grief is not an obstacle to overcome, or an unpleasant experience to leave somewhere
back there.
Instead, grief is part of the architecture of your life.
Not because you're incapable of getting over it, there is nothing broken about you.
It's because everything about your life after is built upon those precious foundations of
your life before.
Hi there, Brave Brothers.
I am so honored to be with you here today, as always.
If you have been growing alongside me in my work for a while, welcome back.
If you are new to me and my work, hello.
My name is Shelby for Scythia, I am a grief coach, two-time author and the founder of Life
after loss academy, which has helped dozens of grieving people stop feeling lost, stuck,
heartbroken and overwhelmed, and start building lives they genuinely love from the lives
that loss forced them to live.
This includes, of course, not only death-related losses, because that is not the only loss
we face as humans, 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 just something to get over, and we're
going to talk about that more today.
Grief is something that we grow with and alongside, and that when we stop treating grief less
like a problem to be solved, and more like an invitation to live more deeply, we get to
create meaningful lives that are rich and folded in and integrated with the memories that
we carry, the struggles that we have survived, and the preciousness, that the hard one preciousness
of what it is to be alive right here and right now.
Today we have arrived at the final module of Life After loss Academy for the past five
episodes or so.
We've been doing sort of a tour de France of my five step grief method framework, G-R-I-E-F
It G-G-E-Yes, spells grief, and we have arrived at F, which stands for Foster, Fostering
a Lifetime Relationship or a Lifetime Partnership, however you'd like to phrase it with grief.
And I want to open up this podcast episode by responding to this question that I received
from a grief grower listener.
She writes, "Hi Shelby, my husband died 18 months ago, and I thought I'd be further
along by now.
Someone keeps telling me to move on and rebuild.
Sometimes I even put pressure on myself to get my act together and figure out what my life
is supposed to be now, but I don't know how.
What does rebuilding even mean?
I still feel like my husband is a part of everything I do.
We were together for almost 20 years.
I can't just forget him.
Does rebuilding mean I have to get over him?
Because I can't.
And honestly, I don't want to.
And this question is to me and my ears, a direct arrow pointing at so much of the shame
and anxiety and uncertainty about the future that my clients and students feel.
It's similar, very similar to what I felt as well after my mom's sudden death from cancer
in 2013.
I put, "It is awful living in the aftermath of loss and not knowing how to navigate it,
how to move forward from it.
You might feel like you should be further along by now, but you aren't sure what further
along even means.
That's like a phrase we toss around, but nobody can really define it.
You might be looking around at other people who have faced loss and see their happy healed
lives, but aren't aware how you might make a happy and healed life for yourself.
Or if that's even something you want, a lot of grieving people say how dare I be happy
because it means I'm forgetting.
You might be getting pressure from friends and family to move on.
Heavy air quotes there, but you're not interested in moving on it, especially if it means leaving
your person or your loss somewhere as we've talked about in previous episodes somewhere
back there.
There's like an invisible back there where people are like, "Just get over it."
And I'm like, "Okay, I guess I'll just put my losses over here then."
And somehow magically move forward as if that never happened.
That's not real.
I have been in this place sitting in the wake of a devastating loss and also asking to
everyone and to no one all at the same time, "How on earth am I supposed to come back from
this?"
It is a question I get so many times in different forms.
You might be asking, "How do I rebuild after loss?"
What does rebuilding actually look like like this podcast listener?
What does rebuilding actually mean?
Is it possible to create a meaningful future without erasing my person or what happened?
So leaving it in the mythical somewhere back there?
And ultimately, people don't necessarily phrase it this way, but this is at the heart of
what they're getting at.
How can I live a good life after devastating loss?
Whatever a good life means to you.
And so I want to get to that when we talk about what it means to foster a lifetime partnership
with grief.
And then at the very end of this episode, I want to offer you like a very heartfelt letter.
I'm going to read a letter back to this letter, but I want to give you a little bit of a
little bit of a story.
I want to give you a little bit of a story.
A very heartfelt letter.
So let's get into the problem with getting over it.
In episode 15 of grief grower, I compared life after loss to living in the aftermath of a
natural disaster.
So I'm going to go with that metaphor for this episode.
