grief metaphors or illustrations or analogies can really help us feel not only seen in our
experience but have language or like a good enough side by side to explain to other people
what it is that we're feeling what it is that we're going through. It like takes the pain of grief
and alchemizes it into pictures into imagery sometimes also into words it gives the experience
of grief which can be kind of like blobby or foggy a sort of shape or texture or meaning in
a time where it can feel like grief is impossible to grasp.
Hi there grief growers and welcome back to grief grower I am so delighted to be here with you today
as always because we're going to be talking about art many of you probably don't know that I
majored in communications in college but I double-minored in fine art and psychology and so thinking
about the ways that we doodle grief or illustrate grief is something that I love talking about and
we are going to get into it on today's show. If you have 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 for Scythia I make
grief coach and an author and the founder of life after loss academy which is an online course
in community that has helped thousands of grieving people stop feeling lost stuck trapped and
overwhelmed and start building lives that they genuinely love from the lives that loss force them
to live. This includes not only death-related losses but also things like divorce and breakup
major diagnosis and any other loss or transformation that changes your life. Here on grief grower we
believe that grief is not something to get over it is something that we grow with and alongside
for the rest of our lives and that when we stop seeing our grief as a problem to be solved
and more like an experience to be had we can create rich and meaningful lives from the losses that
we faced but also with the awareness that it is a precious thing to be alive and to carry everything
that we have been through with us throughout the rest of our lives. Like I said at the top of the
show we are going to be talking about six powerful grief metaphors that help you make sense of life
after loss. These are some of my favorite illustrations metaphors analogies that help you put
language and words to what it's like to be a grieving person because grief is often too big or too
complex or too layered for just like plain language. For example you might say something like I miss
my person but you might actually mean I'm trying to figure out how to live without my person and carry
them with me without feeling weighed down by pain. You might say something like I'm not sure how I feel
somebody asked how are you I don't know but you might mean something like I'm trying to rebuild
from a life that lost destroyed and everything feels weird and different and alien that's a hard
thing to put into words or you might say something like I'm having a hard day today which is a
common response to how are you but you might mean something like I saw my person's favorite cereal in
the grocery store today and it is agonizing to not have a reason to buy it anymore. And when we struggle
to say kind of these secondary things the things under the things the sentences under the sentences
things like grief metaphors or illustrations or analogies can really help us feel not only seen in
our experience but have language or like a good enough side by side to explain to other people
what it is that we're feeling what it is that we're going through and of course no grief metaphor
can solve the pain of grief instead it like takes the pain of grief and alchemizes it into pictures
into imagery sometimes also into words it gives the experience of grief which can be kind of like
blobby or foggy a sort of shape or texture or meaning in a time where it can feel like grief is
impossible to grasp whether it's like invisible or it's so overwhelming that you can't possibly wrap
your arms around it. And so today on the show I want to go through six of my all-time favorite metaphors
for grief including one that I created that can help you make sense of life after loss and if you are
grieving alongside somebody who wants to understand grief better I encourage you to send them this
episode along with the number that is your favorite so they can listen along with you too.
