Finding ways to take care of yourself or cope in life after loss can feel really impossible,
especially when you are emotionally exhausted or you have very little money to work with,
which is true for more and more people in 2025. So this is an episode that I created to remind you
that finding comfort and grief, accessing support and grief, caring for yourself and grief,
does not have to be complicated or expensive.
[Music]
Hi there, Grave Growers, and welcome back to Grave Grower. I am so honored to be with you here today,
as always. If you've been growing alongside me in my work for a while, welcome back,
and if you are new to me in my work. Hello, my name is Shelby for Scythia, I am a grief coach
very soon to be three-time author, and the founder of Life After Loss Academy, which is an online
program that has helped dozens of grieving people stop feeling lost, stuck, broken, and alone,
and start building lives that they genuinely love from the lives that loss force them to live.
This includes not only death-related losses, which so many people think of when they think of grief,
air quotes this time of year, but also losses like divorce and breakup, major diagnosis, and every
single other loss that changes our lives. Here on Grave Grower, we believe that grief is not something
to get over. It is something that we grow with and alongside for the rest of our lives, and that when
we stop treating grief like a problem to be solved, and start treating grief like an invitation to
live more deeply, we create meaningful lives that are rich with the memories we carry, all the
struggles that we faced, and the lessons we had to learn from them, and the preciousness of what
it is to be alive right here and right now. Before we get into the show today, just a quick note that
there are still tickets available for my December 4th event in Toledo, Ohio, so if you would like to
learn how to stay connected to a loved one who has died and form traditions that honor your grief,
especially if you are caring for children, teens, if you are kind of the orchestrator, the lead
camp counselor of an entire household that is trying to remember someone who has died. This workshop
is for you. It is happening once again December 4th into Lido, Ohio, and I would love to see you
in person there. You can find more information at the show notes or by visiting shallwefursathea.com/events,
and this is happening in partnership with Good Grief of Northwest, Ohio. I truly hope to see you there
in the audience, and I would love to meet you in person as we learn how to remember our loved ones
during the holidays and beyond together. Okay, the topic of this week's episode is one of my favorite
things to talk about because it is a question I get very often of like what actually helps with
grief? What are things that help with grief? So the purpose of this show is to just sort of run
down a list of 10 activities for grief that are comforting and are free or low cost because when
you're grieving a lot of times really simple things can feel overwhelming. I'll give the example
often of after my best friend died suddenly in 2022. I remember like trying to muster up the wherewithal
to go to the grocery store, and it felt like I was literally moving mountains. In my first book
"Promission to Grave," I refer to life after loss as "Waiting through the mud with iron boots on,"
and if you're listening to the show, I imagine you can relate to that. When the world, the society that
we live in expects you to keep functioning while you're in a world, everything that you knew to be
true or no to be true has shattered. Finding ways to take care of yourself or cope in life after
loss can feel really impossible, especially when you are emotionally exhausted or you have very little
money to work with, which is true for more and more people in 2025. So this is an episode that I
created to remind you that finding comfort in grief, accessing support in grief, caring for
yourself in grief does not have to be complicated or expensive. And one of the biggest reasons that I
wanted this to be out on the airwaves is that society often jumps to, maybe you should talk to someone,
A.K.A, you should go to therapy after a loss or you should get grief coaching or you should pay
for group support or you should get some kind of deep intense, you should go on a retreat, you should
go on a vacation, you should go to this blah, blah, blah. A lot of people, a lot of people, a lot of people
do not have the money, the time, the emotional capacity or or ability right now because of the season
that they're in, because of the grief or the loss that they face, because of their life circumstances,
to access paid long, talking about time, that's a long time, 50 minutes is a long time, or emotionally
deep support, high touch grief support. So if something like therapy or coaching or intensive
grief support or taking a vacation or growing on a grief cruise or attending some sort of
retreat that is thousands of dollars and a lot of time off work is not accessible to you right now,
I want you to have things in your pocket at your disposal that you can do to support yourself
in grief that are free or low cost that often you could do, you could pause this podcast and do
them right now. So these 10 activities are things that I have done in my own grief that I have gathered
from clients and students inside life after loss academy and I want to make it very clear that they're
not about fixing your grief. Nothing we do here on grief growers about fixing your grief, they are
about helping you cope with life after loss, helping you process your emotions, help you find
expression for your pain and helping you create moments of relief or connection or grounding or
presence or rest. And these can all in their own individual ways serve as tiny little lifelines
that can help you feel more human and more like yourself even in the midst of heartbreak.
