say to that, or add to that, or expound on?

You’re spot on in terms of your thinking, and it’s not about what everybody else is doing. It’s about what makes sense to you when it comes to grief. We all understand watching movies, shows, and the perception is that we’re supposed to act a certain way. You’re supposed to mourn for this many days. You’re supposed to look and feel the way you’re supposed to do things. It’s not a proper portrayal of grief.

I’ve always believed that what you do is what helps you sleep better at night. As your body continues to heal, your mind continues to heal, you’re able to think with a little bit more clarity in what it is that you want to do and how you can move on. Whether you can honor a loved one by celebrating an anniversary, a birthday, or something that whole personal significant where a favorite spot that you used to go to.

I always recommend that when it comes to grief and not necessarily for all grief loss, it can be dedicated to what makes you have that ability to take steps forward. It’s not about somebody. There are individuals who grieve and search for companionship right away because they like feeling connected to somebody. It doesn’t mean they’re looking to replace their loved one with somebody else. They’re just looking for companionship.

Sadly, sometimes social media, sometimes those movies, and the old way of looking at things through experiences get in the way of our grief. The best advice I can give people is to take a deep breath. There is no blueprint for grief. One day, if you finally start to wake up and you take steps forward, that’s where the healing process begins. It happens naturally. You cannot just put it on a calendar and say, “On this day, I am not going to mourn anymore.”

I choose to take life and celebrate my wife’s legacy. That’s what keeps me going. I didn’t think about that when she passed. I took a couple of years not knowing what that purpose would be and how it would lead to a book and going on podcasts, but it just felt natural. I smile because when I think of her, I think of the wonderful memories. I think about all of the great conversations we’ve had, but I’m cherishing her legacy and passing that to my daughter and through others through my work.

Discovering Inner Strength After Tragedy

That is beautiful. You also said you don’t know what you’re made of until that moment. What did you find that you were made of that you didn’t realize?

At the time of my wife’s passing, a lot of people expected me to fail as I would collapse emotionally. I would struggle with raising a daughter on my own. Part of it was because people had a perception of who you are or who I was, and thinking about my hearing impairment, thinking about the struggles I had with different aspects of life. I knew it was just the opposite.

I knew I had to remain strong during the funeral. I knew I had to keep my head high. I had to keep a straight face and just lead many through this challenging, difficult time. At that moment, it’s when I realized that people are looking at you, which is me, and expecting one outcome. I wasn’t going to let them see that outcome. In my private moments, I shed some tears. I took some deep breaths and I rallied around my daughter, who was one year old at the time, for strength.

That’s what got me through those tough, challenging moments. When you go through the unthinkable or any setback, it’s at that moment that you decide deep down what is your next move is, and where are you going to go. That’s where the passion, the fire, burns from within. You start taking that energy and moving toward a greater good. It doesn’t happen overnight. For some of us, sometimes that just pushes that final on and off switch button and just propels you even further than you could ever imagine.

It sounds like the Phoenix rising. I hear that often, or the butterfly transformer, depending on which one of those resonates with you.

It is really important with that because when you come to the end of your own life, whenever that’s going to be, 300 years from now. You want to look back. Many of us look and think about regret. What didn’t we do? What didn’t we say? I want to be in a position, among others, that we look back with gratitude, with that sense of accomplishment, and say that we were able to do such and such. I think that the rewarding aspect for our own personal soul is that we continue to push through even on dark days and times. For those people who just live their lives in regret, it just means that they haven’t found that connection, that little switch to help them go from the mourning into the zestful of life.

That is something to think about. In those years, that were difficult and you were trying to find AJ and what life would look like. Can you share maybe one of your most difficult moments in just how you may have been in that difficult moment, not about getting through it, but what that looked like? Oftentimes, people will see someone later in their grief journey and feel like, “Why am I still crying? Why am I still feeling this way?” They look fine. I think there’s value in them hearing what those difficult moments look like to remind them they are not alone.

Facing The Grief Of Lost Dreams & Social Disconnection

My difficult moment was because I was only 33 at the time and seeing a lot of younger families starting to expand from one child to multiple children, to going through their own family life. My darker struggle was realizing that they don’t have that. Everything that we talked about and dreamed of and planned by having multiple children, living in this great, nice house, and a quiet neighborhood, all changed instantly.

