Embark on a 16-year journey of healing and transformation with Laura Cross, a remarkable woman who has navigated the complexities of widowhood and emerged stronger than ever. In this episode, Laura shares her deeply personal story of loss, resilience, and self-discovery, offering a unique perspective on the long-term impact of grief and the ongoing process of healing. She discusses the challenges and triumphs she has experienced along the way, the importance of self-care, and the transformative power of community and connection. Tune in to discover how Laura’s journey can inspire hope and empower other widows to embrace their own paths toward well-being.

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

—

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

From Loss To Self-Discovery: A Widow’s 16-Year Path To Wellbeing With Laura Cross

Our guest is Laura Cross, an Air Force veteran and dynamic owner of White Sands Premier Travel with an unwavering dedication to promotional self-care and personal growth. She Founded White Sand Self-Care and serves as the dedicated host of the popular TV show. Mindful Mondays with Laura Cross. Laura’s dedication lies in creating a vibrant self-care community that offers invaluable education, resources, connections, and opportunities for collaboration. At the helm of the White Sand Self-Care community group on Facebook, she empowers individuals to lead their best lives. Let’s get into this conversation.

Laura, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

Life’s Too Short: Redefining Priorities After Loss

People say thank you, but what do you think when you hear welcome to the widowhood?

I appreciate the opportunity of being able to be here and share my story or my experience and stuff with people.

What of your experience made this seem like a good match for you when you heard about this conversation Widowhood Real Talk with Tina?

Unfortunately, there are a lot of us who go through it and experience it, and it’s not always an easy challenge. Everybody thinks that you get a lot of those people that think that, “You should snap out of it or get over it,” or other people think you know that you take too long. It’s a conversation that we don’t normally talk about. It’s something we keep to ourselves, but it’s something that we should talk about because I am sure there are others out there who are struggling and trying to get on with their life or however you want to put it, reinvent your life. Start over for me. I felt like I was almost starting all over.

That is very true and I like that there are different terms. People get hung up on “It’s not moving on, it’s moving forward. It’s not getting on with my life and continuing living.” Just as this grief journey is unique. The way we articulate it for ourselves is a unique experience. I have one widow, Andrea. She says Grief is similar and grief is different, and I believe that’s so true.

Every time I have a conversation with someone, their spouse may have transitioned from this world, they may say transition, died, passed away. At the end of the road, they are no longer here and you are trying to continue to live. I feel like sometimes people get too wrapped up in argumentative about a word that means the same thing and we are trying to get to the same place. I love that you had different versions of that. Would you share your late husband’s name with us?

It was Randy Cross and it all comes down to your beliefs, your background, cultures. I have found being more open-minded and listening to other people’s perspectives, sometimes you think about it. It gives you another way to look at things than the way I may have looked at it originally.

I agree with you. My perspective of life changed so much when my husband passed. Life is short. We say this statement, but when someone close to you passes, the fragileness of life becomes very real. You realize how much you believe and how much you don’t know what happens, but what I have come to terms with how I show up now, the spaces I’m given with people are important, and if I don’t take what and do well with that, what am I doing with the life I have been given?

It took me a lot of years, but I was the same as you with the whole process. That’s my whole thing is life’s too short to be doing this. One of those things was like when I was working for someone and because of what I have gotten paid, I realized I didn’t have to go work and answer to somebody, but I used to be that person who would always be there no matter what snowstorm. They were the ones that I could count on. After he died, it was like, “No. I’m not risking my life to go if 10 million other people don’t show up. I’m not showing up.” You start putting value on different things and realizing that what you’ve been doing, although it may be admirable, it’s not always necessary. There are other things that are more important.

You bring up a good point. The perspective of work, what we value, what we spend our time with. You said it took you some time to get there. When did your husband transition from this world and what was your journey like getting to the place of understanding that for you?

That would be December 21st, 2004. Approximately 10:00 PM at night. We were laughing at lunch. He was dead by ten that night at 36 years old. I had turned 37. We had three dogs. Those were our kids. My samoyed I had to put to sleep 2 days after my birthday, 2 weeks later my husband died. The following year I have to put down my keeshond. Within 14 months, I had been to 4 hospitals, 3 funerals, and I had enough.

Thank you for sharing that and I know sharing our journey may be something we say in rope, but there’s a part of it that takes you back for a moment, and we think of those things. It’s wonderful when people are empowered to share their journey, but sharing that comes at a cost. I don’t want to gloss over that and not remember the years. The love and everything that you experienced and have all of those things together is a weight. How did you work through that grief?