And whether you do them in tandem with therapy or coaching or counseling or support group or
a treat or vacation or whatever it is that you're pursuing in grief or you do them by themselves,
they are valuable and helpful. So I encourage you to listen to the whole list, pick one or two
favorites and try them and see how your grief responds. Let's get into it. Okay, number one is one
of my wife's favorites and this is why I put it first. That is go for a walk outside even if it's
just around the block because grief lives in the body as much as it lives in our hearts and minds.
And a short walk I'm thinking like five, 10 minutes or less can help you regulate your nervous system
and shift your energy and your mood into a different place from where they are right now.
And my favorite because I'm an extrovert is to reconnect you with the world outside of your head.
Something that I learned from Megan Reardon Jarvis who is a grief therapist and the author of
the incredible book called End of the Hour and it's like a therapist's commentary on grief talks
about the importance of bilateral movement, which is basically um fancy way of saying like you're
swinging your arms and your legs and they're going in different directions. That is intensely
regulating or stabilizing to put it more simply to a nervous system that is overwhelmed
by grief. So walking is intensely helpful for life after loss and something that I have to say
as a person who has faced a sort of eating in her life, you do not need to make this a power walk
where the goal is exercise or burning calories. You do not even need to count your steps unless
that sort of measuring is helpful to you or you like that like gamification of counting steps in
your brain or if you have like an app that helps count it for you. That's fun for you. Go do it.
If it's not fun for you, don't worry about it. You have enough to worry about
as you are grieving. What I want you to do, the goal of this is to spend a few minutes outside,
even if it's just like barefoot in your backyard. I don't know what season it is for you right now,
but it is winter in Chicago and I ain't going nowhere barefoot, but if you are able to go barefoot
where you are, sure, absolutely. Even doing that can bring some sort of sense of movement to feeling
emotionally stuck. And as we've talked about in past episodes of grief growers, stuck is the number one
word that people use to describe your grief. And again, if you are an extrovert like myself, but you
are also grieving, you might consider inviting a friend to go and walk with you or to take a pet
for a walk with you or to choose a nearby destination like a library or a coffee shop or a beach,
or you commit to smiling at or saying hello to one person before turning around and heading back home.
My wife and I often joke that I like walking, but I like walking with a mission. I have to have a
place to go and then to return to. And so I really enjoy going down to our coffee shop at the end of
the street for a cup of hot chocolate and then walking home, or I enjoy going to the library to
return some books and then walking home, or I enjoy going to the beach to look at the water or say hi
to my friend Tammy and her memorial bench and then go home. So I really like having a walk with a
mission, but if you're a person like my wife who can just like go for a walk for the sake of going
for a walk, more power to you. And it is so helpful in grief. I will say if you are not able to walk
due to a disability or the weather where you are, it's getting ready to snow here in Chicago,
consider opening the windows and breathing deeply for 60 seconds or doing other bilateral
across the body movements, things like swinging your arms or marching in place or circling your
wrists and ankles or like stretching your neck. These are all things that are very helpful for grief
and sort of reminds you to like, "Joupe, that's not a word, but to joupe back into your body."
And to remember, because I often forget this, that oh my gosh, there is a whole world outside of
me and my grief. And that is something that I always have access to and that I can go be a part of
at any time. Okay, number two is to stretch or to try gentle yoga at home. And yoga stretching
things that are not strenuous in like the body movement nature can put you back in your body very
similar to walking. When grief makes you feel numb or disconnected like you are not a part of this
world, there is a man by the name of Paul Deniston who is the founder of grief yoga. He has a book called
Healing Through Yoga, if you're interested in it. And this is a grief-informed guide for doing yoga
and moving your body after loss. It has tons and tons of pictures and lovely little passages about
this one is helpful for heartache or this one is helpful for stress. And so if you were looking for
like an analog way, like a non-digital way, to start to move your body through grief a lot more people
are picking up books now than picking up phones and computers. That's a beautiful book for moving
your body in the aftermath of loss. I will say if you prefer to lean more digital or if like YouTube
or your phone or your computer are more accessible to you, YouTube is full of tons and tons of free
videos for grief and anxiety and trauma-sensitive yoga or movement. You could search terms like
grief stretching or yoga for trauma or gentle movement for heartbreak. I will say that yoga with
Adrian, it's a whole YouTube channel. This is one of my favorite teachers after my mom died in 2013.
