Orla Blackburn - Grief Guide for Widows

02/09/2026

That was me too.

I worked full time.
Built my career and became Head of Creative.
Cared for our baby, kept working, while Andy went through cancer the first time.
Worked ridiculous hours.
Made decisions. Solved problems. Kept things going.

I knew how to cope when life got hard.

And then Andy died.

And everything I had relied on to get me through hard things seemed to disappear with him.

I couldn’t think properly.

Stringing a sentence together could feel too hard.

Making the simplest decision could overwhelm me.

The capable, problem-solving woman I’d always relied on?

I couldn’t seem to find her either.

And I couldn’t work harder at this.

I couldn’t organise my way out of it.

I couldn’t think my way out of it.

All my old strategies had fallen apart.

And maybe that’s where something else slowly began.

Not me finding a better way to push through.

But learning a completely different way of being with myself.

Learning to notice what I needed.

To listen to my body.

To understand what was happening underneath my thoughts and reactions.

To question things I’d spent years assuming were simply “who I am”.

And eventually, to hear and trust my own answers again.

That’s a huge part of the work I now do with widowed women.

I’m not here to make you more capable.

Blimey, you’re probably capable enough already.

I’m here to help you understand yourself, reconnect with what you need and want, and begin trusting yourself to choose what feels right for you now.

Because the goal isn’t to turn you back into the woman who could cope with anything, nor is it to “fix” your grief.

It’s to discover who you are now — and what becomes possible when you don’t have to cope with everything in the same old way.

If you’re a widowed woman who knows you want something to change, but all the ways you’ve always figured things out aren’t getting you there, this is exactly the kind of work I do 1:1.

I currently have two spaces available.

DM me MORE and we can talk about where you are, what you’d love to feel different, and whether working together feels right.

You don’t need to have the answers.

Finding them is part of t

31/08/2026

Because you didn’t only lose your person.

So much of what made your life *your life* changed too.

For me, I was no longer Andy’s wife. I was a widow.

I was suddenly a solo mum.

The future I thought I knew had gone.

And the career I’d worked bloody hard for — a huge part of how I defined myself — no longer felt like somewhere I wanted to be.

So yes...

Who the f**k was I now?

For a long time, I think I assumed I needed to somehow find my way back to myself.

I don’t believe that anymore.

Because over the years I’ve discovered parts of myself I didn’t even know were there.

I’ve questioned things I’d always assumed were “just who I am”.

I’ve learnt what I need.
What I want.
What feels right for me.

And I’ve become far more able to trust my own answers.

I would still choose the life where Andy didn’t die.

Of course I would.

But that doesn’t mean the life I have now has to be something I simply endure.

And neither does yours.

Maybe the question isn’t:

*How do I get the old me back?*

Maybe it’s:

**Who am I now — and who do I want to become?**

This is a huge part of the work I do 1:1 with widowed women.

Not telling you who to be or what your life should look like.

Helping you uncover what might be underneath the uncertainty, reconnect with yourself and start trusting YOUR answers about what comes next.

I currently have 2 spaces for 1:1 coaching.

If you’re reading this thinking *Who the f**k AM I now?* — DM me **ME** and let’s have a chat.

You don’t need to know the answer yet.

That’s part of the work. x

25/08/2026

I’m almost eight years into widowhood now.

I’ve learned a lot in that time. I’ve changed enormously. And there are still things I’m figuring out as I go.

Every week, I write a **Wid to Wid Letter** — from one widowed woman to another.

I write about the things happening in my own life, the things widowhood is still teaching me, what I’ve learned through the work I now do with other widowed women, and the things I wish I’d understood sooner.

The hard bits are in there.

But so are the good bits. The surprising bits. The moments when I realise just how much life has changed — and how much *I* have changed with it.

Because there comes a point when widowhood isn't only about surviving what happened.

It can also be about discovering who you are now, what you want, and how you want to live the life that is still yours.

And that is a huge part of the work I do now.

I don't believe there is one right way to do widowhood, or one path that every woman should follow.

But I **do** believe we can be supported and guided towards feeling better, understanding ourselves more deeply, and creating a life that feels good to be in again.

My Wid to Wid Letters are a little piece of that.

A chance for me to share what I know, what I've lived and what I continue to learn — and perhaps help you see something differently in your own life too.

If you'd like my **Wid to Wid Letter** dropping into your inbox each week, you can sign up through the link in my bio.

