Grief, trauma, and self-worth collide in this raw and empowering conversation on healing through grief. Yvette Lloyd—podcaster, businesswoman, and survivor—opens up about the compounding losses that shaped her, from the death of her husband and mother to the betrayal of friends and the weight of domestic violence. She shares not only what broke her, but how she rebuilt herself with faith, resilience, and a deep commitment to self-love. This is more than a story of loss—it’s a journey of rebirth and reclaiming power in the face of unimaginable pain.

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

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

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Watch the episode here

 

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Healing Through Grief: How To Survive After Losing Your Husband And Best Friend With Yvette Lloyd

Our guest is Ms. Yvette Lloyd, and you are in for a treat. Yvette is going to give you tips on how to deal with domestic violence, how to deal with it when you are stuck in your grief, and third, and most importantly, how the process of loving yourself is the basis for everything that you do. Let’s get into this conversation now.

   

   

Yvette, welcome to the Widowhood.

How are you?

I’m fine, how are you?

I’m good. Thank you so much for having me.

When you hear, “Welcome to the widowhood,” what comes to mind?

Helping someone else.

From what perspective?

Just sharing my journey, my experience. Sometimes, people could feel alone and you just never know what’s going to come out of your mouth that could actually go to someone’s ears and help them understand their journey a lot better.

Life Her Podcast: Yvette’s Journey As A Business Podcaster

That is true. Now, you are a podcaster. Tell us a little bit about your podcast and what you do.

Life Her Podcast is about business owners sharing their journey. A lot of people see the things we post on social media and just believe everything is just so perfect, yet behind the scenes, we’ve been through a lot. We go through personal things in our lives, and we also go through personal journeys by growing our brand. It is basically a podcast where everybody can become enlightened and educated on different types of businesses and they can learn from it or even utilize the services that the individuals provide that’d be on my podcast show.

Where can we find your podcast? What’s the frequency?

You could find Life Her Podcast on all major platforms, and you could watch it as a visual on YouTube.

This conversation we’re having is outside the scope of your normal conversation on your YouTube channel. Are some of your listeners going to be surprised?

Honestly, no, because I’m very transparent on my podcast, so maybe some of my new readers. Some of them may not know, but some of my other ones that has been following me for years, they actually know my journey, but some of them don’t know in that I held back on a lot of things, which I’m willing to share with you.

   

Thank you. How does it feel to be on the other side of the podcast conversation?

Honestly, it feels good because I really don’t express myself much and I really don’t get too many people asking me things. Just someone asking me questions and me releasing, it feels good for real.

You don’t have to worry about editing, show notes, doing any other stuff. You can talk and say, “That was fine. Tell me when I can see that, because it’s a wrap.” That part of it. When you say you have held back, what are some areas that you’ve held back and not been so candid on your show about?

My health. Sometimes, people would be upset when I have to reschedule a podcast show, or some days, I will post and I will go weeks without posting or taking a break, a whole month break. Those experiences are me going through grief or I was going through a lot of health complications, or I was going through a lot of things when it comes to my business, my daycare, mainly. When staff call offs or even staff grieving as well, I have to take a lot of time off to replace them.

Different things like that occur a lot in my personal life. I also had to release one of my businesses. It was a business my husband had started and I kept going with his janitorial company and it became a huge burden, so I had to let that go too. That was taking up a lot of my time and just grieving overall because it doesn’t stop. Some days it’s better than others.

Silent Battles: Yvette’s Health, PCOS, And Self-Love Journey

Thank you. I want to go through those one at a time, if you don’t mind.

That’s fine.

When you talk about your health, when I hear from me, my health, I was in the Army for 21 years and I have anxiety, I have stress. I wear hearing aids and all of those things. I feel like sometimes, I’m falling apart. Sometimes I’ll feel overwhelmed. It’s like sometimes being outside in different moments can create a lot of different triggers for me, physically. I’m in a conversation, I’m constantly asking, “Can you repeat that?” If I don’t have my hearing aids. I’m like, “I am 59 with hearing aids. How is this a thing?” I can relate to that grief weighs on your body. When you say your health, do you mind diving in a little bit more on the details?

Yes. I gained weight tremendously. I had gained weight like crazy. It had gotten to a point I was almost 300 pounds, honestly. I went from like 180 to 300 in a matter of time. I didn’t realize it, honestly. I didn’t notice it. For me, going through that, it wasn’t like an eating type thing, it was more a stress on my body. With me gaining weight, I thought I was having heart problems, but it really wasn’t. It was just me having anxiety really bad. I was also going through like swelling in my feet and my hands, my digestive system started to shut down. I had to readjust all of that stuff.

I end up developing PCOS really bad. The PCOS on top of me having to gain weight and then me actually trying to lose weight, it was a lot. It wouldn’t go anywhere on top of me having stress with that. In August 2024, I had the gastric sleeve surgery. Since I have that, my health has shifted. I feel I’m a lot more motivated to out. I have lost a lot of weight. I have lost probably about over 60 pounds already. I’m a lot more energetic. My digestive system is a lot better. It’s a lot of things that come with it that created me to have a better health aspect of it. It created me to actually do better with just my career myself and everything overall.

