In this episode of Widowhood Real Talk with Dr. Tina, Dr. Tina welcomes Phil Allen, a hospice chaplain and author who has spent more than three decades walking alongside people facing loss, death, and life’s most difficult seasons. Together, they discuss what grief really looks like, why healing cannot be rushed, and how faith can become a source of comfort rather than pressure during widowhood.

Drawing from his book, The Ache in the Ordinary, Phil shares gentle wisdom about finding God’s presence in everyday moments, embracing honest conversations about pain, and discovering hope even when answers are hard to find. Whether you’re newly widowed, supporting someone who is grieving, or seeking encouragement in your own journey, this conversation offers compassionate insight and practical hope.

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

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

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Watch the episode here

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What A Hospice Chaplain Wants Every Widow To Know About Grief With Phil Allen

Our guest is Mr. Phil Allen. He’s worked as a lawyer, a pastor, a counselor, and now as a hospice chaplain. His book grew out of that winding path. Let’s get into this conversation now.

Philip, welcome to widowhood.

Thank you. It is an honor for me to be here.

Honor, thank you, welcome. People usually don’t gravitate that way towards the whole grief thing. Why is that an honor for you in welcome?

Naming The Reality Of Universal Pain

It’s because we all have it. Often, we think of people in the major seasons of life where it’s just horrible. Certainly, a lot of your readers are in that or have come through that, going through it. The reality is, whether we’re in one of those huge losses or it’s just the pain of life, we all have it. There’s part of me that wonders if somehow culturally, we’re trying to condition ourselves to not admit pain. Probably many years ago, I would not have said if it’s an honor to be on a grief show, but now I do just because so many of us are experiencing it. Having the freedom to talk about it and name it is an honor.

What if the world was more welcoming to reality? Life and pain go together. Instead, my life is only amazing when it looks fabulous and airbrushed. Everything is perfect. Can perfection be part of pain in grief?

Pain and grief lead to perfection. I suppose that I’d probably need to condition that by saying, I think that so much of perfection is connection. It’s ultimately through connection to God, but connection to each other as well. We most fully become the people we were intended to be. Yes, certainly in this life. Grief is part of perfection. A path to perfection. What a great question. What if the world were open to it? I feel like we’d all be more complete. We’d all be more whole human beings. We’d have space for each other and for ourselves that we don’t always have.

For the person that heard everything you said, and was like, “Yes,” and then you said that God word. That’s the part that they wrestle with and feel like, “I’m not sure if that’s part of my story.”

Do I understand that? To give you a little bit of my background. I was a pastor for a church for 30 years. I got burned out entirely and it was a spot where I didn’t think I believed anything. I didn’t honestly care if I believed anything or not. I went through a process where the only thing I can say is, from my vantage point, God gradually reintroduced himself to me.

Finding Acceptance Through Spiritual Wrestling

As he did that, I found a freedom, an acceptance, and an invitation in him that I hadn’t before. I’m a hospice chaplain now. One of the things that I will talk about with patients who don’t believe, but who will let me visit still is, “It’s okay to wrestle with whether you believe, what you believe, or how you believe. God’s bigger than that.” There’s a freedom also in just allowing ourselves the questions and the doubt and saying, “That doesn’t disqualify me from anything.” It can be a place of greater intimacy.

Other clergy that are reading and can resonate with the words that you said but they’ve yet to say it out loud or share even come to terms in their own mind that they are there. What would you share with them?

On one hand, I’d shared with them a caution because that was part of my burnout. I do have the sense that there are times and places where the church demands an unfair certainty from the clergy. Clergy are expected to have the answers, for their belief to be solid, their family to be healthy, and not to have doubts. I would caution them in maybe recognizing that in themselves that there are probably doubts there.

Removing The Burden Of Certainty For Caregivers

There’s probably anger and uncertainty. It’s okay. I was a human being 30 years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, but I didn’t let myself be. I didn’t let myself have doubts, anger, and uncertainty that I was so willing to affirm and embrace in other people but not in me. I’m something greater. I’d just like to say it’s okay for you to genuinely feel lost at times, angry at times, mad and uncertain. It’s okay.

What is the difference between being a hospice chaplain and a pastor? Someone looking from the outside is like, “Clergy is the same thing.” Share and help educate the people that are reading to understand what they could possibly expect from a chaplain.

In fact, some people still call me pastor. It’s very different, though. One of the fundamental reasons it’s different is because the majority of your interactions as a pastor are with people you know share the same foundation of belief. It may not be healthy, but that foundation of belief isn’t ever discussed. It’s not part of the conversation. They’re an assumed general understanding.

