We Didn't Plan For This: The People We Miss

After losing her husband, Brian, Adrienne expected grief. What she didn’t expect was how grief would slowly disconnect her from the people she loves.

In this solo episode of We Didn’t Plan for This, Adrienne shares the invisible weight of living in limbo—waiting on probate, facing financial uncertainty, carrying responsibilities that once belonged to two people, and waking up each day with more questions than answers. 

Every phone call becomes another reminder of what hasn’t been resolved, making it harder and harder to reach out to the people who matter most.

This isn’t just a conversation about losing a spouse. It’s about losing pieces of yourself along the way. The version of yourself who you were. 

If you’ve ever felt stuck in the waiting, overwhelmed by life’s logistics, or quietly disappeared because you simply didn’t have anything left to give, this episode is a reminder that you’re not alone.

If this episode resonates, please share it with someone who might need to hear it. And if you’re enjoying We Didn’t Plan for This, follow the show, leave a review, and help us reach someone who needs the reminder that they don’t have to carry it all alone.

We Didn't Plan For This Special Series

This series exists because so many of you reached out and said, “I didn’t plan for this either.”

If you’ve gone through a diagnosis, a loss, a life change, a career shift, a divorce, becoming a caregiver, moving, starting over — we want to hear your story.

EMAIL US: WDPFTPodcast@gmail.com

You don’t have to have it figured out. You just have to be willing to share honestly.

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These podcasts are really about the same thing — how people move through the seasons of life they didn’t plan for, and what helps them along the way.

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For th...

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi, this is Adrian. There's something I've been thinking about all weekend. Not because anything happened. Actually, that's what makes this so hard to explain. I realized I don't talk to anyone anymore. People I love, people who love me, people who have been a part of my life for years. I'm not interacting with those people right now. Every day that goes by, it gets a little harder to call them. A little harder to answer. A little harder to explain why I've disappeared. No one warns you that grief could slowly disconnect you from the living. It's strange. I think about calling someone all the time. Then I realize it's been a few weeks or a few months. Then I feel really guilty. And that guilt makes me wait one more day. And then another. And then another week. Until the silence becomes its own relationship. It's a terrible cycle. And the longer I wait, the harder it becomes. But each day that I wake up, I have a sinking feeling already sitting in my chest. Before my feet even hit the floor. The kind of feeling that whispers throughout the day. How are you going to pay your bills today? When are you going to get that probate court date? I can't even begin to untangle the debt, the paperwork, the house, our belongings, the life that Brian and I built together. And every single day I wait feels like another day I'm falling further behind. There's fear and guilt. There's this constant feeling like I should be doing more. I should be moving faster. I should be getting more things accomplished. I should be holding it together better. Sometimes I think people assume grief is just sadness. For me, it's emails and calls and texts from creditors and shady creepers looking to take advantage of someone in a financial crisis. It's also logistics. It's making a hundred decisions I never wanted to make. It's carrying responsibilities that used to belong to two people, and it's exhausting. Maybe that's why the phone feels so heavy. Because all day long it reminds me of everything I haven't figured out yet. The advice and the support does not go unnoticed. I am so incredibly grateful for my family and my friends being by my side even when they call. And I don't answer. Because sometimes I don't have anything left. It's not because I don't care. It's because I feel tired in a way I have never felt in my life. It's so hard to explain. I miss having someone look at me and say, I've got you. Brian and I shared the weight of our home. We shared the weight of our responsibilities together. Even on the hardest days of our marriage, I never felt like I was carrying life by myself. Now every decision, every bill, every piece of mail, every repair, every signature belongs to me. He noticed me and would say, I see how hard you're working. He noticed because he saw me. He was my other half. He was my heart. And he knew how much heart I put into everything. I didn't realize how much that mattered until it was all gone. I think that's what grief does. It convinces us we're grieving one person. And then months later, you realize you're grieving pieces of yourself too. The version of me that laughed more easily. The version of me that made plans. The version of me that called someone just because. That version of me that believed connection was effortless. I miss Brian. I miss my husband. And lately I've realized I also miss who I was. If you've noticed yourself becoming quieter, if you've stopped returning calls, or if I'll call tomorrow, and tomorrow has quietly turned into six months. I just want you to know you're not the only one. Maybe grief isn't only learning how to live without someone you love, but maybe it's also slowly learning how to find yourself. And maybe when you find a little more of yourself, the people you've been missing won't feel quite so far away. If there's someone in your life who might need to hear the story, a friend who's gotten quieter, share this episode with them. We didn't plan for this. None of us did. But if you're here, if you're listening, then neither one of us is carrying it completely alone today. Thanks for listening.