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Hello and welcome to Dear grief guide.

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A podcast where each week I answer one anonymous letter from a listener feeling lost, stuck,

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heartbroken or overwhelmed in the midst of grief.

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My name is Shelby Fercitya.

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I'm a grief coach and author and I'm here to help you create a life you love from the

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life lost forced you to live.

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Let's get to today's letter.

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Dear grief guide, I should start by saying that this might be a sensitive topic for various

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reasons because it involves children and parenting.

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But it's part of my grief experience after my mom's death and I really want to know

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what you think.

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I never felt the desire to have kids, not even a little.

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It's just not for me.

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I believe it's the way I'm wired.

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It took me many years to go public with this because it's still not very socially acceptable

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in my country.

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Despite this, I've started telling people that I want to remain child free for the rest

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of my life.

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But societal pressure is a side.

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One thing that has really been bugging me lately.

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Even though I told my mom a few months before she died that I didn't want to ever have

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kids and she respected that and I am so grateful I told her, I sometimes feel this enormous

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grief.

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I can only describe it as the grief of not passing on the bits of my mom that live on

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in me and thereby allowing the last physical pieces of her existence to disappear.

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I've read the book Motherless Daughters in which the author and the women she interviews

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describe how they could almost see their mother's presence in their own children and how

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their grief came full circle after they became parents themselves.

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Reading this made me feel envious and sad because I will not have that experience for myself.

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I know I'm privileged to make the decision to not have kids where others are child free

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due to infertility, timing or other struggles.

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But I can't be the only one grieving not seeing my mom and my children even if I don't want

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them.

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I feel like I'm grieving a dream I never even wanted.

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Could you offer some insights on this weird grief emotion?

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Thanks.

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Not undecided, but still sad.

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Hello there, not undecided.

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I see you.

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This is a weird grief.

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I think you chose the correct word for that in that this is one of the stranger letters

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or questions that I have ever received about grief and loss.

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I to this day I have not received anything else like this.

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That does not mean it's bad or wrong or abnormal because I don't know that there's anything

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in grief that's truly abnormal.

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But this is an aspect, a component of grief that I suppose I've never thought of before.

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So thank you for bringing this specific kind of grief here to Dear grief guide and for

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trusting me with this in the inbox.

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I want to start answering your question with a quote that has guided a lot of my grief

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experience.

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I believe it's from Donald Rumsfeld.

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Someone correct me if I'm wrong though.

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But it goes something like this.

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There are known knowns.

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These are things that we know.

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There are known unknowns that is to say there are things that we don't know but we do know

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that we don't know them.

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But there are also unknown unknowns.

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And these are things that we don't know that we don't know.

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And this is a bit of like for lack of better phrasing a mind fuck to wrap your head around.

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But basically with any situation there are things that you know.

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These are facts.

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These are information.

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And then you also know that there's facts and information that you don't have yet that

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they're going to appear at some point.

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These are the known unknowns.

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But then there's also a third category.

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There are unknown unknowns.

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There are things.

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There's information.

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There's knowledge.

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There's experiences that you cannot anticipate because you don't know that you should be

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anticipating them.

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And I think this experience of specific grief that you're having is one of these that

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falls into the third category of unknown unknowns.

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I am grieving a dream.

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I never even wanted.

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I didn't know that I was ever going to have to anticipate and then grieve and release

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this sort of emotion.

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I didn't see that one coming.

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And I'm laughing.

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But there's can be these experience and grief where you find yourself mourning something

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that you never even knew you were ever going to be attached to.

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I'll give you an example.

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My mother was not really to my memory a big holiday celebrator other than Christmas.

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That was her favorite.

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But like Easter, Mother's Day, a lot of holidays where people take their mothers out on holidays,

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not really super celebrated in my family.

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We would like go to church and then we'd go to lunch and go home.

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But we did that every weekend.

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So it wasn't really special.

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And then when my mom died, I moved to Chicago and I became a server at a restaurant up here.

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And Mother's Day, a Mother's Day buffet was just like this grand all out celebration and

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seeing women in their 20s with moms in their 50s, 60s people around my mother's age.

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I was struck just like bold over with the weight of grief that I felt.

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And I sat back and I'm like, wait a minute, I've never wanted to take my mom to a fancy

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Mother's Day lunch.

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That's not who we are.

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I don't know how I was raised.

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That's not anything she really ever expressed that she wanted.

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And yet here I was feeling this supreme jealousy and anger and deep sadness and kind of this

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feeling of being other or left out in a room full of people that all belonged to each other.

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At a time in my life, when I never expected that, I did not know to anticipate or to plan

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for that kind of grief.

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I knew Mother's Day would be hard just in general as a blanket statement.

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Mother's Day is going to be hard for the rest of your life.

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That's a known known.

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I knew that Mother's Day would be hard in different ways as I grew up and grew older.

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Those are known unknowns because I couldn't predict how it would be hard.

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I would just know that it would be hard but something was coming.

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But the unknown unknown is that I felt a deep grief experience about not getting to take

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my mom to lunch at the place where I worked.

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For all these other beautifully dressed people were having mimosas with their mothers and

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daughters.

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I did not know that I would grieve missing out on an experience that I'd never even had

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or dreamt of having.

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And this is exactly what I'm hearing from you.

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Just through a different lens, through this very powerful and profound lens of ancestry

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and DNA and the passage of self and loved ones onto another person.

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I think you have so much clarity here in that you know you're like kids aren't for me.

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This grief isn't going to change my mind.

