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Coming back to life after loss does not mean pretending that those very hard, very true

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elements do not exist.

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It doesn't mean getting over it or moving on or arriving at some fixed state of "I am

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healed now" to me and to the hundreds and thousands of gravers that I've worked with

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we all agree.

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That coming back to life after loss means learning to live alongside the awfulness, the horror

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of what happened, to carry your loss with you in ways that are meaningful and sometimes

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bearable and even occasionally on your best days, beautiful and meaningful to you.

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That is what rebuilding after loss, coming back to life after loss actually looks like.

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[Music]

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Hi there grief growers, I am so grateful to be here with you as always.

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If you've been growing alongside me in my work for a while, welcome back and if you are new

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to me and my work, hello.

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My name is Shelby for Scythia, I am a grief coach, three time author and the founder of life

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after loss academy.

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I have had the distinct honor of helping thousands of grieving people stop feeling lost, stuck,

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broken and alone and start building lives that they genuinely love from the lives that

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loss forced them to live.

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This includes not only death-related losses but also losses like divorce and breakup, major

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diagnosis and any other loss that changes your life.

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Here on Griefgrower we believe that grief is not something to get over.

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It is something that we grow with and alongside and that by treating grief less like a problem

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to be solved and more like an invitation to live more deeply.

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We can create meaningful lives that are rich with the memories we carry, the struggles

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that we faced and the precious awareness of what it is to be right here and right now.

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Now onto today's topic.

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This is, I really wanted to create an episode on how to come back to life after loss.

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This is a rebuilding guide for grieving people.

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My first podcast ever was called coming back, conversations on life after loss because I

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think a lot of people in our society ask like how do I come back to life after loss.

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Again, it's a very common question.

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And recently a listener of Griefgrower emailed me after finding the podcast in the weeks following

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his son's death.

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He said, "Shellby, I lost my son three months ago.

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He was 34.

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There was no warning.

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It was a heart attack in his sleep.

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I identified his body.

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I planned the funeral.

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I handled the insurance calls, the apartment and his belongings.

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I did everything that needed to be done because someone had to and I am his dad."

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Now that the dust has settled, I don't know what to do with myself.

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I wake up at three in the morning and can't go back to sleep.

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I cry in the car.

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I hold it together at work and fall apart the moment I walk through the door.

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Everyone keeps telling me I'm strong but I don't feel strong.

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I feel like I'm just going through the motions of being alive.

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I found your podcast, Griefgrower, and I've been listening during my morning commute.

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It's the only time of day I feel like someone actually gets it.

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I guess my question is, how do I actually come back to life after something like this?

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Is that even possible?

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So if you are listening right now and you have asked yourself a version of that question,

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how do I come back to life after loss?

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Whether your loss is days old or weeks old or years behind you, this episode is for you.

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What I want to start with is a sort of disclaimer.

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The honest truth about coming back to life after loss because coming back to life after loss

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is not what society portrays it as.

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In other words, coming back to life after loss is not a comeback story.

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The way society tends to frame it is you suffer, you heal, and then you emerge from the

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wreckage stronger, maybe with a fun sword in your hand.

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You're shiny or you're better than before.

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There is this narrative I talk about at my book, of course, I'm here right now.

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I refer to it as triumph porn, and it works beautifully in movies and memoirs and other

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forms of media, but for most grievers, it doesn't reflect reality.

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The truth of grief is that some things will always be real.

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Will always be true about your loss.

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Some things that break your heart will never fully come together again or heal.

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There are absences and empty places that you will carry with you forever, whether that

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is at the dinner table or in the car or during the holidays or in moments where you least

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expect it.

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There are elements of your loss that will be as true in the future as they are today.

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And coming back to life after loss does not mean pretending that those very hard, very

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true elements do not exist.

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It doesn't mean, as we talk about so often on grief, where we're getting over it or moving

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on or arriving at some fixed state of I am healed now to me and to the hundreds and thousands

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of grievers that I've worked with, we all agree, that coming back to life after loss means

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learning to live alongside the awfulness, the horror of what happened, to carry your

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loss with you in ways that are meaningful and sometimes bearable, and even occasionally

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on your best days, beautiful and meaningful to you.

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That is what rebuilding after loss coming back to life after loss actually looks like.

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And in more than 10 years now of walking with grievers through devastating loss, I have

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noticed that rebuilding tends to follow a consistent pattern.

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This is regardless of the type of loss, the timeline, since the loss or the circumstances

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surrounding the loss.

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This pattern, I have encapsulated into what I call my five step grief method.

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I've talked about it here on the show before, GRIEF, and this is the framework, the structure,

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the outline of my online course in community life after loss academy, which is the program

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that I teach and the live support group that I lead every single week.