I took seven days of bereavement. You can keep that because that didn’t work for me.

You had the funeral planned in seven days. What is that?

We had people coming in from out of town. I had seven days of bereavement. I went back, I was working nights because we were already told that we got paid 36% under in the Air Force to what it took to live in Colorado Springs. I was already working night shifts to make ends meet, and most people or doctors will tell you or anybody will tell you that’s not normal. It’s not good for the body to be working nights as it is on top of dealing with that.

I was back to work, I don’t remember, maybe a week, two tops maybe, and it was so quiet. Some people would politely ask because I worked overnight and then when I’m driving home in the morning, I was so exhausted from emotion. Emotion drains me out. I’m an empathic person, so emotions drain me. I have wound up falling asleep twice while driving home, where I would have crossed over the line, but I woke up and pulled it back. I went to go see a doctor or whatever and I found out from one of the ladies in human resources that I could take short-term disability and go out on short-term leave.

Were you in the Air Force at that time?

I separated after my husband and I got married. I was working in a company up in Monument, Colorado, that makes the taps, pins, screws, wires, and everything that puts people and animals back together after they have broken bones and stuff. I was in a manufacturing plant.

Thank you for your service. I was in the Army. We are all military because we are the minority, the people who have served this country in the capacity of enlisted in the military, and that is what a true patriot looks like to me. Thank you for your service.

Thank you, and thank you for yours as well.

The Healing Journey: Embracing Grief, Growth, And Self-Discovery

You go back to work in seven days and I see relax and I see the pictures of the dolphins and the butterflies. What was the transition from you from this deep grief complicated layer to get to these places in your mind?

I went from angry. I had people telling me that, “There’s a reason for this.” “There was no reason for this.” I didn’t like having people’s beliefs shoved down on me. It was something that I had to deal with myself. It took over sixteen years. I slowly dealt with it. I sunk myself into watching CSI or Boston Legal, something that occupied my mind until I would pass out and go to sleep.

I always looked at it as he went TDY and if you are not military, that’s a Temporary Duty Assignment. I knew he wasn’t coming back this time. I went through having the wild upsetting dreams and that would go on sometimes for a while, and then it got farther apart once a year, but it wasn’t until 2020, like 16 years later, when I started working with people who were in the holistic health and wellness space, I started working with business coaches and we brought things up and of course, there comes up the emotions, here come the tears. It’s like, “We can do this or we can do that.”

What I got outta that conversation was I did realize at this point now that had my husband not passed away, I would not be on the path that I am now. I wouldn’t be living to what I feel is my true purpose and what truly makes me happy. I’d still be working one job or another to make ends meet, and not that I wasn’t happy to do that because we had a wonderful marriage. A lot of it was like two ships passing in the night because if he wasn’t TDY somewhere, then we were working opposite shifts to make ends meet.

We were in one rat race or another, but I was always working a job doing whatever I had to make ends meet. Now I get to do what I love doing or what I have figured out that I love doing, and so I’m much more relaxed and happy. I like to be able to connect with people and I’m an entrepreneur. I’m a solopreneur, so I work on my own schedule. I don’t work on anybody else’s schedule anymore.

I am so grateful for your transparency in talking about a sixteen-year journey because so many times, people want to make assumptions that after a year, you are moving on with life or you’ve gone through all the cycles of things. This grief is a life journey. That transition that happened for you in those sixteen years was hard, and then to hear you say you are now fulfilling your purpose. This came to me. Maybe there was some truth and what people say there’s purpose for our loved one’s passing, it’s immature to say it at that point in time. What would you think of that statement?

I could see that. I have never been a very religious person. I have no problem with people that have it. We need to do what makes us happy and we have to have something that we believe in. When people came at me like that, I went into full defense mode and I had a person and I have never wanted to reach out and slap someone so bad in my life, but I had someone look at me and say, “I know exactly what you are going through. I got divorced.” I’m sorry they are still alive. You can still talk to them. You are trying to tell me that you understand. See. That’s another word I try not to use anymore because we all throw that word around. Understand.

We lost my dad here now in 2023, so my mom has now lost her husband. I can relate to some things she’s going to go through and some of the ups and downs that’s going to hit her and it’s going to hit her outta the blue, but I cannot say I understand. Their relationship was different. My mom is a different person and has a different personality. To try and sit there and tell someone you understand, I don’t know why we throw that word out there all the time because you don’t. If you are not in that person’s, you can’t understand what they are feeling or what they are going through.

