These stories are not obvious on the surface.
Your grieving person may never say this out loud.
You may never hear it word-for-word out of their face.
But if you listen closely to how your griever talks about their life,
you will hear echoes of these three stories.
I'm crazy.
I'm alone.
My life will be like this forever in every conversation you have about their loss.
[Music]
Hi there, grief growers, and welcome back to another episode of Griefgrower.
I am so thrilled to be here with you today, as always.
If you have been growing alongside me in my work for a while, welcome back.
And if you are new to me in my work, hello.
My name is Shelby Fersithia.
I am a grief coach, two time very soon to be three time author, and the founder of Life
after loss academy, which is an online course in community that has helped dozens of
grigging people stop feeling stuck, heartbroken, and alone, and start building lives that
they love from the lives that loss force them to live.
On this podcast and across all the work that I do, we talk about not only death-related
loss, but also the other major losses that change our lives.
Divorce, breakup, diagnosis, estrangement, pet loss, miscarriage, everything else included
under that big capital and little L loss umbrella.
And we also believe that grief is not a thing to get over.
It is something that we grow with and alongside for the rest of our lives, and that when we
stop treating grief like a problem to be solved, and instead more like an invitation to live
more deeply with ourselves and the people around us, we can create more meaningful lives that
are rich with the memories that we carry and the struggles that we faced and and and the
preciousness of what it is to be alive and to be here right now.
Before we get into today's episode, which is all about supporting someone grieving, we
are supporting someone more and more as the months go on, as the release of my book, of
course I'm here right now, begins to happen.
Yes, I do have a physical copy with me.
I want to make two event announcements.
We are just on the heels of the grief test book fair, which is happening this year in LA
at the Lux Hotel in Los Angeles on Friday, November 21.
My book, my second book, your grief your way has been chosen to be part of the grief test book
fair, and I will be hosting a panel in the afternoon where I'm interviewing a few of my fellow
grief authors.
If you like grief books, if you enjoy reading about loss and putting words to grief, this is
the event for you, they call it just like your high school book fair, like the Scholastic
Book Fair, only sadder, which is why it is the grief test book fair.
You can join me in more than 40 grief authors live in Los Angeles, again on Friday, November 21.
For a gathering that is devoted to grief literacy, finding words to talk about loss and
connecting with other people who enjoy these things as much as you do, there is a brunch that
happens in the first part of the day and then a book fair that happens along with panels and
conversations for the rest of the afternoon and everybody, everybody, everybody goes home with
a tote bag that is lovingly called my favorite thing ever, a sad sack.
So if you would like to come to the grief test book fair, I know that tickets are almost sold out,
you can visit shallbeforsethea.com/events to save your seat and I would love to meet you in person.
I know so much of the work I do happens on computer and it is so fun to meet up with you in real life.
Speaking of meeting up in real life, I will also be in Ohio at the beginning of December for a
workshop called Staying Connected to someone you love who has died with good grief of north
western Ohio. This is happening in Toledo on Thursday, December 4th from 6 to 730 at the glass city
pavilion and if you are grieving somebody you love during the holidays, if you're a parent, a
caregiver, a runner of a family in any capacity or you're just looking for more ways to remember
somebody you love through the holidays and have practices to honor them beyond the holidays,
I encourage you to come join me at this workshop. It is all about how to use your five senses to
honor and commemorate somebody you love and to use those five senses sort of as miniature doorways
into traditions you can start or continue from a loved one memories that you can make with family,
ways that you can ask people in your life who've said, let me know if there's anything I can do
to help and support you and to also sort of weave memories of your person into the holidays.
So it feels like they're not forgotten as the season goes on. So when you come you will learn how to
again use your five senses to call forward memories of loved ones, how to involve kids, teens,
family members and creating positive grief related traditions that can happen year after year.
What to do if painful memories of a loved one over shadow, maybe some more of your happy ones,
and how to tailor holiday traditions based on your energy levels like whether it's a low energy
year and you're staying at home or it's a high energy year and you have to travel across multiple
families, perhaps multiple states or countries. And again, that's happening in Toledo, Ohio on Thursday,
December 4th and you can find tickets once again at shallbeforcityah.com/events and I would be so
honored to see you there. Okay, for today's episode we are continuing the supporting someone series
in honor of my third book. Of course, I'm here right now as debut into the world in March of next
year. So once a month I am doing some sort of podcast episode on how to support someone who is
grieving. And this is sort of like an educational episode and really for the first time I'm unveiling
the crux of my book. This is the core messaging and storytelling behind the book, of course,
I'm here right now. It is the three painful beliefs that grieving people carry and how you can support
them through loss. And this is something that sprung up from many, many years of coaching grieving
people one-on-one of witnessing their stories and experiences inside life after loss academy.