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So here is what it looks like based on the grief method structure, GRIEF, to come back

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to life after loss.

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First, G, ground, feels stable and safe again after loss.

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Because one of the first things that grief does to any of us is knocks the ground out for

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under us.

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Lost shatters the assumption that life is predictable and safe.

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Suddenly, a world that was relatively stable feels like a place where anything, including

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the worst thing, can happen at any moment.

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I often talk about a life after loss academy that lost teaches us that anything can happen

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to anyone at any time for any reason or no reason at all.

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This is why so many grieving people describe the early days and weeks and months of loss

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as feeling untethered or adrift, like they're moving through life in a fog or going through

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the motions without really being present in any of them.

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I once had a student in life after loss academy say it feels as if the ground is falling out

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from under me all the time.

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So before you can do anything else after a loss, the thing I teach is that you need to

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get grounded.

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This means creating small anchors like rituals or routines or sensory touchstones that help

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your nervous system, your literal body, remember that it is stabilized in this moment even

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if the larger world feels unpredictable.

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And grounding does not and probably should not be elaborate.

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It might look like a cup of tea that you make the very same way every morning.

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It might look like a five minute grief ritual that connects you to your person who died

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or the thing that you lost.

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It might be a specific chair or a playlist or a corner of your home that feels like a

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safe or stable enough place.

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It might be a daily practice like journaling or breathing or walking that signals to your

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body you are here and you are okay in this moment.

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The goal of this first step ground is not to feel happy or all the way healed.

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It is simply to feel sturdy enough to keep going and to build a stable in a foundation

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that the deeper work of grief can eventually happen when you feel more ready.

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Number two in the grief framework is release R. This is to let yourself actually feel

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and grieve your loss.

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Because grief is not just about the person or the thing that's gone.

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It is about everything that's attached to them.

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The future you imagined and the identity you built around them, the version of yourself

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that you were before lost steamrolled through hopes, expectations, daily rhythms that

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made life feel like it belonged to you.

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All of those things deserve to be grieved and not just acknowledge once and like file

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the way over there but genuinely, massively, repeatedly felt and released.

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So the release step inside life after loss academy is where I teach you how to give yourself

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permission to grieve the full scope of what's been taken from you.

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This includes creating rituals, so intentional acts of releasing that honor what you have lost

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beyond just the loss itself.

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This step or this part in the course is often the hardest according to life after loss academy

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students because it asks you to sit with the weight of grief instead of distracting from

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it or running away from it or pushing it down.

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It is an invitation, a very open invitation to feel rage and guilt and sorrow and longing

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and despair without immediately trying to fix it or talk yourself out of it.

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It also asks you to grieve the person you used to be before loss changed you because

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loss never just takes people and futures.

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It takes versions of who you are to and that version of yourself, those many, many versions

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of yourself that can no longer be deserve to have space to be mourned.

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Giving yourself real intentional mindful space and place to release griefs biggest and

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heaviest emotions, what that does is gradually shift the way your feelings move through you.

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They transform from things that knock you on your ass, pardon my French, to things that

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you can survive and process and carry forward.

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In life after loss academy we talk about over and over again, the goal of releasing is not

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to feel your grief so that you can be done with it.

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It is to feel your grief so you can have a continual place for grief to go.

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It is to allow it to move through you over and over and over again because so much of

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what society teaches us is to block against grief.

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It is to push against it or to push it down or to file it away or to hide it out of sight

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from ourselves or from other people.

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The release module is like here, let's literally construct a place for grief to go through

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some sort of ritual, some sort of meaningful thing that has intention and purpose for you

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and that's different for every student who comes through the course.

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It's different for you and you're coming back and depending on the loss as well can

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all change so your ritual is very unique to you.

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The goal of the release module is not to create the ritual so you do the ritual once

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and never have to do it again.

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It is so that each time this grief comes up, grief for the person you used to be, grief

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for the person you lost, grief for the life you can no longer have, grief for the future

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that can no longer be, you now have created a channel, a road that those feelings can

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go down so that they are not stuck existing inside of you.

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It is my all time favorite section of life after a loss academy to walk with griefers through

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because once you get through it, once you give grief a place to go, there's so much relief,

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there's so much opening, there's so much more space to do the other things that are necessary

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for coming back to life after loss.

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The third section in the grief method is I, integrate and this is honor your loss while

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rebuilding your life.

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One of the most persistent myths about grief is that healing requires living the past

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behind.

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It does not.

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In fact, some of the most powerful grief work I have ever witnessed and had the honor

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of coming alongside people doing has happened not in letting go and never thinking of the

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loss again, but in weaving in.

