Hello and welcome to Dear grief guide.
A podcast where each week I answer one anonymous letter from a listener feeling lost, stuck,
heartbroken or overwhelmed in the midst of grief.
My name is Shelby Fercitya.
I'm a grief coach and author and I'm here to help you create a life you love from the
life lost forced you to live.
Let's get to today's letter.
Dear grief guide.
This podcast and the tender care it brings has been one of the few silver linings in my
life since going into remission from cancer.
I don't think people realize that not every cancer survivor has the stability and security
to hold them up through the upheaval of a diagnosis and treatment.
I'm dealing with survivors' guilt and it's so hard to express what I'm going through
because well I don't want anyone to think I'm ungrateful but the truth is that the battles
didn't end when my treatment did.
In many ways they just changed form.
I've been trying to pick up the pieces of a life shaken by so many losses I hardly recognize
it.
Cancer left me with injuries from the lack of return to work support, a breakup, physical
and emotional scars that others can't see and now the grief of moving just to find a place
where I can rest.
Each day feels like another climb up the mountain but the top of the mountain keeps moving further
away.
I don't think people realize how much cancer survivors hold inside.
We carry all the aftermath and for many of us the supports that once seemed guaranteed
are just not there.
There's no lifeline for this grief that stretches far beyond the treatments and doctors visits.
There's no financial support, no acknowledgement of what living with the long-term effects of
things like brain fog and cognitive dysfunction does to us.
The grief gets so heavy, sometimes I wonder if anything can keep me afloat.
Please help.
Yours in gratitude.
Survivor.
Barely surviving.
Hi there survivor, barely surviving.
I want to validate for you right out of the gate that just because you survived does not
mean that your life isn't hard.
I think that you are absolutely right that society and the world that we live in tend
to tell the story of cancer and other diseases as you made it through.
You are still alive and so your story of trials and battle and grieving and losing is over.
We have reached the end of the 90 minute movie and we know you're not going to die.
So everything is sunny and beautiful and optimistic and the birds are singing and the world is
kumbaya and everything is so bright and wonderful.
Do you are correct that for survivors of cancer and other devastating diagnoses that could
not be farther from the truth?
I think people refer to beating cancer as if their struggles are over after that after
treatment but in reality surviving is opening a doorway into a whole new life after loss
one that just like your diagnosis you did not ask to be living.
You did not consent to you did not usher into your life of your own free will.
You are correct in sensing feeling knowing with your body and your spirit that everything
is different.
Not only is your body different because it's been through some shit, your relationship
and your posture towards your body is different especially if your specific type of cancer
has a high recurrence rate.
There is a fear I have heard spoken of from friends and family members who have quote-unquote
beaten cancer of not knowing whether or not they are walking around with a metaphorical
time bomb inside their body that they just don't know about.
The uncertainty of not knowing if or when you will be thrust into this whole process again.
The relief that comes with as one of my very dear friends says being boring to her doctors
of not seeing cancer for five years in a row and what a gift that is but also just looking
at yourself in the mirror and knowing that your body once was the sight of major destruction
and grief and toxicity and being afraid and living with that fear every single day that
that could happen again at any moment because diseases like cancer are illogical and
unmerciful.
Beyond your body it makes sense that you see the world and other people differently.
They look at you as someone who has survived as somebody who has made it through as somebody
who beat the odds and whatever other cliche phrases you want to throw in there, you see
them as people who do not understand what it is to be you.
And there is a massive, a picture like a canyon sort of opening up between you, a massive
disconnect in relating to the world after surviving something like this.
And to your point you approach other things differently too.
You see work differently because you work differently.
You see money differently because you interact with money differently.
You live life differently because your life has been changed by this loss.
I know that you're struggling financially and that it feels like there is no place for
you.
I don't know if you've already searched Google, come to the internet or if you're just
reached out to me, either one is fine, but I did want to let you know that of the searching
that I've done, something that I was able to find that is a free resource for people
who have survived cancer.
So people specifically in your shoes is something called the cancer support community or
CSC.
They have free, professionally led support groups in almost 200 locations around the world
plus online for people dealing with the long term impacts of cancer.
Yes, you made it through the disease.
Yes, you made it through the treatment.
Yes, you made it through the seemingly nonstop doctors visits and lab tests and needles
and potentially surgeries and reconstruct anything else pertaining to your loss.
