A New Normal: Char Simpson on life after the death of her soulmate
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Char Simpson, aka “Traveling Black Widow”
My guest today is Char Simpson. To her many Instagram followers, she is known as the Traveling Black Widow, an older, beautiful Black woman traveling the world…or traveling regionally during COVID, offering tips on great gifts to buy or personal health or the best places to eat in Nashville.
Char is classy with a little hint of sassy. And in this episode, she is going deep, telling us about the love of her life, her soulmate, husband, and travel partner, Roy: what she loved about him and what is was like to walk with him through cancer, to bury him, and to live, fully, a life she never would have chosen for herself.
You can find the Handle with Care: Empathy at Work podcast on Google Play, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. And you can listen to the episode here:
Char and Roy
There were so many nuggets of insight from today’s conversation, but here are 3 that I want to highlight as take-aways.
Listen and then act. I loved the story that Char shared about the men that came to rake her leaves. This sort of attuned, meaningful action comes through careful attention: identifying a need and then showing up to meet it. Where are places that you can show up, metaphorical rake-in-hand, to make a difference for someone that is going through a hard time?
Your empathy needs to be attuned and adaptive to the person in front of you. Not everyone wants to be asked how they are doing. Char shared about how this left her crying and suddenly swamped by emotion in places like Target. Char appreciated a card or a compliment much more than the heavy, “How are you?”
Becoming a widow can be full of unexpected moments full of emotion: the first cook-out invite where you are solo, the critter in the drywall that you don’t know how to deal with, the wife that begins to view you with suspicion because you no longer have a husband by your side. If you are a friend of someone who is living as a widow, ask yourself how you might come alongside your friend with a kind word or an invite to a movie as they go through these ancillary losses.
Enjoying her travels