My mom passed from congestive heart failure, and my dad has it too. That was alarming. With my dad still being here, he’s sharing his experience of having heart congestive failure. Behind that, my aunt has it as well. Two of my aunts. My aunt had triple bypass surgery. My cousin had a quadruple bypass surgery. I’m sitting here, like, everybody in my life is having these heart issues and I’m stressed out, gaining weight and stuff.

I started to love me more and I started to see the things that were going on, and I didn’t want to be the next person to be passing away due to my health. I saw that I had a purpose here more than anything, so I wanted to shift it. I was going through that a lot in between me podcasting and running my businesses at the same time and trying to keep myself going.

I can see all of those and people may hear something and go, “You’re gaining weight, but it’s not about eating.” That’s a misconception people have. Can you expound on that a little bit more?

I really didn’t eat much. For me not eating and not feeding myself enough protein, it will cause my weight to do the opposite of what I really needed. Now that I do intake a lot of protein and I make sure that I’m eating at the correct times and eating certain foods, I’ve also discovered that corn syrup in food blows me up.

   

It did not end.

Corn syrup does a lot to me. It does a lot of swelling to me. I had to really notice what things to eat and not to eat for me to be able to balance out everything. I’ve always been athletic, I’ve always done all of these things. I knew all of these things already. However, I really wasn’t trying to pay that any attention at all until things got worse.

When it comes to you taking care of yourself and actually getting testing done as far as like my blood type and things to know what foods to eat, I’m blood type O, so I had to actually research it and see what foods are for me too. It was a lot of things that’s like more in-depth when it comes to your health and what is best for you because what works for you may not work for other people.

Grief’s Domino Effect: Navigating Loss And Rebirth

Exactly. You mentioned having the test based along with your blood type and then understanding how your body responds to different foods. I know a young lady that when she has anything with glucose in it, her face is breaking out all the time. She had to just really remove herself from processed food because that corn syrup is in a lot of things. The more she ate food, I want to say, in this more natural state, the better her body responded. Her body was able to process. Those things key into that. If I heard you correctly, grief was the catalyst for everything shifting. People hear the word grief and it means different things for them. How is grief positioned in your life?

Grief was a lot for me. Grief actually started with relationships with me. It started off with relationships with my friends and people that I thought was close to me. Also, I had lost one of my daycare centers. I had two at the time. I had two daycare centers. That grief came with me dealing with me losing friendships as far as like relationships, them developing a jealousy trait towards me and more hateful towards me. Even individuals that owned the building that I was in who welcomed me in there, she was actually a pastor and I dealt with church hurt as well. Dealing with that.

In the midst of that, me losing my mom. I lost my mom first. From me losing my mom, I was running a youth program and a lot of kids in the program hurt me, like hurt my feelings a lot with certain things that they were accusing me of and how they were feeling towards me. It could be due to other people see what I’m doing for them. They didn’t like it and they didn’t like me. It messed up our relationships due to other people not knowing me as well.

After that, of me losing my husband as well, all of this was a domino effect. All of this was going on in my life at the moment. Those are my different stages of grief. I dealt with those different emotions at the same time. It was hard for me to actually pinpoint deal with one grief or another. It was like all of them all at once. It was just happening to me. This all transpired a whole year. A whole year, I just went through everything just crumbling. Even my finances even decreased. Me almost losing everything, not being able to pay my mortgage or anything, so I dealt with a lot of that.

Are you seeing the friends, the work, the church hurt, your mom, the children, your husband, all those calamities happened within a twelve-month span?

Yes. All of it happened at once.

Where was your safe space in all of this?

I really didn’t have one. Honestly, I really didn’t have a safe space. My safe space was me and God. That’s what got me with so much faith and wisdom now and why I speak on it a lot is because God had me. I communicated with him a lot, a whole lot because in that time, I really didn’t have anyone to talk to that could actually relate to what I was feeling and what I was going through.

However, I did have people in my life there for me, but they couldn’t do much for me. It was more or less I had to want to do things for myself to be able to get through it and strengthen myself in many ways. I did counseling, I did all of those things. At the end of the day, I felt like I had the power over myself more than anything for me to change different things that was transpiring in my personal life as far as me mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

I had to really tap into who Yvette was and who I was becoming and things because it’s like I really had to rebirth myself in a sense because losing my mom, I was really close to her. Me being close to her, it was like I had to literally change my identity more into who I really was because I had helped with my mom, with my identity of her being the voice of reason and me going to her for literally everything. She was my best friend.

You can't change a man—he has to answer to God. Share on X

Me having that, and then from her passing, then I had my husband, I had him to talk to after my mom passed. However, he was dealing with grief too, because nine months before my mom passed, his mom passed. It was like him and I both dealing with it. However, we still had a shared experience of us both losing our moms in such a time span. Me just having that and just being able to adjust for that, it was a lot.