If you picture life after loss like a home, your home that was suddenly destroyed, you don't
pretend that the house never stood there.
You don't ignore the pain of everything that you lost inside of its walls.
You do not forget every memory that you made inside of this house.
So getting over it demands that you do.
Instead, you pause and regroup.
You tend to your wounds, the urgent and the gradual.
You reach out for and you receive support and then brick by brick, you rebuild your life
from the foundation up.
When people in society say get over it, they are implying that rebuilding your life is as
easy as just like hiking up your pants and stepping over your life before and instantly
moving into a perfect, unblemished house down the street.
As if that natural disaster, that devastating loss never happened.
But you know, and I know, as grieving people that life after loss doesn't work like that.
You can't hike up your pants and step over your life before and instantly pop into a perfect
unblemished life after.
You can't just leave the past in the past or just let it go.
No matter what the people around you say or tell you to do, because you still remember
the people you've lost who've died.
You still carry their influence within you.
And even if you didn't lose someone to death, you still own the foundations that you built
your life before loss upon.
Even if those foundations have been cracked or worn down by heartbreak, that foundation,
that earth under your feet, that continues to belong to you.
And if you're like many of my clients, these foundations, these memories, these loved ones,
these pieces of your life before, these are some of your most prized possessions.
So I want to talk about what it looks like to move forward without getting over it.
In my online course in community life after loss academy, which we've been talking about
all summer, I teach this five step process called the grief method for rebuilding your life
that honors who and what you've lost while also helping you move forward with purpose,
peace, and a sense of wholeness.
It is literally the answer to the question, how do I rebuild life after devastating loss?
Inside life after loss community, we one, take stock of what remains, we two, grieve, what
can no longer be.
Three, fold in your memories, losses and loved ones.
We four surround you with protective people and shelter you from people who minimize
judge or dismiss what you've been through.
And five, lastly, we help you gradually welcome the return of meaning, hope, and joy and
live a long-term partnership with grief when you're ready.
Notice there's no speak in there about getting over it.
This in this framework grief is not an obstacle to overcome or an unpleasant experience to leave
somewhere back there.
Instead, grief is part of the architecture of your life.
Not because you're incapable of getting over it, there's nothing broken about you.
It's because everything about your life after is built upon those precious foundations of
your life before.
You get to keep your loved ones and your memories and rebuild with them in mind.
So in case you've missed the last five weeks or so or just in case you want an overview of
the grief method all in one place, here you go.
So what is the grief method?
The grief method is a five step framework or roadmap, whatever you'd like to call it,
that is designed explicitly for the continuous and multi-dimensional nature of grief.
It helps you rebuild life after loss metaphorically from the ground up, starting by helping you
feel safe and stable in a world where anything has happened.
You can go back to, I believe it's episode 17, where we talked about the number one thing
you need to do in order to feel safe after loss.
That's one of the first things we do in life after loss academy.
And ends with helping you explore things like hope, purpose, and your future life with grief,
because I don't want to do that stuff on square one.
I don't want you doing that stuff as soon as your life falls apart.
That is stuff for later, but it is something that many griefers are thinking of right away
is how am I supposed to live the entire rest of my life with grief.
And I'm like, let's roll it back just a bit and practice feeling safe first and releasing
emotions next and integrating loss into our life then and then doing grief with other
people.
And then we talk about the future and doing it in this order has worked for all types of
losses that have come through the digital doors of life after loss academy.
And not only that this framework is designed to be revisited many, many times throughout
your life, again, not because there's something wrong with you, but because we all inevitably
will experience future losses or and or discover new information about old losses.
And so you might need to come back and feel stabilized in the world when say a global
pandemic hits.
You might need to release difficult emotions when you're trying to do grief or establish
boundaries with somebody.
You might want to find new ways to fold losses into your life when you reach a new milestone
such as having children or moving to a new place or going on vacation.
And you might wonder how to foster a lifetime with grief that includes peace and purpose
and hope and joy at other segments of your life.
So the materials in this course are not just a one time thing to get through and say,
alright, I've rebuilt life after loss.
They are designed to help you build and keep building your life after loss and to ultimately
construct a and existence on this planet that honors you and honors your grief.
So here's the grief method step by step.