And also just reflecting back on the stories that I told myself in the wake of my mother's death in 2013
and a little bit again after my best friend's death in 2022. And the reason I want to share this
with you today is you are probably supporting somebody who is grieving through the holidays. And I want
you to be able to have tools and scripts and language and words to do just that without toxic positivity
or just get over it, which I know you're not that kind of person because you're listening to
the show, but a lot of other people are, or just saying nothing at all. I think a lot of people are
afraid to say the wrong thing and so they say nothing at all. And so I want to continue the supporting
someone's series in the lead up to this book to really equip you with language to say,
to grieving people in your life who are suffering in some way. And I want to kind of kick off with
talking about like grief is never just about the thing that happened. It's never about the moment
of the loss. It is more about or continues to be more about what we believe about that loss
and what that means for our lives. So if you are in the wake of a devastating loss, again, a death
divorce diagnosis, we call them the 3Ds or any other major life transition or event, grieving people,
the people in your midst or you, if you're the grieving person listening to this podcast,
you're not only navigating emotional pain. You are also confronting a series of internal stories
about the loss and what it means for the rest of your life. And those stories I often caught the
record player in the back of your head can be relentless. And if you are a person who is grieving or
someone who is supporting somebody grieving, often grievers or supporters as well, if you're wanting
to support somebody who's grieving right now, whether they are a friend, a partner, a client,
family member, understanding those stories, what your griever has on loop on repeat inside of
their brain, what they believe about themselves, their pain, their future can radically shift how you
show up for them and the language that you use in those moments because beneath every heavy
silence or every tearful confession about grief or angry rant about why did it have to be this way
or a blanket mass statement of "I'm fine." There is something deeper and it is whatever story
you're grieving for and your grieving person is telling themselves about what this loss has done
to them and who they are now because of it. And through the last nine years of coaching grieving
people through life after loss, I have discovered three distinct stories that almost every single
grieving person tells themselves in life after loss and most grieving people are telling themselves one
for sure and maybe two or all three. And the three stories are again these are featured and of course
I'm here right now. I'm crazy, I'm alone and it's going to be like this forever. My life is going to
be like this forever. These stories are not obvious on the surface. Your grieving person may never
say this out loud. You may never hear it word-for-word out of their face. But if you listen closely to how
your griever talks about their life, you will hear echoes of these three stories. I'm crazy. I'm alone.
My life will be like this forever in every conversation you have about their loss. And this is what
happened to me in a student as I detected the pattern. I was like, "Oh, there is something here." And
if these are the stories grieving people are telling, there have to be responses or comforting words
or alternate stories that we as supporters can offer them in their darkest moment. So understanding
these three stories is one of the most powerful ways that you can offer meaningful and grounded
and effective comfort and support to any grieving person who is in your midst. I'm talking
friends, family members, co-workers. If you are a grief professional, these are the clients or the
students that you are supporting in your work. So I want to get into in this episode each belief,
each of these three beliefs where it comes from, why it shows up, and how you can show up in response.
The practical scripts, the words you can say in their direction, in response to these three stories
that almost every grieving person tells. Belief number one is, I'm crazy. And other ways that your
griever might say this is, "I should be over this by now. I don't understand why I'm still crying.
Something must be wrong with me. Other people do not feel this way." Or, "I heard this literally
just yesterday on a call with a client. I feel like I'm not getting grief right." There's this
pressure or this expectation that there's a right way to do grief and a wrong way to do grief.
And if you're getting grief wrong, then something is wrong with you. And after a major loss,
life is no longer familiar. I know for me after my mom died, I missed sleep. I lacked focus. I could not
read a book anymore when that was something that was really easy for me before her death. Other
grieving people report things like forgetfulness or spontaneous crying or total numbness or a
failure to focus or sudden social anxiety where they used to be the social butterfly of the room
or motivation gone missing, whether that's at work or otherwise, and a very distinct lack of joy
or interest in things that used to feel happy or fun. One of my clients in life after
law's academy once said, "I don't recognize myself anymore." And many grieving people say at some point
or they start to wonder, "What is wrong with me?" Your grieving friend's story of, "I'm crazy."