That was tough. We did lose some of those connections with friends that we had, and the dynamics changed because they were used to seeing both of us together. Now there’s only one. When you’re grieving at a younger age, not necessarily because of the loss of the family dynamic, but it’s the loss of those connections, it’s hard. The key that I learned is that I stopped comparing myself to others. We were all different.

I will never say I know what it’s like to walk in someone’s shoes because that’s not necessarily accurate. Each of us has our own story, our own history and experience, has shaped us into who we are. Once I learned to stop comparing myself to others, stop looking and saying, they’re our family of four, we’re only a family of two, my daughter and I, I always use the analogy for basketball for those that are into sports is sometimes when you’re parents, you can play zone defense with the kids. I’m playing one-on-one with my daughter.

She’s finding ways to outsmart me. I’m trying to find ways to balance her and teach her their values. I didn’t always get things perfect, but we have such wonderful memories looking back all these years, and we’re very close. Once you start comparing others and you start embracing what you have, I started embracing that special bond for her and I. Again, it doesn’t always translate to perfect pictures. Getting your nails done, getting your hair done some of the things that mom and daughters like to do together.

I’ve done my very best, and my hair didn’t look quite out the way that she thought it was going to look. Sitting with her, smelling some of the perfumes of the nails and stuff was a little too much where I had to step out. In the end, we made it work. It was very helpful to really just form our own connection. That’s how I started feeling a whole lot better about the grief. We still honor her mother every day. We still have pictures in her bedroom. Her mother and her together as a small child, infant. I think that’s healthy, and we’re building onto that legacy.

I would agree for someone else that is having to venture into solo parenting because their spouse passed. Are there some lessons learned, some advice, things that you would want to share with them specifically?

Prioritizing Connection Over Career

Engage with your child or children, put your phone, your electronics away. I spent a lot of time just one-to-one with my daughter, away from the electronics. We had some amazing times that we had together. She knew that she was the focal point of my life. At times, as a single parent, we get caught up in our careers. I actually left a job because the time consumption of the work that I was doing was impacting our playtime together, our one-to-one moments that we would have at night, where we would read the story, play in the basement, and do things, because I was so consumed.

One day, she asked me the question, “How come we don’t do this anymore?” The next day, I resigned from my job to ensure that she was the most important to me. As a single parent, we have an obligation, yes, to ourselves. We want to be happy. We want to do all the right things. We also have our children that we are connected to, and the memories that we share with them not only help us, but also shape their lives as well as when they mature and become adults, and maybe with families of their own. They have those proud moments of being with mom or being with dad and one-to-one.

That’s the best advice. Just engage with them. I know we get tired. I know there are moments that we just want to be able to sit on the couch and close our eyes. My daughter is seventeen years old. She’s a junior in high school. I still tuck her into bed every single night because that’s what she asks me to do. There are days when I’m tired. There are days when I just need to get things done around the house. I always remember as principal, how many other parents would love this opportunity that I have to just tuck her in, give her a kiss good night, and talk about if you can say our prayers. One day, she’s not going to want that, and I’m going to miss that. Be with your children, embrace the uniqueness that you have, but also continue to celebrate.

How have you been able to keep Cory’s memory alive for your daughter over these 16 or 17 years?

Keeping A Loved One’s Memory Alive

We have pictures. We openly talk about certain things. Early on, I felt it was important to be upfront with her and not sugarcoat certain things when she would ask me, “How did mommy die? What happened?” There were terms that I would use to help differentiate things a little bit more. I called it an illness that she had with cancer, as opposed to being sick.

When you’re a child, when you hear being sick, more like a running nose, a flu bug, a cold, or some other ailment. An illness is a little bit different. I didn’t want her to think about being sick, that she had the same thing that her mother had. I was very open from the beginning with her. There were moments where she played the card where “Mommy would want me to stay up later tonight.” I’d be like, “No, I think mommy wants you to go to bed early.”

That one-on-one was getting intense.