And I linked a video of hers that I practiced on the blog that goes with this podcast that you
can find at ShelbyFurseAthia.com/blog. And if you are also looking for something low-key that is
audio-only, if you're like, I don't want to watch it, I kind of know poses already. I just want
someone to talk to me gently while I stretch. The free app Insight Timer is a marvelous platform
for listening to yoga flows and meditations and mindfulness exercises and soothing music and
podcasts and is a lovely thing to put on. There are incremented meditations and yoga poses from like
one minute all the way up to like an hour. So you can choose like how much time do you have? Would
you like a feminine or masculine voice to be speaking to you? Would you like something religious
or non-religious and it really lets you filter out for your preferences and you can treat it just like
Google where you're searching grief yoga or stretching for trauma or mindfulness meditation for
life after loss and it will serve you a whole bunch of things that are what you're looking for. And
again, this is an ad-free platform. And of course, if you're interested in listening to my podcasts
on Insight Timer, you can find so many episodes of grief grower as well as deer grief guide coming back
and grief seeds. Some past podcast episodes of mine on that platform while you stretch and move
your body. The next one I have for you is to write and I'm a little bit biased because I have a grief
author and I really enjoy the power of words to unstick us from places that feel stuck in grief.
And grief especially can do this thing where it like puts your brain on overdrive and a lot of
my clients and students say they feel like there is no break from the onslaught of thoughts and
emotion. It's just grief all the time all the time all the time all the time swirling around
in their brains and journaling or writing in any capacity gives those thoughts and emotions
a safe landing place to go. And you do not need to be a writer to journal and you certainly don't
have to write with the intention of other people seeing your work. In fact, I would rather you write
without the intention of anyone else ever seeing your work. You can go 90s and put an actual
lock on your journal if that works for you. And I just really encourage you to have this be a
practice that exists for you and your grief because grief does not care about grammar or run-on
sentences or losing your train of thought in the middle of things or writing in all caps and
scribbling it out. Grief does not care about that but it is cathartic to put words to your grief.
So as you're journaling or writing about life after loss, you might write a letter to someone who
died or to the version of yourself that you lost in life after loss academy. We talk about grieving
the person you used to be. You could write a letter to them or to that life that can no longer be.
You might write what you were afraid to say out loud or I wish I could tell someone insert
thing here or I wish loved one new or I wish I had the capacity to make other people understand
. . . . and then go from there or even simply just say right now I feel and then insert whatever
comes after that. If a blank page feels overwhelming to you, you might pick up my non-religious daily
devotional which is called your grief your way and write something every day inspired by the
day's entry. There are 366 entries in your grief your way. Again, they are all non-religious
and they deal with a bunch of griefs sort of different topics. So there's entries about
dealing with a loved one's possessions or stuff after they die. There's an entry about dreaming
about grief or having nightmares about grief and there's an entry about coping with friends and
family. There are multiple entries about coping with friends and family who don't seem to understand.
So you might read the day's passage and then just journal your thoughts as sort of like a
sister project to do them side by side. And if you're looking for even more structure, I always
encourage you to join us in life after loss academy which includes more than 60 guided video lessons
you can watch on your own time and every single one of them has a journaling prompt or writing
exercise that gets you thinking and writing about the many aspects of loss and there are many.
Okay, number four is to sing or play music. This is also inspired by my wife and myself because
one of the biggest things we talked about when we met is the power of music and music is something
that connects me to my mom. It's something that connects me to my best friend. It's even something
that connects me to my cat because we had some songs that we would sing together him yowing, me singing
during dinner time. And I think a lot of people underestimate sound as an outlet for coping with loss.