I agree with you because I don’t tell another widow that I understand how you feel and for the exact same reasons that you mentioned. My uniqueness as an individual, my husband’s uniqueness as an individual created our unique marriage and the nuances of that only the two of us can understand. I would dare say if I had transitioned and my husband had left here, he would feel different than I felt in that grief.

How could I dare tell someone else? I understand, I can sympathize, I can empathize, I can relate and I can share my journey, and I’m sure, as we have in this very short period of time, have been able to identify some similarities and differences. The ability to respect that is what’s important, and not try to give these one-line nuances to people. They do not provide much help. As you look back over your experience and other people you’ve come across, what are some things that people could do that would be helpful for someone that is grieving?

Supporting A Grieving Friend: Practical Ways To Show You Care

I would say some things that you can do is sometimes know that it’s okay to be quiet. You don’t have to try to fix them. Sometimes they need someone to be there with them. Not even necessarily talking, or sometimes they may need someone to listen to them without judgment. This is tough, especially when it comes to family members, because my family knocked themselves out to be there with me, and I love them for it.

It’s one of the reasons why I embraced the idea of going to talk to a psychiatrist because it was someone who didn’t know me from anyone else, and it didn’t have that preconceived notion. To be honest, now that where I’m at now, I realize I wasn’t being true to myself or know truly who I was at that time, so how can somebody else?

Especially with parents or family members, they have preconceived notions of you because of whatever you’ve gone through in your childhood and stuff. That doesn’t mean things haven’t changed for me as an adult. As I said, I love them dearly because they were very worried about me and they always made sure. It was four days before Christmas and it ruined Christmas for me for a long time.

They came and picked me up. They drove me so I wasn’t driving in an emotional state so that I wouldn’t get in an accident. They made sure they were there with me all the time, and the thing that they don’t think of is when they are on the phone sitting there saying, “I’m here. I will see you later. I love you.” I don’t have anyone to say, “I love you,” on the other end of the phone anymore. As much as they were trying to help, it was still a constant reminder. At times, they would start to get a little frustrated because they were knocking themselves out to help bring you up, but I wasn’t there yet, and it got frustrating for them.

Thank you for explaining that. It takes time. It is frustrating for us to see people we love hurting and trying to bring them up and understanding this is not fixable. The idea there is so much power and being silent and being present and validating someone’s feelings and not making it weird and letting it be what it is. Thank you for sharing that.

We are not the only ones affected. It does affect your friends and your family around you. It took a year after being on antidepressants and I didn’t take them anymore for me to realize that I was not ready to curl up and die. The New Year’s Eve, one year after my husband died, was when I had met my fiancé. We started dating. He moved in with me.

That created a whole new problem because all of a sudden, now I’m getting, “We are not ready for Randy to be replaced.” He’s not being replaced. On one hand, you wanted me to keep going on and keep moving. I wasn’t supposed to curl up and die, but now that I’m here now, it’s like reality, and now everybody’s like, “Oh, my God.” There are so many transitions, so many things to go through that you probably don’t necessarily even think of, but there’s lots of things that came up.

I can relate to that idea that there’s so much to consider. There are pieces for me eight years later that I am still unraveling about Mark’s passing. I would dare say for you that there are still pieces of your husband’s transition to leaving this world. This still comes up in different ways. It’s like I thought we had considered everything possible, but yet something else can surprise you. I want to talk about the idea of people saying, “We are not ready for Randy to be replaced.”

The people that were not his spouse. The people that were not married to him. The people did not carry this weight of a spouse that is gone from the outside. I’m going to say the audacity to say the things that we are personally trying to relate with. To think that it’s replaceable. Our late spouses are not replaceable. That is not the concept in our mind. At least it’s not for me, and when I talk to people, nor is it to solve our grief. I don’t understand why they don’t comprehend that.

I didn’t necessarily look at it that way because like I said, he wasn’t being replaced. I had to restart and start a new life. This was a second life. Especially when you get into difficult topics like that, and if you are a person that is not used to expressing your true feelings or your emotions, you don’t know the words to put to it.

Looking back at it, I would say it’s not that they weren’t ready to be replaced. They threw themselves and my grandma had passed away two and a half months after my husband did. My mom and my dad had been taking care of her and even turned the front room of their house into a hospice. When you are burying all that, my mom never had time to grieve for my husband because she was worried about me and keeping me up and going. Then they had to take care of grandma and deal with that.