Module one, ground creates stability in chaos because grief can make you feel like the walls
have crashed in around you or that you have no ground to stand on.
So in this first foundational module of life after loss academy, I will teach you how to build
a sense of emotional and physical safety to design rituals that are gentle and regulate
a nervous system that has been stressed out by loss and to recognize what still remains.
There's this myth we tell ourselves that I have lost everything.
In reality, you've lost a lot, a hell of a lot, but it is not necessarily everything.
And so recognizing what still remains, what foundations are you standing on?
For many grieving people, their love, for many grieving people, yes, my person died.
I'm still living at the same address.
I still have the same job.
What truths still exist for you?
What little do you still have to hold on to because those become your stepping stones
forward?
This module, this first bit of life after loss academy is not just about fluffy mindfulness
tricks.
This is about anchoring and restabilizing you amid the disorientation of life after loss.
And it is a vital first step in rebuilding.
The next thing that we do is release, number two, module two, release to make room for
all of your emotions in life after loss because grief is weird, grief is messy.
It also for a lot of people, including myself, kind of ratchets you up to this emotional
spectrum that you have never felt before in your life.
I was feeling in major, major ways and I was like, I'm going crazy because I'm feeling
so much.
So I was telling myself after my mother's death because most of us were never taught how
to feel big or quote unquote negative feelings such as despair or anger in healthy, productive
or shame free ways that didn't just encourage us to bottle it up or shut it down.
So in the release module, you'll learn how to identify and express big, griefy emotions.
So things like rage, fear, guilt, longing, despair.
You will mourn the person that you used to be before your loss.
I will show you how to grieve the person that lost to go away from you, the self that
lost to go away from you.
And also to mourn the hopes, dreams and expectations that can no longer be.
We talked about this in another episode of grief grower recently about the two lists that
you need to make to release the person you used to be and the hopes, dreams and expectations
that can no longer be as a result of loss.
These are two categories of big, big things that loss takes away from you and how do you
navigate the motion surrounding that?
That is what we do in the release module.
And the goal of this module is not to magically let go of your emotion so that you're never
sad or feel bad again.
The goal is to practice moving through these emotions again and again to prove to yourself
they are survivable.
And so that you can see that they can be processed instead of staying stuck inside you
with nowhere to go.
A lot of people say this is the hardest part of life after loss academy, but whatever
leaf it is to get through it and to have these tools for releasing emotions whenever they
surface again in the future.
The third module life after loss academy is the integrate module and a lot of grieving
people say this is the most fun.
This is where you get to weave your losses into your life because again society treats
grief as something to get over instead of something to grow alongside.
And in this module I'll show you how to grow alongside grief instead of getting over
it.
It's kind of a bit of an unlearning and then a relearning.
So you will learn how to stay connected to your person who died or to your loss and honor
what happened in meaningful creative ways.
You can honor what happened, you can honor your relationship to them, you can honor the
love that remains whatever resonates with you.
And there's a lot of different tools and tips I have for how to do that in ways that specifically
resonate with you.
If you remember the episode we did about the signs and symbols library a few episodes
ago, this is part of that module.
Also in this module you will track your growth in grief.
Yes, even when it feels like you're growing backwards and society measures growth as like
up and to the right, I will show you a new way of measuring.
So you're not feeling like you're competing with your former self or with anybody else
as you're grieving.
I will also show you, and this is my favorite part of the integrate module, how to use compassion
and word games and humor to cope with grief's uncertainty and its constant presence.
Like grief's moved in and it's never moving out.
I'll show you how to make that funny or at least lighten it up a little bit.
So as the letter writer at the beginning of this podcast said, grief doesn't feel so heavy.
This is the part where grief becomes less of an obstacle and a thing to fight and to try
to get over and more of a collaborator in your life.
And most students who take life after loss academy or join as members say this is the part
where they stop seeing themselves as broken by loss and start seeing their losses as part
of the whole picture of their lives where really integrating loss into your life.
Number four, module four is probably my favorite part of the grief framework and it is established.
This is building relationships that honor your grief because no grieving person is an
island and grief never happens in a vacuum.
Said another way your friends, family members, co-workers and neighbors all have a literal
or metaphorical say and impact in how you're able to grief in the established module.
