Hi there, it's Shelby.
You may have noticed from the title of today's show
that this is the last episode of Dear grief guide.
After your year of sharing heartfelt letters,
deep reflections, and practical tools
that help you navigate life's stickiest grief questions,
Dear grief guide is coming to a close.
If you've been following me in my work for a while,
you know that this show served as a beautiful bridge
between honoring the dip in my energy
after the sudden death of my best friend,
and returning to the world as a full-time grief coach.
I've been so grateful to answer your anonymous letters
and connect with you in this sacred, vulnerable space.
Thank you so much for trusting me with your stories
and your losses and for sharing the show
with friends and family.
The good news is, this isn't goodbye.
In March 2025, I'm launching a new podcast
called "Greef Grower" that you'll be able to find
just like this one on all major podcast platforms.
This new show is much more robust
and combines everything I love about podcasting.
On it, you can expect to hear
deep, smart, and meaningful interviews
with grief professionals, actionable tips and tools
for navigating grief, including both death
and non-death related losses.
Ask Shelby episodes similar to episodes
of Dear grief guide you've found here,
where I'll answer your anonymous letters
about grief and loss, and a monthly grief book club
featuring chats with the authors of some of the world's
best books on grief, loss, and end of life.
If you wanna be the first to know
when grief grower is live and ready to listen to,
head to shallbeforcithia.com/greef-grower-podcast
to join the wait list.
You can also find the link in the show notes.
Thank you so much for being a part of Dear grief guide.
I am so grateful for you, and I can't wait
to keep growing with you on grief grower.
Now to today's episode.
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 forcithia.
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.
As the New York approaches, I find myself
dreading it like never before.
Next week would have been my dad's birthday
and just this past October marked the second anniversary
of his passing.
For some reason, the weight of it all feels
five times heavier this year.
I've been full on crying as if I'm right back
at the moment I lost him.
It's like the grief is fresh and raw,
hitting me harder than ever.
I thought time would soften the edges,
but it feels like I've been knocked off my feet again.
Is it normal for the pain to come back
in such an intense wave?
As the calendar inches toward another year,
I'm feeling more anxious, more depressed,
and more exhausted than I anticipated.
It's as though the idea of moving forward in time
until yet another year he'll never be a part of
only amplifies the sense of loss.
I keep wondering if anyone else has experienced
something like this.
Is it common for grief to surge again,
even when you've had a little distance from it?
I'm struggling to make sense of why it's so hard now
and afraid that the New Year will knock me down for good.
Signed New Year's Grief.
Hi there, New Year's Grief.
I am really glad you wrote me this letter
because so, so, so, so many grief experts and resources
and books and blogs and Instagram posts
talk about holiday grief, but they fail to make space for
or have conversations about New Year's Grief.
The turning of another year, more time passing,
is a grief event and can bring up emotions in us of,
oh God, I have to do this all over again.
Another year without them, another year for you,
without him.
I will tell you that you noted you're moving
into the second year as of October
and so many grieving people I talk to my grief clients,
my students and life after loss academy.
Everybody says the first year is the hardest
they say the second year and the year after that
and the year after that is often harder than the first
because so many of our support people,
friends, family, even co-workers and societal structures
maybe even therapists have have distance themselves from us.
Oftentimes grief support groups conclude after a year,
friends and family pull away, go on to other things,
they're dealing with perhaps their own griefs
and struggles and losses or celebrations in their own life.
And by year two, it begins to sink in that the shock is gone
but the reality is really, really real.
The world looks much different now than it did
before your loss and in the first year.
And by year two, you have also started in some ways
I imagine accumulating milestones, birthdays,
death anniversaries, achievements like a graduation
maybe marriage, having children, buying a house,
getting a promotion, moving somewhere,
you have started accumulating significant things
in your life that your dad will never see
and there's this recognition of how many more of those
you will have, how many seasons you will continue to live
while he continues to be gone.
Yes, the second year and the years after
are often harder for so many of us than the first.
Something that I wanna make room for
in your letter specifically is just feeling more
anxious and depressed and overwhelmed
than you thought you would.
And this in and of itself is a kind of grief event.
We talk about in life after loss academy,
you must grieve the person you lost,
you must grieve the person you used to be
that you can no longer be because loss has taken
that version of yourself away from you.
But a third thing that we also talk about grieving
is how you thought grief was supposed to go.
Because whether or not we mean to,
we all build up expectations of what we think
grief is going to look like.
It'll get easier after the first year.
I'll only be crying, I won't be angry
and yelling or breaking things.
My grief will come out gentle
and when I expect it such as watching
significant movies or hearing a song on the radio,
it won't happen while I'm driving
and I definitely won't have a meltdown in the grocery store.
Ha, ha, plot twist definitely happens
and you will have a meltdown in the grocery store.
But there is a grief that we rarely talk about
needing to grieve what we thought grief was.
We are painted this picture by society,
the media, friends, family, the people around us,
celebrities, people we look up to and see
in person and online about what grief looks like.
And then we live it for ourselves
and it's like one of those expectation
versus reality memes.
There's this sense of, wow, wait, that's,
I got ripped off.
