There is no single moment when a bell rings and declares congratulations. You're officially okay again.
While that does not happen, there are signs that your grief is shifting or changing or,
dare I say, it evolving, growing for the better.
And to be clear, this shifting, evolving, changing, growing is not grief disappearing or going away,
and it's not you getting over it. What this is, this sense of being okay again,
it's grief changing shape in a way that makes life feel more livable.
A.K.A. clues that you are growing through your grief.
Hi there, grief growers. I am so grateful to be here with you 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 and my work, hello.
My name is Shelby Fersitia. I am a grief coach, a three-time author, and the founder of Life after loss academy.
I have had the honor of helping thousands of grieving people over 10 years,
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, of course, not only death-related losses, but also losses like divorce and breakup,
major diagnosis, and any other loss that changes your life.
Here on grief grower, we believe that grief is not something we get over.
It is something that we grow with and alongside, and that by treating grief less like a problem to be solved,
and more like an invitation to live more deeply,
we create meaningful lives that are rich with the struggles that we faced
and the preciousness of what it is to be here right now.
Before we get into today's episode, which is a question from one of my life after loss academy students
that I think will resonate with you, a reminder that release date for my third book,
of course, I'm here right now, three actually helpful things to say to someone grieving,
is coming up at the end of this month on March 31st.
This little guidebook teaches you how to support a grieving person in your life
with the best free grief support tool any of us has, and that is our words,
so that you will never enter another conversation with a grieving person wondering what on earth do I say in order to comfort them.
As an author, and I've mentioned this before,
pre-orders are so, so helpful when it comes to getting the book seen by bookstores and the powers that be
so you can find a link to pre-order, of course, I'm here right now in the show notes.
If you have already done the work of pre-ordering,
thank you so much, you could submit your receipt number from Bookshop, Amazon, Barnes and Noble,
your local indie book store, go indie bookstores.
On my website, shall be for city.com to access the free six week book club in April,
where we read, of course, I'm here right now as a group and discuss it together.
This book club once again kicks off in early April,
so make sure you have the book in your hands or in your ears.
Yes, there is an audiobook or on your Kindle or Kobo or digital device before then.
And lastly, if you would like to celebrate the launch of this book with me,
I am hosting two launch parties that I would love for you to attend.
The first one is taking place the eve before the book comes out on March 30th here in Chicago,
and the second one is the day the book debuts March 31st here on YouTube,
so no matter where in the world you live,
you can tune in to hear more about the clients that inspired the phrases that are in this book,
and I will tell you what to say to support someone grieving in your life.
My favorite part at both of these events is I'll be taking your questions,
audience questions about real scenarios in your life of this person's facing this loss,
or I'm facing this kind of grief or a relative or a friend or family member has this that they're going through.
What do I say to comfort them?
And we will use the structure of, of course, I'm here right now to come up with actionable scripts
that you can take away from that launch party, from that call on that day.
And of course, because I know that so many of you listening or watching here on YouTube
are all over the world, the replay of the virtual event will be available the next day
if you cannot attend live because I do want you to be able to access
not just the party itself would be like, yes, let's celebrate
but the actionable tools and tips that this book provides.
You can save your spot for both of these book launch events at the link in the show notes.
Today's episode is a question that I get very often as someone who supports grieving people
and it's something that I wondered myself after my mom died in 2013.
And that is when does grief get easier?
So today I have put together for you five ways to know that you're going to be okay after devastating loss.
And this was inspired by a student who joined life after loss academy recently.
Her name is Grace and she shared a question with us as she was introducing herself to the group.
Her loss involves her husband's sudden death and she simply,
but profoundly asked this one simple question, the simple but significant question.
How will I know that I will be okay?
In the aftermath of any sort of devastating loss, again, death divorce diagnosis,
anything that changes your life, you may have asked yourself the same question or some version of it
that sounds like will life ever feel normal again?
Or will the pain of my grief always feel this sharp?
Or how will I know that I'm actually healing and like this is it just a fluke?
These kinds of questions, this flavor of question is incredibly common after a loss,
whether you're grieving the death of someone important to you,
the end of a relationship, a major health diagnosis, a life transition,
a major move, a child loss, a future that you thought that you would have.
And as a griever of more than 12 years and a grief coach has been supporting griever since 2016,
here's what I can tell you for sure.
