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many of us absorb the idea that healing means returning or getting back to normal or going

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back there or getting back to who you were or getting back to the way things used to be.

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And across all of my work and inside my grief support community life after loss academy,

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I regularly challenge that idea.

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Healing is not getting back there.

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Because back there or back to normal assumes that there is a version of normal to return

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to a safe or stable or predictable world that is waiting for you somewhere mythically

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on the other side of your pain.

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But grievous know, you know that the world you once knew and existed in no longer exist

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isn't there anymore.

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It is not that you haven't found your way back to it.

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It is that it literally no longer exists in the way that you once experienced it.

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[Music]

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Hi there, grief growers.

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I am so grateful to be here with you today as always.

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If you've been growing alongside me in my work for a while, welcome back.

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And if you are new to me and my work, hello.

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My name is Shelby Frissithia.

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I am a grief coach, a three time author and the founder of life after loss academy where

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I have helped dozens of grieving people stop feeling lost, stuck, broken and alone and

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start building lives that they genuinely love from the lives that lost forced them to live.

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This includes of course not only death related losses but also losses like divorce and breakup,

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major diagnosis and any other loss that changes your life.

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

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It is something that we grow with and alongside and when we stop treating grief like a problem

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to be solved and start treating it like an invitation to live more deeply, we can create

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lives that are meaningful and rich with the memories we carry, the struggles that we have

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individually and collectively faced and the preciousness of what it is to be right here

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and right now.

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As we go on the show, I want to have a mini teaching about what it really means to be grounded

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in grief and my thesis for this is the firm and hard and true statement that you will never

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feel completely safe or back to normal after a loss.

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And what I want to do is teach you on this episode today is how to feel grounded in grief

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anyway because this sense of stability, security, safety, semi-normalcy, even peace or calm

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is something that so many grieving people crave but they don't know how to access especially

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when life before or life as you know it has essentially died as a result of the loss.

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And this is something I see across social media, inside support groups even in my online

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support group life after loss academy.

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It's the one thing that grieving people wish that they had and it seems to take priority

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over everything.

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It's this sentence I just want to get back to normal and it comes up in so many other ways

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but it really is reduced to.

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I just want to get back to feeling normal.

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And this longing to go back to the way things were can creep into your heart or creep into

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your mind as this exhausted voice that is wondering why can't you find your footing again?

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Why even though time has passed and all these garbage people say time heals all, why does

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the ground keep shifting underneath you instead of settling down and why do some parts of

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your grief feel like they found a rhythm, they have a movement, they have a calendar, they

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have a sense of predictability while other elements of your grief remain completely unknowable

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and guessable to you no matter how hard you try to pin them down or understand them or

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stabilize them.

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So if you have ever asked questions like or made statements like I want to feel okay

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again, how do I feel happy, peaceful, hopeful again?

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I want to feel like the world is a safe place again, I want to put the ground underneath my

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feet again.

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If these are true for you or if you've ever said something similar, you are in the right

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place.

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And maybe as a grieving person your friends and family have asked you point blank directly

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when are you going to go back to normal and whether they use those exact words or not,

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you probably get the sense that they want you to get over your grief which we don't believe

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in here on grief grower or pick up where you left off as if you can simply remove or shed

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the weight and the impact of loss and step right back into your life before the worst thing

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happen to you.

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I want to validate that the desire to get back to normal after loss is extraordinarily

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human and understandable.

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This is deeply understandable to me and it is so frustrating and so hard because I think

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as I said at the top of this episode, every grieving person comes to know this unshakable,

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permanent, unchangeable foundational truth.

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The world does not and cannot feel safe anymore after a loss and no amount of time or positive

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thinking or attempts at getting back to normal are going to change that.

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And this may not be what you were expecting to hear on this episode of grief grower today,

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but I want to invite you to stay with me because what I am teaching and talking about on this

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episode is not how to force or contort the world back into a shape that feels secure to

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you.

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It is about how you create a sense of something sturdy that doesn't depend upon the world

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or life around you because those things can be unpredictable and loss filled and like

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they cannot cooperate with what you and your heart need at all.

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The first thing that I want to establish is that loss doesn't just take your person or

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your relationship or your health or your identity.

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Loss is never just the one big thing.

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We've talked about this on grief grower before.

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Loss also takes your worldview.

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It robbed you of a way of seeing the world.

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Inside life after a loss academy, we talk about this as permanently wearing a set of

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grief glasses.