It is a lot. You mentioned the idea about rebirthing yourself. I’m going to share something. I want you to give what your perspective. I feel as if people who have not had a profound loss look at it from the outside and think the person died, just keep living. You’ll be okay. That gap of that person’s absence, the impact, who you were, because this person’s existence, and them no longer being here, whether it was a long sickness or all of a sudden, we are impossible to be who we were when they were here. What would you say to that?

I’m not who I was five years ago at all. If you had a strong bond and relationship with that person, I feel like a person can’t be themselves again. I feel like it’s impossible because the hurt that I go through, even now, still is a lot easier. My mom was my next-door neighbor. I had a clear connection with my mom. She was a person I went to when me making business decisions. She was my protector. She was literally everything for me.

That moment of her being gone, I didn’t have her to go to, I had to figure out what, what she would say at this point. I had to transform and transition myself to be able to still connect with her, but connect with me too, because I have the abilities of the different things that she had given me. I just had to start applying it and bringing it to life myself as though she is still here.

She already built me up to have the strength, the courage, the knowledge, the wisdom. She built me up for all of it already. Me leaning on her more, it didn’t create too much independence for myself. Once I knew I was here alone by myself, I had to 100% give myself a lot of grace and also courage to actually say, “You’re out in the real world now. You completely out there. You going to have to stand up, be tall, and have the strength, the courage and everything.” I watched her do it since I was able to notice it with her. With me being able to come out and realize that I had to be her times ten, that’s what I had to do to transition myself.

I actually see that now that I am her and I’m a lot stronger than she was. That’s exactly what she wanted. As far as me just being fearless and just being able to do the things that I do, that created me to create a new identity on top of me, creating a new identity with my husband. I had a godly husband. He prayed over me. He taught me the word of God a lot more than I’ve ever been taught. We’ve done it together. With him teaching me all of this and making sure I have the word and being able to transition things and learn Songs 91 in a different form, that created me to another rebirth. I just continued to rebirth constantly.

How did you meet your husband?

He saw me in a newspaper. Once he received the newspaper, he reached out to me. He was incarcerated in federal prison. He was close to coming home. He had some years to go, but he was coming home and he reached out to me basically explaining the different things he wanted do for the youth that I was doing and the things that he was currently doing, helping individuals that was incarcerated already.

We were friends for many years before we actually came to a point we want to be in a relationship with each other. He was in the relationship and I was too. There was lot of boundaries there. It was just strictly us handling business and me helping him and he helping me to prepare for different things as far as helping youth in the community.

Later on, his fiancée passed away and I was able to be there for him, pray with him and everything. We didn’t talk all the time. It was like spurts, like months will go by, or a year will go by. It was like one moment when I was in a relationship where the man had abused me and held me hostage in my basement at the time. I was in my basement for three hours before I was able to get away from him. At that time, he helped me get through that situation for me to get my mental health together with that. For about two years, we just really helped each other heal. Next thing you know, it was more or less, “Do you want to get married?” It ended up becoming a marriage and us getting married in Milan, Michigan.

Unconventional Love: A Prison Love Story

I only have water and I feel like I need to go make a whole cup of tea. Give us some timelines like when he got out, when this flipped, “Can I marry you?” Did you kiss first? We need to know.

No, we have not even seen each other in person.

What was your friends and your people saying?

   

No one knew I got married until after I got married

You didn’t want to hear what they had?

Yeah.

I’m going to drink this tea.

When they found out after, what did they say afterwards?

My mom, she said, “I knew you were going to do something like this. It’s not surprising to me because you’ve always been this way.” It really just didn’t even faze her.

It didn’t faze Mom?

No, it didn’t faze her at all.

Did it disappoint you that your mom wasn’t fazed?

No, it didn’t disappoint me at all. She knows me as far as me making decisions. I did it with me having a business and everything. She wasn’t surprised. I’ve always been the type of person that thought for myself and make decisions on my own, bump my head on my own, learn from it, keep it moving, bounce back. That has always been me.

It was shocking to a lot of people. My best friend and my sister came with me. They were my two witnesses that came with me. Them two, they knew. They had to be there to sign the papers. We weren’t going to get married at first, honestly, because I guess the pastor didn’t come on time, so they were curious about that. I had to go back out and come back in. They usually don’t let you go out and come back in.

Go out and come back in where? In the federal prison?

Yes, in the federal prison because I had to come back out due to the pastor not showing up. As I was leaving, the pastor came and he saw that. I was like, “You’re here.” He was like, “Yeah.” Usually, when you’re out already, you’re out. It’s over with. You’ll have to reschedule or whatever. For me, for us, it was in our actual dating phase when I had start to see him and visit him for the first time and everything. Time went by. I’d say about a year went by before we actually got into it, like really serious and stuff. The guards and everyone knew me and due to me being respectful all the time and them knowing me, they let me back in.

I want to know in all that you are, it sounds as if you are very whimsical or just make decisions. Are you?

   

   

Yeah, like, whatever comes to my mind, if it’s something I want to do, I’m going to do it.

From Trauma To Triumph: Overcoming Domestic Violence

The gentleman who held you in your basement for three hours, was that an SA situation or domestic violence or somebody came to do some work at your house? How did that come about?

