There's kind of two different directions.
I can't imagine what you're going through takes.
The first is I can't imagine what you're going through.
It's like, well, you can't imagine it, but you don't want to.
And the other one, I can't imagine what you're going through is you actually can't
imagine what I'm experiencing.
So we are not related.
We cannot relate.
There is no thread or string or tether tying us together.
We are entirely separate entities and there is distance in pain in both of these tracks
that I can't imagine takes.
Hi there, grief growers and welcome back to grief grower.
I am in the dead center.
All puns included of probably the griefiest week of the year.
I did an Instagram or a threads post recently.
Both.
I did both recently about how this time of year has replaced the holiday season
as the biggest griefiest time in my calendar.
It used to be Thanksgiving in the lead up to Christmas because my mom died the day
after Christmas and kind of we found out that her breast cancer had come back
around Thanksgiving, got the news she was going to die a week before Christmas.
We're told she had six weeks to six months to live and then she died in seven days
the day after Christmas.
And so kind of that whole season of Thanksgiving and the lights going up and people
singing carols and giving gifts to each other and like things being married and
bright was always the worst part of year for my grief.
And that's the worst part of year for a lot of people's griefs because the holidays
can be really hard.
In general, there's an expectation to perform joy and also if you grew up in the
South like me like send out a Christmas newsletter of like here's all the amazing
things that happened this year and that has never been my reality.
But only recently in the last three years has the month of May become probably
the worst season of my life.
There's Mother's Day, which I graduated on Mother's Day more than 11 years ago
after my mom died.
My best friend died suddenly from COVID on May 13th.
So I literally just passed that milestone and the one that's coming up for me
tomorrow by the time you hear this podcast on May 16th will have officially been
one year since my cat who I adopted while I was in college died.
And that's a that's a big one for me.
I think a lot of people don't acknowledge or recognize how big or significant
pet loss is to our lives.
But pets are so interwoven into our routines and our rituals and how we go
about our days that do not have them here and to do not have him here for a whole
year now is is really like wild to my brain.
And I still am in that place with my best friend as well to not have had her here
for three years is really boggling to me like I do not comprehend how that is
real and true.
It has felt like forever and nothing all at the same time.
And I'm in that section of grief still where it seems like time is moving
very fast and time is moving very slow but it's all happening all at the same time.
So if you have been alongside me in my work for a while, welcome back.
If all of this is new information to you and you have never heard me speak before, hello.
My name is Shelby for Scythia.
I am a grief coach to time author and founder of Life After Loss Academy, which is an online
course in community that has helped dozens of grieving people stop feeling stuck and
alone and start building lives that they love that include the losses that they have faced.
And this includes not only death related losses but divorce and breakup, major diagnoses,
geographic move, job loss, pet loss and any other big loss that changes your life.
And on this show and throughout all of the work that I do, I firmly believe that grief
is not a thing to get over.
It is something that we grow with and alongside for the rest of our lives because grief is
not a problem that we have to deal with or figure out.
It is a relationship that we enter into usually by force.
But when we exist and learn to coexist with grief, we are not only reminded that yes,
everything will end, but it makes everything that we're experiencing right now feel all
that more precious and all that more meaningful grief is one of these ingredients that can
infuse us with a sense of purpose or value or peace sometimes even in life.
Because when you know everything is not going to be here forever, I am a firm believer that
grief is a doorway to empathy.
It's a doorway to appreciation.
It's a doorway to rearranging your priorities.
That's where damn sure.
It's a doorway to rest and oftentimes especially when you are so limited in what resources
you have or what energy you have or what time you have grief can be a doorway to creativity
as well.
This week we're going to be talking about one of my least favorite platitudes to receive
as a grieving person and one that I don't receive as often anymore because I talk about
this so much in public and private circles, but one that I received a lot in the early
months and years of all of my losses actually.
And that is I can't imagine what you're going through.
This is one, if griefers could say what's a phrase that really grinds your gears.
This is one that usually makes the top 10 if not the top five.
And to be frank, I can't imagine what you're going through is not comforting.
And today on the show, I want to talk about why.
Because I think a lot of people set out a lot of people who are alongside gravers, whether
they're friends and family, coworkers, medical professionals, nurses, school counselors,
soccer coaches, people who are alongside grieving people, even people in the grocery store
who are checking you out at the checkout line, want to say something that's helpful.
They want to be comforting.
They want to acknowledge what it is that you're going through.
But I can't imagine what you're going through feels like somebody just jammed you in the
chest.