Within hospice chaplain, there’s not. It’s a discovery process of trying to find where the person is in hospice, their family, where they are spiritually, what they’re experiencing emotionally and spiritually, and how to meet them there. It’s a very different focus because I’m not trying to teach them anything. I’m not offering the answers from a particular theological perspective. I’m trying to offer at heart companionship from myself and ultimately, hopefully, invite them toward the companionship of God as well. It’s a different role, certainly.

The person that is under hospice care, they are coming to the terms of their own mortality. The people surrounding them are coming to terms like, “This person may not be here on their own.” What do you do for them? The mindset may be, “I’m going to talk to the chaplain pastor. They’re just going to try to make sure that I’ve done this, this, and this before I die. I don’t want somebody pushing me. Life pushes me too much.” What could they literally expect in the experience of working with a chaplain?

That is a wrestling match we encounter literally every day. We envision ourselves in a variety of stages of life on some level, even including getting old. We do not envision ourselves or our loved ones in that season of hospice. It has to be a six-month prognosis. You have to have a doctor say that, “If this progresses the way we think it will, you will die within six months.” I can’t imagine getting that news for myself or my wife or my children.

Living In The Present Moment During Hospice

That process of accepting the diagnosis is important. What we will always say in hospice and what I would offer in terms of the spiritual side of chaplaincy is, “We’re here to help you live now. Death is coming, but you’re not dying. You’re not passed yet. We want to help you live in the best way you can at this moment. No matter how many moments you have coming.” From a very medical side that I obviously don’t get involved with, thank God, it involves a lot of pain management.

From a spiritual side, it’s not an evangelistic question for me. It’s not, “I’m trying to make sure you’ve prayed the Lord’s prayer or something.” To be honest with you, there was probably a time in my life where I would have done that. I’d like to tell you a quick story in a second if you don’t mind. I’m in a different space than that now. What I want to help the person find is God’s presence in this situation. That He’s with you now. Not making sure you’re going to heaven in six months. He’s with you now. Finding Him in that, responding to Him in that and figuring out what He’s saying in this moment. If I can share a real quick story.

I want to ask you a question that I think is going to lead into the story. You mentioned you could not imagine hearing that news for your spouse or your child. What provides you or grounds you or drives you to be able to serve people that are here in that information? What is the backstory that’s giving you space to show up?

I did lose my mom and dad but it was in the natural course of things. They lived a full life. The thing that began to lead me toward it was many years ago. My niece, who was late teens at the time, died somewhat unexpectedly and someone did not, but she died. She was gone. It was out of what a lot of us consider the natural order of things. You don’t expect the teenager to die. You don’t expect the 20-year-old or 30-year-old or 40-year-old or 60-year-old. I began at that point to Grapple with, “This is part of life that we experience these things.”

Releasing Rigid Explanations For Tragic Loss

What does God have to say in the middle of that? I reached a crisis point. The crisis point was, I was quite close to a funeral director, where I was the pastor. He would call me from time to time for people who didn’t have a pastor. Usually, they were looking for somebody who could stand in front and say words, but he called. He said, “Phil, I’ve got a tough one for you,” and I said, “Okay. Great.” It was a five-year-old who had died suddenly. No notice. As of the funeral, they still weren’t sure why. Gone. I sat with the family, and I remember thinking, “My answers don’t work for me anymore.” Up to that point, I had embraced the things that we say, “God always has a reason. There’s something behind it. God needed the person back in heaven.” There’s truth probably underneath those somewhere.

For the griever, you’re wanting to throw a punch to deliver just from my perspective.

It is your perspective. I didn’t say this to the family but I sat there thinking, “What a horrific thing to say to this family. Their five-year-old died and I’m supposed to say, ‘God just needed him home.’ They needed him here.” What I did say was, “I have no answer for you. I don’t have a solution. This stinks, but I did have the sense that God was there.”

I’m still honestly not sure what they believed then, and believed now, or anything. I said, “I do believe God’s here. I believe He mourns with you. I believe he grieves with you. He sees the pain. The pain hurts Him.” That’s part of embracing the reality of life in a fallen world. It hurts in big ways and it hurts in small ways. Embracing the reality of pain is not as something to be fixed, but as something to get through with connection and understanding that the pain itself can be a point of connection with other people.

Thank God for you, Dr. Tina. I think audiences have a continuing point of connection with another person, another set of people who can say, “I get it. This is terrible.” Ultimately, I go back to a God who genuinely understands and mourns alongside us, even though he gets it. Even though he knows the whole in and out of everything. He mourns with us.