It was more of domestic violence. It was someone that I was dating and someone I’ve known since I was at eighteen years old, since I was a kid. It’s not like someone I just met. We just always been cool. He’s always been a friend of the family. It has always been a cool relationship that we’ve always had. It randomly came about with him acting like that. I don’t know, something just triggered in him.

He’s never been that type of person. I’ve never known him to even be like that with women that I know he dated in the past. I don’t know what and how that came about with him to be that way. It only happened once and that was my last time being around him, seeing him and everything. My mom was my neighbor, so I ran straight to my mom’s house for safety and my mom gave them a few words and we haven’t been around each other since.

How did you prevent yourself from not being triggering with men altogether? Something like that can happen to someone and it makes them closed off. It makes them isolated because now, the world is really a scary place.

Yes, the world is a scary place, but I’m not scared. The reason I’m not scared is I was blessed and raised by my grandfather’s, my mom’s dad and my dad’s dad. Being raised by my grandfathers, they taught me self-defense at a very young age. I’d say I was like 11, 12 years old. I’ve done all the hunting, I did boxing. I did training as far as fight and all of that. I’ve always done different things to train myself and also get training from my grandparents and stuff. They already taught me different things on how to navigate, how not to panic, how to think when you’re in situations like that. That’s basically what I did. That’s how I got away. I think before I actually react, I thought out everything that I do strategically before I actually make a move.

That was how I was able to get away from him because I had a long dress on. With me having a long dress on, every time I tried to run and go up the steps, he would drag me back down. He even pinned me down and tried to rape me as well. He also hit me, but I didn’t back down. He had to use more strength on me because I was stronger than him. I pinpointed his weaknesses and it helped me get away.

I tied my dress up before I actually ran the third time to get away and I went straight out the door. I’m not going to lie, my aim was to take him out of here, but I didn’t want to. I just felt like a person dealing with that on a daily basis, they’ll suffer more. Not dealing with me anymore and keeping myself away, I have a lot of protection around me as far as me, myself, God, and my family, so he doesn’t bother me at all.

Unveiling Strength: Sharing Personal Battles Aloud

That is a lot to share. I know people say this like, “Yeah, whatever.” That is amazing. That is not something to just gloss over that you share with because we’re having a conversation.

You’re actually the first person I ever shared this with, even loudly for me to actually speak about it.

I honor that because those are not light words. Sometimes, those thoughts may have obviously relived in your mind because they happened, but there’s something different and powerful about saying it out loud. If there is someone that is reading that has been through a similar situation as what you just described, and they are struggling with, “It was my fault. Maybe I should have done something else. I should have done this and that,” is there anything you would want to share with them?

It isn’t your fault. It’s usually signs that you see early on or sometimes, you won’t see the signs till later. Staying with a man and thinking you could change him and change who he is, you can’t. You won’t. You won’t be able to. He has to do that himself. He has to answer to God at the end of the day. Sticking around with a person that’s mentally ill like that, they will kill you. They will literally take you out of here.

Ironically, my mom used to tell me that all the time. She said, “A man will really kill you if they want to.” She used to always tell me that all the time. I used to be like, “Mom, you’re exaggerating. It is not that serious,” but it is that serious. When they want what they want and they pinpoint your weaknesses and everything, they will do anything in their power to test that out and take it even further the next round.

I suggest all women to learn how to protect themselves. Learn how to handle a firearm, learn different techniques on how to get out of zip ties, how to do certain moves or trigger points to be able to make them lose their breath. It’s just different things that need to be done. You have to notice because you have to love yourself first.

   

I was blessed to be able to have a mother that I’ve had and taught me how to love myself and told me what I don’t have to put up with and what I won’t have to go through. Not even just my mother, my brother too. My brother taught me a lot. I have more men in my family than women. The men in my family as well, they’re not having that either. Just being surrounded by love matters. If you’re not surrounded by love, you have to be able to love yourself enough.

Self-Love: The Foundation Of Boundaries And Decisions

I love the idea, the root of that is loving yourself because when you love yourself, there’s value in yourself. I hear you saying that because I love myself, I will not allow this to be in my space because I love myself. That is the basis for the decisions that I’m making. Everything needs to stack up. Does that equate to me loving myself, allowing this to happen in my space? Am I hearing you correctly?

Yes, ma’am.

You go from that. What gave you the goal light to continue this relationship from friendship to marriage, never living together or interacting? I’m sorry, what is your husband’s name?

His name is James.

What gave you the goal light to say, “This is it with James?”

James was gentle. He was a godly man. He expressed himself in ways where a man is supposed to treat a woman. It was different ways on how my grandfathers taught me how I should be treated. They taught me. I also watched my dad’s parents, my grandmother and grandfather, I watched them love on each other. I watched them do things for each other. I have other family members in marriages and I watched them love.

He gave me a lot of love that I’ve never experienced before. Not even just with his words. Even just me meeting him and being around him, his company. He was a really good man and he was blessed with an amazing father as well. He watched how his father treated his mother and loved his mother. It helped him know how to love as well.