A lot of people I speak to refer to it as like an electric shock or almost like a shoving
away.
They can almost feel it in their body.
So like I feel it in my soul for sure.
I feel it in my heart.
But it can almost also to feel like a pushing away in just a single sentence.
And if you have been on the receiving end of these words, again, whether you've faced a
death, a divorce or a breakup, a major diagnosis or another event that has drastically changed
your life.
You have felt the weirdness and uncomfortableness and alienation of this phrase in response to
the circumstances that you're going through.
You might get it in a sympathy card.
Somebody might comment it on a social media post.
You might get an email or a text so there's like a digital footprint of I can't imagine what
you're going through and people will say it to your face.
They'll say it to in person.
And yeah, sure, it's usually offered with the best of intentions.
People want to help.
It's supportive, but the positive intentions or the good intentions don't change the fact
that the impact of it by and large with almost every griever that I've ever spoken to
is pain.
And as a person who loves helping grieving people, not only rebuild life after a devastating
loss, but also talk about the words that can help us do that and how easily words can turn
into a weapon.
It's something that I'm really interested in talking about because so many people in life
after loss talk about these are the words that hurt.
These are the words that hurt.
These are the words that hurt and why?
And it seems like for as much as we're shouting as grievers for as much as we're shouting, the
world is not listening.
So this is another attempt to shout, hey, this phrase isn't helpful.
But also if you're watching this or listening to this and you're a supporter of grieving people,
I'm going to give you some scripts to say instead.
So this is a really deep exploration of where did this come from, this phrase, I can't imagine
what you're going through.
How do grievers receive it?
How and why does it feel so icky to them?
And then what to say instead.
So let's talk about where I can't imagine what you're going through came from.
This I couldn't find like a definitive like origin point source of this phrase.
It seems fairly recent, like it's not something people were saying in like a ye oldie times.
I'm thinking like Victorian times or even within, you know, maybe a hundred years ago, I don't
think people were using it then.
It's fairly recent in terms of human history.
And from what I can put together, it likely evolved from other expressions of empathy or
sympathy such as, I'm so sorry for your loss or I can't even begin to understand your pain.
And I think for a lot of people who are supporting grievers, especially those in grief adjacent
professions, I think I can't imagine what you're going through feels like an improvement on
statements they said in the past like I understand or I know what you're going through, which
very blatantly imply that the speaker, the person trying to offer comfort knows exactly
what it's like to be in the grievers shoes, which of course is not possible.
I do not like when people say I know where I totally understand or I absolutely get it.
I was there in my own life in XYZ because I'm like, no, you don't understand.
You don't get it.
You are not living inside of my body and my soul and my spirit and my relationship and my
experience of what's happening.
You can get close.
You may have experienced a similar loss, but just as no two griefs or no two losses are the
same no two grievers are the same either in a support group, for example, of people who
are widowed, you will not have the same relationships to the person who died.
You will not have the same ages, the same geographic locations, the same childhood upbringing,
the same sociodemographic circumstances to say the least, not to mention, do you have children
was one of you working inside or outside the home?
What was your financial situation?
How did they die?
You can't ever say I know exactly what you're going through.
I imagine for a lot of people, I can't imagine what you're going through felt like an improvement
on that phrase.
It was probably built or designed or invented.
However, it came to be with the intention of comforting people and to relay the fact that
grief is unique.
We've stopped assuming we know what grievers are going through.
We've stopped saying, I understand, I relate, I know and started saying, I can't imagine
what you're going through.
And in theory, that's supportive, but instead of drawing the person who is offering comfort
closer to their griever instead of kind of bridging that gap or that distance, it creates
distance.
It pushes grieving people away because kind of like these other phrases that have gone
by the wayside, it has the appearance of deep compassion, but the impact of it is shallow
and dismissive and painful.
And in a grief, a literate culture, largely grief, a literate culture, if you're listening
to this, you're trying to change and that's wonderful.
But for the most part, our culture prizes things like positivity and control and productivity
and silver lining.
So it's like, clean up grief as fast as you can, get over it and get back to normal life.
It can be a lot easier to say something like, I can't imagine in passing to a grieving
person kind of like a dry by platitude.
There you go.
Can't imagine, okay, bye, I've taken care of that on my to do list.
I've taken care of checking on that person and I've marked it off of my to do list.
It takes a fair bit more time and more energy and more presence and focus to pause and take
a moment to come up with something that is more empathetic and frankly more personal to
the loss that they faced.
Here's why a lot of people think this phrase is comforting.