Did you get to tell the story you wanted or is that something else?

I didn’t, but that was a good one. One of the things that happened that was very interesting for me as I first became a hospice chaplain. Dr. Tina, I was in the throes of not knowing what I believe and not caring about what I believe. Honestly, chaplaincy allows for that because I’m not trying to convince them of anything. There are a lot of chaplains who don’t believe anything themselves. I walked in this room and it was nothing unusual. It was a family. The patient was about to pass. It was an older woman who lived a full life. The family was supportive, encouraging, and nearby, and all of the cool stuff.

I sat in there and it was the first impression I had of God. I’m like, “I’m done with time.” The impression of God was that it was so non-anxious. I used to walk into those rooms as a pastor and what you alluded to earlier, you think, “I’ve got to make sure these people are okay. I got to make sure that they believe the right things and the patient has believed the right things and all the stuff.”

I had this overwhelming sense of this non-anxious presence of God. That I understand I am here. I know these people. You don’t need to have all the answers. It’s in hand. That’s one of the things about God that has not left me. It’s that sense of this non-anxious. He’s not worried. He’s not trying to fix everything and is unable. He’s very willing to be soaked in the reality of our grief and be okay with that.

How do you go from the chaplain, the pastor, the husband, the father to The Ache in the Ordinary, finding God in everyday grief? What was the motivation for this to become the reality of life?

It was not a book at first. It was my exploration at first because, as God, as I say reintroduced Himself to me, I re-embraced the idea that He is real and He is there. All kinds of pain from 30 years ago started to emerge, and I was mad. I was angry, hurt, and disillusioned. I felt let down and abandoned. I realized as I sat there with those things that I didn’t know how to talk to God about those. I thought He was there. I thought I should talk to Him, but I don’t know how.

I knew in the back of my head that honesty is important and is vital. I felt like there must be something more than just complaining. The complaining is part of it, but not all of it. I didn’t know what that was. I started an exploration on my own. I started a Substack, but I didn’t even publish it. It was just a place for me to write. I started a little bit through a variety of things that we don’t need to go into.

I talked to some people about it, and there were some residents and some of the things that I was finding. I published the Substack, and then the book emerged from that. One of the things that was nagging at me as I was leaving the church and going through my stuff was, we are not invited toward honesty. As I explored it more, I thought, “I’m going to write down what I found and see if anybody’s interested.”

In that concept, I would like to share some spaces I like for you to read and then we build our conversation around that. I would like to start with the page before the Author’s Note and to read that first.

“The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in Spirit.”

Why was it important to start with this?

It’s the core of the point of the book. The point of the book is that whether it’s a tremendously large loss or it’s a compilation of small losses, we are brokenhearted and crushed. We may not even allow ourselves to feel it that way necessarily at the time, but we are. The question then is, “Who is God in relationship to that? Who is He in relation to the brokenness and the crushed?” I love that He’s near and He saves. It’s that idea of connection from within the struggle. It’s why the verses are there.

Let’s go to page seven. If you would read 7 and 8, and then we’ll discuss that.

Section one, Naming the grief we carry. It says, “Some griefs come with casseroles and funerals. Others show up without warning and don’t introduce themselves. We need to start with the quiet griefs. The one we minimize or push aside. The ones no one names because they seem too small or too ordinary. The ones that slip in as sadness, as fear or even as a knowing sense of unease, but they add up. I hope to make space for what you may have carried silently. The grief of losing rhythms or a sense of belonging. The sorrow that shows up in the grocery store aisle, or after a scroll through someone else’s life.”

“The fear that pulsates under the surface of losing what matters of not being enough, life unraveling in ways you can’t quite name. These are not lesser griefs. They’re just harder to name. Let this be your permission to name them now. As you do, I want you to know where this journey is headed. Lament isn’t just venting pain into the air. It’s not a self-help technique or a spiritual performance.”

“Lament is movement. It’s the honest, often faltering choice to turn toward God instead of away. Now, once you’ve cleaned everything up, but exactly as it is, even when fear and trust sit in the very same breath. Underneath it all, is this truth. You are already held before the word form, before the prayers take shape, before the sorrow makes sense. You are not too much. You are not too small. You are not alone. You are already held.”

That is beautiful.

Thank you.

Is there a part of you that was writing this to yourself and to the readers?

Yes. A lot of the ideas in it shape completely for myself and completely from my understanding. As I say, I didn’t necessarily have an intent to write a book. Even as I wrote the book, it was cathartic for me. It was very much written to me at first and still is. Even as I read it now, I’m like, “I need to read this.”