When he came home, it was like even better. It was like a dream come true. My mom loved him so much. She called him son so quick, like immediately. She just like, “I’m proud of you for making a great decision to have him as your husband.” My whole family loved him. He even got one of my cousins to get married to a woman they were with for over ten years. He encouraged them so much and they ended up getting married. He was a huge influence on just anybody he came around. He was a powerful man. He just put himself in a bad position years before. He was just amazing. Great father, great nephew, just a great guy.

The way you just bubbled up when we started talking about James, like we are having a whole different conversation than we were a moment ago. “He was like this.”

That man was amazing. He was the best. I did good for myself.

A Chapter Of Love: Yvette And James’ Journey

How long were you guys together?

We were actually married for three years when he was home because he was away for a year. He came home for like two and a half before he passed away. We were together for that amount of time, like a little over three years. It was amazing. It was such a blessing. We were able to live with each other, start his janitorial business. He was in motion of doing wholesale real estate. He was on his way. He would probably be bigger than ever right now if he was still here because he has so much grind and hustle to him. He was really good at it.

What year did James leave this world?

You are not alone in your grief; someone needs to hear your story. Share on X

December 2020.

What would you want to share about that day or what led up to James leaving this world?

Life is short. Before he passed, we were having such an amazing conversation and it gives me a lot of closure with him passing. He was on his way to Atlanta, Georgia for a while. He got a job offer that was going to be able to make him a lot of money going there, working through the union. He was asking me if I was okay with it and things and I was fine with it. Whatever that makes someone better, I will support it in any way possible.

He was on his way there and just us having conversations saying we love each other and everything, it brought a lot of closure to me to be able to actually say that because some people would be mad at each other before they go to bed and everything. I didn’t know he passed. Not until after I checked. I always got up every morning to go check on my staff at the daycare and stuff. I went there and I noticed he didn’t call me when he got up. I ended up going downstairs to check on him and that’s when I noticed he was gone..

Me just expressing and feeling his hard, cold body, I don’t know, it just sent me somewhere different and it impacted me even now on how I live my life. I focus on myself a lot. I don’t entertain other people’s things that they have going in their life. I will give somebody advice, words of wisdom and things like that, but gossip and all of that stuff, I just don’t want to waste the minutes, the seconds of my life experiencing something that isn’t meaningful for me or even godly. I just make sure I live my life to the fullest and continue to uplift and inspire others and live my dreams and do things that’s for me.

If James were to see you now in this rebirth, what do you think he would say?

Girl, he’d be like, “You doing your thing, girl.” He would be extremely proud of me. Just even me getting up out of the depression that I was in, him seeing me be uplifted and prosper and everything, he would be extremely proud of me and we would’ve been teaming up together, showing the world how a married couple is supposed to be and how you supposed to support each other. Even before he passed, with me having Life Her Podcast, he had Life Him Podcast and he did three interviews before he passed and he was doing really good with it and developing a whole community of men. They were having bible study every week and everything. It was amazing.

Can we find Life Him podcast? Is it still available somewhere?

I still have it all up, yes. You could still see it, especially on Instagram and stuff. You could still see Life Him Podcast. It’s still on his YouTube and everything. I leave it up just in case if like his family or someone wants to see it or have some memory of seeing him. I left all of his stuff up just in case somebody want to collect memories from him.

Navigating The Labyrinth Of Grief And Depression

That is so kind of you. The idea of depression and grief, they just seem natural. Some people may hear that and go, “Why do you feel like you were depressed?” The gravity of every moment of not being able to connect with them, every second of trying to operate in the gap of their existence is turmoil. At least it was for me. Can you relate to that?

Yeah, definitely. Today is one of my better days. If you would catch me another day, I probably would’ve been started crying. It is just the balance of grief, it’s sneaky. It’s very sneaky. You never know when it’s coming or going. I could say having the memories do matter a lot. Having pictures, having videos, just having those different things matter, but it is just a lot of people won’t understand your grief until they actually lose someone that they truly love and adore and made a huge impact on your life.

I can agree. Have you found a tribe or community of widows that you connect with that understand your journey or can relate to it?

Believe it or not, even though I’m sharing this with you, I’m private. I’m really private with myself and I think it’s like due to me being around certain women. Some people could be really hurtful. They could be supportive in the beginning and they had just changed on you. I have a support system as far as like my family, like my sister cousins, my sister, like my aunts, especially my aunts, my mom’s sisters. I have my own personal relationship with her three sisters, so I could always call them and talk to them. That’s mainly my close village.

My aunt lost her husband, so sometimes I could talk to her too because she lost him before my husband passed. That’s probably as big as going to get, unless I do meet another, like see a group of women that are doing it. I will feel a lot more comfortable. Having a mixture that haven’t experienced, I think it’ll be different for me and difficult.

   

I can relate to that. In all the hurt that you have experienced from the youth group, the church hurt, a lot of people have an experienced like that and they are bitter. They don’t want to be involved. They scorch the earth. How have you managed if you felt that way, and how you transitioned out of that?