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You are now walking around, looking around existing in the world, seeing now and forever

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through the lens of loss because before your loss, like all of us, every single one of us

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does this.

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You likely operated consciously or unconsciously on an unspoken set of assumptions.

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These are things that clients have sent to me before and things that I even believe before

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my mother died in 2013.

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Bad things happen to other people or in my perspective, if you're good enough good things

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will happen, if you're bad enough bad things will happen.

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You have a God or a world that punishes and rewards.

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That was a young thing to think.

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I know that now.

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Here's another one.

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If I do everything right, my person will be okay or I will be okay.

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My relationships are stable.

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That's something we tell ourselves a lot just to get through the day.

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My relationships or my job is stable.

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My housing is stable.

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The world is stable.

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Or the world is mostly fair, mostly predictable, mostly safe.

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Things work out for the best.

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Everything happens for a reason.

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These are very real things that people have believed in their life before loss.

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But loss destroys these assumptions.

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No matter what kind of loss you're grieving, a death, a divorce, and a strangenment, a diagnosis,

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a tragic world event that hits way too close to home.

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And suddenly, you know something that you didn't know before.

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And I say this often, anything can happen to anyone at any time for any reason or no

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reason at all.

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This is why so many grieving people describe feeling like a different person after loss.

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It's not just that your life changed.

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It's that your entire operating system for understanding reality changed with it.

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There is a really awful motivational quote that circulates on social media.

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And even on sympathy cards I found while googling around researching for this episode insert

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barf emoji here.

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It goes like this.

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Everything will be okay in the end.

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If it's not okay, then it's not the end.

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But to anyone who has faced a life changing loss, this quote is the most hollow ringing

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saccharine bullshit, unhelpful advice that exists.

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Grievous know or come to know with time and experience that endings are often the least

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okay of our experiences.

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We can keep going and never be 100% okay again.

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We or other people can get to our respective ends and be so many things, but okay is not

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one of them.

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Holding this perspective is not pessimism or catastrophizing or being a Debbie Downer.

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Like lost turn you into a Debbie Downer.

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It's not any of those things.

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This is data.

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You have lived it.

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Anything can happen to anyone at any time for any reason or no reason at all.

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And once you know this, once you are seeing through the lens of grief glasses, you

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cannot unknow it.

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You cannot go back to the version of yourself who believed the world or your relationships

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were safe or predictable because that version of you required a worldview that lost came

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in and took away.

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I learned a ton about this concept of a shattered worldview while I was training with their

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piston author Megan Devine in her grief care professional certificate program last year

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in 2025.

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And it reinforced so, so much of how I teach the concept of getting grounded in grief inside

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life after loss academy.

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And this is what we're going to get into for the rest of the episode.

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Essentially the maximum is this.

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Rebuilding after loss is not about getting back to the way things were.

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It is about grieving the normalcy and safety that you once knew so that you can orient

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your new and loss informed reality around things that are true for you now.

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Here is why getting back to normal is never ever ever a good goal for grieving people.

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Some are along the way, many of us absorb the idea that healing means returning or getting

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back to normal, going back there or getting back to who you were or getting back to the way

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things used to be.

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And across all of my work and inside my grief support community life after loss academy,

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I regularly challenge that idea.

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Healing is not getting back there.

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As back there or back to normal assumes that there is a version of normal to return to,

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a safe or stable or predictable world that is waiting for you somewhere mythically on

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the other side of your pain.

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But grievous know, you know that the world you once knew and existed in no longer exist

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isn't there anymore.

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It is not that you haven't found your way back to it.

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It is that it literally no longer exists in the way that you once experienced it.

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And chasing the dream of getting back to normal after a devastating loss is a little bit like

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trying to find your way home after your house has been destroyed by a storm or a natural disaster.

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We talked about this in the is grief selfish episode of grief grower, which you can check

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out by going back in the history of the podcast, either on your podcast player or on YouTube.

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Just look for the episode called Ask Shelby is grief selfish.

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And I talk about how grief and trying to get back to normal or trying to take care of

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yourself is like taking care of a house that has been destroyed by a storm.

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And in it, I talk about yes, you can rebuild.

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You can create something new.

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You can create something meaningful.

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You might even create something beautiful, but you cannot go back and undestroy the house.

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You can't go back and prevent or protect the house from being taken away or blown away

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by the storm or flattened.