So whether you have the ability to play an instrument or sing or just have a concert for yourself
in the car or shower or just listen to a playlist that makes you cry or makes you dance,
music is a wonderful thing that can help you get unstuck. There's that word again.
And reconnect you with your physical body. Singing has a lot to do with the breath and especially if
you are playing a piece of music or thinking through lyrics, it requires some brain and some emotion
to use. And so it kind of connects all these things together, the physical act of breathing,
but also the logic or the formula of following chords or a song and then also the heart element of
putting your heart and soul maybe literally into the music that you are singing or performing or
listening to. You could create a grief playlist of songs that match your emotional state whether
that's rage or sadness or nostalgia. You might pick up and play an instrument that's been gathering
dust in your house or you might try singing a song, a new rendition of a song that your person
or pet loved. I invite you to let music be both a container and a sort of release for your grief.
When the world, the society that we live in expects you to keep functioning while you're
in a world, everything that you knew to be true or no to be true has shattered. Finding ways to take
care of yourself or cope in life after loss can feel really impossible, especially when you are
emotionally exhausted or you have very little money to work with, which is true for more and more
people in 2025. So this is an episode that I created to remind you that finding comfort and grief,
accessing support and grief, caring for yourself and grief, does not have to be complicated or
expensive. When the world, the society that we live in expects you to keep functioning while you're
in a world, everything that you knew to be true or no to be true has shattered. Finding ways to
take care of yourself or cope in life after loss can feel really impossible, especially when you are
emotionally exhausted or you have very little money to work with, which is true for more and more
people in 2025. So this is an episode that I created to remind you that finding comfort and grief,
accessing support and grief, caring for yourself and grief, does not have to be complicated or expensive.
Number five, here marks our halfway point of this list of 10, and that is to let yourself sleep.
This is kind of a gimme one, but I want you to consider sleeping more than you think you should,
because grief is exhausting on every single level physical, emotional, spiritual. And I want you to know
from me to you that you are not lazy or a failure, if you sleep or if sleep is your response to the
overwhelm of grief, rest is healing, rest is reparative, and even a short nap can help you de-stress your
brain and body. After my mom died, I found myself longing for bedtime. I would go to bed so early
in ways that I never had before, and I would sleep sometimes as many as 12 hours a night, and after
my best friend died in 2022, I would often set my computer to like out to lunch mode during work
hours so that I could have a nap in the middle of the day, because I just needed to turn my brain off.
And be flat. So so many gravers describe life after loss as exhausting, and my response to that is
if you can rest more, rest more. It may feel like a boring thing to do or a useless thing to do,
and it might not feel like it in the moment, but over time a little bit of added rest helps your
body and your brain and your heart, and even your spirit a lot. I will say if you're a person who
struggles to sleep in the aftermath of loss, you might try laying down with your eyes closed for 20
minutes, and that still counts as a form of rest. And if you struggle with nightmares surrounding loss,
you might check out the grief-grower episode I did with Dr. Joshua Black, a few episodes back.
He is an expert on grief dreams, and the tips that he shares in that episode might help you shift
from having nightmares to having positive dreams or visitations that can help you cope with and
process all of the emotions that are coming up with your grief. And as a bonus, he shares some
writing exercises in there too, so if journaling or writing was your thing, you can absolutely take
away some things to write about how you sleep and pair two of these grief activities together.