Sometimes, you we would have to use the mommy card here, or sometimes she’ll be like, “Mommy would want me to wear this.” I’m like, “No.” It gets humorous. When she was little, it was much easier to dress her because all the outfits, the top and the bottom, were matched. For the first couple of years, I’ve always dressed her in fancy outfits because I didn’t want anybody to say, “Look at this guy, he doesn’t know how to dress his daughter. He’s got the worst color code combinations that we had.”

I would put her in like really good stuff. It’s like when she got past, like I think it was the five T stage or the clothing, I was lost on what to dress her in because I couldn’t figure out what color schemes. We would joke around and say, “Do you think mommy would like this? Do you think she would like that on you?” She had her own imagination, and what was unfortunate is that she didn’t have much of a memory of her mother.

She knows the stories, she knows the pictures, the videos, but we honor the anniversaries. We honor both days, and we celebrate. I think that’s the key in this whole thing is that I chose not to run from this and help her grow up and help her understand that her mother loves her. Her mother is still with her in her heart, looking down on her. I do believe there are certain forces of nature at hand. There are times when she has gotten herself into a little bit of a challenge. The only thing I can explain is that her mother sheltered her from it.

I still take that, and we share that memory and say, “I think mommy was watching over you.” Again, that helps us with our grief and that helps us with our healing. We go and we try to keep it natural without overdoing it. That was important to me early on to celebrate. I use that term a lot when I talk about grief, it’s part of our memory, showing appreciation, our affection, but it also helps her grow into a young adult, knowing that the memory of her mother may not be there, but she has those artificial warm feelings knowing that she’s still with us.

Those are some gold nuggets there for sure. AJ, in the grieving community, people will say moving on, moving forward. Some people are very passionate about not wanting to say I’m moving on

versus moving forward. To me, they mean the same thing. It’s semantics. It’s one or the other. Do you have a preference? If so, or does either of those matter to you? Just use them interchangeably.

Moving On Vs. Moving Forward

Again, going back to whatever helps people sleep at night. Sometimes we get caught up in words, we get caught up in various phrases that hold significance to one person, but might mean something different to the other. I always use words like, “Where are we going? Keep those feet moving, where are we going?” That holds personal significance to me.

It’s important is during that grief is where you’re going, moving on, moving forward, whatever phrase and terminology that resonates with people. Once you start talking about that, it’s not like you’re moving on from that person, like you’re forgetting about them, you’re not mourning them any further. What it means is that you’re moving through your healing process. You’re learning the coping strategies, whether indirectly, directly.

It also means that you’re taking a breath and realizing that you have a lot of life still to live. It’s okay to mourn and have a little setbacks here and there. As you continue to move on, move forward, where you’re going, it shows strength in the healing process. We are never 100% fully healed, but the healing process helps the heart, helps the mind, helps the body, and comforts and softens the overall landing.

I would agree and definitely never 100% that this is not impacting our life on a daily basis in some form or fashion. Every time you look at your daughter, I’m sure you’re thinking of her mother and what life looked like then, and the anticipation of what life would have looked like in the future in being a young widower, and the concept of moving forward. What did that look like when you started thinking about dating, or what life would look like going forward for you?

The Internal Conflict About Dating Again After Loss

I never wanted to date again. It was a challenge partly because when Cory was dealing with the illness, we never talked about the what-ifs. What should happen if the inevitable happened because I chose to continue to fight for her, believing that we were going to find a cure, that we were going to overcome this brain tumor that was just ugly? We never talked about, “If I go first, I want you to find somebody and continue to live your life.”

Deep down, I know both of us would have said, definitely. When you don’t have that conversation and you don’t have that real, in-depth knowledge to hear it from them, it holds you back from the dating aspect. Sometimes you feel like you’re cheating on your spouse. You feel that “Is it possible to love somebody, be with somebody?” Again, that goes back to the mourning, the feeling of guilt. It took a long time for me to realize that sometimes you miss that adult companionship.

It wasn’t until my daughter was about nine years old, came to me and sat me down on the couch and said, “Daddy, we need to talk.” I’m thinking, “We’re going to have a talk about something in school. We’re going to have something about the playground, a fun thing.” She looked at me very directly and said, “I need a new mom. I’m missing out on so many mom activities that I see my friends have with her.” That’s when I realize it’s not about me. It’s also her. My choosing to not date, my choosing not to do any of that, was having an impact on her as well.