I think the first reason I think it's comforting is because they don't really know what else
to say.
It's a thing on the shelf that's like that appears comforting and so I'll put that in
my cart and deliver it to a grieving person.
But I think for a lot of other people who are trying to offer comfort to someone who's
grieving, they are overwhelmed by the intensity of your loss or the suddenness of how fast
it happened.
This was true in my mother diet and when Tammy died and frankly when my cat died as well,
I have no nothing but sudden losses, which is wild to me or maybe the complexity of your
grief and all of the moving parts of it is really overwhelming to them.
A lot of other comfortors or people who are adjacent to grieving people say something like
I don't want to make them cry or I don't want to remind them of their loss.
Gravers know we can never be reminded.
We're always thinking about it.
And I think a lot of people, especially in this day and age when language is so important
to all of us for a lot of different reasons, tons and tons of supporters of gravers are
terrified of saying the wrong thing.
And there are so many articles including this one that exists on the internet that I'm
reading from right now.
You can find it at ShelbyFristhia.com/Blog that say don't say this.
It's not helpful.
Frankly, that scares people very rightly so who are trying their best to offer comfort.
And that is why the second half of this is going to be about what to say instead.
So with all of those fears and worries and concerns in mind, both things that they are
personally afraid of and things that they're afraid of sparking inside of you, the grieving
person, they land on something that they assume is helpful and humble.
I can't imagine what you're going through.
And I think for so many people who are alongside gravers this feels safe.
This feels like a safe script because it avoids assumptions.
I don't know what you're going through.
It doesn't risk comparison like when I was grieving uphill in the snow, both ways, etc.,
etc.
It is short and very easy to send across any medium text, email, social media in person over
the phone.
And it communicates that your grief is big.
There is a great magnitude.
I can't imagine what you're going through.
So there must be a lot of it.
But beneath the surface of this and I kind of alluded to this before, it's more often
about the speakers discomfort with grief than the griever's actual experience.
There's a wonderful time article about COVID pandemic grief from Rebecca Sofer who we had
on grief grower in episode four.
And she writes, the truth is, it's not that speakers can't imagine the experience.
It's that they don't want to.
In saying that the deep loss someone is feeling is too unbearable to picture, what speakers
are really doing is drawing a line between them and the grieving person.
This is not mine.
It's not ours.
It is only yours.
This grief belongs only to you is the implication and what she wrote.
And that is precisely what I can't imagine does.
It politely sidesteps the vulnerability of being with grief and being with the person
who is grieving and bearing witness to grief together.
And it keeps the onus of coping entirely on you, the grieving person's shoulders, entirely
on your shoulders.
So if you're a supporter of a griever right now or you're a grieving person who is like,
why is this harmful?
I've never heard this before.
We can all learn together.
This is what students and clients have told me when they hear, I can't imagine what you're
going through.
This is kind of the, the, the, the, the translator machine that happens in their brain.
One, your life is too horrific for me to even relate to.
Two, I'd rather not get close to your pain.
Three, this is genuinely unimaginable to me.
So I won't even try.
Four, your reality is my worst nightmare.
Five, something like this would never happen to me.
And six, you and I are fundamentally different.
Even if it's not what the speaker means when they're trying to comfort you, the grieving
person, the impact is what matters.
There's kind of two different directions.
I can't imagine what you're going through.
Takes.
The first is I can't imagine what you're going through.
It's like, well, you can imagine it, but you don't want to.
And the other one, I can't imagine what you're going through is you actually can't imagine
what I'm experiencing.
So we are not related.
We cannot relate.
There is no thread or, or string or tether tying us together.
We are entirely separate entities.
And there is distance in pain in both of these tracks that I can't imagine takes.
There is a really wonderful piece on modern loss by Kim Goldman and she says, when someone
doesn't know what to say, I can't imagine is a phrase that many of us hear.
It's said to simultaneously confer great weight upon the situation at hand, while also allowing
the person commenting to distance themselves from it.
Neither can I is always my response to I can't imagine.
I say it to make the point that it's so horrendous that even I, the one who is living through
this experience can hardly believe I am living through this experience.
The only difference between me and the person trying to offer me comfort is that I was not
afforded the luxury of not living through my child's death.
Exactly, Kim.
Exactly.
Grieving people already feel as if their pain is too big and too much and too inconvenient
for other people to handle.
And when they hear that someone can't imagine what they're going through, it reinforces
this idea that they are othered or separate or untouchable or broken.