Is born from this societal lie that grief has a fixed timeline that it should be neat and linear
and sense-making and productive, and it can all be tied up in a 90-minute movie with a really pretty
bow. We live in a culture I'm speaking largely about the United States and other Eurocentric societies
that rewards stability and certainty and punishes emotional messiness and uncertainty. So when grief
sort of comes in and breaks those rules and turns over all the tables, grieving people sadly assume
that they, and not the society that raised them to believe those things, must be defective or broken
in some way. And in my book, of course, I'm here right now where I go into detail about each of these
three stories I write, these stories are running on repeat inside of a grieving person's head,
torturing them endlessly with the lies that loss has somehow made them abnormal, not fit to the
long and permanently broken. And people around grieving people, very well-meaning supporters,
will often try and reassure griefers with the statement, "Oh, you're not crazy, it's okay, you're not crazy."
But here's the thing, when you contradict a grieving person's story, those words clash with the
story that they are already believing inside of their mind. And when you challenge that too directly,
I'm crazy, no, you're not. It rarely sticks. Like, why would they believe you? The story of yours,
this counteracting story, you're not crazy, it'll slide out of their brains, like eggs out of a
teflon pan. It's kind of like, if somebody, if you're having an experience of, it's really windy outside,
and somebody says, "No, it's not." And you're like, "I can't believe that because that's not the experience I'm
seeing, that's not the experience that I'm having." And so when a grieving person genuinely believes,
"I'm crazy, your contradiction of, no, you're not, you're not crazy, does not land or is not able to
be absorbed by their minds," because that's not the lived experience that they're having. So the
alternative to "I'm crazy," the first phrase in my framework of, of course, I'm here right now,
is validation without contradiction. No, you're not, we're not doing that. So instead of trying to
talk your griever out of their feelings, try reflecting their exact feelings in a more gentle way,
using the phrase, of course, or similar phrases. Of course, this is hard. It makes sense that you're
feeling this way. I can see how you got there. You think you're crazy, but that sounds pretty normal
to me, or I expect there are other grieving people who would feel exactly the same way.
Notice how different that is than, "You're not crazy. You're not losing your mind." Of course,
it feels like you're losing your mind. Of course, it feels like you're going crazy right now.
These small phrases affirm the reality of grief. This is what's happening. It's windy outside hell,
yet. It is, of course, it is. Without requiring your grieving person to explain or defend or even
erase the fact that they are in pain, it gives them permission to feel exactly what they're feeling,
and that is a very profound way to comfort them. Comfort by way of the phrase, of course.
Okay, let's get to belief number two. I'm alone. Grieving people who tell this story say things like
nobody gets it. I don't want to talk about it anymore. Everyone has moved on without me. That's a big
one. I don't belong anywhere. Now I used to have a home. I now belong nowhere. And nobody remembers
that I'm grieving. Your grieving friend's story of I'm alone is constructed from tons and tons of
tiny interactions. Things like forgotten grief, anniversaries, or someone changing the subject as
soon as they bring up their loss or being told that they need to just get over it. And that reinforces
the narrative that they, your grieving person, needs to deal with their loss alone. And in, of course,
I'm here right now. I described these moments as micro traumas. Quote, teeny tiny emotional wounds
add up, subtly hurtful experiences accumulate over time and can eventually change the way we see
ourselves as humans, measure how safe we are in the world, and connect to our sense of well-being.
And on top of that, being met with things that are toxically positive, toxic positivity statements
like at least using a better place or shallow distractions like you just need to get out of the house.
These things reinforce the idea that no one really gets your grief or the truth of their experience.
And it teaches your grieving person to pull back from human social interactions or to stay quiet
or to not talk about their loss anymore in order to self-protect. When my mom died in 2013,
I absolutely told myself the story I'm alone because people around me said things like,
be grateful you got 21 years with her. And you can't grieve forever. And I registered the story of,
"Ah, nobody really gets my grief. I really am alone in this." And I write, and of course, I'm here
right now. I was convinced that I would feel precisely this way forever and ever for the rest of
all time, amen. Yeah, I really wrote that in the book. I could say no way out. And there seemed to be
no one who understood me in my grief. When you tried to fix or cheer up or reframe your grievous
grief, you risk pushing them further into isolation. But when you simply stay by their side in the
awfulness of loss, you interrupt the story of, "I'm alone with the story of, I'm here." And this could
sound like any one of these statements, offer them to your grieving friend. I haven't forgotten that
you're grieving and then insert loss here. So I haven't forgotten that you're grieving your mom.