Come and join me: https://www.orlablackburn.com/mailing-list/

11/08/2026

If someone had suggested meditation to me after Andy died, I’d probably have rolled my eyes.

I wasn’t looking for breathing exercises, meditation or yoga.

I wanted Andy back.

And obviously, none of this could give me that.

What I didn’t understand then was that while I couldn’t change what had happened, I could begin to support the body that was trying to cope with it.

The tension. The racing thoughts. The exhaustion. The inability to properly switch off.

Gradually, these practices gave me little pockets of respite from all of that.

And those little pockets mattered.

This Sunday I’m offering the gentlest introduction to this work: around 30 minutes of guided meditation, completely free, for anyone who has been widowed.

You don’t need to know how to meditate. You don’t need to be able to clear your mind. You don’t even need to believe it’ll help.

Come and prove yourself right. 😉

Or perhaps you’ll discover, as I did, that the thing you’d once have rolled your eyes at feels surprisingly bloody good.

Sunday 16th August
8pm UK | 3pm ET | 12pm PT

DM me REST and I’ll send you the link to join my free widowed community, where I share the session details.

Or you’ll find all the ways I support widowed people via the link in my bio.

Orla x

11/08/2026

01/08/2026

One thing nobody told me about grief...

It wasn't just that I'd lost Andy.

In many ways, I lost myself too.

Not because I chose to. Not because I was weak.
But because the shock of losing the person I loved changed everything in an instant.

My world. My body. My sense of who I was.

Looking back now, in the years that followed, as much as they were about learning to live without Andy, they were even more so about about slowly finding my way back to myself.

That didn't happen because time passed.
It happened because I slowly learnt how to support myself through the hardest thing I'd ever lived through.

And when my body finally began to feel safe enough to loosen its grip...

Something unexpected happened. I began to see possibility again. Not because I'd stopped loving Andy. Not because I'd "moved on."
But because I was slowly remembering who I was underneath all the fear, shock and survival.

❤️

If you're wondering who you are now, perhaps that isn't a sign you're broken.
Perhaps it's simply where your journey back to yourself begins.

If you'd like to explore that journey with me, you'll find the different ways we can work together here:

orlablackburn.com/support-options

27/07/2026

People meant well.

I know they did.

But when people told me,
“Time heals.”
or
“You’ll be okay.”
it didn’t comfort me. It frustrated me. Because I didn’t want vague hope.
I wanted certainty. I wanted someone to tell me the exact date I’d finally feel okay so I could just hang on until then.

Of course, nobody could.

Looking back, I realise something I couldn’t have understood then.

Time wasn’t doing the healing.

What I chose to do with that time mattered.

Little by little, I learnt how to support my grieving body.
As my body slowly stopped believing it was in constant danger, something unexpected happened.

Life didn’t suddenly become easy.

But it slowly stopped feeling impossible.

❤️ If this has resonated with you, and you’re wondering where to begin, I’ve put together the different ways we can work together here:
orlablackburn.com/support-options

26/07/2026

When Andy died, people often told me that time heals.

I know they meant well, but if I’m honest, it used to really annoy me.

Time wasn’t doing anything. Time was just... passing.

I wasn’t suddenly waking up each morning feeling a little bit better because another day had gone by. I was surviving. I was getting through each day as best I could.

Looking back now, I think time simply helped me get used to a new reality that I never wanted in the first place.

What changed things wasn’t time.

It was what I slowly started doing with that time.

I tried all sorts. Counselling. Reiki. Nutrition. Throwing myself into the gym. Some of it helped in different ways.

But the biggest shift came when I stopped trying to fix my mind and started learning how to support my body.

Little by little, my body stopped believing that danger was everywhere.

And when that happened, something else quietly appeared.

Possibility.

Not because life suddenly became easy.

Not because I stopped missing Andy.

But because fear wasn’t making quite so many of my decisions anymore.

Watching this reel, you might think it’s about Bali.

It isn’t.

It’s about every frightened little “yes” that came before Bali.

Because this trip didn’t happen when I booked a flight.

It began years ago, when I started learning how to feel safe enough to live again.

❤️ What you do in your grief truly matters.

If you’re ready to stop waiting for life to somehow feel different, and start gently supporting yourself towards that place, I’d love to walk alongside you.

You can explore the different ways we can work together here:

orlablackburn.com/support-options
The link is in my bio.