But what does it look like to live life in the after?
That is what they have built community around and are focused on supporting people through.
So even more than any expertise or wisdom that I can offer, I hope you'll check out CSC
or any resources that they can recommend that are similar because what happens when you
sit in a room with other people online or in person who have experienced and are living
the same life you are living, it's like that canyon closes up.
It doesn't even split open in the first place.
There's no room for it to because the grounds on which you are meeting each other are shared
immediately.
There is this understanding of we are meeting each other in this space under these parameters.
This is why I love especially after my mother died again after my best friend died.
As I watch people come into life after a loss academy, I see this phenomenon over and over
again when you enter into spaces where grief is the default or grief is a given, then you
do not enter with the same fears of a chasm rupturing open between you of a misunderstanding
of what it is to live like this because they know.
They know through their own path through their own means, but they know.
And that's something I wish and hope for you in looking into these groups.
I think I don't know if you've pursued yet, but might be interesting to you.
This was helpful for me after I was diagnosed with a chronic illness is researching, following,
reading, participating in the work of people who are living with chronic illnesses.
I know this goes far beyond living with cancer.
This can include fibroid disease and pots and peacos and so many other disease, acron's
disease, just so many other disorders that people can have that extend for a lifetime, whether
you work with a therapist one on one talking about what it's like to have a chronic condition,
whether you relay that it's cancer or not, whether you follow people on Instagram or TikTok
or social media or get their email newsletters who talk about what it's like to be limited
by a body to be surviving with something, but to not be back to the people that they were
to be permanently disabled by something that has happened and the sight of that happening
is their body.
It's been tremendously grounding and affirming and validating for me.
The way that my chronic illness manifests a lot of the time is needing longer and longer
periods of time to rest, especially after seasons of great output.
And you would think that, yeah, of course, if you input a high amount of X, you would need
a high amount of Y, but I didn't use to be this way.
I did not use to need to slow down this much, to rest this much, to sleep this much, to
grieve this much, to rage this much, to dance this much, to lie on the floor and do nothing
this much.
And there is a grief in losing the person I used to be whose energy seemed limitless,
who was not impacted by the changing of the seasons, who was not impacted by the food.
She put into her body, who was not impacted by the stress of the world around her manifesting
in her physical being.
These are all things I have had to grieve and being in community, whether manufactured online
or lived in person.
With other people who just generally have this blanket, common ground of chronic illness
has been so incredibly helpful.
And some of my closest friends now are people who live with similar conditions to mine.
And it's just amazing.
We free each other, and I don't know if this resonates with you, but we free each other
from society's expectation that we be over it by now, that we be cured by now, that we
be better by now, that medication will fix it.
The laundry list of things that society just expects of someone who is sick.
We give each other permission to be sick and to remain sick because that is the nature
of a chronic illness of surviving something that has impacted you and will
continue to impact you for a lifetime.
This is a space that we've created with each other of non-judgment, of understanding, and
of recognition that, yeah, sure, we are grateful to be alive, but that doesn't mean that living
is without struggle.
And being in circles where that is true is just really, really affirming, especially
as in your case, when you have so many other losses piled on top of that.
I will say quickly that life after loss academy is hosted and run by myself.
So if you're interested in receiving frameworks for working through grief as a person with chronic
illness, I would love to support you in that.
And there are likely at least a handful of other people in the course who are experiencing
grief and chronic illness together and grieving what that means and finding meaning from
that grief, if I can turn that phrase into something that plays on itself.
But I also know there are so many other places in the world that get more, even more specific
that might resonate with you.
The last thing I want to share with you, survivor, barely surviving, is an exercise for the
day today.
An exercise for when you just need something small to get you through to the next minute
or the next hour or the next week, because the things I've mentioned seeking out support,
entering into community, validating your emotions, these things can take a lot of energy.
And sometimes there's things like wait lists, especially with regard to one-on-one therapy
right now.
It's a big time for a lot of people to be needing therapy.
And we need mental health and grief support professionals now more than ever before.
And also sometimes communities are not always open.
I'm hoping that will be the case though for CSC.
But anyway, suffice it to say, this is a passage from my book, Your Grief Your Way.
It's from the November 21st entry in the book.
And it's all about reframing purpose after surviving devastating loss.
Here we go.