All right, number six is entirely my wife's idea. She's popping up a lot in this episode today,
but that is to surround yourself with warmth. We are people who like being warm. I joke about
preheating the bed, and how I will enjoy a warm beverage at any time of year. So both of us are in
this camp of heat can be medicine, whether you are brewing a cup of tea or sipping warm broth or soup
or simply holding a mug of hot chocolate. This is my personal favorite. Having something warm
near you or touching your body can help regulate your nervous system and bring you back to the present
moment. You can choose to make this a ritual, which is like something small you do every day to
signal to your body, you're safe, you're held, it is okay to relax, or you can kind of do it
sporadically as needed or in really dark evenings or nights where like the grief feels overwhelming
and you don't know what else to do other than make a cup of tea. If you want bonus heat, if like more
warmth only sounds good or better to you, you could do things like surround yourself at a soft blanket,
you could put your whole body in a warm bath, you could add a heating pad to your bed, or this is
something I did after my mom died, where a loved one's sweater or sweatshirt for extra extra layers
of warmth. Warmth is something that reminds us that we are held, that we are safe, that it is okay to
relax and it is so often associated with things like getting massages or taking care of ourselves
in a shower or bath or being soothed by nourishing food. And so anything you can do to sort of activate
those memories for yourself, whether you're eating something or putting your body in the bathtub
or putting a heating pad on your feet or your neck, those are all lovely things that can help your
body find comfort and rest in the midst of grief. And again bonus points if you pair them with something
else on this list like taking a nap or sleeping more often, bonus points for you there.
Okay number seven is one of my personal favorites because I am a animal person through and through
and that is to spend time with animals and pets whether they are yours or you borrow them from other
places. Please don't go around stealing animals but they are little beings that can help you with
grief and so many grieving people say the animals do not judge you, they just sit with you in life after
loss and that can feel like it's own sort of blessing in a society where humans demand certainty
and answers and clear words to describe your grief and sometimes we simply do not have that.
Many people describe being with animals as a form of unconditional love and that can be really
healing when you are feeling just flattened by loss. So if you do have a pet, if you share your home
with an animal, consider devoting some extra time to feeding them or brushing them or
grooming them or sitting with them or cleaning their little cage or enclosure or walking them.
Just like spending time, your energy with their energy, your life in the room with their life in
the room, it can be a sort of uplifting thing to do. And if you don't have a pet or if you're grieving
the loss with pet, I see you out there and you are not interested in welcoming another one into your
home right now. Consider you can visit animals in other places. I'm thinking animal shelters or
rescue organizations. You might also ask a friend or a family member if you can walk their dog or
cuddle their cat or babysit their turtle for an afternoon. You might also choose to admire animals
from a distance. Things like bird watching can be helpful for this. You might visit a local
or a national park where you could see wildlife, again like birds or I'm thinking like wolves or deer
or coyotes. You might spend some time on a farm, especially if you're in a more rural area or you might
get yourself tickets to a zoo or an aquarium or nature sanctuary that is in your neighborhood.
And a lot of places will offer like free days or discount days or student days or bring the family
days as ways to get cheap or discounted tickets if that resonates with you. But simply just being
in the presence of animals and looking at these these living things in nature is a really wonderful
way to connect with something else that is alive besides you while you are grieving.
Number eight, if I had to guess, would be one of my mom's favorites and this is inspired by her.
And that is to try a simple art or craft project. Creativity of any kind is really marvelous at
giving grief a shape and a place to go in the world outside of your head and your heart. A lot of
people describe grief as like it's spinning around in my head or it's just swirling around in my
heart. There's a lot of like spinning motions and making something with your hands or drawing
something or painting something or crafting something is a way to take all of that swirling,
shifting, spiraling energy and force it to go somewhere outside of yourself. And that can feel like
overleaf when you're grieving. And so so many of my clients and students and I have personally
enjoyed things like dutling or sketching and life after loss academy encourage people to draw a
picture of what does your grief look like. And we've had everything from things that look like
dementors to things that look like giant like buff bouncers at a bar that won't let anybody or
anything in. It's really fascinating to use the prompt of draw your grief. What does your grief
look like and see what people come up with. Watercolor painting. I had a client once who turned to
water coloring flowers after her daughter died. A lot of grieving people really enjoy creating a
memory box or grief alter. We are now on the heels of Dia de Muertos and creating a grief alter
in your home is a way of being creative. If you feel like you are not necessarily like a painter type
or like a pastel or a drawing sort of time gathering objects together curating something as my
friend Charley Lamb of curating grief says is its own kind of creativity. I would be remiss if I did not
mention my day job. Floral design putting flowers together where they you pick them out of your yard
or pick them up from a grocery store or go to a fancy boutique florist and get really beautiful
and expensive flowers putting flowers together. There's a great way to cope with grief. Making pottery
or painting ceramics is a wonderful way to use your hands while you're grieving. My wife is into what
we call string sports knitting crocheting and bordering sewing lace making. These are all things
you can do with your hands to process grief and there are wonderful collections and collaborations
online. If you search like grief quilts you will see a bunch of stories of people folding stories
of loved ones into string sports creations that they make. And then finally molding clay or
play dough. Again, these are things that you use your hands to craft something new that wasn't there
before and also quietting the thoughts and emotions that are spiraling in your head or and or
giving them some physical place to go that is outside of your inner world. Number nine is
another one of my favorites. This is just a list of my top 10 greatest hits in coping with grief and
loss but a really free thing that most of us all of us have access to is immerse yourself in nature.