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The sooner that you can release this impossible pressure to return to something that's gone,

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that literally is inaccessible to you.

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The sooner that you can start building whatever comes next for you in life after loss.

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This wrestling with changing worldview in life after loss can be a moment for so many

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grievers, maybe including you, where you feel stuck, not because you're not trying hard enough.

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Grievers are some of the hardest working people I know.

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I write about this in my book, of course, I'm here right now.

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But it's because you're aiming for this goal that society tells you to want of getting

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back to normal or getting back on the horse or getting over it.

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You are not failing at grounding in grief because there's something wrong with you.

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You are failing because others are telling you that it's possible to get back to normal

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when you know for sure that that is not available to you.

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And it is really freaking tough to grieve a worldview, a reality that you know in the

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depths of your heart is gone.

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While everyone around you is telling you it's perfectly possible to go back to the way

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things used to be.

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And I just want to validate that here for you now.

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I want to take a side detour also for a second and put an asterisk here because there are

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grievers for whom the world has never, ever, ever felt safe or normal.

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And what I don't want to do is assume that every single grieving person who's listening

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to this or watching this on YouTube has had a stable life before.

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And in my new book of course I'm here right now, I describe when I'm working with grieving

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people I often will picture them in their life before as someone tethered to their life by

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golden cords of stability, their job, their beliefs, their home, their routines.

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Around them there's these little colorful bubbles of light that are people who know and

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understand them, friends, co-workers, family members.

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And even on hard days in life before I often picture people as having invisible wheels

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underneath their feet that are carrying them steadily towards a future that they're

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generally looking forward to.

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These three things are how I picture grievers in life before tethered with stability surrounded

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by people who know and understand them and moving forward into a future that they are

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generally looking forward to.

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Then lost crashes in and I picture golden cords severed, stability severed, lights of community

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dim or muffled by the fog of grief kind of tornace under and the wheels of forward movement

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disappearing replaced by something more like quicksand.

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But something I love that as I was working on this book I was taught by my sensitivity reader

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her name is Elisa Forneray and she was on some episodes of coming back my very first podcast

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way back in the day.

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She reminded me she said, "Shall we?

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Not everyone has golden cords of stability to begin with."

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Many many grieving people come from backgrounds that never once ever included stability.

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Wildtards marked by poverty or abuse or constant relocation or divorce or early early loss.

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People have lived lives that are shaped by ongoing crisis rather than a single one time rupture

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of loss.

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And for grievers like this, there is no sense of steady before or normalcy to grieve the

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loss of because normal, safe and steady were never fully available to them to begin with.

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So if this is you and you're listening or watching right now, please know that your grief

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is not less valid because it doesn't follow the clean dramatic, societally pictured before

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and after story arc that was beautiful life before and then there's terrible life after.

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Your story may be more complicated than that.

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And what you are also allowed to grieve that not every griever will experience is not just

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the safety you lost but the safety that you never ever had.

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And everything that I talk about in this episode I hope will still apply to you because

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you are trying to ground in a world that is informed by loss.

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And what I want to share with you is that you may even be more skilled at this because

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you might have more practice locating stability within yourself than grieving people who are

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encountering true instability for the very first time.

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Okay, back to how do I ground when I am deeply grieving?

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The truth of the matter is something I learned after my mom died and don't say out loud very

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often because it really really hurts to hear when you're in the most awful and painful

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parts of grief.

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So take care if this is you is that the world was never actually as safe or as steady as

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you believed it to be.

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Loss is not the thing that made the world dangerous.

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It is the thing that revealed a truth to you about uncertainty or injustice or death that

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was always there.

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It was just underneath the surface of your daily life or irrelevant to you or in someone

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else's orbit.

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Before loss you may have had the privilege of not knowing this yet.

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You may not have been born into this world where in grief coccles.

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Now you know that and that knowing while it is incredibly painful and it is so painful

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to grieve a worldview.

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This knowledge is not your enemy.

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It is simply your new foundational starting point.

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It is the new thing that you know for sure to be true.

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The thing you know without a shadow of it out.

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So this might have you asking and this is the whole purpose of me creating this episode.

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If the world was never guaranteed to be safe and it's not going to become safe just because

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I want it to be then where does that leave me?

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What do I do?

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And my answer to you is that it leaves you needing to build safety, normalcy, security

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stability somewhere else.

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So where does safety, normalcy, security, stability actually come from in life after

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loss.