As you read it now, what does it speak to you compared to the years of it becoming into development?

There is such a deeper sense that continues to grow. Even as I read it now, or I review with people, or whatever, there is such a deeper sense of the concrete undergirding of God’s love that He cares for us more than we know and more than we can even express, I think. The idea that we are already in his hands. We’re already held, and we’re already embraced, is something we can certainly experience more. All of us are longing for that and learning to experience it.

You speak about God as if it’s not to be feared. Oftentimes, people use God in that sense. Similar to Santa Claus, you’re going to get it. How has that form been different for you than what it was as Pastor Philip?

As a pastor, I didn’t realize it at the time and I realized that I am not easy on myself. I am very self-condemned. I am very aware of how far short I fall moment by moment. I wish I could say daily, but it’s far more often than that. I’m very aware of that. Looking back on it, I realized that as a pastor I was constantly trying to do that made up for my lack. That made up for my fallenness. There was a constant pressure that I felt internally that I had to perform and present myself as this person that was much more together than I am, much more subtle than I am, and then all of that collapsed.

Suddenly, not only did I not try to be good enough. I didn’t care. It was that spot where I was like, “I don’t know, and I don’t care. I’m just done.” The thing that is still just shocking to me is God didn’t leave. I feel like I went from trying my best and thinking, “God is staying because I’m trying my best to not trying at all,” and He was still there. He gave me space. He gave me time. He continues to be so gentle and gracious and reintroduces himself. The thing that’s different isn’t me. It’s that, in all of that, He didn’t leave.

I have one more section I’d like for us to cover, page 61.

“Lament is intimacy discovering how sorrow draws us deeper into a relationship with God. We’ve talked about lament as a way to unload pain, to give voice to what’s on us, to say what hurts, and it is that, but beneath the sorrow something deeper begins to stir. Lament opens us. It peels back the parts that are performance, the versions we’ve rehearsed, the pieces we’ve had hidden, sometimes even from ourselves. It lets the real self speak. Sometimes breathless, sometimes trembling, but unguarded.”

Lament not a word we use a lot today. Explain that to someone, and it’s like, “What are we talking about? What is lamenting?”

Embracing The Quiet Motion Of Biblical Lament

Lament itself in English means to pour out your heart. It means to express the depth of what’s there in the Biblical context, it takes on a little bit more movement than that. A little bit more motion. It becomes a process of expressing the reality of what’s inside of us to God and trusting that He is there. He can take that, and He is good. One of the illustrations that kept coming to you over and over again as I read the book was of a child whose skins their knee. I think all of us have done that.

You look at it and it’s raw. You go to your mom or dad, and they say, “Let me see that.” That’s what I think God is doing with us, with the pains that we have that are just realizing, “Let me take a look. Let me see what’s going inside of you and with you.” The beautiful thing is mom and dad probably can’t do a whole lot. Maybe they can wash it out, but they probably can’t do a whole lot. God can do a whole lot, but He wants us to express that openly. Lament is the open expression of the reality of what’s going on in our hearts.

I have one more section I want you to read, page 105.

“Staying present. Some grief doesn’t go away. It quiets, it shifts, but it doesn’t resolve. Not neatly and not quickly. Sometimes, the ache we carry begins to ripple outward. It connects. It expands. What began as a private sorrow brushes up against silence, loneliness, and injustice. The ache of a world still unraveling.” This section is about learning how to stay. Not just with God, but with ourselves and with each other.

What happens when we’re not able to stay present?

I love that. Thank you, because there are seasons where we’re not. Again, if I can point to personal experience, it’s not the death of my spouse, thank God, and of my ministry. I was broken and, in more ways than one. Looking back on it, I could not be present to God and to myself. I was differently present to my wife. There’s probably a little bit of difference in that, but underneath that truth, there are times where we’re not ready. We’re not able to.

Staying Present When Grief Doesn’t Resolve

I go back to the reality that God states. When we can’t stay, He does stay. One of the things that I’ve said to people at times is, “It’s okay to not be able to stay. It’s okay to have to run. It’s okay to have to retreat for a time. God doesn’t run. He doesn’t retreat. The depth of the pain that we feel at times is such that there are times when all you can do is breathe.

If all you can do is breathe, then just breathe. It’s okay. Nothing hinges on my strength. That’s one of the things that I am slowly coming to embrace. When I have those times or when I have those days, or we go through those seasons, nothing’s breaking that relies on me. God is present. He’s capable. He loves us and He’s not going anywhere.

For the person that is struggling with God, they’re reading and going, “This is not the version I’ve ever heard. This is so different.” They are mad because their loved one died. What would you share with them?