There is no single moment when a bell rings and declares congratulations, you're officially okay again.
While that does not happen, there are signs that your grief is shifting or changing
or dare I say it evolving, growing for the better.
And to be clear, this shifting, evolving, changing, growing is not grief disappearing or going away
and it's not you getting over it.
As I said in the intro to this podcast, we don't believe in that here.
What this is, this sense of being okay again, heavy air quotes around okay again,
it's grief changing shape in a way that makes life feel more livable.
A.K.A. clues that you are growing through your grief.
Inside life after loss academy, which is my course and community for students going through any kind of loss,
I see these signs appear again and again as students move through the five pillars of the grief method.
This is my framework for how to rebuild again after devastating loss.
And the grief method stands for G, ground, R, release, I integrate E, establish, and F, foster.
So through each of the video lessons, each of the journaling prompts, each of the live coaching calls,
students inside my after loss academy progressively go from suffering underneath the weight of grief
to learning how to live and rebuild alongside of it.
So if you are wondering whether your grief is getting easier
or when you're ever going to feel okay again, these five markers based on the grief method, G, R, I, E, F,
can help you take stock of where you are right now.
What I want you to do is think of them less as a finish line
and more sort of like a checklist of growth that could possibly happen over time
while you're coping with grief and rebuilding life after loss.
So let's get to the first one.
Number one, you are feeling more stable and grounded, G for grounded, in daily life after loss.
One of the very earliest signs that grief is becoming more manageable for you
is that your nervous system begins to settle.
In the beginning, especially after a very devastating or a sudden loss,
loss often creates a feeling of total disorientation.
Your routines disappear, your sense of safety and certainty disappears.
Even really simple decisions, decisions that look simple to other people, like what to eat or what to wear,
can feel overwhelming and world-ending.
Many grieving people describe this season of instability
as the feeling of being untethered from everything they ever knew.
And one of my students in life after loss academy once phrased it as
"It feels like the ground is falling out from under me all the time."
With time and consistent grounding practices, which I teach in life after loss academy things like rituals, routines,
spending time with your grief, stability slowly begins to return to your life,
not because the loss hurts less, but because you start building new foundational anchors of support in your life.
This is something that you do intentionally to rebuild your life with grief.
For you, this might look like developing small daily routines that help you feel steadier or sturdier.
These could be things that connect you to a positive memory of a loss or to a loved one who died.
This could also look like setting aside intentional time, even five minutes a day to be present with your grief.
In life after a loss academy, we talk about devoting 1% of your day to grief,
and that's usually about 5-10 minutes of your day.
This could also look like identifying a few spaces or people or practices or resources
that help you feel settled and secure and peaceful or at least able to rest.
Something that I tell my students is that the work of restabilizing after loss getting grounded
may seem subtle or insignificant or like not worth your time,
especially when there's bigger or more pressing issues like coping with guilt
or dealing with shitty, unsupported family members or grieving the person that you used to be.
Those things can take up a lot of your emotional energy,
but getting what I call good and grounded matters enormously,
especially if you are aiming to feel okay or normal again.
Feeling secure again in a world that has taught you that anything can happen to anyone at any time
is an essential first step in rebuilding life after loss.
It allows your body and mind to gradually relearn how to exist in this world
or anything can happen to anyone at any time,
and find pockets of peace and calm in a world that you know for sure has forever changed.
So your reflection question for this section is,
do I feel grounded, stable, and centered most days?
This could be a sign that grief is getting easier for you
or that you are starting to feel or be okay again.
Number two, this is based on the release module.
You are better able to handle intense grief emotions when they come.
So another sign that you're managing your grief well is being able to cope with the emotional ups and downs of life with loss
because grief can feel unpredictable and all-consuming.
Tears may arrive unexpectedly at the grocery store or during your commute,
anger or like what I call snittiness,
erupts seemingly out of nowhere.
Guilt and regret show up in your dreams. Nostalgia, heartache, longing,
things like this can take over your entire day.
Many people worry that when these feelings come in grief that something is wrong with them
or that there's no possible way they'll survive the intensity of the emotions.
Lots and lots of my life after loss academy students describe their feelings with natural disaster metaphors,
things like a tsunami of grief or a storm of pain for instance.
Maybe you have your own metaphor that's like natural disaster adjacent.