When you don’t give yourself time to grieve, that’s where that comes from. It’s not being replaced. In other words, they are ready for this because they haven’t had time to deal with their own grief and the whole idea of it because it’s like what we do every day. We throw ourselves into work, we keep going and instead of facing it or dealing with it, that can cause you health problems and all kinds of other problems, but when you pack that stuff down and you don’t let it out and deal with it, it hangs around a lot longer.

I like that perspective because I will say from my perspective, being a widow, I was dealing with my husband’s death every second, every moment, every day. Not dealing with it was not an option for me. That process of getting to a place where I was willing to open my heart to someone else and the amount of work that had taken place internally for me to get to was massive.

I could see from that statement that other people from the outside may not have had to do the amount of direct work to continue living, so that changed. I’m fortunate that the majority of my family and friends were extremely supportive and happy that I was continuing to live, and what that looked like. You talked about how it’s impacted by grief. What does that look like from your perspective? What are the things you’ve learned?

Mindfulness And Self-Care: Navigating Life After Loss

There are a lot of things that can come up and there’s a lot that I have learned, especially the more I have learned about holistic health and the things that you can do, but not everything is fixable with drugs or going to the doctors. Those are bandaid fixes. There are things that are off in us. When you are burying down traumas and you are not dealing with them, it shows up in pain in different ways in your body. It can show up as disease or dysfunction.

It affects the whole person when we don’t release that. Blocked emotions can cause a bunch of constant headaches, different things. I have had chest pains before come up when I was bottling things up but don’t let up. I can feel myself getting upset and I could feel chest pains and I would know to take a few deep breaths and you have to work through it, but it does have an impact on your health when you don’t face things and deal with them.

That’s a brief synopsis. You have a talk show on television. What are some things that people could expect to hear from and how that would benefit them from tuning in?

The Mindful Mondays with Laura Cross, I created that not because of my experience that I had. I want people to know that they are not alone. Someone else probably out there has gone through something similar and can relate and maybe they have some methods or different techniques because there are so many different modalities and stuff out there that can help them.

I love when I have people who can share their story, how they got past their challenges and how they help other people get past those same challenges. I have had people on that grew up in evangelistic and a very abusive household and it damaged their self-confidence, their self-worth, but they got through that and now they are shining through as the professional and the entrepreneur. They have gone through paths. I have had other veterans on that were five-time suicide attempt survivors and how they have gotten past.

Sometimes it has to do with physical fitness. It can have to do with business. It is all realms. Mindfulness and self-care are all realms of life because we always like to say work is, work is home, but if something is off in one area, it’s affecting the other parts of your life. You don’t shut it off. It may show through an attitude, expression, whatever, and you may not even be aware of it.

I have all different realms. I have had intuitives. I love when I get the intuitives on there because they have such a unique perspective and there are some of those that make me think it’s like, “I could see that.” I love getting different perspectives. It’s a judgment-free space and I love having all the different perspectives on there.

You mentioned the word intuitive. Could you elaborate on what that means for someone who’s learning that word for the first time?

I’m not sure if I’m the best to define it. We all have intuition. We are born with it. We all have it. Some of us have buried it or don’t listen to it or don’t know how to listen to it. It’s like your hair stands up on your arm or something. You don’t know why. You have an intuition about stuff. People can sense or they can feel things. Other people are very in tune to it. Where I can be talking to them, they can be in a different country. They can either tell by my vibration, my energy. It’s like this aura.

When you have people telling you the same thing from different countries, there’s something to that. It has to do with the vibrations and the frequencies. It has to do with your intuition being in tune. It can go into the Claires. Some people are clairvoyant. It depends. There are so many different things. I’m still learning more about that world, but it’s pretty fascinating and it makes sense when you can get them on there and they can explain.

Speaking of explaining, can you tell us what was going on with the picture of the dolphin?

Animals have their own spirits and stuff, too. We are drawn to certain animals. For me, it’s dolphins and bears. I have been drawn to dolphins since I was a kid. I was never sure why, but I always loved the water, and people know that when they see me, they tell me, “You are a water person.” They’d like to see it about me. There’s something about it that can tell them that.

