The promise of it is that if we just hold on long enough, if we wait our turn, the pain
of grief will magically fade, but for anyone who's lived through devastating loss, that
promise is hollow because once again, time does not have the power to heal.
All it has is the power to pass.
It is what you do with your time that contributes to your healing.
[Music]
Hi there, grief growers.
It is a new year and welcome to new episodes of grief grower.
I am so honored to be with you today.
If you have been growing alongside me in my work for a while, welcome back.
If you are new to me in my work, hello.
My name is Shelby Fersithia.
I am a grief coach, three time author and the founder of Life After Loss Academy, which
is a program that has helped dozens of grieving people stop feeling lost, stuck, broken,
and alone, and start building lives that they genuinely love from the lives that loss
forced them to live.
This includes, of course, not only death-related losses, but also losses like divorce and break-up,
major diagnosis, and any other major loss or transition 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 when we stop treating grief less like
a problem to be solved and treat it more like an invitation to live more deeply, we can
create meaningful lives that are rich with the memories that we carry, the struggles we
faced, and the preciousness of what it is to be alive right here and right now.
Being of the preciousness of being alive, some of my greatest, I would say, proudest achievements
in my life, my short life so far on this planet, has been writing and publishing books,
and we are less than three months away from the release of my third book, which is called,
of course, I'm here right now, three actually helpful things to say to someone grieving.
This little guide book, less than 200 pages, teaches you how to support a grieving person
in your life, even if that person is you, with the best free tool that any of us has and
those are words.
So that you will never enter another conversation with any grieving person wondering what on earth
do I say that is actually comforting to them?
This comes from more than 10 years of experience working with grieving people and more than 12 years
of being a griver myself.
It is full of scripts and frameworks and exercises and journaling prompts and is such a think
starter for how to have conversations with people who are grieving.
I will say that as an author, pre-orders are super helpful when it comes to getting the
book seen by bookstores and the marketing powers that be in this Capitalistic Society.
So you can find a link to pre-order, of course, I'm here right now in the show notes.
If you have already pre-ordered this book first off, thank you so much.
You could submit your receipt number from Bookshop, Amazon Barnes and Noble, or your local Indie
bookstore.
Thank you for supporting Indie in these trying times.
On my website, you can submit that receipt on my website to access my free six week book
club where we will read, of course, I'm here right now, whether in real hard back copy or
e-book copy and discuss it together as a grieving group.
This book club kicks off in early April, so I want to make sure you have your copy of the
book before then.
And last thing about this book before we get into the episode, if you like to party, if you
would like to celebrate the launch of this book with me, I'm hosting two launch parties
that I would love to see you at.
The first one is taking place the evening before the book comes out on March 30th here in
Chicago.
And the second one is the day the book comes out March 31st on YouTube.
So no matter where in the world you live, you can tune in to hear more about the clients
and interactions that inspired the words in this book.
And you can also hear me read some excerpts from, of course, I'm here right now live.
And of course, the replay of that virtual event will be available if you cannot attend
live. So even if you can't come at the time that is listed, please register anyway and I
will email you a copy so that you can watch it the day after or the week after or whenever
it resonates with you.
You can get tickets for both of those launch party events at the link in the show notes.
Okay, that's all for bookstuff.
Let's get to today's episode, which is all about the BS myth that time heals all.
I titled this episode, Time Heels All Is A Lie because that is something that I have
just discussed with every single grieving person in my life.
This is friends and family.
This is grief professionals.
This is clients.
Anyone who has come across my path and like, what do you think of Time Heels All?
And everyone I talked to is like, oh, that's garbage.
So let's talk about why and how it's garbage.
If you have ever been grieving, which I imagine you have, if you're listening to this podcast
and have this phrase, Time Heels All, lobbed in your direction, you probably felt dismissed
or pissed off or both.
It is one of those platitudinous phrases that people offer when they don't know what else
to say, but the reality is, and something that I say often is that Time itself does not
have the power to heal.
Time only has the power to pass.
It is what we do with the time while we are grieving that is actually the element of healing.
And I suppose to people who have not experienced loss this phrase, Time Heels All Sounds comforting.
It is very short and it's very certain of itself Time Heels All Period.
And the promise of it is that if we just hold on long enough, if we wait our turn, the pain
of grief will magically fade.
But for anyone who's lived through devastating loss, that promise is hollow because once again,
Time does not have the power to heal.
All it has is the power to pass.
It is what you do with your time that contributes to your healing.
So today on the show, I want to explore where this phrase comes from, why it's not just
unhelpful but actively harmful, and what actually does help gravers heal over time.
So let's get into where the phrase Time Heels All comes from.