And not only that, but despite the fact that there is a very real human person communicating
with them who wants to comfort them, that human cannot or doesn't want to imagine what
they're going through.
So their grieving person is left to deal with the fallout from their loss alone.
It is exactly the same as saying, I see your pain from way over here.
And for people listening on the podcast, I'm backing up from the microphone.
I bet you can hear, I see your pain, but I'm way up here.
I'm way over here.
I am touching your pain, as they say in the Grinch Christmas song, with a 39 and a half
foot pole.
And so it's like, I'm here for you, but like from like 12 blocks away or from eight states
away or from 15 countries away or from 80 planets away.
That is what I can't imagine what you're going through feels like to people who are grieving.
I want to say kind of clearly, and I hope this metaphor comes across, that the word imagine
is not the problem.
Imagination itself is not the problem because when you use imagination to support grieving
people, I'm talking to supporters now, it can actually be a bridge between you.
So instead of saying, I can't imagine to say, I can imagine because here's the irony.
Generally you supporter, people who are talking to grieving people about their losses, they
can imagine what they're going through.
You as a supporter, you might not know exactly what it's like to lose your person or experience
your grievous specific loss, but you can imagine fear, you can imagine despair, you can imagine
feeling stuck or confused or unmoored in lostness and uncertainty, you can imagine longing
or aching for somebody who can never come back or waking up over and over again in a life
that is worse than you ever expected it could be.
And when you as a supporter of grieving people do try to imagine even clumsily, even imperfectly,
it creates connection with the person that you're trying to comfort.
So so many of the people I work with in life after loss academies say that having a friend
or a family member or a coworker picture their loss actually try to imagine and then offer
compassion from that sort of empathetic imagining, this is a term I'm inventing right now, it
doesn't require perfect words.
It only requires that you be honest about the horror or the agony or the uncertainty
that you are imagining.
It's like you're putting yourself in your shoes to the best of your ability and responding
to that with kindness and empathy and what that does is shows that you are willing to put
yourself in a place with a grieving person and sit with them in their sorrow instead of
shrinking away from it or again kind of touching it but like from way over here.
So here's some things to say to grieving people instead of I can't imagine what you're
going through and if you're grieving person and you want the people in your life to say
something different, these are things that you can also offer as substitutions.
So you could say something like I don't resonate with I can't imagine what you're going through,
it makes me feel like you don't care to imagine what I'm going through.
I wish you could say this instead or I would rather you say this instead and that is a boundary
you can draw for yourself as a grieving person.
It's not fair that we have to be the teachers of our grief and also be the people who are
grieving but this is a burden or a task that is for now until society can do better firmly
on grievous shoulders.
I am with you through it and we'll talk more at the end of the episode how you can set
even better and even clearer boundaries with the people in your life as you grieve.
Okay, here's some scripts for you.
I am heartbroken that you're going through this.
I've never experienced what you're facing so you delineate you like I don't know what
you're going through can't imagine but it's a never way of saying that.
I've never experienced what you're facing but I want to understand more if you're open
to sharing.
Tell me a story or what does your day look like?
How does your heart feel in this moment?
Asking opening questions that show your grieving person that you're interested as opposed to
saying I can't imagine what you're going through full stop is a really lovely way to keep conversation
going as opposed to putting a big fat period on the end of it.
I don't know what to say but I'm here with you in it.
Very simple, very effective.
I'm imagining how painful this must be and I wish I could make it easier for you.
And then if you want to be really helpful, actually offer three ways to be helpful or be
supportive or three practical things you could do to help.
Know the law and get the mail, address them envelopes, whatever the case may be.
Think about what your gifts are and how much time you have to offer and then offer from
that place.
There's a wonderful old episode of coming back I did with Elisa for an array about that
that you could certainly go look up.
It's one of my all type favorites.
Very simple one as well.
This is unfair and awful.
You don't have to carry it alone.
And this is one of my all time favorites.
I haven't forgotten about your loss or I haven't forgotten that you're grieving and remembering
in certain name of loved one here or remembering your dad or remembering your sister or remembering
your best friend matters to me.
And sometimes for grieving people just knowing that somebody else is remembering the fact
that they're grieving is a really, really big deal and does wonders more for offering
compassion and empathy than I can't imagine what you're going through.
And each of these phrases does something simple but also radical.
They stay with the grieving person.
They do not pivot away from the pain or end it again with a big fat period and move onto
something else.
And they don't put up an emotional barrier between you and the person who's grieving.
They say, "I'm here and I care enough to imagine what you're going through right now."