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Integration of loss into life in a way that says, this happened, this person existed, this

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chapter matter, this is part of my life and I insist on carrying it with me.

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An integration looks different for everyone, but for you, it might look like talking about

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the person you lost without apology or shame.

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It might be continuing a tradition or ritual that connects you to your loss.

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It might look like folding in or even wearing meaningful symbols, objects or dates into

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your life.

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It might look like allowing your loss to inform how you make decisions or form relationships

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or show up in the world, essentially for this loss to have some sort of meaningful legacy

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in your life.

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What I want to stress here is that integration is not about keeping grief front and center

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forever.

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It is about making room for grief as a permanent, honored thread in the fabric, the larger

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picture of who you are, so that moving forward does not feel like abandoning the loss, that

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chapter, that significant element of your life and your story.

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This is the part of life after loss academy where so many grieving people realize that moving

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forward and honoring loss, they're not opposite things, they're not fighting.

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They can both be happening at the same time.

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It's also an opportunity to get really, really creative of how do you want to carry your

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loss, your person forward into the future with you, because you can insist that it happens

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because that is your right as a griever.

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And so you get to create how that goes.

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That can give you so much of your power back at a time in your life when it can feel like

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grief is really taken everything away from you.

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Number four in the grief method framework is e. Establish.

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This is navigate relationships and set boundaries with other people while grieving.

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The first three sections ground release and integrate are all about doing grief with

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you.

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The fourth section, establish, is about doing grief with others because as I like to say

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grief never, ever, ever, ever, ever happens in a vacuum.

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Loss changes everything about your life, including your relationships with the people around

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you.

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Some people show up with tremendous care and consistency.

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Others more frequently disappear after the funeral or after the flowers die.

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Some people are really wholesome grief and say things that leave you feeling more alone

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than companion.

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And most people, even people who claim to love you and claim to support you, have their

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own weirdo discomforts with grief that can make it actually harder to get the support

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that you need in the aftermath of loss.

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So the established section in the grief method framework is about creating grief honoring relationships.

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These are friendships, family dynamics and workplace interactions that make room for

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and honor who you are now as a grieving person, not holding you to the standard of who you

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used to be before loss stormed through your life.

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This looks like setting kind but firm boundaries, not the punishing kind, but the compassionate

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kind.

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Things that say, "I need you to show up differently for me," or "I need this kind of conversation

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to stop," or "I need this kind of conversation to start," or "I need more time than I used

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to," or "I need less time than I used to," or "I need you to remember my loss even when

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you assume that I've moved on."

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In the established section of Life After Loss Academy, we work to identify your grief

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allies.

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These are people in your life who can actually hold space for your grief without flinching

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and leaning on them more deliberately and also setting boundaries of people who have shown

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themselves to be hostile to your grief in ways where you can either put the relationship

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on pause or bring it to some kind of conclusion.

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What I want to make clear here is that establishing grief honoring relationships is not about becoming

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difficult or demanding or some sort of grief princess on a high horse.

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It is about recognizing that grief fundamentally changes all of your relationships.

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In my new book, of course, I'm here right now.

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I talk about how grief changes your rules of engagement with everyone in your life.

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As you are recognizing that all the relationships that you're in from co-workers to your closest

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family are filtered now through the lens of loss.

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We talk about in Life After Loss Academy permanently wearing grief glasses.

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This is not a problem to be fixed.

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It is simply a new truth of your life that deserves space and honoring.

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And it really honors that like grief is never just happening to you and with you.

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It is also rippling out to all the relationships in your life.

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The last element of the grief method framework F is for foster.

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And this is find peace and joy again while living with grief.

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This step tends to be what my students call like the longest one, the lifetime one, because

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it never really ends.

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Fostering a long-term relationship with grief means sort of gear shifting the way you see

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grief itself or reframing it.

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Grief is no longer an enemy to defeat or a problem to solve.

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It is not a phase of your life or a season of your life to push through or get over as

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quickly as possible.

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Grief is, and we really drive it home in this section, a companion, a teacher, an unpleasant

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roommate, a permanent part of the landscape of your life.

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This section is where many, many of my clients and students begin to notice something surprising.

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It is glimmers of peace or moments of laughter or pockets of joy that coexist with the sadness

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of grief.

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These are not signs that grief is gone.

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They are signs that you are living alongside grief.

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So in the foster section we talk about seeing your grief as a living thing that evolves and

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changes shape along with you.

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And it also means building your capacity to hold joy and sorrow, love and loss before and

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after all at once.

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It is very much a yes and section.

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It means fostering a lifetime partnership with grief means that accepting grief will still

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arrive in waves sometimes years and decades down the road.