I’ve always been the type of person to not have anyone have power over me like that. Just because someone does something to you, it doesn’t mean you have to live with what they’ve done to you. I don’t give a person that much power over my life to take away my happiness and the way I feel towards other people as far as building new relationships and stuff like that.

I may have trust issues, but I do give someone a chance. I will give them a chance until they develop that trust from me. I can’t give a person that much power that done something to me to actually turn my life for the worst really and put blockage in my blessings that I will receive because all it is is creating you blocking your blessings. From you feeling some way about somebody, you’re pinpointing that on the next person when you haven’t even give that person a chance or you haven’t given yourself a chance.

If you love yourself, know who you are, know how you treated that person and confident in what you’ve done. You can’t feel no ill will or harm within yourself because you’ve done god’s work already. That’s how I feel. I know I’ve been good to people and I know I did good things. However, I’m human too. I’m not perfect either. However, I know I didn’t do anything as bad as to that person to make them feel extremely horrible towards me though.

If someone read this conversation and they’re going, “I never considered I allow them to have power over me by my disposition changer from their behavior,” are there any steps or things you could possibly recommend for them to change that narrative for themself because they’ve been in that place for so long?

It takes a lot of self-help. Go to counseling or journal. I journal my thoughts a lot. I also try to notice my flaws, notice my weaknesses, and I write all my weaknesses down and I write down all my strengths. If it takes a month to strengthen, that’s what it’s just going to take. I do either 1 or 2 at a time to help myself and also try to get some people in your life that’s going to be honest with you and you not take it personal of what they’re saying.

Sometimes, asking someone what you’re doing wrong or, “What do you see that I need to change,” or, “Do you feel like I do something in a way that will stagnate my growth to a point I need to work on it?” It’s good for people to actually tell you that and you listen and you actually work on it. That’s a lot of things that I do. I have people in my life that tell me things about myself that I need to work on. I make the changes. I do what I can to change it to become a better version of myself.

In becoming the better version of yourself and having this conversation about some things out loud that you’ve not spoken about, how does that feel for you?

I feel good. It feels so good because I’ve been quiet for so long and I haven’t been doing interviews. I haven’t been doing nothing. I’m in this era now where I want to be more transparent. I want people to get to know me more because I’m noticing a lot of people when they do hear me, they always want to hear more and I don’t give them more. A part of me now is ready to blossom and become who God wants me to become.

It’s all about timing, too. I feel like now is the time for me to speak more because honestly, randomly, literally probably every month, I get someone to reach out to me and tell me how I have helped them, how they admire my strength. They always telling me something. These are people that don’t like my posts. They don’t comment, they don’t say absolutely nothing to me. Randomly, they’ll say something and I will have no clue at all that they were following me or anything or even felt that way. It’s amazing to me. It’s really cool to know that I’m making an impact on people’s lives for them to be a better version of themselves or even seeing the mirror in me in themselves.

Living Life To The Fullest: Yvette’s Advice For Empowerment

It sounds like the door is open for anyone else that wants to ask for an interview and speak with you. I won’t take everything, but I do want to ask, is there something else you wanted to talk about that we didn’t cover in this conversation?

I just want people to know, to start living a life. Travel the world, do things that you love to do, start stepping out on faith. If you have a plan of something that you’ve been wanting to do for a long time, do it. If you don’t do it, you’re letting time go by. Life is literally short. Watching my mom take her last breath, watching my husband, just finding him gone, it changed me a lot for me to actually see life differently and put more of me into my life for me to be better. I want other people to realize their worth.

Also, realize your surroundings, the people you are around. Make sure these people are really helping you and not hindering you. Not putting a burden on you, helping you grow, speaking life into you and not creating more darkness to your life that you already might have. Just be around people with a light so that your light can shine just as much as theirs or you guys could shine together.

Being around people that isn’t beneficial for you, you’re only wasting your time and your life. Start being you. That’s a very important, especially being you. If you on social media and you’re promoting whatever, or trying to do whatever, just always be yourself. Don’t not try to be anyone else but you because what people is going to love you for is being you.

   

That is some amazing advice. If you were to go back in time with all the knowledge that you have now, and you could speak to Yvette the day that James left this world, what would you tell her?

Probably hide less and show more. I dimmed my light for many years for people that I was around to make them feel comfortable and I would change from me not dimming my light years ago and bringing more light to my life. I feel like I would’ve been a lot further and in life if I wouldn’t have dimmed it so much. Now, it’s more or less time for me to just shine my light even more at this point and not let anyone dim it anymore to make them feel comfortable. I was doing it to make them feel comfortable. They say jealous stuff sometimes, but I thought it was an innocent conversation when in reality, I noticed it was a hate conversation.

Eventually, the truth comes out. Who we are is going to be seen even if you try to hide it. I try to give my guests an opportunity to see if there were any questions they have of me. This puts you back in podcast mode if there were any questions that you had of me at all.

The Genesis Of The Widowhood Podcast: A Calling To Serve

What made you start podcasting?

