Hello and welcome to Dear grief guide.
A podcast where each week I answer one anonymous letter from a listener feeling lost, stuck,
heartbroken or overwhelmed in the midst of grief.
My name is Shelby Fercitya.
I'm a grief coach and author and I'm here to help you create a life you love from the
life lost forced you to live.
Let's get to today's letter.
Dear grief guide, I'm sitting alone in an airport lounge surrounded by people who
look like they could be around my mom's age.
She's gone, but here they are.
Laughing, chatting and just living their lives.
It feels so incredibly unfair.
I know it's irrational but I can't help feeling angry.
Angry that they get to have this time and she doesn't.
It's ridiculous to be mad at strangers for something they have no control over, but the
bitterness and resentment I feel is there all the same.
I'm mad at everyone who gets to live while she remains dead.
What do I do with these emotions?
How do I stop myself from drowning in them?
Signed alone in the crowd.
Hi there alone.
I deeply resonate with what it is you speak of, this sense that all these other people with
these other lives get to be here and my mom does not.
When I first moved to Chicago after my mom's death, I took up a job waiting tables and one
of the hardest days for me was Mother's Day because it was a day where people would bring
in their moms or their grandmothers for brunch and just celebrate what it was to have a mother
and seeing these families that had the appearance of intactness.
And I know that's a story that I'm telling myself I have no idea what their family structure
or grief or relationships looked like behind closed doors but being surrounded by seemingly
perfect, intact, happy, alive, mothers and daughters just about did me in and it was the
hardest day I ever had to work as a surfer, as a waitress here in Chicago and it just
brought so much up for me and I wonder how much of this is coming up for you.
It is the unfairness of they get to be here and she does not but it's also the sense of
I feel like she's missing out on something.
I feel like I'm missing out on something.
I feel like we're missing out on something by not having this.
We were supposed to have that.
Yes resentment.
Yes bitterness.
Yes.
This sense of my God, why do they get to have this?
When I don't, it is irrational.
It is unfair and illogical and I think you're correct in feeling anger, anger, much to societies
I suppose dismay or chagrin is a perfectly acceptable response to unfairness or injustice or
not having things unfold the way that you'd expected them to or not getting the sort of ending
or continuation that you thought was going to happen.
Anger is a perfectly acceptable response to loss and that's something I feel like people
certainly didn't tell me enough but certainly don't tell grievers writ large enough that anger
makes sense when you are deeply, deeply grieving, anger in the form of rage, in the form of resentment
and anger in smaller forms too, in disappointment, in numbness, in cynicism and sarcasm and
a dark sense of humor, anger can come out those ways too.
It's not just being so angry you feel like you could set yourself in the world on fire,
although that is a form of anger that can show up in grief, it's also sitting in an airport
lounge and looking around and for lack of better phrasing saying where's mine?
Where's my mom?
Where's my life that I was supposed to be living and why is all of this, has all of this happened
to me and just carrying this slow burning rage for people you have never met and who have
never met you.
Yeah, a thousand percent.
I hear you.
I see you.
I want to tell you two things and we talk about this in life after loss academy but one of
the first things I share with grieving people is that anger is often a protective barrier
from emotions that are harder to feel or harder to process in a given moment.
So, sitting with your anger, being in this airport lounge, looking around at all these
people who get to be alive while your mom does not, anger could be and see how much of this
resonates.
It may not at all and that's okay too.
We'll wait for the second thing I have to tell you.
But if this does resonate, take it for what it is and then maybe take it somewhere else,
whether to life after loss academy, to a therapist, to a friend, to a fellow griever, who will
know what you mean, a community or a person who will know what you're talking about and
be able not only to commiserate but in some way guide you through the experience of that
emotion.
And that's what I want for you.
Anger can be a protective emotion for and this is not a limited list, but just a few
things I've seen commonly with students and clients for powerlessness.
I had no power to change the outcome of this for hopelessness.
My relationship with my mom is now over.
I have no hope of continuation, of reconciliation, of what a lot of people define as closure.
Also this sense of just a great sadness or a great despair and oftentimes it's a lot easier
to sit and anger and be angry because that can feel like doing something instead of sitting
in despair, which can often feel like a sort of surrender that we do not want to participate
in.
I do not want to be someone who is despairing so consciously or unconsciously, I'm going
to be angry instead.
Anger can totally be a protective barrier for some other emotion that either you aren't
ready to feel or don't feel comfortable feeling in a public space or maybe you don't have
a name for yet and that's okay.
But I wonder if here anger is protecting you from something that has yet to rise to the
service of consciousness for you.
The second thing I'll tell you if that didn't resonate or maybe if that did, but this can
be an add-on to that, this is my personal favorite way to think about anger and it's anger
as a doorway to your values, anger as an indicator of something you find deeply important.