Okay first I'm going to talk about what is probably the most popular grief metaphor of all time
and this is called the ball in the box. This was popularized by Lauren Herschel in 2017 when
this woman, this Canadian woman on Twitter, Lauren Herschel shared an illustration of something
that her doctor told her about how the pain of life after loss worked and she wrote a series of
like little illustration she she's like I'm not an artist but here's the best way I can do it for you
and with each doodle she wrote the following captions so she says grief is like this there's a box
with a ball in it and a pain button in the box. In the beginning the grief ball is huge you cannot
move the box without the ball hitting the pain button it rattles around on its own in there and it
hits this pain button over and over and over again you can't control it it just keeps hurting
sometimes the pain seems unrelenting. Over time in life with grief the ball gets smaller it hits the
button less and less but when it does it hurts just as much as it did on day one it's better because
you can function day to day more easily but the downside is that the ball randomly hits that button
when you least expect it. For most people she says the ball never really goes away it might hit less
and less and you might have more time to recover between painful hits unlike when the ball was still
giant. I thought this was the best description of grief I had heard in a long time and when she posted
this tweet just a random lady from Canada as far as I can see in my research this tweet went
super mega viral it resonated with thousands and thousands of people including therapists and
grief educators because it is so visually clear and so emotionally accurate and she even wrote in
a follow-up tweet to her original thread of tweets about how she's using the ball in the box
analogy to talk about grief with her stepdad who is also grieving so she wrote he says he now uses it
to talk about how he's feeling quote he said the other day the ball was really big today it wouldn't
lay off the pain button I hope it gets smaller soon and so if you're struggling to talk about how
pain is showing up in your grief experience or how your heart is feeling today this is a wonderful
metaphor that validates that grief is nonlinear the ball is not always within your control whether
or not or how often pain arrives is not always within your control and moments that hurt or
sneak attacks what sometimes I've heard called grief bombs are not things that are your fault or
things that mean that you're sliding backwards in your grief they're not setbacks they are literally
just the ball of grief in the box hitting that pain button again and as with all of these metaphors if
you want to find or see the illustrations for each of these you can find them on my blog shall be
for city.com/blog and I will put a link to this specific blog post in the show notes for this episode
so you can go see illustrations of what these are all like I'm I'm using my hands here on YouTube
to do some illustrations but if you'd actually like to see the doodles of each of these illustrations
you can find them on my website on my blog okay let's get to number two and this is actually one
that I put into I believe my second book my third book one of my books there is a model of
grief called growing around grief and this was originally created in 1996 by lowest honken
and it challenges the common belief that grief shrinks over time and instead suggests that nope
griefs the same size but your life the thing that surrounds the grief is the thing that's growing
and so it appears from the outside like griefs getting smaller but what's actually happening is that
your life is growing around the grief and lowest honken invented this illustration after speaking
with a grieving mother she sketched two circles one that showed grief gradually overwhelming life
grief metaphors or illustrations or analogies can really help us feel not only seen in our experience
but have language or like a good enough side by side to explain to other people what it is that
we're feeling what it is that we're going through and of course no grief metaphor can solve the
pain of grief instead it like takes the pain of grief and alchemizes it into pictures into
imagery sometimes also into words it gives the experience of grief which can be kind of like
blobby or foggy a sort of shape or texture or meaning in a time where it can feel like grief is
impossible to grasp whether it's like invisible or it's so overwhelming that you can't possibly
wrap your arms around it and the other that showed life expanding around a grief that stayed the
same size grief that was still present throughout the rest of this person's life and lowest honken's
model has been illustrated countless times online one of my personal favorites is a bookshelf
version by the artist Shari Altie and it shows grief as one big fat black book in the middle of a
bookshelf and over time the bookshelf slowly fills up with other volumes other texts other life
experiences and so what looks like an empty bookshelf with just grief in it at the day one of grief
by day 1934 grief is surrounded by all these other life experiences and it's such a great
interpretation of how our lives can become fuller and richer after loss the grow around grief model
helps you release this pressure to move on or let go of grief or the pressure to make grief
somehow smaller to fit into your life you do not have to try to fit grief into your life what your
life will expand to grow around the grief it is a reminder that you don't somehow magically outgrow
grief and you are not in control of how much grief will shrink it is a recognition that yeah your
grief is going to stay the same size it is you and your life and the bigness of all that you are
