Rebuilding yourself after life falls apart is a challenging, yet necessary, journey, especially when navigating grief during the holiday season and facing self-doubt. Arthur J. Rutledge, a servant leader, speaker, and author of 11 Pillars of Confidence: Build & Lead an Empowered YOU, shares his profound personal experiences with loss—from his pet to close family—and offers constructive steps to consciously move toward the light. He discusses the power of “stringing” good memories to work through the darkness, the importance of forgiving the unspoken, and how overcoming “low-frequency ideas” like shame and blame is crucial to becoming the ‘Victor versus the victim’ in your own life story. Arthur emphasizes that strengthening the trifecta of self-esteem, self-worth, and self-value is key to seeing grief not as a tombstone, but as a stepping stone to a renewed life. 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     Grief As A Stepping Stone: How To Start Rebuilding Yourself After Life Falls Apart With Arthur J. Rutledge Voices Of Widowhood Healing Through The Holidays Has grief impacted your confidence? Has grief taken away your self-worth, your self-value, your self-esteem? If so, this conversation with Arthur is just for you. Let’s get into this conversation now.       Arthur, welcome to the Widowhood. I’m happy to be here. Thank you for having me.  I always ask people like, “Welcome to the Widowhood. Thank you for having me,” is that the ticker tape? If we were to see the invisible ticker tape in your mind, what would that look like? I’m an avid servant leader. The first thing I learned as I’m going through my life is to always edify the person before you edify yourself. I always want to give it back, and I’ve made that the precursor to all the things that I’ve added up to the successes that I’ve obtained in my life so far. Just that little piece, just letting that person know that they’re seen and they’re valued in my eyes. That appreciation always gets received. At least I believe it gets received well, and it just opens the vulnerability, the trust up between the two that’s, or a room of people who are looking for what that can be for them. That’s the long of it. Servant Leader In Action: How To Live With Integrity And Kindness Actually, I want to dive in and be a little bit more specific. The servant leader, the giving back. How do those show up in actions? A lot of times, we use these words to become buzzwords, but how does that show up in your everyday? I always say leadership is just a big word for us leading ourselves. The hardest thing that any leader will ever tell you are the ones who are being truly honest is that process. It is very easy to give instructions or tell somebody how to go about, how they should live, where they should go, how they can be or should be. It’s always best shown by emulating what that looks like by the actions. If I’m being a good person to myself, if I’m being kind to myself, if I’m being a person of integrity with myself, if I’m following through on the things that I see for myself and I want for myself, and I’m living that every day. If I’m telling someone one thing, and then the next day I’m waking up to a smile on my face, which I’m always telling people to get that going, and their chemical imbalance that might be there to start their day or hugging themselves or taking deep, long breaths to step into who they are, and what they’re becoming, then that’s going to, like I said, trickle forward. It’s going to echo in a way that’s what’s being expected of me. If I can give what I’m expecting out of myself, then the other person can receive that on their side and say, “This is the formula to have that smile, to have that good frequency, to have that good energy.” I’m a God-fearing person. At the end of the day, God says, “Put this in your space.” A person who is good at following and serving leader means that for me you can’t be a good leader if you’re not a good follower first. Jesus, and my Lord and Savior and God, and or whatever that looks like for people who are stepping into, I emulate in a good way, in a good, healthy, kind, generous, respectful, loyal noble type of way. We are all kings and queens, so that’s the same thing that I think people can expect from themselves at the end of the day. I don’t think it’s one without the other. I always tell people the first learning prowess, the first way we step into learning is imitation. Now we don’t have to follow people the same way we did from a young age, but to get good at that is the foundation for critical and creative thinking, standing on our own two feet and being able to give that back. Paying forward what we’re able to give lets us understand that we are interdependent in a world that maybe doesn’t make us feel like we are such at, at different points in our lives. Navigating Grief & The Holidays: Finding Your Way Through Loss Speaking of those different points of being in our lives, this conversation around widowhood, grieving holidays, once I was that person. I was this man who showed up in life that way. Now I feel that grief has taken that