The idea that time alone, time all by itself, can mend emotional wounds is not new.
It actually is over 2000 years old.
The earliest version of this sentiment is often attributed to a Greek dramatist and poet
named Meander, which is funny to me, co-meander around a near grief, who wrote around 300
years old, "Time is the healer of all necessary evils."
So maybe people were saying Time Heels All before then, but this is the first instance that
at least I could find in my research of it being written in recorded history.
And the phrase reappeared later in Chaucer's, I don't know how to pronounce this, so please
bear with me, is it "choiless and christy day?"
I'm hoping so, written in the 1380s.
And it is an old English sentence that basically says, "As time hem hurt, a time dot
hem cure."
And that is translated to, "As time hurt them, time cures them."
And if you fast forward to the 19th and 20th centuries, we see versions of this phrase show
up everywhere from things like Victorian death rituals to hallmark cards to the well-meaning,
advice and text messages and so on and so forth that we receive from friends and family.
But here's the problem, just because a phrase has been around for a long time doesn't
make it good or true.
So let's get to the problems, the issues that I think most grieving people have with the
phrase "time heals all."
So on the surface, time heals all sound "cleashay" at worst.
It's a tired thing that gets repeated a lot.
The worst thing it can do to you is be a cliche.
It is what I giggle at thinking about a nothing burger of a phrase, so basically a phrase
with words and then nothing in the middle that is meant to imply hope or comfort.
One day your pain will end or if you just give it time, eventually healing will happen.
But beneath that nothing burger-ness of time heals all the emptiness of those words, it
actually makes several dangerous assumptions.
And I think this is the issue that a lot of grieving people have with time heals all.
Number one, the phrase puts grievers on a passive clock.
Someone is counting how long it's been.
Time heals all implies that healing is something that happens to you, not something that you
actively participate in or pursue for yourself.
It encourages this kind of emotional passivity, just sit back and the healing will happen,
that demands sit still and wait long enough and eventually you will feel better.
Your turn will come, your time will come, the healing will arrive to you.
But grief does not work like that.
The example I always like to give for this is that we all know someone who is still deeply
impacted by a loss from decades ago and still talking about or reenacting the hurt of
it.
Not because they are weak or broken, but because they were never given the tools or the
space or the presence or the witnessing to process that grief and pain.
And on the other hand, we also know people, no hennaf seen people, who have experienced life
altering loss and managed to feel joy again, not because time did the work, but because they
did.
Grievers know just instinctually and also by looking the hell around that time in and of
itself is not the force that is healing grievers.
Others themselves are the force that is healing grievers.
Here's the second issue I have with Time Heels All.
It dismisses the depth of loss.
Hearing Time Heels All can feel like a slab in the face to a lot of people, including myself.
It suggests that pain is temporary or fixable or less significant than it feels.
And for someone who has lost a person or a pet or a version of their life, that's the
thing that they are grieving.
This phrase feels really dismissive and really cruel.
And on top of that, the thing that I noticed as I was writing this article from my blog and
then speaking it here to you on the podcast is that this phrase is like "hella impersonal."
It says nothing about the significance of your relationship to who or what you lost.
It says nothing about "oh I'm sorry for the loss of your father or my condolences on your
divorce" or whatever is happening.
And it also says nothing about the person who's saying that phrase is comforting you.
And even equally overused support phrases like "let me know if you need anything" or
"in my thoughts and prayers."
That says more about you and the person who's trying to comfort you than Time Heels All.
Time Heels All is the most generic grief support phrase I can possibly think of.
And the bar for grief support phrases is truly in hell.
My best friend Tammy and I used to joke about that a lot but we're like "wow the bar is
in hell."
Like it should take nothing to offer more than this, to think a little bit harder on what
you would like to say to someone than this.
And so when people offer your Time Heels All, it doesn't say anything, anything, anything
about who or what I lost or what I possibly miss or maybe even that you're thinking of
me or you want the best for me or you can see how hard I'm trying to get through this
nothing about that Time Heels All.
It is so neutral, it is so removed, it is so impersonal and it takes all the depth,
the real human depth out of what it is to grieve.
Okay, finally number three.
The issue I have with Time Heels All is that it shames grievers for still feeling pain.
This is similar to number one is that somehow now you're saying Time Heels All, you're on
a grief clock.
But this results in, when grief lasts longer than other people around you expect it to, the
ticking of Time Heels All starts to turn into judgment.
This is the other side of the coin of Time Heels All.
So if you are not over it by now or if you're still feeling sad, even though time has passed,
people judge you for how you're grieving.
And instead of offering compassion, Time Heels All becomes a deadline of sorts.