Or I haven't forgotten that you're enduring a cancer diagnosis right now or treatment. I haven't
forgotten that you're mourning your marriage as the holidays approach. Make it very specific to
their loss. You could say something like, "You have lost so much. You will not lose me." Or, "I'll keep
checking in with you. No need to reply." And then follow up, keep checking in. Schedule on your
calendar. Whatever you need to do to keep checking. And whether it's once a week, once a month,
any frequency that works for you and the person who is grieving. These phrases, even if they seem
like nothing to you, or seem very, very small to you, are a gift to grievous who feel alone because
they are reminders that someone else in their orbit, you, gives a shit about the fact that they're
grieving. They do not erase the darkness of loss because you do not have that power. I do not have
that power. But they do offer someone holding a second light inside of it. Your grievous has
their own tiny light in the darkness that is flickering and dangerously low. But for you to step
alongside them and say like, "Hey, I see that you're grieving too." I haven't forgotten that.
Or, "You will not lose me." Or, "I'm going to keep checking on you." And when you're supporting
somebody who's grieving that tiny, second glowing presence inside of the darkness is evidence to your
grieving person, "I do not have to go this alone." It is a way of rewriting the story of, "I'm alone."
"No, you're not." No, you can't. You can't contradict a greeting person's story that way.
They will not believe you. But to say, "I have not forgotten about you." You will not lose me.
I care so much about you. I'll keep checking in, no need to reply. That is evidence. That is the
secondary light in the darkness to a grieving friend. And lastly, belief number three, my life will
be like this forever. Or simply, it will be like this forever. This can sound like from a grieving
friend. I'll never be happy again. This is just how life is now. I don't have a purpose anymore.
I feel stuck. Or what's the point of anything? And when grief storms through, I'm sure a lot of you
resonate with this story, the future vanishes. Or joy feels unattainable. Or hope feels like
something that died that you held a funeral for, along with your loss. And the life that your grieving
friend was building collapsed and fell apart. And all that they are left sitting in is the wreckage
of what used to be. And of course, I'm here right now. I describe it like this. It's a picture that I
often see in my mind's eye when I'm working with students in life after a loss academy or one-on-one.
Quote, "In my mind's eye, I picture a person whose gentle gold cords of connection to others
have been severed, trailing in shreds and fragments around their body. The future looks grim,
support has become difficult or impossible to access. And what was once solid is now just clouds
of dust." Your grievous story of my life will be like this forever is often born out of a place
of overwhelm or exhaustion. Or the very true reality that some losses like death really are forever.
It may very well be like this forever. But again, when supporters rush to contradict this pain,
saying things like, "You'll find happiness again. Don't worry. You're so attractive. You'll find
another partner. Time heals all wounds. It does not bring comfort to grieving people. It brings them,
serves them on a silver platter. Big, blatant disconnection. It feels very hollow and trite like you
are offering or serving positivity for dinner without noticing that your griever is already stuffed
full of pain. And this is because grieving people are not living in later or hope for the future
or being able to see down the road. They are living in right the hell now. And this is why the most
healing thing you can say to a grieving person is right now. Consider, as you offer statements or
comfort to your grieving friend, grounding yourself and them in the reality that this is one of the most
painful moments of their life out of many of life's moments by saying something like, "Yes,
right now this absolutely hurts." Or in this season, "I know it feels like you'll never be happy
again." Or, "I can see how this feels like way too much right now." These phrases don't necessarily
agree. With your grievers despair, they don't endorse hopelessness. What they do is they frame it
through this soft sort of lens of temporary-ness. This is not all there is. Without saying, this is not
all there is. And also, while acknowledging what's really happening in this moment, right now,
I can see how you can't see a way out. I can see how you got there right now. It is contextualizing
where they are today without demanding that they paint over everything with a bright pink coat
of toxic positivity. I want to end this show today by talking about why understanding these three
beliefs matters. Grieving people are not always aware that these are the stories that they're telling
themselves. If somebody asked me after my mom's death, "What stories are you telling yourself in your
head?" I don't know that this is what I would have offered you, but these three stories shape
everything about how a griever talks about their loss, how they relate to other people, and how they