Be mad. Be hurt. Yes, you are, and you have every right to be. There is a reality for us as human beings, and this is assumptions and theology that I have, but we’re not designed for pain. We’re not designed to lose. When we lose, it is incredibly difficult and incredibly painful. In the context of widows and widowers. When you lose your spouse, you lose part of yourself and you should be angry about that. It’s okay to be angry. It’s okay to be mad. It’s okay to be disillusioned. It’s okay to be disappointed.

The one thing that I would encourage is just being honest. All you have to do is be honest. Be honest about the pain, the loss, the disillusionment and the anger. There’s a spot where Jeremiah, the prophet in the Old Testament. Horrible ministry and horrible life. It never saw any real results. I can’t imagine doing what he did. There’s a spot where Jeremiah is praying to God, and he says, “God, you lied to me.” God didn’t lie to him, but it was what he felt. It was what he experienced and he knew God well enough that he knew he could say that.

Ultimately, it resolved but the point is, we have these biblical invitations and we start to see them fulfilled by coming to God with brutal honesty. God knows. If you’re mad, He knows you’re mad. If you’re disillusioned, He knows you’re disillusioned. By being “respectful” or whatever word we want to use in talking to Him. We’re not sheltering Him from something. He knows it. Healing comes, I believe, in the beginning with honesty.

For some people that’s like, “I need to read this book.” How do they find your book and how do they connect to you?

There are two ways that they can do that. The book is on Amazon. If you type in The Ache in the Ordinary, it doesn’t quite fill all of the algorithms. Having Amazon surface it, sometimes you have to put in Phil Allen, too. Otherwise, it will say the book doesn’t exist. It does exist. It’s there. There is a regular print version, large print, and audiobook, which I read. There’s a Kindle as well. I also have a website which is Wick-Whisper.com and that will link you to the book. It will also link you to my Substack, and my email is on there if you want to get a hold of me. You can do either of those two routes.

I give my guests an opportunity to be the show. Any questions you may have of me?

How did you make the turn for yourself? One of the things that the book draws out is the idea that lament properly exercised sometimes becomes action. Where your pain reaches beyond you into a world in pain. Had I known you when I wrote that book, I very well may have asked if I could even include some of your story. This show is such a perfect example of going through a horrific experience, but making the turn of that becoming healing for other people. How do you make that turn?

First of all, Widowhood Real Talk with Tina is a non-faith-based organization. It’s a 501(c)(3) to meet anybody in their place of grief. That is the organization. It’s set up to meet someone where they are. Faith is not a condition but often in these conversations, faith is part of what people lean into with their grief. It’s the automatic party. I say this because so far, I’ve only been able to get people who have a Christian faith, but I would like to speak with someone of different faiths and religious backgrounds, because everyone does not believe the same thing.

If you’re reading this or if you know people that have different Faith walks, I would love to have that conversation to give space for that too. Personally, it was not the thing I wanted to do. It wasn’t the thing that, “My husband died and I’m going to make pain out of purpose.” That is not it. A family member had a spouse that passed and I reached out to them. They called me back and we were on the phone way past my regular bedtime.

When I finished speaking with them, I could hear God saying, “What are you going to do in the next person?” I’m like, “No one is calling my phone this late.” It was not someone calling me but what would I do to serve the next person at 2:00 in the morning, going through the struggles of life. From that, Widowhood Real Talk with Tina was birthed, the show and the things that we do to support other people.

That’s beautiful. Often, the trajectory where we go through the thing and we make one little tentative step forward, one little tentative step towards someone else. That gets affirmed and it spreads. What a wonderful ministry you have, Dr. Tina.

Thank you. Thirty-eight million views across 124 countries tells me there are more hurting people than we know. This conversation for people to leverage that and to know they’re not alone is powerful. I would ask you to close out this conversation to our readers.

You are not alone and whatever you believe. Whatever walk of life you’re from, like faith, tradition, or whatever. Pain is real. Be honest about it. Let other people into it and there is healing even if it doesn’t all go away. There is companionship and presence.

Thank you.

My pleasure. Thank you.

Important Links

• Phil Allen on LinkedIn
• The Ache in the Ordinary
• Wick-Whisper.com
• Wick & Whisper on Substack

About Phil Allen

Phil Allen is a hospice chaplain and writer who has spent more than 30 years walking with people through loss and life’s hardest seasons. He is the author of The Ache in the Ordinary, where he explores grief, doubt, and the quiet presence of God in everyday life. Phil’s work centers on honest conversations about pain and faith, helping people find a way forward without rushing their healing.