and all that you still have left to live that will expand around grief and so it will not be
or feel as big as it is or feels right now the next one I want to cover is called ring theory number
three the ring theory of grief support which basically can be summarized as comfort in dump out
and this is created by Susan silk and Barry Goldman so in 2013 the LA Times published an opinion
piece called how not to say the wrong thing and it was written by Susan silk and Barry Goldman
it introduced this concept called ring theory for supporting someone going through grief or crisis
so basically this is not necessarily a metaphor illustration for grieving people it's for all the
people surrounding a grieving person so this is a great one to share with someone in your pun intended
circle who is supporting you through grief but may not understand emotional or relational boundaries
and it goes like this basically if you imagine concentric circles the center of the circle is the
person most directly impacted by the crisis or loss this is the griever the next ring includes
immediate family or close friends the outer ring holds acquaintances co-workers distant connections
and the outer most ring often includes people that you don't see very often so like health care
professionals people who are supportive but maybe on the far far outskirts also observer or on
lookers and so the rule of ring theory is that only comfort can go towards the center of the
circle and dumping or emotional releasing goes towards the outward rings of the circle you support
people in rings that are closer to the center than you and you seek your own support you go get
help in resources or dump emotionally on people from rings further out from your own to put this
into clear perspective it is inappropriate for instance for a cancer patient's co-worker to look
to the cancer patient the person who's sick for emotional support regarding their cancer diagnosis
that co-worker should not look at the cancer patient and say something like it tears me up so much to
see you hurting like this because what's the cancer patient supposed to do with that that co-worker
should lean out for support from other co-workers their own circle of family and friends helping
professionals potentially that have no connection to this cancer patient so instead decompressing with
a social worker about how hard it was to see their co-worker friend this way or with another co-worker
of like man it's really hard to see her like this I'm struggling to cope with that as opposed to
dumping that emotional burden on top of the person who is going through the hard thing again this
metaphor is less about how to survive the pain of loss and more about how other people should
respond to it this is what Susan and Barry said in their article for the Los Angeles Times
quote the person in the center ring can say anything she wants to anyone anywhere she can
cavetch and complain and whine and moan and curse the heavens and say life is unfair and why me
that is the one payoff of being in the center ring everyone else can say those things too but only
two people in larger rings when you are talking to a person in a ring that is smaller than yours i.e.
closer to the center of crisis the goal is to help listening is often more helpful than talking but
if you're going to open your mouth ask yourself if what you're about to say is to provide comfort and
support and if it isn't don't say it don't for example give advice people who are suffering from
trauma do not need advice they need comfort and support so say i'm so sorry or this must be really
hard for you or can i bring you a pot roast don't say well you should hear what happened to me or
my cousin or my friends nephew here's what i would do if i were you and definitely don't say this
is really bringing me down to see you like this if you want to scream or cry or complain if you
want to tell someone how shocked you are or how ike you feel or why and about how it reminds you
of all the terrible things that have happened to you lately that's fine it's a perfectly normal human
response just do it to someone in a bigger ring comfort in dump out and quote from the article
and this is such a helpful metaphor and illustration for grief not necessarily for the grieving
person at the center but to kind of set up emotional relations and emotional boundaries with everyone
involved in a loss or crisis situation because as we've said here before on grief grower grief
never happens in vacuum you are never doing grief by yourself we are always doing grief
in relationship with other people and it makes it so that grieving people potentially you do not
have to manage others emotions or expectations and supporters know where and how to offer comfort
instead of unhelpful advice or emotional unloading and they go on to say in that LA Times article
that somebody that they spoke to about ring theory has actually drawn her own life ring
and has it pinned to the fridge so she's like here's me in the center the person with the grieve
experience here's my close friends and family here's the the next kind of closest friends and family
here's co-workers here's acquaintances here's onlookers and observers and she uses it as a guide and
will often pull out in conversations with people to be like here's where you are in the ring
i as the person in the center get to have support from you you as someone who is not in the center
of the circle need to find support from somewhere else do not look to me the person who is grieving
as your center of supporter as your sole source of support in this experience and it just makes things
clear and kindness is clarity clarity is kind all righty let's get to number four which is kind of
a silly one but one that actually a client brought up with me and then i found out it was a real thing