When you miss whatever deadline that the people in your life think you should adhere to, it
is normal then for you when they say this to feel broken or defective or like you've let
them down.
You have disappointed their expectations of whatever invisible time is supposed to heal
all.
But everyone who has ever grieved knows that grief does not adhere to a clock or a schedule
or a calendar.
Grief does not work in time.
It works in spirals and cycles and a lot of people talk about waves of grief.
And I like to say grief works in the spur of the moment.
You can be fine one minute and grieving the next and no two people move through loss in
the same way or on the same time frame.
It is impossible, I say, to measure success and grief by way of time because grief doesn't
even measure itself that way.
I'm going to say that one more time.
It is impossible to measure success and grief by way of time because grief doesn't even
measure itself that way.
What I want to do now is transition to a snarky bit.
So those of you who love the snark, I hope you'll stick around for this one.
The thing I think about often with the phrase time heals all is that if that was true, if
that was real, if that was what we genuinely believed about grief and loss and healing
and life, all old people everywhere would be the most healed among us.
If time was the great healer, then all elders in our society would be fully and completely
healed.
They would be peaceful, joyful, emotionally whole, and that would be on full display for all
of us to see.
But we all know, from experience, from looking around, from having eyeballs, from having
your holes, that is not true.
Some older adults are still living in the emotional aftermath of a loss that happened 30 or
40 years ago because again, they never had the chance of the support to grieve it.
And some people, in their teens and 20s and 30s, who have faced tremendous loss, are living
beautiful and emotionally present lives.
Once again, it is not about how much time has passed, it is about what you do with your
time.
So I've been talking about what you do with your time.
And I want to offer you some things to do with your time that support actual healing and
grief because if time alone doesn't heal, what is it that you do with your time that
does?
And I will say kind of my asterisk caveat at the beginning of this is that the answer
is not a single action.
It is a collection of practices and mindsets and support systems that create space for healing
to happen in your life because I think healing is more of a verb than a noun.
Healing is sort of always happening, just like grieving is always happening.
Healing is always happening.
And there's never such thing as reaching an ultimate healed destination.
I don't believe in that for myself.
Like, oh, I'm done grieving now.
I'm fully healed.
I think you're always grieving.
But you are also always healing.
So these are a few key things I listed five that truly support healing over time.
I've seen this for myself.
I've seen this for my clients.
Number one, doing the work of grief.
And what I mean by that is this healing takes work.
And it's not just about feeling pain.
It's also about processing it.
So this could look like journaling or writing letters to the person that you lost or the
person that you were before a loss.
If you do not lose a person, it might look like crying or screaming, which all of you
know is my favorite thing, or moving your body in a way that expresses your grief, getting
the physical element of grief to move through you is a way to heal, talking through memories
and regrets with either a trusted friend or somebody who knew your person who died,
or a professional who's willing to hear that from you.
And then finally, acknowledging what you've lost, literally wrapping words around what
it is that you are mourning and talking about how deeply it has affected you.
Life is messy and unferenitable and non-lidier, and obviously you do not just feel better
one day.
You are consistently doing the work of grief to work your way towards a life that can hold
grief and joy and healing at the same time and in my brain, that is real healing verb,
not now.
Okay, number two is to have a grief informed community, because to me, especially after
my mom died, especially after my best friend died, even after my cat died, I learned that
one of the most healing forces in the world is being witnessed by other people, having
other people see and receive and honor and validate the grief that you are going through.
And when you are in community with other people who get it, not because they're trying
to fix you, but because they're traveling the same road that you are, the burden that
you carry, lightens because it is shared.
That is in part why I created Life After Lost Academy, which is my online course in community,
because grieving people need and deserve a space where they can be fully themselves, grief
and all. And if you are interested in learning more, you can watch the free workshop that's
included in the links section of my show notes.
Okay, number three is giving yourself permission to grieve.
I think this kind of ties into doing the work of grief, but giving yourself permission
is sort of worth its own explicitly named bullet point in this list, because much of
healing in Life After Lost is tossing out your old beliefs about grief and giving yourself
permission and grace as you figure out what grief actually is.
So giving yourself permission to grieve looks like dropping the timeline of when healing
should happen and how it should look.
So it's kind of getting rid of the sheds.
It's also letting grief change you, including your values and needs and identity, giving yourself
permission to grieve looks a lot like giving yourself permission to change.
We can talk about that in a future episode.
Absolutely.
Let me know if you're interested in that.
It also looks like allowing emotions to rise without judgment.
I think that's what most people think of when they think of giving yourself permission
to grieve.
And if you're interested in any of these things, my first book permission to grieve is born
out of this question of how do I give myself permission to grieve.
It is a three-part structure, one of my favorite things.