You will learn how to set boundaries with people who minimize or dismiss your grief.
You will also learn how to ask for what you need at work at home and with friends and I'll
give you very specific language and scripts for doing that.
And you will learn how to surround yourself with grief, literate people who get what you're
going through like build a new list of criteria of what does it take to be a friend to
me while I'm grieving and to seek out new relationships through that lens.
Because rebuilding after loss, putting this metaphorical house back together after a storm
includes receiving support and this section of life after loss academy is all about figuring
out how to do grief with other people.
Finally, let's talk about five, the foster module.
This is where we cultivate a long term relationship with grief.
The most common thing my students say they want to experience after loss, it's a handful
of things.
Peace, purpose, hope, joy.
These four come up more often than anything else.
To me then, the ultimate goal of rebuilding is something that feels like a good life to
students, clients, grievers that join life after loss academy into them.
My good life is one where their losses and loved ones are remembered and where they get to
feel the full spectrum of human emotions again, including peace, purpose, hope, and joy.
In the foster module, I will show you how to reframe grief not as a tormentor or the thing
that is keeping you stuck, but as a living being that you are in a lifetime relationship
with.
I will show you how to stop fighting grief and start collaborating with it whether you
need to make a decision about something quickly or you're figuring out what feels good to your
body or to your heart right now.
I'll show you how to see grief as that living thing that you can work alongside with and
stop using your energy to shut it away or push it in the basement, as I often say.
But instead to allow it to show up in every facet of your life and to honor its presence
there, you will also learn how to experiment with finding meaning and purpose again.
You don't have to decide what this all means right now or today, but I'll show you how
to sort of try on meanings like clothes and addressing room, if that's something that
resonates with you right now or experiment with what is my purpose?
What is this all for?
Why am I here?
These are very big questions that come up with grief and I love helping you sort of parse
out what feels like a right fit for you in this season.
And lastly, in the foster module, we talk so much about how to make space for hope, peace,
and joy in a life that has also been changed by loss.
You can't unsee the impact of grief.
You cannot undo what has been done, but you can also be on the lookout for hope, peace,
joy, happiness, purpose in a life that has seen this level of loss.
This last set of lessons, the foster module specifically, is the direct answer to the
question I received from this podcast listener.
This is the part in the grief method where you define what rebuilding means to you and
construct a life of future that not only includes your losses, but also honors the fact that
grief's presence is going to last.
This is where you get to move forward as a full and complete version of yourself, one
that has been yes impacted by loss.
And yes, is also carrying loved ones and memories and compassion into the future.
This is how you rebuild, not by leaving grief in the rubble of your old life and hiking
every pants and stepping over it and getting over it, but by allowing it to be part of the
new life that you are assembling from what loss left behind.
I want to leave you with this today, grief growers, the understanding that you can rebuild
and honor your heart.
Both things are possible to you.
If you are anything like this podcast listener, loss or stuck in the aftermath of grief and
wondering how on earth do I rebuild?
What does it mean to rebuild?
This is what I can tell you from more than 12 years now grieving my mom and coaching grieving
people since 2016.
So think of this as a letter from my heart to yours.
Rebuilding after loss is clunky, painful and time consuming.
There will be days where you plop down on the literal or metaphorical ground in frustration
because you feel like you do not have enough information or tools to keep going.
And you are right to be frustrated.
It is like building a house when you never worked in construction and never wanted to work
in construction.
On top of that, you have to live in the house that you're rebuilding every single day.
Your house, your metaphorical house, aka life as you know it, is the only place you have
to live.
So you will set up shop in misery as best you can.
All the while working very, very hard to make things feel a little bit less miserable,
bit by bit.
There will be parts of your old house, your old life before that you will grieve.
We talk about this in the release module.
All rooms you can no longer revisit in literal dreams that were torn away by loss.
You can remember these old versions of yourself and the hopeful futures that you once held.
You can even memorialize them in your new home in a picture frame, a cornerstone brick,
a tile in the kitchen.
But they are no longer the foundational bones of your house.
There is a devastating and heartbreaking permanence in that.
An simultaneous sense of power and agency and how you choose to honor those parts of your
life before going forward.
There will be seasons when nothing feels done enough and you will feel exposed to the elements.