Recognizing that is such a critical aspect for me, a wake-up, and I started laughing in a sense, I’m like, “Did somebody put you up to this? Is this something that I need to know about?” She was genuine. She handled it very maturely at that nine years old, and said, “I need a mom.” She did throw in a couple of humorous things that I won’t share too much, but from a dad’s perspective, 9 or 10 years old and you’re developing to a certain thing, I cannot answer that moms have a better way of deciding. That was like, she’s like, “See, daddy, you cannot even handle that one.” That’s where they got a little humorous into that.

She came well prepared, but that’s really how the whole dating aspect came about. If I swore up and down, I would never. I did go through and talk to somebody professionally and ask, “How do I let go of that thought channel that I’m having that cheating, even though I know that she would have wanted it, without that reassurance verbally that I was just stuck and that part of that mourning. As I continued to turn, we moved forward, move on, you were am I going?” I realized that it’s a healthy journey that we are going on together. She was involved from the beginning.

Looking back, what was dating like for you?

Dating As A Widowed Single Parent

It was so challenging in a sense because as a single dad, you have to find somebody that is interested in not only you, but it’s interested in your child. The child has to accept and give approval on who you’re dating. It’s a lot easier when you’re single with no children because it’s you weighing. Now you’ve got the other variables that are coming into the picture. There are some dates that I went on.

My daughter eventually would meet and she looked at me and goes, “No, daddy.” I’m like, “Tell me what I’m missing? What am I seeing?” She would say something. What it came down to is finding somebody that you can trust as a companion. Someone realizes that my marriage ended through a tragic, the unthinkable, and who secures within themselves to realize they’re not competing with my spouse.

What they’re doing is complementing the companionship and taking on a different type of role where they’re not trying to be the mother or the significant other for the child. What they’re doing is they’re very genuine and just letting that natural ability come through. Children are a lot smarter when it comes to dating than we give them credit for. They see things that we necessarily don’t see, which is, they say, love is blind. Having that trustworthiness and openness with my daughter helped tremendously.

She saw some things that were a little strange, that maybe somebody said something to her when I wasn’t around, or observing certain things. I go back to the thought process that she came to me, my daughter, and said she wants a mom. The different thought process, because one day she came to me and said, “Dad, I want a little sister. Could we go to the hospital and pick one up?” That was how she thought that. You’ve got children. I had to explain that it doesn’t necessarily work out that way.

She’s like, “Could we go to someplace and pick out a month?” I’m like, “It doesn’t necessarily work out that part.” We have to give our children a lot more credit. The dating part was challenging. You have text messaging, you got apps, people have different ideas, different agendas. Two weeks ago, we talked about catfishing. In terms of when it comes to dating where widows and widowers have this perception that they have all this accumulated wealth, and people are attracted to that wealth.

When in reality, we just use that wealth that we inherited, we were fortunate to pay for medical bills, to pay for the funeral costs, and whatever little money is left behind, we probably did something with it. Either for the children, for ourselves, put it away for another day. It’s a whole different aspect of dating than what it was when I first met my wife. Text messaging wasn’t even around back then. I don’t know what some of these abbreviations mean. It felt like I needed a dictionary next to me, what LOL meant or some of the other terms that were used in dating. I think the one that got me was when they said TY.

I didn’t know what TY was. I thought it was like somebody’s name, Ty. I’m like, “That’s weird. Why are they calling me Ty? I’m AJ.” There were some humorous moments looking back. It was a whole different animal in terms of, but the key was just trying to find genuine people that had a great heart, compliment our lives and not rush into trying to fulfill a void out of necessity, filling it based on the natural ability that you’re ready to move forward, to be in the presence of someone and learn about them. For me, it took my daughter to put me onto that dating map. Without her having that conversation with me, I don’t know if I would have dated again.

It sounds as if she had some really good observations as far as women who were not suitable for you guys as a family or for you. Flip the question, what does it look like with your daughter dating, and how is your energy being brought to that if she started dating at all?