I also have a three-part structure, and of course I'm here right now, but it gives you guidance
and exercises and journaling prompts.
It's kind of my token thing on how to give yourself what I call the three permissions,
permission to feel, permission to be, which is permission for your identity to change,
permission to do, to take your grief out into the world to be seen by yourself and to other
people.
So if that's something you're interested in, you can also visit ShelbyFersethia.com and
snack a copy of that.
Number four is staying connected to your grief.
And this is staying connected to your grief as a force, but also if you are grieving the
death of a person or a pet or a life that you used to live, it's still extending tethers
toward that life and allowing yourself to stay tied to it in some way.
Because to me and to so many other grief professionals and grievers, healing is not about forgetting.
Healing is about rooting yourself or tethering yourself even more deeply to who and what you
lost so that you can carry all of those things into the future with you and creating small,
predictable rhythms and routines can help you feel grounded as you navigate life after
loss.
So things like morning rituals or bedtime routines or memorial traditions every year or
grief anniversary practices are all like little baby anchors that say, "I am still here.
I am still breathing.
I still remember.
I am still moving forward.
I am still doing this."
If you are grieving the death of a person, my book here grief your way shows you how to
develop an ongoing relationship with a person that you lost and there's a lot of examples
of rituals and letters or storytelling or visualizations that help you stay connected
with them.
Again, you can find that at ShelbyFersethia.com.
And if you are grieving something besides a person, divorce, break up, major diagnosis,
job loss, astrangement, geographic move, insert your loss here, you can always join us
in life after loss academy.
The grief framework, GRIEF that I teach inside of that course and these are all on demand
video lessons can help you figure out what are the rituals and the routines and the connections
that I want to maintain from the people and things that I've lost and what do I need
to release in order to be able to move forward.
And there are live calls with me every single week so I can work through that with you.
And again, you can always find more information about all of those things in the show notes.
The last thing I want to offer you here is consuming grief honoring media.
This is stuff that can help you heal and heal and heal again over time.
Things like podcasts, books, blogs, movies, music, even grief professionals on social media
are all wonderful places and forms of content to seek out information or tools or support
as you move through grief.
You can listen or you could read, you can scroll or you can watch.
There is so, so much that you can take away from the things that other people have made
that are grief informed and to find things that resonate with you, you might consider
googling things like grief shows or podcasts about loss and death or free grief support blogs
to get started and you can customize them with your individual losses.
So you might say podcasts about is changement or TV shows about the death of a parent or
movies about the loss of a pet or something of that nature.
And you can type in your specific instance of loss and see what other things people have
created to consume, to absorb with those grief themes and storylines because sometimes healing
can come from observing how others have done it and doing that kind of observing over time
is a form of healing in life after loss.
Before we go, I want to offer you some things to say instead of time heals all.
If you are supporting someone grieving, there are alternatives that are much better.
They are more meaningful, they are more personal, they are not the nothing burger of time heals
all.
Here's just a few.
I don't expect you to be okay right now.
You don't have to have it all figured out.
I am here to listen even if I don't know what to say.
There is no right timeline for grief.
Take all the time you need, I mean it, and I see how much you're hurting and I am not
going anywhere.
Each of these phrases is so, so much better than time heals all because they relay your
care and support while also granting the grieving person in your life permission to grieve
in their own way and on their own schedule.
Something that I firmly believe is that we should put the time heals all phrase, myth,
worldview to rest.
We should put this away and not say it ever again because one more time.
Time is not the healer.
You are the healer of your grief and loss experience.
Your willingness to feel, your courage to show up, your effort to consistently and continually
honor what's been lost or taken from you and to keep going anyway.
These are the things that are healing in life after loss.
The next time someone offers you time heals all as a response to your grief, you have
every single right in the world to disagree.
You can say, here's a response back to them.
Actually, I'm the one doing the healing.
How about that, maples?
I will see you next time on Grief Grower.
That's all for this episode of Grief Grower.
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 Supporters Strength Quiz" at shallbeforSatthia.com/links.
And if you'd like to get support from me for your unique loss experience, join us in life
after loss academy, my online course, and community.
As a student, 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.
Replays are always available if you can to 10 live.
It is just $33 a month to join or $22 a month if you are marginalized or financially stressed
griver.
You can cancel your membership at any time.
If this podcast felt validating, comforting, educational, hell yeah, or otherwise helpful
to you, please subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and be sure
to share this show with a friend, because you never know what someone you love is going
through.
Grief Grower is hosted by me, shallbeforSatthia with music by Addy Goldstein.
And until next time, I see you, I am so proud of you and the work that you're doing in
the world.
And I love you.
Because even through grief, we are growing.
[Music]