Air Force blue, Caribbean blue, so my blues going, but purple is one of my favorite colors as well. When I was a kid I didn’t know how to pick sports teams. My dad said you had a team that you know you root for. Miami Dolphins because they had a dolphin. That was my team. No, I have never lived there. I have visited there now, but I have never lived there. We’d go to SeaWorld as a kid and as much as I wanted to feed them, I was never able to because I didn’t want to touch the slimy or smelly fish and I was afraid they’d be all slimy.

We finally got to go to Atlantis with my parents in 2017, and that is Elektra. She was a dolphin that was rescued from Katrina that was down there. I decided I was going to do this experience one way or another. I have learned other things about fear. You are facing me, push through and let’s go do this. My mom said she’s already done the shallow experience. If we do this, we are going to do deep water swimming. I said, “Okay, let’s go.”

I threw on the wet suit, and we went in there and I loved it there. They are like a soft leather coat. It was the coolest experience. Anywhere I go that has a dolphin experience, I will sign up and go do that because being in the water with them and they come right up. They give you a kiss. They come by so you can pet them. You lay down, you put your feet, they take the nose, they propel you out, you put your feet down, you smack the water, she comes back and you grab her top fin and she pulls you back in. It was an amazing experience, and it’s one that I had with my mom. It was a lot of fun.

Thank you for sharing that and the butterfly.

Butterflies always represent new beginnings and that is something that a lady did for me in Denver. I won that, and it said peace on it. It had all the blues. I was attracted to it because of the blues and the purple ones. It had butterflies, so I put that up there too.

It’s Not The End, Only The Beginning

If you were to speak to yourself shortly after Randy passed away, what would you tell yourself now? Knowing what you know on this side of the journey, what would you tell Laura?

That it wasn’t the end, it’s the beginning, and that everything is going to be okay.

That is something to hold on to.

It was not something I felt like at that time.

Nor does anyone, but I believe it’s important for our sisters and brothers, widows and widowers who may have lost a loved one. They may be reading this blog and their spouse may have passed months ago, and to read someone that may have struggled for sixteen years and to be able to tell themselves it was the beginning. You forged through so much to be in the space that you are now. Those words have value. Thank you for sharing that. You mentioned sixteen years later, you found coaches and business people to work with. What was that transformation like for you?

I had done other business and stuff. I always kept plugging away. That’s what I was always taught to do. If I could share with you, it is something ironic and everybody has a different view on it.

This is your story and your journey. You get to share. This is yours.

Rebuilding From The Ground Up: Love, Loss, And Moving Forward

I met my late husband on New Year’s Eve at Luke Air Force Base. I met my fiance on New Year’s Eve, a year after he passed. They are both 5’10”, and they are both heavy metal headbangers. They have about the same comic book collection, the exact same music collection. They will describe the same definition between how rock and classical go together.

Did they have some differences? They both graduated from North Dakota, 1 in Underwood, 1 in one in Bisbee. I have had other people tell me that Randy sent him to me and I said that’s an interesting perspective, but I could see that. Other people say, “You have a type.” Those were some of the challenges. I still had some of the stuff, but he’s the exact same build, too.

Some of the clothes fit and then as time goes on we start doing stuff and then I don’t know if it’s struggling to remember or when you are creating new ones, but then there are times where it gets to be and it’s like, “I’m sorry. Was that with him or was that with you?” Now, the memories are starting to blur. When they are so similar, it was getting tough sometimes to say, “Did I do that with him or was that what you and I?” I was married for 14 years and 3 months. Dakota and I have been together for several years. There get to be those blurry lines. Those were some of the challenges.

I started businesses and I did stuff, but there were other things within myself that I was struggling with because I was always used to following someone else’s lead, doing what I had to give me a direction and you go. It wasn’t until I had joined that group in 2020 and started working with like other business coaches and stuff that I started to learn how to work more as an entrepreneur and start learning more about different things that I could do and the different light that people were seeing me, and then we moved from Colorado to Missouri in 2022.

I moved because I didn’t want to lose everything again. We didn’t like the way Colorado was headed. It was wearing my fiance into the ground. It’s like, “I have already lost everything once I’m not doing this again,” so we moved. When it got here, I realized how much I needed the change. My family’s all in Colorado. I love them dearly, but when you are not happy with the environment, I couldn’t stay because my family was there, and so we went. The more I have gotten to do this and meet with more people. I have had a quiet time. I have been able to figure out what lights me up and resonates with me and not doing what I’m supposed to do and following certain paths. I found my own path. It’s taken a lot of time.