that existed on the internet so during covid in 2020 i was working with a client who was grieving
and she talked about how integrating loss folding loss into her life was a lot like
adding a really unpleasant ingredient to a larger recipe so for instance a lot of baking recipes
will call for things like apple cider vinegar or a lot of salt or or some other type of ingredient
that is seemingly in an enormous quantity that wouldn't be good by itself like you can't just have
a meal that's just salt or just vinegar but to fold it in with everything else and to have it be
reacting to other things in the recipe gradually becomes integrated in the end result is something
that is is beautiful or satisfying to eat and there is a metaphor going around that originated i
believe on instagram by the illustrator Ruth Chan called grief butter and it's grief as butter
in pastry now i don't know about you but i would eat butter straight so butter and vinegar are not
the same thing to me but she compared grief as butter that gradually gets integrated into pastry
dough and then becomes something else over time and russian created this after a series of personal
losses including the death of her friend steve and it was a simple but stunning visual comparing
grief to the presence of butter a lot of butter in laminated patrioto and Ruth wrote in her comic
quote grief from loss is like the butter and a puff pastry it's huge and imposing and seemingly
impenetrable but eventually gets folded in it's never gone but instead infiltrates every part
until one day it is simply part of you in a way that feels okay and this metaphor is helpful because
it's it's tasty it's related to a food that a lot of people like it's relatable and it reframes
grief as something that gets integrated it's not something that gets removed or separated out from
who you are but it is literally baked into your being like a croissant it is always there and it
shapes the texture and the taste the flavor of your life even when you can't see the butter directly
because you don't pick up a croissant and be like man I can see the butter you can't see the butter
that's the point it gets so folded in that it becomes invisible in the larger pastry but you know
that it's there because when you put it in your mouth you can taste it it is part of the experience
of eating a croissant and in this blog again i'll link it in the show notes for this episode if you
want to see the illustration to it you can see her original Instagram post where she talked about
grief butter and just recently I think like 2023 2024 she also did a follow up one that features a
chocolate croissant so you can see how this metaphor has evolved over time and it's been featured
in quite a few places so thank you to that client who brought the grief butter metaphor to me and to
Ruth Chan for creating this grief metaphor number five is from one of my favorite grief authors whose
book I have it might be on my shelf back here somewhere yes it sure is so the author Mari Andrew
she's also an illustrator she's written a book called My Inner Sky she also one of her first
books that came out was called Am I there yet and it was about the zigzagging path to adulthood
but she writes and illustrates these beautiful essays about life with grief and especially about the
death of her father and in 2018 I believe this was around the time her first book was coming out
Am I there yet she created a doodle about grief and it's kind of grief in three parts and it showed
the weight of grief diminishing over time so first grief was a huge heavy clunky bulgy burlap sack
and it was scratchy and weird and hard to carry and then she shows grief as a briefcase still heavy
easier to move around in the world with and then eventually grief as a purse it's still there and
it's still important and you still carry it with you but it doesn't weigh you down the way before
it's not grief in burlap sack mode and it it is intended to describe how the burden of grief or
the weight of grief transforms over time but never necessarily goes away and in 2022 Mari Andrew
shared this illustration again in a sub-stack piece that she wrote about the seven-year death
anniversary of her father the name of the piece is called grief baby again if you go to my blog you
can read it in full but she writes "Jumana and I talk from time to time about our grief babies I
can't remember where we got that term but we're referring to the length of time since our respective
parents died acknowledging their absence as a presence I still vividly remember my grief's
newborn stage when I was sleep deprived and had no idea what I was doing something was screaming
at me most hours of the day and I was completely ill equipped to understand its wants and needs
after all I'd never done this before I love this idea of seeing grief as a grief baby and then it
grows up with you when a year passed I felt a significant internal shift that I misinterpreted
as the end of grief all done I thought only to find that the next morning I woke up with a one
year old who still needed my attention if we rethink of grief as a living growing thing with a
heart and mind of its own then we can more wholly accept its whims its mood swings its occasional
vacations away and its inevitable returns often when we least expect it. Grief you're doing it wrong
is how I felt so many times during those first confusing years when I happened to clue how to
settle this mysterious toddler's tantrums just like dealing with a two year old nothing about the
grief babies temperament followed any logic. The grief baby has gotten a lot more complex through
the years tidy answers are not going to work on a now seven year old a child that age starts
questioning the Easter Bunny and demanding a few more answers after because I told you so.