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But it also means knowing that when it does, you have the tools, the ritual, the community

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to meet your grief with compassion and even expecting it to arrive.

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Hello, Mr. Hardick.

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I've been expecting you as one of my favorite songs from the Chicks goes instead of dread.

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This is not the same as closure.

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There is no such thing as closure as I spoke about in a previous episode of Grief Grower

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and wrote about on my blogs.

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You can go find that by searching Shelby for Zythea Closure.

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But there is integration.

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There is folding in.

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There is meaning making and there is a life that is full and rich and beautiful and profound

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to you.

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It is different than it was before, but it is full nonetheless.

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That is the goal of the foster section.

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Before we go, I want to offer you a note on the timeline of what it means to come back to

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life after loss.

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The Grief method, the five steps that I've laid out here is not a linear checklist.

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This is not something you go through.

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G-R-I-E-F, all in order.

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And then you're done.

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You do not graduate from the Grief method.

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You do not complete any of these sections and then leave it behind never to think of it again.

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The five steps in this framework weave in and out of each other throughout your life

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with Grief.

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You might find yourself circling back to the ground module after a really hard Grief

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anniversary or returning to release after a new loss maybe reopens things about an old

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one that you'd never even considered.

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None of this is a failure.

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This is Grief being the living, breathing, lifelong companion that it actually is.

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There is no finish line.

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There is only the next step and your willingness to keep taking it, to keep practicing everything

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that you learn in the Grief method framework.

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As we wrap up today, what I want to remind you of, especially if you were this listener

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who wrote this to me, what does it mean to come back to life after loss?

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How do I come back to life after loss?

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You do not have to figure out the whole road ahead of you.

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You do not have to know the entire rest of your life.

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You just need to take one step.

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You do not have to have life after loss figured out.

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I think if anything, probably Grief taught you that you can't figure it out because

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again, anything could happen to anyone at any time for any reason and that is a very

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neutral statement.

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You could have horrible things happen to you with the same frequency and probability as

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you could have wonderful things happen to you.

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You do not have to know what life looks like from here and you do not have to be further

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along somehow than you are right now.

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You just have to be willing in any sort of capacity, even very small, to take a step in

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the direction of your own survival in life after loss.

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This could be like the ground module establishing a tiny daily ritual or release allowing yourself

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to cry without a time limit.

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Establish.

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It could look like texting one person who actually gets it a member of your Grief allies community

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or integrate considering one way you might fold loss into your life.

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The path back to feeling fulfilled and rebuilding after loss is never, ever, ever a straight line.

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But it is a path.

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It is a process.

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You were already on it.

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You were already doing it.

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I never want to call Grief a journey because I know so many people don't like that.

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But like people say how do I come back to life after loss and my answer is you're already

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doing it.

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You're already doing it.

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It is not something you need to opt into.

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You can do it more consciously, sure, but you are already living life after loss.

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You are already returning to life after loss.

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And if you are looking for a guide, a community, this framework, GRIEF ground release, integrate

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established foster to help you navigate it, to wrap words around it, to have exercises

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for processing it, that is exactly what life after loss academy is here for.

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I have designed a free two minute quiz to find out if you are ready to join life after

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loss academy.

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There's less than 10 questions.

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And even if life after loss academy turns out not to be your next best step, and I will

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be honest with you, there is a quiz result for yes and a quiz result for no.

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You will still receive resources for coping with grief and coming back to life after loss

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again.

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And you can find the link to that quiz in the show notes.

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I hope this has helped you get a better grasp of what it looks like, what it actually

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means to come back to life after any sort of devastating loss.

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I'm so glad to have joined you today.

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That's all for this episode of GRIEF GROER.

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Thank you so much for joining me today.

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If you're looking for grief support beyond this show, you can find free workshops, blog

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articles, and my new book, of course I'm here right now, three actually helpful things

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to say to someone grieving at shellmeforSythea.com/links.

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If you'd like to get support for me for your unique loss experience, you can get in life

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after loss academy, my online course, and community.

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As a student, I will walk you through the five step grief framework for rebuilding after

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loss, and you can get live coaching with me every single week to answer your questions.

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Replays are always available if you can't attend life.

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If today's show felt validating, comforting, educational, or otherwise helpful to you,

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please subscribe and leave a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify.

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And be sure to share GRIEF GROER with a friend.

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Because you never know what someone you love is going through.

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GRIEF GROER is hosted by me, Shelby ForSythea, with the music composed by Eddie Goldstein.

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Until next time, grief growers, I see you.

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I am so proud of you in the work that you're doing in the world, and I love you.

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Because even through grief, we are growing.

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[Music]