Hi, I'm Kendra

I’ve been married to a neurosurgeon since 2003. I’ve lived every season of medicine, from residency with four young children to attending life and I know firsthand that external stability doesn’t automatically create internal peace. I spent years waiting to feel better. When that didn’t happen on its own, I started untangling who I had become inside survival mode. Now, as a Professional Certified Coach, I help physician spouses do the same.

Living Loss: The Grief No One Gave You a Card For with Viola Enns Woelk

Podcast

My guest, Viola Enns Woelk, has spent the last few years studying, and living. Viola spent years as a nurse before life circumstances led her to give up her licence. No nursing shortage in Canada at the time, her husband working eighty and ninety hour weeks, no family nearby to catch the kids on short notice. On paper, it was simply a practical decision. Underneath it, it was a loss she carried quietly for thirty years, with no language for it and no permission to grieve it out loud.

Then, at fifty five, she went back to university to study thanatology, the study of dying and death, grief and loss, and found a chapter that stopped her cold. It was called living loss. Non-death losses. Loss of identity, loss of career, loss of self-worth. She told me, “I suddenly realised that maybe, just maybe, the loss of my career was valid.” That sentence has been sitting with me all week.

We talk through the moment Viola tried to explain this loss, years before she had the language for it, and got shut down by well meaning colleagues instead. “You’re married to a physician. You have an income. Why do you even need to be here?” I don’t think I need to tell you how many of you have heard some version of that sentence.

Viola gave me the definition of living loss that anchors this whole conversation, and it’s worth pausing on: it’s an experience where there is a circumstance, perception, or experience where it’s impossible to go back to the way things were before. We walk through the four types she teaches, ambiguous loss, disenfranchised grief, tangible loss, and intangible loss, and if you’ve ever had someone tell you a divorce or a move or a career change was “your choice, so what are you complaining about,” this part is for you.

We also get into curiosity as a tool, not just for supporting someone else through a hard season, but for turning toward yourself when you’re the one grieving something nobody else can see. “Tell me more” might be the most useful four words in this whole episode.

If you’ve ever walked away from something that mattered to you and felt like you weren’t allowed to grieve it, this conversation is for you. I think it might give you the same thing it gave me: permission.

What You’ll Learn (with Timestamps)

[02:00 – 04:00] What thanatology is, and how one class handed Viola the language for a loss she’d carried for decades
[06:00 – 09:00] Why Viola gave up her nursing licence, and the quiet grief that followed the “practical” decision
[11:00 – 12:00] The one sentence definition of living loss that reframes any loss you can’t undo
[16:00 – 21:00] The four types of living loss, ambiguous, disenfranchised, tangible, and intangible, and where they show up in a medical marriage
[21:00 – 24:00] Why curiosity beats fixing, reassuring, or comparing, and how to turn that same curiosity on yourself
[28:00 – 30:00] The advice Viola would give her thirty five year old self, still figuring out how to name what she’d lost

Resources Mentioned

Connect with Viola: vewlivingloss@gmail.com
Take the “Hidden Cost of Being the Strong One” Assessment
Non-Death Loss and Grief, by Darcy Harris

Your Next Steps

Check out this episode!

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Life After Survival Mode

A private reflection guide for physician spouses who thought it would feel better by now.

HI, I’M KENDRA

I’ve been married to a neurosurgeon since 2003. I’ve lived every season of medicine, from residency with four young children to attending life, and I know firsthand that external stability doesn’t automatically create internal peace. I spent years waiting to feel better. When that didn’t happen on its own, I started untangling who I had become inside survival mode. Now, as a Professional Certified Coach, I help physician spouses do the same.