You are that butterfly. I don’t want to say you recreated yourself but you matured yourself and came into your own. That is one of the biggest struggles when you lose your spouse, your identity, who you saw yourself with that person and who you saw yourself to be has to change because they are no longer here. We cannot be the person we were with them, and we have to choose. You said you had to decide you needed to move forward. You couldn’t stay there any longer. If you were speaking to someone who had lost their spouse and they felt like they were stuck and they didn’t want to go on, is there something you would share with them?

I would tell them to give it time. I know it looks bad and it feels devastating. I had those moments. I had moments where I wouldn’t have cared had I crashed the car, but I had 2 pups because we had 3 dogs. Those were our kids, and at the time, I still had two dogs. Those are my kids, and for me, no one could take care of them the way I could. For me, I had to keep going for them, but there are a lot of people there for you and you leave quite a hole when you choose not to go forward. It’s tough to say because if I go back there, I remember how devastating and I wasn’t sure how I was going to get through things.

I kept going through it one day at a time, and each day, it would get a little bit different. You are always going to have those challenges. Stepping into that restaurant, Red Robin, where we had lunch the last day when he died. I had to go back there for the first time. It was a little weird, but it takes time. I don’t want to say it gets easier, it does, but there’s nothing easy about it. It’s more digestible and you can cope with it better. I would say talk to other people. Give different perspectives, and don’t ever let anyone tell you how you should feel or say, “You should be over this by now.” You have to figure out what you need for you.

People don’t necessarily know what to say all the time when you are in pain. They want to try and fix you, and when we want to try and fix people because I used to try to fix a lot of people. It doesn’t work, but they want to fix you and they don’t know how. We’d have this magic wand, but it takes time. If you can hear from different people and different experiences because I have listened to different people and when I can look at different perspectives, it might take a little bit, but I will start thinking about it, it’s like, “That’s a different way to look at it,” and maybe it helps you move a little farther or it may help you may move a little further along.

If someone wanted to contact you, email you or watch your show or your website, could you share that information, please?

The TV show is Mindful Mondays with Laura Cross. You can find it on YouTube. It’s probably the easiest way to find it. Otherwise, it’s also on e360tv.com. It is a TV show. WhiteSandsSelfCare.com is my website. You can always find me on Facebook or LinkedIn. White Sands is with me for everything, for White Sand Self-Care, White Sands Premier Travel. I have got everything related to White Sands. You can email me at WhiteSandsSelfCare@Gmail.com.

Thank you. When we thought about having this conversation, is there anything that you thought we should cover that we didn’t go over to make sure we dive into that and give space for it?

The Healing Power Of Sharing Your Story

I’m always open to share. If anybody wants to know more details or more of things that I went through, I am always happy to share that. As you said, yes, it can be painful and bring up memories, but I got through it, and if it helps somebody else get through it, then I’m happy to share because I want people to know that they are not alone.

Together we can do more. If you’ve got someone, you feel the negativity in stuff when they are around. Create space. You have every right to that. Create the space from them, whether it’s family or not, sometimes you have to create that space and give yourself time to heal. Some people get through it by throwing themselves back into work and my hat’s off to them, but it’s just the more I have learned, my question is, have they dealt with it, though? Is it going to show its head up in another way either in pain, sickness, or something else at some point in time? Everybody’s different.

Sound Therapy And Healing The Body Through Grief

You mentioned healing. I want to talk about something we briefly discussed before the episode. If you could talk about the work that you are doing with sound and people’s voices, you and I can relate that grief can cause so many traumas to your health and the ability to learn holistically how to deal with that. I would like for you to mention that because there may be someone reading that may want to connect with you for those services as they are trying to redefine themselves and find out why am I aching, why am I feeling this way? I think that could be very helpful.

It’s something new. I have a partnership. I teamed up with Dr. Grant out of Canada, a biofeedback toxicologist who turned me on to this AO voice scan. It’s amazing because of the stuff from Nikola Tesla and the energy, everything’s energy and vibration. People may not realize it, but your desk colors, everything in this world has a vibration and a frequency to it.

What it does is it has the Nicola Tesla in this software, and I do it for people with Zooms. I do it from Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy. You do not have to be here with me. It picks up your voice, your vibration. When you say I am and your first and last name and you talk, you have thousands of vibrations and frequencies coming out and this takes it down and it finds your 3 highest and your 1 lowest.