Make a list of people, places, pets, things, experiences, dreams, and opportunities to
live for.
Individually each item on your list may not fill you with purpose, but together they create
a life worth living.
Instead of asking what gets me up in the morning, because in grief the answer may be nothing.
Ask what is worth staying up for?
We are not looking for motivation to stand up with this exercise.
We're looking for what compels you to remain standing.
And survivor, this was based on my experience in corporate America.
We're so often the pressure where the question is, what is so exciting to you?
What is so energizing to you?
And so meaningful for you that you just jump out of bed in the morning and want to get
started working on it or creating it or making it or sharing it with other people.
And in grief sometimes, especially when you have survived something hard and life is still
hard on the other side of it, the answer to that question is nothing or not much.
Very little.
And yet we know, because we are still here, that the nature of life, especially after
loss is to keep going, to wake up in the morning, to stand up, to put our slippers on, to
brush our teeth, put on our clothes, and have a day, whatever that day holds.
But something that you can use as a reframe for big, huge, meaningful things like purpose
and life's vision and these huge things that society might thrust on you or you may feel
a pressure to fulfill.
It's like, let's set that down.
And instead ask, all right, I'm out of bed, because I had to be for whatever purpose.
What's going to keep me from getting back in?
And sometimes it's as small as needing to feed or walk a pet.
Because it's going outside and smelling a flower, touching grass, is the kids saying, "Now,
as if I'm not also one of those kids."
Maybe it's a weekly coffee date with a friend.
Maybe it's joining one of these communities that's worth staying out of bed for.
Maybe it's selfishly that there are more episodes of this podcast you have to listen to
at some point.
Maybe it is looking for signs in your world from whatever sources you feel you receive
signs from that things will be okay or that you will find a way to make it okay through
this.
People, places, pets, things, experiences, dreams and opportunities.
They do not have to be grand and order to be good.
And I think that's where so much of society's focus on survivorship and purpose get it
wrong.
They're like, "Turn your pain into purpose and start a non-profit and advocate for others."
And of course, these are all tremendously good things to do.
But they also require a lot of precious energy, which a lot of times people who have survived
do not have a great amount of.
And so making a tiny list, a little micro-list of this may not get me up in the morning,
but it makes me want to stay up.
Once I'm up, could be the sunrise, could be a flower.
A lot of people look to nature when they make lists like this.
Could be people in your family or a friend group that you just love beyond all measure.
Could be a book you're trying to finish.
Like whatever it is.
What makes it worth it to keep standing once you've stood up?
I hope that's helpful to you.
I hope all of this is helpful to you.
I want to thank you so much for writing to me because you are so correct that we do not
talk about the impact of survivorship from cancer and other diseases.
We often close the book on people's lives that they survived.
They didn't die.
They made it out alive.
And that's enough information.
But what you are writing now is the sequel to that book.
What happens in the after?
And in this space, my hope is that you will have just like you had the energy to write to
me, the energy to reach out, to connect, to recognize that as you are on your own lonely
grief planet, there are all of us out here in a huge constellation of other lonely grief
planet, some more similar than others, some surviving in the same way as you, and all trying
to find our things to stay up for.
I wish you so much love, survivor.
I wish you so much luck.
And I wish you the knowing that you are not alone.
That's all for this episode of Dear Grave Guide.
Thank you so much for joining me today.
If you are feeling lost, stuck, heartbroken, or overwhelmed in the midst of your own grief,
check out my free workshop Grow Through Grave.
Three ways to stop feeling stuck and start moving forward.
I'll give you three easy, actionable tools for navigating life after loss and show you
how you can create peace, stability, and compassion right there in the middle of grief's
confusion and uncertainty.
You can find the workshop link in the show notes.
If this podcast helped you feel a little less alone in your grief, please subscribe and
leave a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening.
And be sure to share Dear Grave Guide with a friend, because you never know what someone
you love is going through.
You can submit your anonymous letter for the show and find additional grief support at
shallbeforsitthia.com.
Music for Dear Grave Guide is performed by Eddie Goldstein, editing by Ruth Spence of
Celebio.
Until next time, I see you.
I am so proud of you and the work that you're doing in the world.
And I love you.
Because even through grief, we are growing.
Music for Dear Grave Guide is performed by Eddie Goldstein, editing by Eddie Goldstein.