But by allowing yourself to feel and granting yourself permission for grief to come and go,
you gradually become more capable of experiencing intense emotions,
the storm of grief without feeling completely consumed by them.
This is a learnable skill.
So this could look like crying or feeling rage with the understanding that this moment will not last forever.
This moment will be followed by another moment and then another and then another and then another.
This could also look like learning how you uniquely feel and express grief
and naming those emotions beginning to wrap language around the emotional experience that you're having.
This might also be noticing where the pressure to be what I call the perfect griever shows up in your grief.
Perfectionism is a sticky thing and allowing yourself to feel without judgment.
It might also manifest as sitting with difficult emotions like guilt or regret or despair
without trying to escape them or distract yourself or put on a happy face for the sake of yourself or other people.
And it might also look like creating physical rituals to release grief to move grief through your body,
things like writing or dancing or boxing or singing or breaking plates are going to scream with the leg or whatever it is that you like to do.
Giving yourself permission to grieve to release your emotions,
however and whenever grief shows up for you can be one of the most difficult parts of grief.
But it is also one of the most rewarding.
When you learn to let emotions move through you instead of being overtaken by them,
you become free to move forward with grief in a new way.
Learning to feel and release your emotions gives you a sense of power and control and self-trust
and that is really helpful because I imagine it is a time when it feels like each of those things is in really short supply.
It is a very deep and rewarding work that shows you it's possible to weather grief storms or waves or whirlwinds or earthquakes however you describe them,
instead of ignoring them or trying to keep them from happening.
So a good reflection question for this section is,
do I have consistent, helpful practices for processing grief's biggest emotions?
Okay, let's move on to number three.
This is, you are finding meaningful ways to carry your loss or loved one with you.
And this is inspired, of course, by the Integrate section.
This is one of my favorite indicators that you're moving forward with grief instead of sinking into it.
It's that you are inventing ways to bring your loss or your loved one into the future with you.
We very much live in a society that sometimes labels gravers as stuck in the past or unhealthy
if they still talk about their loss or dedicate time and energy to remembering things like significant grief dates or loved one's traditions or catchphrases or favorite things.
For this reason, lots of grieving people worry that air quotes moving forward can only mean leaving their loss behind.
We talked about this in the closure episode of grief grower,
but healing does not look like forgetting and moving on is if nothing ever happened.
That is just grief erasure. Let's go back a few episodes and listen to the closure episode for more on why grief erasure of your entire past is bad and not helpful.
Instead, one of the most meaningful signs of being okay again after a loss involves weaving your loss into your life in a way that still honors what matter to you.
This can take many different forms depending on the type of loss you've experienced,
but it could include things like talking about the person or the chapter of your life you lost without shame or self-judgment for bringing it up in conversation.
This could look like performing rituals or traditions that keep a memory present in the present for you.
This could look like recognizing how the relationship or experience shape to you are today. This is a reflective practice that you bring into the present with you.
This might also manifest as allowing your loss to inform the way you live your life and make decisions moving forward.
Folding grief into your life, the practice of integrating, is something many gravers do naturally.
You may already be doing this by sharing stories, continuing traditions, displaying or wearing mementos, and practicing rituals.
As you integrate your grief into your life, you are showing yourself you are demonstrating by doing this that it is emotionally, mentally, physically, and even spiritually possible to move forward with grief instead of insisting it stay stuck or back there as a chapter in your past.
Ancline Life after Loss Academy, the Lessons and the Integrate section, teach you how to weave your losses into your day to day.
It is such a meaningful part of healing because it demonstrates that grief can be a part of your life without you being entirely defined by your grief.
You stay connected, tethered to your losses or to your loved ones while also having the ability to move forward.
So a great reflection question for this section is, do I have clear personalized ways that I carry my loss with me?
Number four is probably my favorite.
You are setting boundaries and building relationships that honor your grief and this is based on the established module E in Life after Loss Academy.
Another powerful sign that grief is becoming more manageable is that you begin advocating for your needs again.
Because, loss changes the way we experience relationships, they alter our rules of engagement, as I like to say, with just about everyone in our circle.
Some people show up beautifully, other people disappear, some people say some shit that leaves you feeling misunderstood or pressure to move on or absolutely unseen in your grief.