We are going to try and bring you back into balance because it means you are out of balance, and it’s amazing because in ten seconds of your voice, it captures this. It will show what foods are causing inflammation in your body. Are you pre-diabetic? It’ll show bloodwork. Do you have more bad LDL than HDL? It kicks out MRI-like pictures, but it will show you pictures. It pointed a picture to my thing. I have been told I clenched my teeth and if I do clench them every now and then, I will start to get a headache and that thing’s pointed right to my skull right to where I clenched my teeth. It knows I clenched my teeth at night. It showed that I was starting to have a little bit of a leaky gut.

When it gets to the color therapy part, we always ask people what their favorite colors are because not everybody knows what their colors are. Colors have vibration. There is a reason that your spas are painted a certain color or restaurants are painted a certain color. They are designed to either make you relax or to make you want to eat or buy more. There’s psychology behind that, and it’s color therapy.

When we get to that color part, that’s when it shows you emotions. It’ll show your highest emotion, what you are swinging between, whether it’s like love and unconditional love. You are somewhere in that pendulum and it’ll show you the possible emotions, and a lot of times, grief, anger, or anxiety does come up in people. I will tell people it could be something you are experiencing now or it could be something that you think you are over. You’ve experienced it when you were younger, but it’s trapped in your subconscious because when it is trapped in your subconscious, it still comes through in your vibration and in your voice.

We can scan and I always do that scan complimentary for the first time for anybody so that they can, it can give them a snapshot. We can let them know. We can interpret it for them. It’s up to them what they want to do with it. We have natural supplements that we would recommend for people to be able to help fix some of those things, or sometimes it’s deep belly breathing. There are so many of us and 95% of us are walking around with hypoxia because we breathe in our chest.

Celebrating Small Wins And Embracing Life

You’ve shared your email address and if they want more of that, they can follow up with you. I like to ask people if they have any questions for me. A lot of times, you are sitting there on the defensive end answering all these questions. I try to turn it around and see if, by chance, you have any questions for me.

I love what you are doing. What inspired you to do your Widowhood Real Talk?

That is a good question and I’m glad that I’m inspiring you. You are inspiring me and we are on this journey together. I had a conversation with a widow about the passing of her husband and I go to bed super early when possible. This conversation had me up into the wee hours of the night, and I was okay to sacrifice that time because I knew what it looked like for me when I was in that place of so desperately needing to talk to someone else that had a glimpse of what I was going through and they could relate to my struggle.

When I got off the phone with her, I was still sleepy and it was my husband’s relative and I was sitting there exhausted and I could hear guys saying, “What are you going to do about the next person that comes to you that needs help?” I was like, “No one is calling my phone this late. I am tired. I’m going to bed.” I heard a guy say, “No. How is this conversation repeated? How do people know they are not alone?”

From that, this nonprofit 501(c)(3) Widowhood Real Talk with Tina was born. As I’m writing my own memoir now, I can see this leveraged my own grief journey in the three ways in which we help people. We have three legs. One is social media because oftentimes, when we are grieving, we may not know how to articulate our feelings, but we yearn to connect with other people or resources that do. Our show comes out every Thursday. Content that we put out across 6 social media platforms and analytics of over 4 million views across 106 countries tells us people are hurting and they are looking to connect.

That one resource that we provide across social media in our show creates an opportunity for people to connect with us, and so that second way in which we support people is with resources, and those resources may be people who have written books, people needing to connect with a mental health professional or things that can help them recommendations, and so those resources are on our website.

The third way in which we support people is with mental health events. Such as the event called A Walk for Love, where we ask people to walk 1 mile for 7 days and then hashtag their loved one’s name and #WalkForLove because the desire to say our loved one’s name and people to embrace that is such a deep desire for people who are grieving. They often don’t have a place to say their loved one’s name and people look weird, do stuff, and exercise.

Get outside, get some Vitamin D and realize that energy from the sun is healing. Some people may have to walk at home, but getting that body moving again is part of healing and being good to yourself on this very difficult journey. We are conducting our first butterfly release ceremony for a memorial garden in Norfolk, Virginia.

With the analytics that we have and being a 503(c)(3), it allows businesses to come alongside of us to be sponsors. We have 5 different sponsorship programs as low as $2.75 a year that gets you before different people in our community and allow us to mention you. There are different sponsorship programs up to the top level where we would have a show dedicated to you and then different places you are on our website to connect with our community.