That is an excellent question. My current husband, because I’m a widow and I’ve been remarried, had a cousin who passed away and I met the widow. It was her late husband’s birthday and I saw her post it on social media. It was the first birthday after he passed and I was like, “I remember what that was like for me.”

I reached out and I messaged her. I said, “Do you want to talk?” She was like, “No, not really.” I said, “Okay,” then I expressed, “I remember what that felt like and if you want to talk, I’m here.” I don’t think I hardly hit send and she was calling me and we were up in talking way past my bed time. 9:00, 10:00, I’m checking out. I’m up at 4:00 AM. After we finish speaking, I could hear God saying, “What are you going to do about the next person?” I said, “Nobody is calling this phone.” I was like, “I must be tired.” God was like, “The next person that needs to hear the story, the next person that needs to know they’re not alone. The next person that needs to know that this is how you really feel. That it is this hard.”

God just made it clear, it’s more than the show. It’s the entire 501(c)3 nonprofit. The show comes out once a week, but we’re recording this June 20th. This episode won’t come out until September. June 21st, we have a workshop with a poet who also has grief background and showing people how to use their grief to make poetry. We have workshops periodically helping people facilitate their grief.

Some people like yourself, journalists that you had, one of your journalists were like, “I really would like to make a poem out of this, but I’m not quite sure how to do that.” This workshop is literally for people that want to take their grief and maybe, in their healing process, write poetry out of that who may have never written poetry before. We’re always having mental health events.

God was just like, “This is what I need you to do.” I was like, “Okay.” I have an accounting background, so establishing a 501(C)3, doing all that is my wheelhouse. I was like, “God, but all this stuff costs money. This cost this. This was not on my bingo card. I’m out here just trying to live my life, read a couple of books and mind my business. Are you sure you want me to do this?”

I could hear God saying yes, but I was just like, no. I met with this person that does tech for some musicians and he was showing me all the it I needed, everything needed. Being an accountant by trade, I calculated all this up. I said, “God, this the total of this. This isn’t in my budget. I’m doing okay taking care of my regular stuff, but you want to add in extra. You’ve got to make this make sense for me.”

I called the health insurance company to put my current husband on and the people told me, “Your husband is on your health insurance.” I was like, “This is weird.” I never took my deceased husband off. At that point, it was five years. My health insurance said, “We will reimburse you for everything that you paid from when your husband passed.” Do you know how much the total of all that equaled?

To help you start your podcast.

The whole 501(c)3 God fund. God was like, “Now what you got to say?” I was like, “Minding my business, doing what you said I do.”

God is good.

Sometimes God’s plans make no sense—until they do. Share on X

I mean, to the penny. When they were reimbursing me, the health insurance, it was like something I had been paying biweekly. The exact difference from when Mark passed to the day I called them, they calculated all of that up and reimburse me. That don’t happen. Usually, they would’ve been like, “It’s your loss. Thank you for paying,” but they reimbursed me that money.

I was like, “Okay, God, now that you had to be all specific about it.” However, I am like anybody else. It’s still like, “Okay, but what about this?” Something else came up. You talked about family, my sister and my mother lived right next door. We purchased homes next door to each other. It was under construction and it worked out. The refrigerator in my house was a year old. My husband and I are sitting in the front room and all of a sudden, we start hearing water splattering. It was the water coming out of the water dispensing the refrigerator, just hitting the floor just from out of nowhere, random. This is going on back and forth.

You try to do a couple of things, get you a mechanic and keep going. I finally called the warranty for the refrigerator from where we purchased it. I was on that phone way too long talking to too many people. I finally talked to this person, transferred me to this person, transferred me to that person. The last person I talked to was a young lady, don’t even know her name, but she was starting a funeral home and her mother had passed.

We started talking about her mom. She was like, “How do you know how to help people with this?” We started talking about my nonprofit, what I was doing. She goes, “I’m just going to give you all the money for your whole warranty. You go buy your own refrigerator. I feel like that’s what I need to do.” I was like, “Girl, I’m not trying to get you to lose your good job messing around on this phone because these things are recorded.” She said, “No, I’m good. You did all this. We got all this.” My refrigerator stopped doing after that.

That’s amazing because I told you, God don’t be playing about his charity.

Even though Christianity is my faith, the nonprofit is not a faith-based thing because when your loved one passes, you need someone to love you in the place you are because so many people, when your loved one passes, maybe they had a faith, but they are mad at their creator because their loved one is not here. Not that having faith is wrong because that’s me.

In the realm of this nonprofit, it is showing up for people in their place of hurt. That’s it. Holding that space and creating something safe and how they’re working through that, validating their feelings, supporting them, having workshops and mental health events to supporting them through their grief because it can be so isolating. It can be such a lonely place. It can. God just said, “This is what I need for you to do.”