make meaning of their pain. And as someone who is interested in supporting a griever, whether you're
a griever yourself or a comforter adjacent to a griever right now, you will not always be able to
identify their belief right away. You will not know what to say in every single moment, but if you
are present and if you are listening, continually listening, for the stories that your griever is telling
under the surface of every conversation, you will find your way. And what I can guarantee you from
reading my book, of course, I'm here right now, is that when you use these three phrases, of course,
I'm here and right now to contradict gently through the back door these phrases of, "I'm crazy,
I'm alone, it will be like this forever." You strengthen your relationship with the griever in your
life while also offering them comforting words that actually help. These are words that I didn't
just invent out of nowhere. These are phrases that I've used over and over again in grief coaching
and that were offered to me in my darkest moments. And I have packaged them all into one little
container for you. You are not giving grieving people platitudes or toxic positivity or sympathy card
cliches, but real honest language that sees them and honors their grief and helps them feel heard
and reminds them ultimately that they are not alone in their grief. And in the book, I write,
that's the paradox of comforting someone in grief. It's the more you try and lift them out of their
pain, the more likely you are to make them feel misunderstood, unheard, or alone. Grievers do not
need you to counteract their reality. I'm crazy. No, you're not. I'm alone. No, you're not. It's
going to be like this forever. No, it's not. They do not need that. They need you to witness it.
And in witnessing your grieving friend's reality, you offer them something that is so much better
than a sympathy card platitude. You offer them your heart alongside theirs, a companionship of
witnessing a coming alongside through every single one of life's hardships and struggles. And by doing
that, and I get chills talking about this y'all, your relationship with a grieving person is strengthened,
your friendship endures, and they get to feel like, and you get to feel like it is possible to survive
the hard things that life throws at us. And if you want even more scripts like this, if you want to
hear the research and the storytelling and the client stories behind these phrases, of course,
I'm here right now. Please pre-order my book, of course, I'm here right now because I will share in
this book how these three stories shape a grieving person's inner world where they come from in our
society. Like, why do we tell ourselves these stories in the first place? And you will find
boo-cous of tangible scripts and practices to help you as a supporter, whether you're supporting
yourself as a griever or other people in your life, sus out the dominant story the grieving person
is telling, and offer comfort through language, which is a free tool without fixing them, without
minimizing their pain, or walking on verbal excels. Inside the book, you will find a dedicated section
right at the beginning called sus out the story. And this teaches you how to notice the belief your
grieving person is caring, which are the three stories they're telling themselves, and how to respond
with language that heals instead of harms. So if you're a person that says, I do not know what to say
to comfort someone who is grieving, and I am the griever, or I am working with grievers, or I am living
with grievers, or I'm working alongside grievers, this is the book for you, and you can find a link
to that in the show notes. I'll tell you that when you read this book, you will become someone who knows
how to hold space for grief in all of its complexity and truth, and that is the ultimate source of
connection and community in a world that regularly teaches us that more loss is just around the corner.
[Music]
That's all for this episode of Grief Grower. Thank you so very much for joining me today.
If you're looking for grief support beyond this show, you can find free workshops,
blog articles, and my signature, what's your grief support style quiz at shallbeversathea.com/links.
And if you'd like to get support from me for your unique loss experience, you can join us inside
Life After Loss Academy, which is my online course and community. As a student, I'll walk you through
my five step grief framework, G-R-I-E-F, for rebuilding After Loss, and you can get live coaching from
me every single week to answer your questions. Replays are always available if you can't attend life.
It's just $33 a month to join, or $22 a month if you're marginalized, or financially stressed griever,
and you can cancel at any time. If this podcast about validating, comforting, educational, or
otherwise helpful to you as you support someone in grief, please subscribe and leave a review on
Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and be sure to share Grief Grower with a friend, because you never
know what someone you love is going through. Grief Grower is hosted by me, Shalbe,
for Scythia, with music by Annie Goldstein. Until next time, Grief Grower, I see you. I am so
freaking proud of you and the work that you're doing in the world. And I love you. Because even through
Grief, we are growing.