Parenting Philosophy & Openness Around His Daughter’s Emerging Independence

She claims she is not dating. I don’t know. She hasn’t come out to tell me. She does go out with different groups of people. I’ve always said that “I’m going to trust you until you give me a reason not to trust. Let me know where you are. Let me know that you’re okay, that you got to that place.” I do not track her. I know a lot of parents they track their children. It’s not necessarily because they’re being nosy. It’s because they’re looking at it from a safety concern.

I use the honor system. If you say you’re going somewhere, that’s where you went. If you’re saying you’re going with people, that’s who you went with. When it comes time when she brings home somebody to date, I have to take a step back and let her learn. She has to decide what she wants in a companionship. What her interests are and supporting her. There are a lot of times that I go back and look about growing up as a child, growing up in her shoes of being a teenager. What did I want my parents to know? What didn’t I want my parents to know?

I choose to have a much more open relationship with my daughter than I had with my parents. If she wants to tell me something that may not sit right with me, I have to open. A couple of years ago, she was thirteen years old and she asked a weird question. She goes, “Daddy, what if I get pregnant at thirteen years old? What are you going to do?” I thought about it for a second, saying, “We will cross that bridge when we get there because we’re not there. Let’s take a look at the facts. We’ll take a look at what’s happened and we’ll strategize there.”

She said, “Would you be mad?” I said, “It’s not about being mad. It’s about understanding how we got to this position.” A lot of times, I speak to her with the mindset of teaching a certain principle. Sometimes it backfires on me. There was a time where, perfect example to your question, about a year and a half ago, she wanted to go to Colorado. We live in Illinois to visit some camp friends. I took the position with, and she and her one of her girlfriends were going to go with one of the moms, and they were visiting some girls in her cabin.

I didn’t ask the right question. I made the assumption that she was visiting friends from her camp. When I was texting with the mom, because the mom was going to go, I said, “We’re good to go.” She’s like, “I don’t think the boys have the same spring break as the girls.” I’m like, “What? Boys? What do you mean, boys? I thought they’re going to camp with friends.” Like, “Yeah, but these are the boys from the boys’ cabin that they’re visiting.”

I said to my daughter afterwards, “You’re visiting boys?” She was like, “Yeah.” I said, “You didn’t tell me.” She goes, “No, Dad, you didn’t ask.” Which is why I’ve always taught her don’t volunteer information if you’re not being asked. She turned it on me. At that moment, I had already told her previously that she could go visit her camp friend, not thinking that it could be the opposite end. When it comes to the dating aspect, I look at things a little different.

It means I’m doing my job right as a parent to allow her to grow, to allow her to make informed decisions that she thinks are important for her, providing guidance along the way. I choose to provide that support even if I may not agree with something, because the relationship, the connections that we have, it’s much more important. As we all know, relationships come and go, and you want to be able to help steer them. Maybe the light bulb goes on at the right moment. I fully support it when that time comes. It will be a big step for me.

Indeed. It sounds like you have raised a very wise young lady.

Thank you. To borrow my uncle’s phrase, I’ve done a lot of great things in raising her, but I’m sure I’ve found some ways to mess her up as well.

Building Trust, Blending Families

I think all of us can say that about our parents. When you found the right woman to be your companion in this journey of life, how did you know, and how did you make your daughter aware?

My daughter was involved every step of the way because that’s just our connection. What was interesting is that it’s built on trust and companionship. I started to trust this woman that I was dating with my child, and understanding that she had her best interests too. She had two daughters of her own who were a couple of years older than my daughter. The girls got along very well. There were moments where there was some jealousy here. The big girls are doing one thing, that’s one little one doing this.

When we have that open connection, it also did help that the one person I was dating at that time, I’ve known her my entire life, so I could trust her. We grew up four houses down from each other very early on in our lives, and then we went our own separate ways. I had some familiarity that I knew she wasn’t going to take advantage of me. I also saw her interest in generosity toward my daughter and treated her. As single parents, we’ve all been there where we get caught up somewhere with traffic or other challenges that we’re trying to meet and beat the rush to get our child out of daycare before they charge us $25 a minute for late charges.