I’m like, “Okay.” It’s interesting you would ask me that. We’re planning our first in-person gala dinner for 2026. I was been planning back and forth with the location where we’re going and I was like, “Okay, God.” I’m in the car sweating, about to go in and sign this contract and start making these quarterly payments. I was like, “Lord, if this isn’t what you want me to do, just tell me. I will just tell people it’s canceled. Every time you plan something, it doesn’t always have to happen. I made a mistake.” I walk into the establishment and the lady says, “Such and such is a widow and they need to speak with you.” I was like, “God, you just had to make that crystal clear, didn’t you?”

I was like, “I guess we’re doing this.” It’s like we’re having a celebration. It’s going to be like a ‘60s thing dressing and a lot of fun, vendors coming right here in Norfolk. When I walked in and before we could even start talking about what I was there for, she was talking about the person I need to speak with, what they needed. I was like, “all righty, I guess we’re doing this.” I said it to say it’s natural to wonder for me if I’m going in the right direction God would have me to go in. God knows me well enough to know, “This girl going to ask me, ‘Can you just make sure, because I don’t want to be out here.” He is faithful to do that.

Yeah, definitely. That is amazing. I’m proud of you for actually just hearing him just guide you. Some people don’t have the tools to be able to understand the difference between him and the other person. It’s just a blessing that you are letting him guide you through because it is going to go so far.

I’m sweating because it’s still scary. Let that be clear.

I already know it is. It is like we’re protected. What more do we want besides that? As long as we got that and we’re doing God’s work and we continue to be our true self and not let the journey change us, we could do it.

You are more than welcome to come here May 2026 and be a part of this experience.

I would love to. I love stuff like that. I will come, for sure.

   

   

I am going to send you an invitation. I’ll send you the save the date. We’re having vendors, we’re having some speakers. Maybe we’ll put you on the itinerary if you’re going to be here. Just being able to encourage people and strengthen, because what we’re raising money for is to create a college scholarship fund because when people lose their loved one, it can impact you financially.

I was broke.

You’ll get left with this one person and now your brain isn’t working. Maybe you have to go back to school. Maybe you have to reeducate. Maybe your children were in college and you no longer have the funds to do that. Between our regular operating expenses and wanted to create education, that’s what we’re trying to do with this.

Yeah. I had to pay for his funeral. I had to pay for everything. Luckily, she’s like a cousin to me. She helped me with a lot of expenses because she owned a funeral home. Thank God for that. I had to pay for my husband. His family didn’t help me with it or anything. I did it all myself.

That is a weight

It’s already bad enough. My daycare, I lost that. I didn’t have nothing. I literally was broke. I lost the kids in my daycare at a point in time and I had them coming for free because I was so torn apart because I didn’t do my corrective action when licensing come out. I lost my stars and my daycare. I lost the kids on my roster, but I had the parents keep bringing them until I got it back together.

For almost two months, they’re getting childcare for free without me even charging them. I was getting my paperwork together and then I had to get out of my bed just to go sell the stuff in my old daycare for me to get some money to even pay my mortgage and my car note and everything because I didn’t have nothing. I will say probably August of 2024, a little before that, is when I really just got on my feet and everything is going so great and smooth. I’m truly blessed.

You can definitely relate to what we’re trying to support and do in this process.

Yes. It’s a lot. It’s a lot. Having life insurance policies and stuff is very important. You don’t even need much. At least a good $20,000, $30,000, just so you could at least get everything completed. It is just fine. You don’t need a whole bunch. As long as it’s like $20 a month, that’ll cover just certain expenses. People just need to know that. Some of them are not knowledgeable of it, but it is helpful.

I would agree with that. I’m looking forward to meet you in person. I’m going to say something to the readers and then I would like for you to close this out if you want to share again where they can find you. Any information, any words you feel like you want to wrap up and share with people, I’d appreciate that.

I’d just like to say, just continue to love on you and continue to live the life that you’ve been wanting to live peacefully. You could follow me on all social media platforms under Life Her Podcast and also my personal page. I really don’t post much on there, but you could find me on there or just under Yvette Lloyd. You could find me anywhere. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you for having me on your show. It’s a relief to let this out. It was a relief and thank you for giving me a safe space to even communicate with it because your spirit is so beautiful. Thank you.

You are so welcome. I want to say thank you for each one of you joining us in this conversation. I am so sorry for the person that you have lost that is no longer here that has driven you to this conversation but I’m glad that you found us. I know you found encouragement. I know you found inspiration in this discussion and I look forward to seeing you next time.

   

Important Links

• Yvette Lloyd
• Life Her Podcast on YouTube
• Life Him Podcast
• Life Him Podcast on YouTube
• Life Her Podcast on Instagram

   

About Yvette Lloyd

Yvette Lloyd is the founder and host of Life Her Podcast, a powerful platform dedicated to sharing the stories of resilient men and women who have faced life’s challenges and emerged stronger. With over 5 years of experience as a podcaster and more than a decade as a multi-business owner, Yvette has used her voice to uplift, inspire, and educate her community. After facing the heartbreaking loss of her mother and husband, she transformed her pain into purpose, helping others heal while building generational wealth. Yvette is also the owner of Miracle Child Daycare Center and the founder of the Fadia Young Women’s Program. She’s passionate about faith, entrepreneurship, and legacy.