Counselling and my healing journey
Hi, I'm Nicky, the founder of The Widowed Collective I wanted to create a free to access not for profit peer to peer support group for widows and widowers of all ages regardless of where they are in their widowed journey.
I just thought I'd share a few thoughts on my experiences of counselling, my husband sadly suffered a catastrophic brain injury in 2017 which rendered him profoundly disabled, he was in a nursing home for 3 years until he died of covid in 2020. I started counselling back in 2017 and continued for 2 years while I adjusted to visiting him in a nursing home and solo parenting an 11 year old child while running our business (a large events company) I was suffering terribly from shock and depression, I was technically married but emotionally widowed my life literally destroyed overnight. Counselling definitely helped in this stage of anticipatory grief but unfortunately my daily bottle of wine quickly became too to numb the pain and counselling was definitely not as effective.
When I finally lost Andy I was referred to Cruse who gave me 6 weeks of brilliant counselling for free, they signed me to wAY Widowed & Young a charity for people bereaveed before they are 51 which became a lifeline, I found a peer to peer support network which is partly why I started The Widowed Collective but to hlp widows of all ages - widowhood is devastating regardless of what age it occurs at.
I have since had more private counselling and some EMDR therapy (which uses moving lights to help with PTSD which Ihad after giving CPR at Andy's initial heart attack) all of which helped but for me the turning point in my healing was finally last year when I admitted I was an alcoholic and I checked into rehab, a 28 day stay with daily one to one and peer to peer therapy along with embracing sobriety helped enormously and I am now 11 months sober and happier and healthier than I've been in years..
We'd love to hear more about your journey, what has been helpful to you?