I am recognizing that the bill of goods
I was sold about grief is so much more deep
and complex and relentless and different
than what I expected and it is, yes,
sadly, frustratingly another thing to grieve.
And even saying, oh, I'm grieving my sense
of how I thought grief would go.
I'm grieving the expectations I had for myself
about what I would feel and when I would feel it
and how long grief would take even saying
those things out loud gives you a sort of breathing room
or permission to have all of those things be happening
right now.
And just to validate this for you too,
this is something that everyone I have ever worked with
and myself multiple times have faced.
Almost every grieving person I talk to speaks of
needing to grieve and then come to accept
what the experience of grief is actually like
and remember acceptance is not about liking what's happening
or being okay with what's happening.
It's about looking at what's happening and saying,
that's true, that's real.
I am not hiding from the reality of that
or I am not telling myself a story about what that actually is
or should be.
I'm looking at it and saying, yep, them's the facts.
That's exactly what's in front of my face.
I want to speak to now your fear that new years will knock you down.
It may very well knock you down and it is an inevitable human
practice, ritual, form of existence.
I'm not sure what words I want to wrap around that,
but it is human to fall down and it is human to get back up
when you're ready.
I did an episode very, very early on in dear grief guide
that I hope you'll go back and listen to its episode 11.
I don't know how to go on where I spoke to someone
who wrote in about experiencing multiple losses in a row
and how everybody told her, just get back up on the horse again.
Just keep trying, just keep moving forward
and she was like, is it so bad to want to just hang out
in the dirt for a little while?
There is resting to do when you've been knocked down.
There's grounding to do.
There is sometimes too a soft recognition of looking around
because you're now stopped, you are no longer in motion
for a little while and seeing who else might be down here
on the ground with you.
Who else is having a season like this?
Who else is struggling?
Who else has been knocked down or knock sideways
by unexpected grief?
And it's a lot more people than you might think.
I've been spending a lot of time on threads lately
the social media platform tied to Instagram,
but it's kind of like nice Twitter
is how a lot of people are branding it.
And because I talk about grief,
I get served a lot of people's writings about grief
and it has made me feel so seen
and so okay in this season, not trying hard
to force things or to make magic or to do more than I can
to make things special because I'm griefing.
My mom died the day after Christmas, New Year's Christmas,
the holiday season is a real rough time for me
in this corner of the world and New Year's and time passing
is kind of a knock down season,
but to see even on social media,
the company of others who are in the dirt with me,
metaphorically who have fallen off the horse
who have been knocked down by the wave,
whatever metaphor you'd like to use is comforting.
There is a not a loneliness in this.
The people in your direct orbit and your life
may be in motion, they may be on horses
writing towards beautiful sunsets,
things that you are not doing right now.
But trust me when I say you are not the only one
in the world who is spending the turn of the New Year
in the dirt.
There are also some tips in that episode
for how to take care of yourself in seasons like these
when it feels like grief is stronger
and you may not have the strength or the will
or the desire or the capacity to think about continuing
going on when it's harder than it feels like it normally
is to muster up things like energy and hope.
It's a really good one to go back and less than two,
so I hope you will.
The last thing I want to offer you is this.
If you are or would like to be a person
who makes New Year's resolutions,
you can make New Year's resolutions or commitments
or whatever other language you'd like to use
to describe them that honor and recognize your grief.
You might ask yourself, "How can I resolve to carry my dad
with me even as I get knocked down?
How can I hold him close even in the dirt?
How can I make ways to see or feel my dad every day of the year?
How can I create rituals on dates that feel important
or significant kind of looking ahead to the entirety
of 2025?
And how can I remind myself that the dirt,
as with the ride on the horse, is a temporary state?
And it's not a bad thing to be knocked down.
It's simply a part of being human
and very much a part of grieving is to be unexpectedly surprised
and knocked down by grief.
How can I make room for grief in all the ways
that it shows up whether or not I expect it?
And how can I find more ways to play a game of grief I spy
out in the world noticing who else is having a similar experience
to mine?
When you look closely and in this day and age
when you train your algorithm to start seeing other stories
of grief, it turns out that you are one part
of a very, very, very large solar system of grievers.
I'll leave you with this last thing.
As I've said on so many other episodes,
you do not have to have a happy birthday.
You just have to have a birthday.
You don't have to have a happy holiday.
You just have to have a holiday.
And for you, New Year's Grieve,
you do not have to have a happy New Year.
You just have to have a New Year.
And the blessing of birthdays and holidays and New Year's
is that whether or not you like it
and whether or not you consent to it,
they will happen with or without you.
You are not in control of whether or not the day occurs.
And sometimes in grief, that's a blessing
because all that's required of you is to hang on for the ride
or to sit in the dirt and watch the sun come up
and watch the sun go down.
I am honoring your dad's second death anniversary.
I'm honoring his birthday.
And I am honoring all the ways that you
and your grief find to carry him forward with you
into this next year and the year after that
and the year after that.
You are not alone.
That's all for this episode of Dear Grieve 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 Grief,
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 leave a review
on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you're listening
and be sure to share Dear Grief 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 Grief 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.
[Music]