This seven year old grief baby is skeptical no one has any way of knowing any of that
but my seven year old grief baby is also imaginative if there are no answers here then I can make
this experience all my own I can traipse around New York alongside my dad's ghost and envision
that we are having coffee in a completely different relationship at his old haunt in the West
Village I can get upset while waiting for the subway let the pain swoosh me around like a
gust from the train I can use this death anniversary to be sweet to myself or I can use it to listen to
his music at full blast or I can use it to really really feel sad I can live the questions of grief as
realka instructs and children do naturally rather than force a solution and I just love her continued
musings on on grief and loss seeing grief as a burlap sack and then a briefcase and then a purse
or grief as a grief baby and this sack to purse illustration helps visualize griefs changing nature
as you navigate life it will always be a container for what you lost it will always exist but your
relationship to it and the weight that you feel from it and your ability to carry it and what it looks
like to others may become more manageable or familiar or as she writes more imaginative over time
and I don't know about you but especially in the early days of my grief my new born grief days
that's something that that brought me a lot of hope is it will not always be a giant scratchy heavy
burlap sack forever okay number six the last one I want to give to you today is grief as a dressing room
and this is one that I personally created and then I share first inside my book provision to
grief and then also now I teach it often inside of my online course life after loss academy so in
provision to grief my very first self published book I published it in 2019 I use this metaphor
of grief as a dressing room to describe how our identity shifts and changes after loss when you
experience a death or breakup or major diagnosis your sense of identity who am I who do others perceive
me as is something that is flipped over abended gone dust in the wind who you were may no longer feel
accessible to you but also who you are becoming might feel unknown TBD life in progress not really
sure what's happening there status pending this is why I started to see after my mom's death grief
as a dressing room of private space where you try on beliefs routines boundaries coping tools identities
ways of being to see what fits now in your life after loss because some identities even ones that you
may have held before feel completely wrong that is not a good fit some identities that do fit are
surprises to you that didn't fit before I can't believe that fits now some identities you keep for a
season and then discard or replace later and all of these things are part of rebuilding your life
after loss and learning how to live in this new version of yourself whether you chose this for yourself
you instigated a loss such as a breakup or a move or you did not choose this law such as a death
again sometimes you do not choose breakups or a diagnosis that has changed your life and this
is the passage from permission to grief try imagining your identities as articles of clothing
in a dressing room perhaps caregiver is a purple sweatshirt creative is a pair of bedazzle jeans
and reliable is a cozy pair of gray sandals these identities make up a part of how you show up in the
world but they are not you you can try them on keepers hang them up on the rack as possibilities for later
maybe or give them back to the dressing room attendant definite knows grief forces you to outgrow
old identities maybe caregiver no longer fits maybe creative is temporarily out of stock maybe
reliable has a bunch of holes in it making it unwearable in this season loss makes it so that some of your
identities will never fit again for instance religious or innocent but most of the time your
former identities just aren't appropriate to wear right now i can't tell you how many of my
former identities i've rediscovered in the past few years that suit me again it was like i needed
to wait for life stressing or moutain to get my size back in stock or what's even more fun realizing
that my old identity of creativity is no longer a pair of bedazzle jeans but now boom it's a colorful
grain hat where did that come from i had been looking for creativity in its old form how i used to
recognize it except loss made my old form of creativity unavailable it didn't fit me anymore but it
turns out creativity still does exist it just fits me differently now than it used to because loss has
changed my life so what do you do if you don't know what identity to wear start with what you know
for sure this could be as simple as your name height i color age or geographic location then expand
to other definite identities in your life is your job title the same what about your role in your
household or their community or volunteer roles that align with who you are now these are garments
you are still wearing what about hobbies talents spiritual pursuits these identities all might
feel small in the grand scheme of things they may just be a small percentage of what you are all
how to keep after loss took so much from you but no too that it is okay if you got a whole lot
of nothing to wear a bathrobe that has big bold letters spelling out i don't know across the back
this outfit will not be your forever attire but if i don't know is a true identity for you
then that's the identity you have permission to wear right now and that is the section from my
first book permission to grief this metaphor of grief as addressing room is so incredibly helpful
because it makes room for all of this unpleasant uncertainty but also so much of the experimentation