It doesn't have to be animals just nature. And the gift of nature is that in all seasons it has
this really calming presence that can hold and tend to grief without rushing you through it. So whether
you find a tree in your yard or a patch of grass in your neighborhood or a bench at a park or a
local community garden to wander through. I invite you to sit and to breathe and to just simply
exist in nature as a piece of nature. You are a piece of nature. I am a piece of nature. Let nature
hold you and all of your grief emotions. I remember very vividly one client of mine in life after
loss academy sought out bodies of water. It doesn't matter the type of body of water after her daughter
died and whether she was near a river or a lake or a pond or an ocean, the movement of light on
the water. And the sound of it rippling or crashing or tumbling over rocks was something that brought her
an immense amount of peace in the aftermath of loss. Just the sound of it, just the presence of it.
In 2020 I had the opportunity to interview the author Cheryl Stray who wrote the book Wild.
And I've mentioned this a few times here on grief grower but she taught me about her mom's practice
of seeking out beauty in the world and especially in nature. And so if this resonates with you,
you could play a game of grief ice by looking for beautiful plants that your loved one might enjoy
or seeking out living things that start with each letter of the alphabet. So A for aphids, B for
Beatles, C for neighbors cat, D for dogwood trees. You could find all sorts of things that are around
you and play a sort of beauty ice by game. Or you could collect five pretty things to take pictures
up before you head home. I encourage you to leave nature in nature unless it's permissible to pick up
things like pine cones or pebbles or shells wherever you are. But taking pictures of things is a beautiful
way to remember what you did that day and sort of create an album or a catalog of your grief.
And something I love about nature is that whether it is spring or fall or the darkness and
beariness of winter, nature is a lovely reminder that there is life and death and growth and healing
happening constantly all over top of each other. And not just it is only good to grow or it is only
good to bloom or it is only good to expand, which is often the myth that society tells us is that
the only good and valid growth is the kind that goes up and to the right and is linear and you're
always getting bigger and you're always getting better. And nature's like that's not true. That's not
the truth of being alive. And so to be in a world in the real world in nature where life and death
and growing and breaking and healing and repairing are all happening simultaneously, that is a very
grounding thing to do when you're grieving. And finally number 10 is to watch shows or listen to podcasts
or read books about grief. Many of them you can access very very low cost or for free. There is an
immense amount of comfort to be found in the stories and experiences of the people I call those who
have gone before. And whether you choose a fictional piece of media like a TV show or a movie or something
that is based in real life like a memoir or a podcast, there are countless pieces of media. Movies,
TV shows, podcasts, books, blog articles about grief and living life after loss. You might try
searching for grief on Google. You might try searching for grief or loss on your streaming service.
You might try searching for it in your local libraries catalog in your local bookstore, your favorite
podcast app wherever you obtain media right now. I vividly remember it was 2015 or 2016 when I got my
very first like grief book haul from the Chicago Public Library after my mom died. And those
few stories that tiny little handful of three or four books made me feel even though I didn't get
all the way through all of them. They all introduced me to a whole world of grief guides that continue to
support me today. It was as if suddenly this light bulb went on of like other people have grieved
and they have put work into the world about it. They have put media into the world for me to consume
about it. And suddenly it was like I could not get enough and that is true still to this day. If you're
looking for a place to start, obviously you are here in grief grower, which is a free podcast all
about grief and loss. You might also be interested in reading my blog if you prefer to read instead of
listen. It has articles filled with helpful and practical articles on living life after loss.