So where do we go from here?
If you have been hurt by these words, if someone has said, "I can't imagine what you're going
through to you and it's stung, know this.
You are not being too sensitive.
Your pain is real and your grief is real."
And so is your need for connecting and having language directed towards you that feels
safe and comforting and emotionally honest.
All of those.
That bar is not too high for you, dear griever.
And if you were a supporter or even a griever who has said this phrase to someone grieving
in the past, it's okay.
I am offering you like a bucket of compassion right now because probably I have said this
myself.
Most of us have before we knew better, but once we know better, we can do better.
So I invite you kind of for your homework to swap out.
I can't imagine what you're going through for one of those six scripts that I offered instead
and just see what happens.
The next time somebody reveals their lost story to you, substitute one of those.
Keep them in your phone.
Keep them in your pocket.
Keep this podcast episode on your player constantly so you can reference it.
The next time you need to text somebody who has just shared a horrific thing that has happened
to them.
Keep it somewhere where you can see it or again, you can go read the full blog at ShelbyForSitthia.com/Blog.
It will always live there as well.
And it's one of these things that is a small, tiny way that you can have this huge ripple
impact on the people around you.
You can demonstrate that you not only care, but that you are interested in continuing the
relationship.
It doesn't end at, I can't imagine what you're going through, which offers nothing else to
the conversation.
It is painful and it is unproductive.
But to say, I hate that this is your reality.
Or I have not forgotten that you're grieving.
And I care about remembering your dog who died.
Those are ways to keep conversation with a grieving person going, especially when they are feeling
so tremendously isolated in their grief.
I know without a shadow of a doubt, and this is one of the things that I'm most passionate
about in my work, which is what I'm trying.
I'm clapping my hands, but I'm clapping quietly.
I'm hoping it doesn't show up on the mic.
It will definitely show up on YouTube.
Words matter a shit ton when you're grieving.
They can build bridges or they can build walls.
They can soothe or they can isolate.
They can say, I'm with you or you're on your own.
Words are some of the most powerful and free tools that we have to comfort people when they're
grieving.
So whether you're a griever or someone supporting a griever, let's all agree to be people who
choose our words with care.
And let's all agree to be people who imagine others pain on purpose, even when it hurts.
Because this is where healing begins, but it is also where connection begins.
And it is also where community not only begins, but continues.
And I get chills thinking about this because this is one of the ways that we can keep our friendships
and relationships and working relationships and medical professional relationships and
school relationships and extended family and ancestry relationships all intact in the
aftermath of loss.
One of the biggest pain points grieving people talk about is, yeah, my loss happened and
then I lost a ton of friends and a ton of family because they did not know how to respond
to my grief and I didn't know how to tell them otherwise.
I didn't know how to teach them because I didn't have the words.
And this is one of the things I'm most passionate about in my life.
So if you are looking for more scripts, tips and tools for navigating life after loss, most
of them wrapped around language, I hope you'll join us in life after loss academy.
This is an always open online community for griever all over the world where every single
week we wrap words around the experience of loss and you small and sometimes silly.
If you can handle some fun while you're grieving scripts to make a living with grief feel
just a little bit softer and a little bit more possible.
And as always, you can find the link to learn more and join life after loss academy when
you're ready in the show notes.
And if that's out of reach for you right now, that's a okay.
I hope you'll keep coming back here to grief grower where I will continue to share words,
stories, conversations, tools, tips, education about what it is to live a long term relationship
with grief and not just one that feels survivable, but one that feels thriveable.
That feels like there can be meaning and depth and richness and purpose and peace and
maybe even hope.
Enjoy all woven in.
That's all for this episode of Grief Grower.
Thank you so much for joining me today.
If you're looking for grief support beyond this show, you can find free workshops, blog
articles like the one I read from today and my signature, what's your grief support style
quiz at shall be for Scythia.com/links.
If this podcast felt validating, comforting, educational or otherwise helpful to you, please
subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and please share a grief grower
with a friend because you never know what someone you love is going through.
As always, a huge thank you to the Grief Grower's community for supporting the show on Patreon.
If you'd like to join them and help me keep this show ad free because grief is hard enough
without commercials, head to patreon.com/shellbyforsitia.
As a Patreon supporter, you get to help me choose new topics and guests for the show and
you're the first to get behind the scenes access to all of my upcoming projects like my
new book coming out in 2026.
Grief Grower is hosted by yours truly, shall be for Scythia with music by Addy Goldstein.
Until next time, Grief 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]