And in a culture and a society where we are often told to be grateful that anyone showed up at all, just check my Facebook comments, let people watch my reels, especially for a non-death loss.
It can feel like there's not a lot of room to ask for what you need from other people.
It can also feel sticky or uncomfortable to critique how someone is offering support when you know they're just trying to do their best or like they have good intentions.
Add on top of all of that the confusion and disorientation of grief and it can be a very real struggle for grieving people to both get support and to feel supported after any sort of devastating loss.
As the initial fog of grief lifts off your being, many grieving people begin to develop something that is so incredibly important and underrated and that is grief honoring boundaries.
These are statements of need and want, whether they are for a specific kind of care, for some behavior to change, for grief to be respected and prioritized within your relationships or for your grief to simply be allowed to be in the room.
So this might look like speaking up when someone minimizes your grief, this could be protecting your energy around people who expect you to move on or get over it quickly.
This could be asking friends and family with allegedly good intentions to use different words or change their behavior when interacting with you, asking people to do something different as a sign of a great grief boundary.
This could also be seeing out friends or communities who understand loss more deeply. This could be an in-person group or something that happens online like Life After Loss Academy.
This could also be allowing yourself to decline invitations or conversations or interactions that feel draining to you as you grieve. You're like, "This is not supportive to my grief. This is not honoring of my grief. This does not see me for all of who I am."
So I'm going to pass.
These shifts in how you operate in relationships and move through the world with other people, how you do grieve with others.
This does not mean you are becoming difficult or overly needy. This indicates that you are learning how to protect your emotional well-being while also doing the work of living with grief.
When you set these grief honoring boundaries, you are allowing grief not just to show up as a private personal thing that you do like by yourself in your house, but you are allowing grief to have an inevitable impact.
It will no matter what, on all of the relationships that you participate in, friends, family, co-workers, neighbors, strangers. So establishing new rules of engagement looks like acknowledging the presence of grief that already exists everywhere in your life.
Healthy relationships after loss often operate differently than they did before.
And while that may be something worth grieving, maybe you don't have the energy you did before, maybe you don't have the capacity for small talk, maybe you don't want to get invited out to concerts or restaurants or live music anymore.
These are things to grieve.
It doesn't mean you are failing as a friend, as a member of your family, as somebody in your workplace.
It is yet another sign, these renegotiating the boundaries, that you are growing through grief.
So your reflection question for this section is, do I set defined compassionate boundaries related to my grief with friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors?
Last one for you, number five.
And this is the one that so many grievers really want as a part of their life.
And this is, you are beginning to feel glimpses of peace, purpose, and joy again.
This, for as much as grieving people, generally want it and ask like, when will I feel happy again or when will I feel joy again?
This is kind of the one that surprises a lot of people.
And that's because it feels good.
Because grief can feel so hard and dark and exhausting and heavy and overwhelming, it's really, really easy to believe that life will never be okay again.
And it is understandable that you may not want things to feel okay again, because it can seem like a sort of betrayal of the person or the thing that you lost.
It is also very common to resist happiness, hope, or joy when you're grieving, out of fear of having them taken away from you, dashed out of your hands,
whether by a resurgence of grief or some brand new unexpected loss that steam rolls in and flattens your peace of mind.
But and as you continue to live life with grief, it is normal to get flashes with a lot of grief professionals called glimmers of happiness, desire, purpose, hope, contentiveness.
These flashes or glimmers are not indicators that grief is gone, but that you are getting better at coexisting with it.
And some ways that this could show up in your life could be allowing yourself to laugh out loud or to hold on to hope or name a future dream to hope for the future.
Or to settle into a peaceful moment without guilt or what I call like waiting for the other shoot to drop.
This could also look like seeing grief as a lifelong relationship, something that's going to keep going forever that accompanies you both through despair, but also through joy.
This could look like rediscovering an interest in hobbies or relationships or setting goals again.
Sometimes I talk about in life after lost academy when desire begins to show itself again that is a sign that you are healing from or becoming okay with the presence of grief in your life.
This may also appear as regaining a sense that life might still hold meaning or possibility, whatever that looks like for you.
It may not be the meaning or possibility you had before, but it may be a different flavor of meaning or possibility that has also the taste of grief with it.
These instances in your life of joy or calm or happiness may feel very small at first, but they are incredibly important indicators that goodness after loss is beginning to be a real reason.
