Hello and welcome to Dear grief guide.
A podcast where each week I answer one anonymous letter from a listener feeling lost, stuck,
heartbroken or overwhelmed in the midst of grief.
My name is Shelby Fercitya.
I'm a grief coach and author and I'm here to help you create a life you love from the
life lost forced you to live.
Let's get to today's letter.
Dear grief guide, I have so much grief to work on I don't even know where to begin.
I was abused as a child and both my parents abandoned me at different points in my life.
My sister also ran away from home when I was 12 and we'd been a strange tense.
Two years ago my long-term partner broke up with me out of the blue after we vowed to
spend the rest of our lives together.
I couldn't believe that I was being abandoned again.
To this day I feel frozen and unable to connect with others.
Could you please help me reframe my grief so that I can start living my life again?
Thanks, frozen in disbelief.
First frozen, thank you so much for reaching out and connecting with me.
I can recognize how deep this pattern of abandonment runs through your life and I am so honored
and so grateful that you chose to reach out to me.
You wrote in your letter that you feel frozen and unable to connect with others but I need
to let you know that this connection that you've tried to make has been received, connection,
successful, connection held strong.
Secondly, I know you wrote to me about grief but what you've written about and what you've
written about, let's put an end in there, is more than I think what most people would call
just grief.
What you have lived through, what you have faced is trauma.
This is abuse.
This is an unwinding of everything that life was supposed to be for you.
You are not just grieving physical presence.
You must also grieve physical safety, emotional support, mental safety and stability seeing
the world as a safe and good place that is a thing worth grieving and spiritual connection
and world view.
These are all things tangled up in grieving, trauma, abuse and a lifetime of loss.
A lot of times people say that we grieve because we love but in the case of abusers and toxic
people and assholes, I find that truth hard to swallow.
Sometimes I bet you can relate to this.
It is complicated and sometimes paint brushing over all of it with the word love.
It feels too simple.
You wrote to me asking for a reframe so here's what I'm going to give you.
You are weighted down with so much grief because you care.
You cared back then when the abuse and trauma and a strangement was happening to you and you
care right now in the present.
In this long term partner left, you will care about your losses into the future as well.
You grieve these many abandonments because you have a heart inside of you that by design
was created to give a shit.
Humans are born forming attachments connecting to people and to animals and objects reaching
out for love and help and care and comfort.
That is what we are made to do by design.
We are a community attaching creatures.
And then to have that taken away time and time again in every possible flavor and in every
permutation and combination and iteration that you can imagine and some that you can't
and couldn't anticipate.
But certainly creates grief.
Your list of things to grieve is massive frozen and in as much way as I can I would be honored
to help you on your way.
But and this is a huge but I hope that you will not exclusively lean on me because again there
is so much more than just grief here.
What I can do should you choose to work with me beyond the bounds of this podcast episode
is trust yourself as the one constant thing that has been with you through your whole
life.
Amidst the abuse, amidst the astrangement, amidst the breakup and the abandonment, you have
been here with you the whole time.
You may not have been here for you, sometimes we even practice self abandonment after
enough trauma, after enough grief, after enough overwhelm we can abandon ourselves.
But some piece of us by design again by design is still here because we must be we have no
other choice.
So I can help you begin to trust yourself as the constant thing that has been with you
the whole time and will continue to be with you the whole time.
And I can help you begin to surround yourself with people you trust to honor every single
part of your story, whether they're friends, whether they're coworkers, whether they eventually
become romantic partners.
But these other layers of abandonment, attachment, unattachment and the nervous system consequences
of having stability repeatedly pulled out from under you, that is best done with a trauma-informed
therapist.
First, I want you to join Life After Loss Academy, email me if you need financial support.
We can walk through these tools related to grief together.
And then I highly, highly, highly, highly encourage you to visit traumatherapistnetwork.com
or and or and.
Look for any online or in-person resource that guides you through coping with trauma in ways
that are backed by research.
Look for resources and people with trustworthy reviews because sadly the trauma space, especially
these days can be rife with grifters, looking to take advantage of people who have been wounded.
And please look for credentialed instructors.
People who can confirm for you who can demonstrate to you that they are valid, trauma-informed therapists
and body workers and healers of whatever flavor resonates most with you in this season of your
life.
I think these two things together, working with me through Life After Loss Academy and working
with especially of trauma-informed therapists, are going to be the things that will walk you
back to yourself in a manner of speaking, in a life that is full of unfairness, and trauma,
and lostness, and abandonment, and feeling as if you are the only one in the world, in your
world.
I grieve with you, frozen, and I understand, I comprehend, I get why.
You call yourself frozen, it makes sense.
Your response to what has happened is understandable.
And if no one else has told you that, I hope that that lands.
You are not crazy or broken for feeling the way that you feel, and for focusing so much
on everything you lost, of course.
What else could be expected of you after enduring and living through what you've lived through?
I hope you'll take the steps I mentioned, and I hope you'll stay in touch.
I am wishing you so much love, so much love, and so much luck too.
That's all for this episode of Dear Grave Guide.
Thank you so much for joining me today.
If you're feeling lost, stuck, heartbroken, or overwhelmed in the midst of your own grief,
check out my free workshop Grow Through Grave, three ways to stop feeling stuck, and start
moving forward.
I'll give you three easy, actionable tools for navigating life after loss, and show you
how you can create peace, stability, and compassion right there in the middle of grief's
confusion and uncertainty.
You can find the workshop link in the show notes.
If this podcast helped you feel a little less alone in your grief, please subscribe and
leave a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening.
And be sure to share Dear Grave Guide with a friend, because you'll never know what someone
you love is going through.
You can submit your anonymous letter for the show, and find additional grief support at
shallbeforcitya.com.
Music for Dear Grave Guide is performed by Eddie Goldstein, editing by Ruth Spence of
Sonivia.
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 for Dear Grave Guide is performed by Eddie Goldstein, editing by Eddie Goldstein.