Knowing that I can count on her and say, “I’m sorry, can you pick my daughter up? I am not going to make it.” Over time, my daughter started feeling that connection and realized that coming to me and saying, “I think we found my mom.” To differentiate the women in our lives, we call Cory mommy because that’s what my daughter knows her as. My current wife, that I remarried, wants to call her mom because she likes that feeling that she has a mom, but knowing that she will never replace her mommy.

It’s again, that complimenting, and that’s how we knew, because it takes a special person to recognize that they’re not there to replace but complement, as we talked earlier. That’s how I knew it was the right fit. I talked to my daughter and I said, “What do you think? Do we do it? Should we emphasize? We become a blended family? What are your thoughts?” She was like, “Yeah, that’d be great.’ She was involved in the process and was there. I didn’t do the traditional, similar to what we talked about in the pre-discussion.

I didn’t want to follow the same footsteps, getting on. I did it a little bit differently. I know I even think I said it when you were magic, you want to get married. I think I just said I changed the wording or something, because being born on the thirteenth, sometimes you get a little superstitious, too. She was there and thought it was the funniest, the greatest thing. They have a good relationship. Give and take at times, that’s where I come in and have to mediate some of the things.

Overall, my daughter and I have made things work. We still have, like I said, very close. She gives it to me as much as I try to use those as a teaching moment back. There are some days where she’ll come and say, “Dad, why did you get remarried?” I’m like, “We talked about this. You said you wanted something.” Jokingly, of course, she goes, “Yeah, I forgot. What was I thinking back then?”

It’s the humor. At our house, I try to raise her around humor, around laughter, smiles, and doing everything I can to give her the quality of life that she may not have gotten early on with the loss of her mother. Tried to compensate as much as I could. There were times I was overcompensated in terms of shouting. I didn’t know what American Girl’s else were.

I’m like one day, “Let’s go down to the American Girl store and we’ll buy you an American Girl and a couple of accessories, not knowing what I was in for.” I went into the store and I had to walk right back out and look at the title and say, “Am I in the right place? $300 for a doll? What?” She listened and go, “Daddy, you said we were going to get a doll today and the accessories and everything.” Things like that, we look back on with fond memories.

We have talked about so much over these last two conversations, and I am very grateful. If someone wanted to reach out to you, how would they contact you, and how would they find your book?

Thank you for the opportunity to share. The best way to contact me is through my website, KeepThoseFeetMoving.com. You can order the book through our website, or you can go right to Amazon and order just by typing, Keep Those Feet Moving by AJ Coleman. The book itself is very easy reading. It’s about 160 pages with some exercises at the end of each chapter to help promote curiosity, to help you do some self-discovery, but challenge you to think about where you want to go in life and how you want to achieve some of that.

It’s designed to be light reading where you can pretty much pick it up at an airport and read it on an entire flight. Designed not to carry through it, but that’s the best way to get hold of me through there. I’m happy to answer questions, return emails, and provide as much guidance and where resources such as yourself and where people can turn to for additional support.

Thank you. I have asked you tons of questions over these last two conversations. Any questions you have of me? Give the opportunity to be the podcaster and I be the host for a moment.

I don’t think anybody would ask me that part, but what it would be the one lesson that you’ve learned through all your podcasts that you can share with others who are thinking about maybe even starting their own grief support among their friends, or looking for ways to connect with others?

No one has ever asked me that question. That’s a good one. The one thing that I have learned most in three years of podcasting and helping people, everyone has something I can learn from. Being open to that reality creates curiosity. That curiosity draws me in to want to learn because one conversation can change the dynamics of what you think you thought you knew, and going forward, and how you move forward in life.

The other thing that I have, as far as the connection with people, it is so valuable to have a community because some days you just don’t know how to get out of bed. Some days, you want someone to listen as you talk about your loved one and not feel like they’re picking up their phone and they’re trying to hurry up and scoot past. There’s also value when we pull back and reflect in our moments of introspection, and finding that balance is helpful.

Someone should know if you’ve not shown up for three or four days, because one of the biggest things when our spouse is no longer here, our accountability partner, the person we would come home to talk to, the person that I shared different things with, no longer exists. I now have to put emergency point of contact. Maybe I don’t even have one anymore. It’s an opportunity to think about creating friendships and an opportunity to bring people into your sphere.