Or you can watch my free workshop on my website shall be for said the dot com slash links,
which includes three of my clients favorite tools for navigating life after loss. And it's just
like a little 60 minute workshop of like here are the best three things my clients say I teach
all in one place. I will say you might even just it depends on how I suppose extroverted you are
or interested in other people's input you are. But to even ask on social media or in your friend
and family groups are in your workplace, what is a movie or TV show or a book that you've consumed
recently that has a griefy theme? People will tell you people love giving suggestions about what
they're watching or what they're listening to or what they're reading at the moment. And that is a
way that you can ask people in your life to be helpful and grief is to make recommendations like
that to you, especially people know you very well. They know your taste. They know what you enjoy
watching or reading or listening to, looking to people who have given you good advice or good
recommendations in the past are tremendous ways to find grief guides in the world who have created
who have created media that might resonate with you. Before I sign off for the day, the thing I want
to leave you with in offering you these 10 activities is the reality that navigating grief does not
have to be expensive or time consuming. Again, there is this advice or this wisdom in society that
pathologizes grief. It's like, oh, you're grieving maybe you need to see someone. And while coaching
and therapy can be really helpful, many gravers, especially in the early months and years after a loss,
are not looking for that deep sort of 50 minute, sometimes expensive, intense work to cope with loss.
They are looking for small and manageable ways to sort of fold grief into their everyday life. So
if this is you, welcome, this is the episode for you. These 10 comforting low-cost or free activities
are not about avoiding the deep hard work of grief or saying therapy is bad because therapy absolutely
has its place. I have a therapist right now and I love her. These activities are about creating these
tiny moments or pockets of presence and connection and comfort and relief as you figure out how you
would like to carry your unique loss or losses. They can all be done in tandem with personal or group
grief support or they can be done all on their own. The choice is up to you. You can decide which of
these resonate most with you in the season of your grief and come back and revisit them again, maybe
a year from now and say what other activities would I like to fold in? What would I like to sit down?
What would I pick up? Again, in my first book, "Permission to Grief," I referred a life after
loss as an involuntary scavenger hunt. You didn't want to be here, but now you're going through the
dark woods of grief sort of picking up and seeing, does this work and setting it down if it doesn't
and picking up? Does this work and if it does, put it in your pocket. Take it with you as you continue
to explore the ginormousness of what is life after loss and yes, paying for things like therapy,
coaching, a grief retreat, taking your grief on vacation, going on a cruise. These are all things
you can do in life after loss, but in this day and age, not everyone has the time and money to do
these things. And so having a buffet of activities that are all helpful for grief that are very little
money or no money at all and honestly don't take a lot of time unless you decide to sleep for a long
time are really lovely ways to be like, this is how I'm managing grief, this is how I'm living,
being a grieving person in a time in an era in a season and a political climate where it is not
always easy to find meaningful large pockets of time to cope with life after loss, not to mention
the cost that you may accrue from doing that. So if you take even one activity from this list
and go do it in the world, I hope that it reminds you that you are worthy of care and tending to,
even in your darkest seasons. I am sending you so so so much love.
That's all for this episode of Grave Grower. Thank you very much for joining me on the show today.
If you're looking for grave support beyond the show, you can find free workshops, blog articles,
and my signature. What's your grief support style quiz at shallbeforsethea.com/links.
And if you'd like to get support from me for your unique loss experience, you can join us in
life after loss academy, which is my online course and community. Inside, I will walk you through
my five step grief method, G-R-I-E-F, for rebuilding after loss and you can get live coaching from me,
every single week to answer your questions. Replays are always available if you get to 10 live and it's
just $33 a month to join or $22 a month if you're marginalized or financially stressed griver.
You can cancel at any time. If this podcast about validating, comforting, educational, or helpful to you,
as you navigate life after loss, please subscribe and leave a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify.
And be sure to share grief grower with a friend because you'll never ever know what someone you love
is going through in this season. Grief grower is hosted by me, shallbeforsethea,
and the theme music is composed by our own Addy Goldstein. 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.