and the trial and error that we participate in a lot of times involuntarily in life after loss
and it tells the truth rebuilding is not linear it is a try on discard see if it fits for a while
maybe go back to an old identity see if that still fits it's not the same as it was before
and it's always changing my after-laws is always changing and while you cannot always choose what
identities are in stock in this metaphorical store you have the power to try out identities or
practices you do have control over as you figure out what fits you how you close yourself in identity
in life after-laws something i just love love love about metaphors is that they help us understand
grief in a new way so whether you are just trying to relate to yourself in grief because we can
become unrecognizable and in communicable to ourselves we're like what am i saying what am i doing what
am i thinking and and metaphors can help you connect with yourself metaphors can also help us connect
with other people who are trying to understand us better in life after-laws so to say that ball is
punching that pain button real big today or to say i'm still trying to figure out where this giant
heap of grief butter goes that's a great way to start to connect with other people who are trying
to understand you in life after-laws and again as i said at the beginning of this episode metaphors
are not intended to fix your grief or to make it so that pain does not exist anymore they are
intended and here to validate you whether that's helping you name something that was previously
unnamable to you or giving you a visual illustration of something that you feel that haven't put words
or imagery to or just offering you this much more clarity in a world that has been blown apart by
loss it helps you make that much more sense out of an experience that is so non-sense making and so
incredibly illogical so if one of these metaphors gave you language or visual for your grief experience
i do hope that you take it with you beyond the audio sound waves of this show and of course
please share it with a friend especially if there's a metaphor you're like let's use this as our
like secret code as our language going forward that would be so incredibly cool to have with you whether
it's the dressing room whether it's the ball in the box whether it's the grief growing theory that
happens where grief is the same but life grows around it or grief as butter that gets integrated
gradually as you as you go along they are all incredibly helpful and and and the last thing before
we go if you would like even more helpful frameworks and metaphors and tools and illustrations for
coping with grief you are always welcome to join us in life after loss academy which is my online course
and community for grieving people inside life after loss academy we talk about grief as a record player
we talk about grief as a living thing we talk about grief as a sitcom and we talk about grief as a
fortune cookie so if you'd like to hear all of those different metaphors for grief that i invented
you can come visit us in life after loss academy and we keep doing our best to wrap language
and pictures and illustrations and metaphors around what it means to grief so it is more understandable
to us because when we understand it more when we relate to it more we start to be able to get through
it just a little bit better inside life after loss academy you get instant access to a video library
of short step-by-step lessons they're all about five minutes or less for navigating life after loss
plus weekly group calls with me and the replace from the group calls are available immediately if you
can't attend live that's the number one question i get is what if i can't attend live you can watch the
replay it goes up right after the call ends and you can cancel your membership at any time so the power
of whether or not you are in this group how long you stay how much you're paying for it all of that
is within your control and here is one of my favorite reviews from a life after loss academy student
and this relates exactly to what we're talking about today about finding words to express grief she
wrote throughout this course i have definitely managed to process a lot of feelings i didn't have words
for before it has been immensely helpful to work through some of those unnamable things and i have come
to feel a lot of relief in that so if you'd like to find words for some of your unnamable things
in life after loss you can join anytime you can find the link in the show notes the course is open
year round and if you'd like a free taster of how the course works and a preview of what you'll get
inside you can always watch the free workshop for life after loss academy which is available on my
website and i will put that in the show notes as well thank you so much for joining me today here
on grief grower i would love to know what is your favorite grief metaphor and if there is one i
didn't mention please email it to me i would love to hear from you and maybe we'll do a part two
on helpful grief metaphors for understanding and putting words to life after loss
that's all for this episode of grief grower thank you so much for joining me today
if you're looking for support beyond this show you can find my free workshop for life after
loss academy blog articles and my signature what's your grief support style quiz at shallbyforcitya.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 be sure to share grief grower
with a friend because you never know what someone you love is going through grief grower is hosted by me
shallbyforcitya and our theme music is composed by our very own adi 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]