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This is the locus of this episode because if the world could not be your source of

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certainty anymore.

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You need a new anchor.

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And the good news is you'd have to go out and buy one.

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It's that you already have access to one and that is you.

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It is not the world.

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It is not other people.

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It is not circumstances that you cannot control.

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It is you.

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The person who has lived through this loss who is still here and still breathing and still

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capable of getting through the next hour or the next day or the next week even when

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that feels impossible.

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Grounding in grief, getting grounded is not about finding safety somewhere out there.

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It is about locating safety within and inside of yourself as the one constant that has

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been present through every single version of your life so far.

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Think about it this way.

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Your identities shift constantly through life and especially through loss.

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You may have been a spouse and now you're a widow or a widower.

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You may have been someone's baby and now you're navigating the world without a living

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parent.

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You're not being parented.

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You might have been relatively healthy.

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And now some part of your body is diseased, unwell or even missing from you.

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You might have worked one job and now you're in a totally different field.

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You might have been close with your child and now you're grieving a relationship that

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is sporadic or distant or strange or outside your control.

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You may have lived geographically in one place and now you live geographically somewhere

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else, whether literally or figuratively in loads of areas of your life.

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Identities change.

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Roads change.

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Relationships change.

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Systems change.

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Rules of order or engagement change.

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Problems change is absolutely change often without consent or a heads up warning.

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But you, the one living through all of it, the one noticing, adapting, surviving, integrating,

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you are the thing that remains.

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You are the thread of your life that connects every chapter of your life, including the

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chapter, the excruciating one called life with grief.

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What I want to make clear is that this does not mean you feel steady all the time.

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It means that you are the steady thing in a much deeper sense.

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You are the thing continuing to exist in your life, your mind, your heart, your body,

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even as everything else around you keeps shifting.

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Grounding in grief does not look like having certainty about the future.

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It really does not look like feeling calm all the time or trusting that nothing bad will

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ever happen again.

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Those are old world life before pre-greeth glasses promises.

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And remember, as you now know, they were never fully true.

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Instead, grounding through grief, and this is what I teach in my after-loss academy, often

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looks like making a list of things that are still true about you, things that lost did not

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take away.

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These can be as simple as physical attributes or as deep as things you know and value and

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believe to be true, no matter what.

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It looks like building small rituals and routines that remind your nervous system that

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you are still here for you, even if those rituals need to flex around circumstances that are

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unpredictable or timing that is unpredictable.

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It is learning your own patterns of griefs you can anticipate and care for yourself through

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all of the waves and all of the seasons.

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It looks like reconnecting with your own values, preferences, instincts, separate from what

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the world or another person is or is not able to give you because those things are uncertain.

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And it is recognizing that you have already survived every hard day of your life so far,

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which is real, tangible, actionable evidence of stability and consistency that you can

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lean on and look back on and be like, "Well, damn, I have survived this far.

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I have been the constant thing so far.

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I may not have enjoyed living inside of these experiences or living inside of myself,

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but it is true that I have been here the whole time."

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None of these practices require the world or another person or even your day-to-day life

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to become predictable or sturdy again.

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All of them just require you to build a relationship with yourself that can hold steady and grounded

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even when everything else cannot.

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This is a different kind of stability than the one that you are grieving.

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It is not about the ground never shifting again because you don't have the power to change

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or control that.

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It is about learning that you can be your own source of safety or peace or normalcy

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or security, no matter what else shifts around you.

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I can't leave you today without giving you this.

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Also, if the word "safe" doesn't resonate or "normal" doesn't resonate, try a different

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word.

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And this is inspired by one of my life after a loss academy student's named Kim.

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She is just as much of a word nerd as I am and she's like, "Shall we?

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I can't do the word safe."

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Life has never felt safe to me.

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She's one of these people who experience so much loss.

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She's like, "I don't know that safety is ever possible for me."

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So instead of safe, maybe a grounding word or a goal word for you might be something

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like stable or oriented or calm or planted or anchored or steady or even home.

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That's one of a lot of grievers in life after a loss academy use.

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And the goal of this language is not to find the correct word.

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It is to find the word, a word, a collection of words that helps your body and your mind recognize

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this is what I'm reaching for.

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This is the aim I'm going for right now.

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And I want to encourage you to experiment until one of them feels right or you find a

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new one that feels right enough for you.

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Life is personal so is language.

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So please, if the word safe doesn't resonate, you've been itchy the whole time I've been

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talking.