So for instance, you're outraged at all these people in the airport who get to live and
have these rich, full lives while your mother does not.
The flip side of your anger could be that you value the right to a long, full life.
It's something you want for everyone.
It's something you wanted for your mother.
It's something you want for yourself.
You could say that you value relationships, especially deeper relationships with people
you love and to have those taken away so soon or too soon for you.
So however that timeline rolled out, that could be the flip side of your anger.
What is it that you value that was stolen from you, that was taken away, that was made impossible
by loss?
That can be a really helpful way to see anger, not as something that's going to destroy you,
but something that points directly to something that is so close to your heart that it cannot
be untied from you.
I do this a lot with people who are grieving divorces brought on by a betrayal of sorts to say,
"Yes, I'm angry about a betrayal.
The flip side of that is that I value loyalty.
I'm angry about secrecy.
The flip side of that is that I value openness and communication.
What is the flip side of the thing that is making you angry?"
The last thing I'll offer you alone is that sometimes when I'm in this space, especially
when I used to wait tables on Mother's Day, I would ask my mom for signs that she was there.
To show me with whatever power she had in the afterlife, whether this is something you believe
in or not, that she is still present, that she still has some sort of influence or ability
to be there in the life that I'm living on earth without her physical presence.
I would say, "Mom, show me that you're with me."
Or if that's too hard to wait for a sign from your mom because a lot of people either don't
believe that's possible or feel like sometimes that takes too long or what if I miss it or
what if I don't see it, you can imagine these scenarios for yourself.
You could say something like, "Mom, if you were here with me, we would be."
And then daydream and plot out a scenario of what you would be doing together in your
head.
And if that's too hard, you could say, "Mom, if you were here, we might be."
And let that certainty get a little fuzzy around the edges.
This is true, especially for people who didn't know their mom's very well or can't really
guess as to how their mom's would age with time.
"Mom, if you were here, we might be.
We could be."
Possibly we would be doing this together.
You can also use this time and space to conjure up past memories of any time you've ever
traveled with your mom, any story she ever told about being in an airport, any time you
were ever in that situation together.
Using the situation that you're in, the anger that you feel about it to sort of backdoor
strategize your way into feeling more connected to her instead of, or in addition to, more
resentful of the people around you.
I am such a firm believer that many, many, many emotions can exist at one time.
And you can say, "I am so angry that all of these people get to be alive while she is dead.
But mom, if you were here, we might be checking out magazines in the bookstore or swapping
candy back and forth or making our homemade trail mix from the airport peanuts."
Like, "What would you be doing together?"
And you can hold both of those things in the same exact breath.
And you can metaphorically take her with you as opposed to fixating your eyes solely,
exclusively, on her absence.
I really want to thank you for writing to me alone because sometimes simply writing
out our anger and our rage is the healthiest thing we can do when we just want to scream
at everybody who gets to be alive and the unfairness of it when we are on the verge of something
that feels like breaking apart.
Sometimes one of the healthiest things we can do is let somebody else know how we feel.
So no interest that I see you.
I resonate with your pain. I've been in perhaps the same size shoes or the same style of shoes
before. Not the same exact circumstances, of course, because nobody can say that about
anybody else's grief. But I think we may have gotten our shoes from the same shoe store.
I am sending you so much love. I hope your travels were safe.
And the next time you're in an airport or a restaurant or anywhere else where all you
can do is look around with this anger resentment bitterness of she should be here.
Consider what your anger is trying to tell you. The values that are inside it, maybe the
deeper emotions it's protecting you from. And also in whatever way feels right to you
invite your mom to be in that space with you too, whether you believe that something she
has the power to do in the afterlife or you conjure her there yourself because you have
that power as someone who is still alive and carries her memory into her spirit within
your heart. I have so much faith in you. Good luck.
That's all for this episode of Dear Grave Guide. Thank you so much for joining me today.
If you're feeling lost, stuck, heartbroken or overwhelmed in the midst of your own grief,
check out my free workshop Grow Through Grave. Three ways to stop feeling stuck and start moving
forward. I'll give you three easy, actionable tools for navigating life after loss and show
you how you can create peace, stability and compassion right there in the middle of
grief's confusion and uncertainty. You can find the workshop link in the show notes.
If this podcast helped you feel a little less alone in your grief, please subscribe and
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to share Dear Grave Guide with a friend because you never know what someone you love is going
through. You can submit your anonymous letter for the show and find additional grief support
at shallbeforcitya.com. Music for Dear Grave Guide is performed by Eddie Goldstein, editing
by Ruth Spence of Celebio. Until next time, I see you. I am so proud of you and the work
that you're doing in the world. And I love you because even through grief, we are growing.
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