They are literal, felt, evidence that you'll be okay and that you're learning how to carry life's hardships and life's delights side by side.
Inside the foster section of life after loss academy, I teach that recovering a sense of hope in the midst of grief is usually the most fragile feeling part of rebuilding after a loss.
Because when you know the pain of loss and the uncertainty of the aftermath, you likely have an older version of hope that requires grieving, hope used to be shiny and unbreakable and strong.
It is possible to lose hope, it's possible to grieve hope, just like it's possible to go through a heartbreaking loss.
But when hope reenters your life, not invincible as it used to be, but small and frail and yet somehow still full of song, it is a breath of fresh air, as well as a sign that your world has not ended.
Just the world as you knew it, and that is not nothing, grief growers.
So your final reflection question here is, do I experience tiny moments of happiness, peace, purpose, joy, or hope?
What I want you to take away from this episode is that on the whole, as far as I can define them, there are five ways to know if grief is getting easier for you.
And if you are wondering when grief gets easier, the honest answer is that it will not happen for you all it wants.
Kailing from grief as any person who has ever grieved can tell you, it tends to reveal itself or to happen very gradually through small but meaningful shifts like the five I shared here, and here they are once again.
One, you might feel a little more grounded in day to day life.
Two, you may have developed practices for coping with grief's most difficult emotions.
Three, you may create meaningful ways to fold loss into your life.
Four, you might be setting firm, compassionate boundaries with the people you care about.
And five, you may notice moments of hope, peace, happiness, or joy again.
Once again, these changes are often slow and uneven. It may still feel like two steps forward and three steps back.
Some days may still feel incredibly difficult, whether it's a big grief milestone that you were expecting or something that absolutely caught you off guard.
You may also have days of unexpected peace in the midst of it all.
Both all experiences can exist at the same time while you were learning to live with loss.
If you are searching for signs that you will be okay again, how to know that you will be okay.
These five markers can offer a compassionate checklist to look at what's already happening in your life and notice the growth that exists right here and right now.
And if you are looking for support, as you learn to feel okay again, if you're listening to this checklist and recognizing areas where you still feel stuck,
you think maybe I'm not coping with my emotions well or maybe I haven't quite learned how to navigate relationships with other people to do grief with others.
Or maybe I'm not really sure how to rebuild hope or to find peace or purpose again. That is exactly what we do inside life after loss academy.
Inside this course and community, you will learn practical tools to study yourself in the chaos of grief.
You will learn how to process painful emotions, things like guilt, regret, anger, sadness, hopelessness, despair, safely.
You will learn how to integrate or weave your loss into your life, including non-death losses, and rediscover peace, purpose, and joy again.
Inside my FactorLoss Academy, you receive my five step grief method framework for rebuilding life after loss, GRI-EF, ground, release, integrate, establish, and foster and they are given to you, release to you in that order because everything builds on itself.
You will get all of these through way of on-demand video lessons and journaling prompts that you can access at any time.
You get weekly coaching with me where I answer your questions and address your struggles, and you also get to join a community of grieving people who truly genuinely gets it,
and has absolutely no judgment about the type of loss or how long it's been and supports you as you move through the course.
Being okay again, and putting air quotes over okay again, never means forgetting what happened to you.
It means learning how to carry grief with you while you grow and live alongside of it.
And if you would like to read student reviews and join us inside my FactorLoss Academy, you can do that at the link in the show notes.
I will see you there.
[Music]
That's all for this episode of Grave Growr. Thank you so very much for joining me today.
If you're looking for grief support beyond this show, you can find free workshops, blog articles, and my new,
what's your grief supporter's strength quiz at shallbeforsethea.com/links.
And if you'd like to get support from me for your uni-class experience, you can join us at any time in life after loss academy, my online course in community.
As a student, I'll walk you through my five step grief framework for rebuilding after loss, and you can get live coaching for me every single week to answer your questions.
Replays are always available if you can't attend the session's life.
It's just $33 a month through join or $22 a month if you're marginalized or financially stressed griver. You can cancel at any time.
If this podcast felt validating, comforting, educational, or otherwise helpful to you, please subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
They do help other greeting people find the show.
Grief Growr is hosted by me, shallbeforsethea, with the music by Addy Goldstein.
Until next time, grief growers, 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]