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Find a word that works better for you than safe.

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What I want to acknowledge for you and what I want to urge you towards is that you are

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allowed to stop waiting for the world to feel safe again.

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Because if you are waiting for the world to feel safe again in life after a loss, you might

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be waiting a very, very, very long time, possibly forever.

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But when you shift this goal, if you start building your sense of stability from the inside

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out instead of outside in, something can change in your loss.

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You stop needing the world or another person to cooperate with you or what you need in order

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to feel okay again.

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And you start anchoring.

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There's a good word anchoring into the one relationship that will never leave or be taken

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from you.

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And that is the relationship you have with yourself.

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To be extraordinarily clear, grounding in this way does not erase or take away your grief

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or the pain of it.

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It doesn't mean that you will never feel afraid or uncertain or shaken up again.

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It just means that you have something solid to come back to when you do.

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A place that is steady, aka you, in the face of loss's chaos and overwhelm.

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So do your grief grower who is listening to this today.

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I need you to know that you are the safe, grounded, constant that you have been looking

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for in your grief.

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When you ask will life ever be back to normal again or when will I get back to normal again?

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It's like life may never be back to normal, but I am true across every chapter of my life.

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Lost teaches you this hard truth that the world was never as safe or normal as you believed

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it to be.

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And it is sure as heck not going back to the way it was.

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But loss also teaches you something else.

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That is just as true.

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But perhaps much more empowering, it is that you are still here.

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You are the constant thread that is running through every chapter of your life, including

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the one that you're living right now.

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And grounding is not about the world or you, finding a way to go back to normal, heavy

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air quotes around that.

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It is about you seeing and trusting yourself as the safest and steadiest place in the world

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that you have.

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You do not need the ground to stop shifting and you do not have the power to make that

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so.

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Lost guaranteed that it shoved that truth right in your face.

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You need to know that you are solid within yourself even as the ground keeps moving.

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If this episode resonated with you or if you want real, practical, tangible tools for grounding

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in the face of grief, what are the nervous system tools, what are the lists you can make,

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what are the practices you can start doing?

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I hope you will join us in "Side Life" after loss Academy.

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After what I call my 5th Step grief method, ground release, integrate, establish, and foster

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GRIEF, you will learn how to, step 1, ground yourself even when life feels uncertain or

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unsteady.

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Step 2, release what you are carrying, including versions of yourself or your loss that

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loss robbed you of.

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Step 3, integrate your losses into your life in a way that's meaningful for you that makes

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sense to you.

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Step 4, establish grief honoring relationships with others.

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And step 5, build a future that feels peaceful and hopeful again, even with grief and

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tow, even with the wisdom brought by grief glasses.

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If you want a preview of this work for free, you can watch my workshop.

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It's called "Grow Through Grief."

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You can find it on my website or in the show notes for this episode.

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I will walk you through the three student favorite tools that have really resonated with so

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many folks over the years.

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And you can start using them right now to feel steadier in life after loss.

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Plus you will get a look inside the course itself.

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I'll walk you through each of the modules and everything that you get inside and you

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can get that for free at ShelbyFersathea.com.

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What I want to reassure you of is that you are more resilient and resource and capable

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of grounding yourself than you may believe to be true right now, especially with loss giving

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you all of these painful reminders of how the world really works and what is really

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possible to be taken from you.

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If you are looking to ground through grief, I would love it so much if you would join

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me inside life after loss academy.

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I would really appreciate seeing you there.

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That's all for this episode of "Greef Grower."

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Thank you so much for joining me today.

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

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articles, and my new book.

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Of course I'm here right now, three actually helpful things to say to someone grieving at

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ShelbyFersathea.com/links.

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And if you'd like to get support from me for your uni-class experience, you can join me

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inside life after loss academy.

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As a student, I will walk you through my five step grief framework, G-R-I-E-F, for rebuilding

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after any sort of devastating loss and you can get live coaching from me every week to

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answer your questions.

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

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If this podcast felt validating, comforting, educational, or otherwise helpful to you, please

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00:27:27,360 --> 00:27:31,000
subscribe and leave a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify.

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00:27:31,000 --> 00:27:33,840
And be sure to share "Greef Grower" with a friend because you never know what someone

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you love is going through.

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Greef Grower is hosted by me ShelbyFersathea with music by Addy Goldstein.

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Until next time, Greef Grower's, I see you.

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I am so proud of 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]