To be gentle to the people in your life that you thought were going to show up, but didn’t realize until your spouse passed, you probably didn’t have the emotional bandwidth or capacity to support someone else and understand they’re in uncharted territory. Maybe you taking the first step to reach out to your family and friends and invite them to be on this journey with you.

You too will learn together what support you need, but sometimes being okay to just tell them, “I just need you to be there. We may never need to talk about my spouse’s passing. I just want someone to watch TV with. I want someone to go to the movies or go out to eat with, and I just need company.” It’s okay that you need that. Your feelings are valid.

Coping Mechanisms In Grief — Four Unhealthy Patterns To Watch For

Embracing journaling is extremely helpful. I will say a lot of times people say there’s no roadmap to grief, but there are some things I have found that are not healthy coping skills that deter your ability to keep living. If you’re doing some of the things I’m going to mention to maybe evaluate how that is impacting your grief. If you are spending an immense amount of time on, “If I would have done this, that would not have happened.

If I would have done this, I could have prevented that.” The reality is we all have a moment that we will no longer have this life journey, and we don’t have the capacity to often alter that for someone else. If the what-ifs are driving you to so much pain and anguish, please reach out to a mental health professional to get the coping skills to work through that.

If you are leaning heavily on drugs, alcohol, or different things to mask your pain, then that is probably not serving you well in your grief. If you have totally isolated that you go to work or come home and you don’t speak to anyone else, you don’t do anything else. I understand that it can be hard because often most of the things we did were with our spouse or our loved one. I remember going to the grocery store, sitting outside crying because I didn’t want to do something I had to do without Mark. The first time, horrible.

Second time, less horrible. Third time, negligible. Fourth time, I can do this. Maybe ask someone to go with you, but reach out. Don’t isolate yourself from everything. The fourth thing is when people feel like the universe or God, or a higher being, personally attacked them, by their loved one dying can leave them feeling hopeless. Those are four things I have found in a lot of conversations. If you’re heavy in one or all four of those things, evaluate how it is impacting your grief and seek somebody that can help you work through those.

Now, I love that. Those four steps are critical. It’s almost like a checkpoint. If you’re saying yes or I don’t know, maybe then it’s like a reality. Say, “Now I need to take the proper steps to talk to somebody to work through that.” I found that in times of grief that we don’t ask ourselves questions. We just function how we feel, how the day is, and we just go about it. The warning signs are never always there.

I did like those four points where you’re asking yourself some pretty key questions. I would even encourage people to take what you wrote and write them down, and look at them on a daily basis, and just keep that journal and say, “If there’s a yes to any of them, maybe one day that we have set back.” If you’re seeing a pattern of multiple days or more days than not, then there is an opportunity for you to network and seek some assistance to work through those thoughts. I like that. That was a great lesson that you’ve shared. Thank you.

Thank you so much for being here. I’m going to say something to our readers and the people who joined us. I’d like for you to close out this conversation. I want to say thank you for allowing us to share with you. I am so sorry for the person that you have lost, that has drawn you to this conversation, but I’m glad that you found us, and I look forward to seeing you next week.

Thank you all for reading and allowing me to come and share some insights into my life, into my stories. There’s one key takeaway that I will share with you is continue to celebrate your loved ones, continue to honor them, share with their memories and keep their legacies alive, because without them, we would not be who we are today.

Thank you, AJ.

Important Links

• Keep Those Feet Moving
• AJ Coleman on LinkedIn
• Keep Those Feet Moving on Amazon

About AJ Coleman

After supporting his wife Cory in her fight against brain cancer, and inevitably losing her in that fight in 2009 (when their daughter was just one-year-old), AJ has dedicated his life to raising his daughter and helping others overcome painful challenges.

As the author behind the blog and upcoming self-help book, Keep Those Feet Moving — A Widower’s 8-Step Guide to Coping With Grief and Thriving Against All Odds, AJ has become an internet and social media sensation. He strives to make it possible for anyone to take the steps they need to reach their goals and focus on wellness and happiness—regardless of what they’re going through.