On today’s Intelligent Money Minute, we’ll interview Kathleen Rehl on how widowhood is like a butterfly. Kathleen discusses the butterfly’s transformation in her book. She speaks of how we all know the basics of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. However, part of the transformation process is quite different than we would expect. Within a cocoon, you would find the caterpillar liquified into what is called “goop.” This “goop” is amazingly what will one day become a beautiful butterfly. Kathleen explains that the butterfly must struggle on its own to come out of its cocoon to soon fly. Likewise, widowhood can be explained in this light. Kathleen describes widowhood as this “meltdown” process. Widows go through a similar “grief goop.” Most noteworthy is that a widow goes through this process in order to become a beautiful butterfly.
As Kathleen mentioned, the process of widowhood can sometimes feel like “goop” because of the different struggles faced during grief. At Intelligent Investing, we have a webpage dedicated to widows and you can learn more by going to investedwithyou.com/widows. If there is anything we can do to help you transform, please let us know. We will be interviewing Kathleen on many more episodes of Widowhood, so be sure to subscribe to Intelligent Money Minute so you don’t miss them. 
On upcoming podcasts, Kathleen will talk about the three stages of widowhood- Grief, Growth, and Grace, so be sure to subscribe by clicking here.
Kathleen Rehl Bio
Kathleen M. Rehl, Ph.D., CFP®, CeFT® wrote the multi-award-winning book, Moving Forward on Your Own: A Financial Guidebook for Widows. Experiencing widowhood herself, Dr. Rehl empowers widows financially™ and inspires their advisors. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, AARP Bulletin, CNBC, USA Today, U.S. News & World Report, Journal of Financial Service Professionals, Journal of Financial Planning, and other publications. Rehl owned a financial planning firm for 17 years before retiring to her “encore” career. She walks an hour daily, practices yoga, enjoys art and music festivals, writes poetry and makes art, loves her grandsons . . . and continues to evolve on her journey.