For these mental health events, we have an in-person event surviving the winter holiday where people come together. We also have something called Preparing to Deal with Grief during the holidays because right there is tricky, so we have mental health professionals who make themselves available. I go back and look at my grief journey. When my husband passed, I reached out to the community. I reached out to other widows. I read books. I leaned in, similar to what you were saying.

I can’t stay stuck here. I miss Mark terribly, but my life is still going. and I can see those three pillars represent the things that I went through in my own grief journey. Watching it help other people is amazing because this was the most horrific experience in my life. This is where I thought I didn’t know what I was going to do, and it was a daily, hourly minute process that has gotten me to where I’m at. If I can let someone else know they are not alone and encourage them and help them, then something of worth and value came out of my struggle.

You and me both. We are very similar. We are very similar in those ways and it is very minute. You never know what comes up, but especially if you’ve been married for a long time before you lost them. It seems like the simplest thing, but it’s like I happen to be the one who took care of all the bills. I used to write programs at one time, but he was a gamer, and then something would happen to the computer.

I was afraid to touch anything because I didn’t know what I could uninstall or not install that would crash this. When you let things go and someone else, like your husband, takes care of this and then you don’t, or they, you got to relearn those things. You got to figure them out, and then that’s always another reminder that they used to always take care of that.

Mark was a journeyman electrician. I didn’t fix stuff, assemble furniture or do anything, but we built our first house. There are pictures of him showing me how to wire electrical outlets because we were young kids trying to save every penny to purchase that house. I remember when he passed that purchase of this dresser that came with all these pieces and I cried.

I was looking at all these pieces, thinking I can’t do this. I was like, “I got the YouTube video. How do you assemble this? I had all the pieces out.” I’m thinking it’s like 1:00 in the morning. I was not sleeping until that thing was assembled. I’m sending pictures to my siblings and they are like, “We put together furniture all the time, Tina. Big deal,” but I’m like, “This is my first time out here.” I felt so accomplished to go, “I can get these little wins and be excited about it.”

I can do it. I was always a tomboy and I was the aircraft electrician so I used to put all that stuff together. The embarrassing part for my mother because my mother taught us how to cook. I had all these cookbooks. My husband loved to cook so he wanted to do all the cooking. I only baked and I did Thanksgiving dinner. He did all the rest of the cooking.

After fourteen years, my fiance now became the guinea pig because I had to learn to cook again. We are learning this. I made him a five-alarm spaghetti sauce because he said he liked things hot and I dashed too much. He’s like, “It took me five batches to get it to calm down without it burning up.” I was like, “Sorry. I will get the hang of this.”

Eventually you get it, and it shows that life changes and our roles change in life. This has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for making time out of your busy day to have this conversation with me and my community. I will allow you to close this out with final words.

I was going to say anytime and thank you for providing this platform. For anybody who’s going through that, I take time to look inside yourself, and you know if you tap into what you are feeling, you know you can get through what you need to do. You may have to block out other people. It’s always well-intentioned, but it comes down to you and what you want to do. You are stronger than you think, and you have to give yourself some credit. Celebrate your wins. If you wake up breathing, celebrate it. It’s that simple. Make sure you celebrate the wins and don’t beat yourself up on every turn because we are good at doing that.

Thank you, Laura. Thank you for being here.

Thank you for having me.

Important Links

• White Sands Premier Travel
• Laura Cross
• Mindful Mondays with Laura Cross YouTube
• e360tv
• Laura Cross’ Email Address
• Vortex White Sands
• Travmanity White Sands
• Laura Cross on Facebook
• White Sand Self-Care on Facebook
• Laura Cross on Instagram
• Laura Cross on LinkedIn
• Laura Cross on YouTube

About Laura Cross

Laura Cross is an Air Force Veteran and the dynamic owner of White Sands Premier Travel. With unwavering dedication to promoting self-care and personal growth, she founded White Sands Self-Care and serves as the dedicated host of the popular TV show “Mindful Mondays with Laura Cross.” Laura’s dedication lies in creating vibrant self-care communities that offer invaluable education, resources, connections, and opportunities for collaboration. At the helm of the White Sands Self-care Community group on Facebook, she empowers individuals to lead their best lives.

Laura’s journey from a veteran and blue-collar worker to a successful entrepreneur equips her with a unique understanding of the challenges faced by solopreneurs. Her role as a self-care leader for this community allows her to empathize with their struggles, particularly in the realm of self-care. Laura Cross is on a mission to inspire and support others in achieving holistic well-being, ensuring they thrive in both their personal and professional lives.