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So it's not that you're being influenced by this grief which I commend you on because

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having a child just so you can see your parents' eyes or your parents' nose or your parents'

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mannerisms in them is not a good enough reason to have children in my humble opinion.

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There are many other reasons to have children.

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And you can also hold so much space for yourself and make so much room for yourself and your

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grief for having this experience of mourning that that will never be your reality.

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It's not going to be your reality because you never desired it.

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And it's not going to be your reality because you don't want it now.

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This grief has not changed your mind.

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And you know logically and you mention as well that you exist in a world where this gets

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to happen for other people.

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Other people get to take their moms to lunch.

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Other people get to have children that remind them of their mothers and they have this kind

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of three generations connection and maybe even more to women and their family based on their

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choice, their decision to make children, to have children.

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And that is something you will grieve being a bystander of for the rest of your life.

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So I think in terms of any advice I can offer you, not undecided but still sad is to allow

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that grief to surface and allow it to be irrational and allow it to not make sense and allow

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it to be something you didn't plan for and allow it to not be rooted in something that

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feels logical or oriented for you.

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I think that's really valid.

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I think this is one of those unknown unknowns in grief.

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We're like, well, didn't plan to grieve for that, but I guess now I am.

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And as much as you can invite humor into that or levity or lightness of well, that wasn't

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on my bingo card, but here we are.

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I think that will be helpful to you moving forward.

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And on a practical level, I wonder if something like, and I teach this in my online course

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Life After Laws Academy, but if crafting an escape plan for moments when you're in these

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rooms with these other people and their children and they're talking about how precious it is

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and how wonderful it is for their kids to remind them of their parents or to have all three

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generations in a room together.

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These things that you didn't get to experience and you more not experiencing even though you

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never wanted them.

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I would encourage you to craft some sort of escape plan for when those emotions feel

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like too much.

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How do you get out of there?

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How do you make a graceful exit?

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How do you say I need to protect myself in this moment so I'm going to leave and then

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I'll follow up with you later or we'll hang out next week or whatever else is going to

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happen because it is okay that your emotions around this are strong.

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Again, even if it's something you never wanted and don't want now, even if it's something

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your mom was totally okay with.

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It's not like you're disappointing her letting her down in some way.

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This is a really valid grief experience.

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You are allowed to continue to have large emotions about it.

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Even if there are all these ways you can logic or rationalize yourself out of it.

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I hope this is helpful.

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I know in the book, Motherless Daughters, Hope Edelman, who I interviewed for another podcast

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that I did called Coming Back, she's written two, several, more than two wonderful books

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called Her Famous Ones, Her Motherless Daughters and another one I love is called The After

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Grief.

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But you might actually pick up her second book, The After Grief.

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It's about what she refers to as the long arc of loss.

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As it goes beyond the first year or two of life after loss and goes into loss for a lifetime,

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coping with grief for a lifetime, which is very much also what we talk about in life after

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loss academy.

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But this sense that your grief comes with you and there will be new things to grieve, whether

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you anticipate them like birthdays and anniversaries and milestones, whether you know

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they're coming, but you didn't know necessarily what form they would take, such as what's

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going to happen on a wedding day or when you graduate or buy house or get this new job.

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And then also grieving and coping with the things that you didn't anticipate coming that are

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coming anyway.

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She has a really lovely structure in her book The After Grief for that.

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So if you have access to a bookstore or a library near you, that's one of my all time favorite

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books for the years beyond the first few of grief for the five years and the decades

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after devastating loss.

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She has a lot more stories, a lot more research and it's really just a lovely book to pick

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up.

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So yes, those two things for you, those three things for you allow this unknown, unknown

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to be okay with you as much as possible, allow this kind of grief, even though it's grief

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over something you never wanted to bring its bags full of emotions to your feet, be

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willing to unpack them with grief and honor them and validate them and say this is real.

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Even though it doesn't feel rational or even though it doesn't feel warranted or even

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though it doesn't feel like it should be that big of a deal.

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If it's a big deal for you grief, we can allow it to be a big deal for both of us.

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Craft an escape plan for these moments when it does get overwhelming because I sense

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if you are around a lot of people with children that this will come up as you grow with them,

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as you grow up with them and their children and also pick up a copy of the after grief.

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Hope Edelman's book.

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I hope it will be a nourishing and grounding and validating companion for you on this journey.

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There is so much wisdom in her book, Motherless Daughters.

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There is even more in the after grief.

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I am wishing you so much love and so much luck in knowing that there will be more unknown

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unknowns.

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And I'm hoping you can use this call as sort of a grounding or a foundation for reckoning

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with all of those unexpected grief waves as they arise in the future.

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That's all for this episode of Dear Grave Guide.

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Thank you so much for joining me today.

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If you're ready to start moving forward after a loss, consider joining my online course

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in community, Life After a Loss Academy.

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There, you'll find video lessons you can work through at your own pace, weekly live calls

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where I take your questions, and a welcoming community to talk about grief with others who

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understand.

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You can find the link to learn more and join today in the show notes.

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If this podcast helped you feel a little less alone in your grief, please subscribe and

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leave a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

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And be sure to share Dear Grave Guide with a friend, because you never know what someone

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you love is going through.

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You can submit your anonymous letter for the show and find additional grief support at

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shelbyforcithia.com.

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Music for Dear Grave Guide is performed by Eddie Goldstein, editing by Ruth Spence of

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Sinivia.

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Until next time, I see you.

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I'm so proud of you and the work that you're doing in the world, and I love you, because even

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through grief, we are growing.

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Music for Dear Grave Guide is performed by Eddie Goldstein, editing by Eddie Goldstein.

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[Music]