Maybe you're missing a roof for a while or trying to rest in a house where wind is howling
through the walls that have been framed but not yet filled in.
Or maybe you just can't decide on a new fence just yet.
So poorly boundary friends and family members keep knocking on your door insisting you do
something about your grief or telling you to look on the bright side.
This is another frustrating yet normal thing about rebuilding and it's okay to grieve
that this, this kind of unfinishedness, is part of your life right now too.
There will probably also be a time or many times when it feels like your house will never
be a place of peace, hope or joy again.
With grief present in every single bit of your rebuilding it is normal to believe that
grief's volume will crowd out any happy or positive experience and for a while it certainly
may.
But gradually with your intentional focus and attention things like hope and peace will
find their way back to you.
This is really a lot of what we do in the foster module.
Peace, hope, joy, purpose, they may be hiding in the salt and pepper shakers or tucked away
in a random cupboard.
In other words they may not be out in the open like they used to be in life before loss but
just like you are waiting for their return.
They are often waiting for you to find them again.
Rebuilding after loss just like living in a house is a project that is never truly finished.
You will ground yourself into rituals that feel safe to you.
You will learn to release big hard emotions like anger and despair.
You will fold losses into your life.
You will establish grief honoring relationships with people you care about and eventually form
a long-term relationship with grief.
But this new home in which you live will constantly be changing shape.
Its cast of emotional characters will come and go with the seasons.
The rooms you spend your days in will vary.
Sometimes some years you will have a blooming and abundant garden.
Other times you might need beauty and abundance to be brought to you by others.
What I want to leave you with is that in every step of your rebuilding, grief and by association
your loved ones and your memories come along for the ride.
They are an unbreakable and inextricable part of your life's new foundations.
These are the bones of your new house.
There is no way to separate them from you because they are yours.
You do not have to get over a damn thing.
You get to stay put and rebuild on top of everything and everyone and every memory that got
you to where you are right now.
Said another way, moving forward in life after devastating loss is not about forgetting.
It's about doubling down on remembrance.
Remembering with more intention, remembering with more gusto, and remembering with more
compassion for yourself and the others you are grieving with than ever before.
That my dear letter writer, that my dear grief grower listening to this podcast right now
is what it is to rebuild life after devastating loss.
Do not fall for this get over it.
Move forward.
Get your act together propaganda.
It is not true.
It is not what a good life with grief actually looks like.
There is another way to do life after loss.
To rebuild again.
And it's one that is more authentic to your heart, more honoring of your grief, and more
connected to your losses, your loved ones, and everything that came before.
As with every other episode I've done this summer about life after loss academy, I will
once again offer you this invitation.
If you are looking to rebuild your life after any sort of devastating loss, death, divorce
diagnosis, the 3D's, and anything else under the sun, follow along with the grief method,
GRIEF, and meet other grieving people who are rebuilding life after loss.
Please join us in life after loss academy.
Inside you will get the complete 5 step grief method with all of the tools and many videos
you can watch inside at your own pace, and I will answer your questions every single week
during live coaching calls.
If you can't make the calls replays are available immediately after the call ends, and there's
sliding scale pricing for life after loss academy available, if you're marginalized or financially
struggling griever.
You can learn more and become a student at the link in the show notes.
And of course, until August 31st, 2025, it is still free for one month to join with the
code "Greef Grower", all one word.
Again, you can find that link in the show notes.
That's all for this episode of "Greef Grower".
Thank you so much for joining me today.
If you're looking for grief support beyond this show, you can always find free workshops,
blog articles, and my signature "What's your grief support style quiz?" at shallbeforcithia.com/links.
And once again, if you'd like to get support from me for your unique loss experience, join
me in life after loss academy, my online course, and community.
I'll walk you through my five step-grief framework for rebuilding after loss, and you can get
live coaching from me every single week to answer your questions.
It's just $33 a month to join or $22 a month if you're marginalized or financially stressed
griever, and you can cancel at any time.
Now through August 31st, you can try one month for free with code "Greef Grower", and you
can find a link to that in the show notes.
"Greef Grower" is hosted by me, shallbeforcithia with music by our own Eddie Goldstein.
Until next time, "Greef Grower's", 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]