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The thing I love about studying secondary losses is that they give your grief the depth

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and the significance that it deserves beyond the single sentence of my mom died or I got

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divorced or I lost my job.

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Grief is never, ever, ever just about one thing, and identifying your secondary losses

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can help you capture this full picture of what it is that you're going through.

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Hi there, Grave Growers. I am so grateful to be here with you as always.

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If you've been growing alongside me and my work for a while, welcome back.

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And if you are new to me and my work, hello.

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My name is Shelby Fiersitia. I am a grief coach, a three time author, and the founder of Life

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After Loss Academy, where I have helped dozens of grieving people stop feeling lost, stuck,

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broken, and alone, and start building lives that they genuinely love from the lives lost,

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forced them to live. This includes, of course, not only death-related losses, but also losses

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like divorce and breakup, major diagnosis, and any other loss that meaningfully changes your life.

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Here on Grief Growers, we believe that grief is not something to get over.

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It is something that we grow with and alongside, and that when we stop treating grief like a problem

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to be solved, and start treating it like an invitation to live more deeply, we end up creating

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meaningful lives that are rich with the memories that we carry, the struggles that we faced,

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and the preciousness of what it is to be right here right now. Today on the show, I am so delighted

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to talk to you about something you may not have heard of before, secondary losses. But before we do,

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I've got a few events coming up here in April. On April 20th, you can join me and the DeadMom

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Therapist Miranda Malone for a workshop called How to Re-Write Your Inner Grief Story.

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If you are someone with a DeadMom, this workshop is all about the internal, often painful stories we

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tell ourselves after our mom's die, and how we can rewrite them so we can be more compassionate towards

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ourselves as we grieve. This is so, so helpful in the lead up to Mother's Day. And on April 30th,

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you can join me and the founders of GriefTastic, including my friend Megan Reward and Jarvis,

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for a facilitated discussion about my new book, of course I'm here right now,

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three actually helpful things to say to someone who is grieving. You do not have to have bought the

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book to attend, so if you're looking for a more low-key event about the book that's not a book club,

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this event is a perfect match for you. You can find the link to RSVP for both of these upcoming

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events in the show notes for this episode, or it shall be for sathea.com/events.

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Okay, let's get to that word you may or may not know, secondary loss. The purpose of the show today

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is to define secondary loss, and then I'm going to give you examples and tell you how to process

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them because odds are, you have them. And here's how I like to start talking about secondary losses.

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If someone asks you about your loss, you can probably sum up what happened in a single sentence.

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So maybe you say, "My mom died or my best friend died or my cat died or I'm going through a divorce

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or I've just been diagnosed with insert illness here." Maybe you say, "I've experienced a

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myths carriage." Maybe you say, "I just lost my job or I got laid off." Maybe I've been forced out

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of my home by a natural disaster. I have just had a breakup with a friend. But perhaps somewhere

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along the way, you recognized that your loss is so much more than that one single sentence. You didn't

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just lose your mom. You didn't just lose your job. You didn't just lose your home. You are never. No

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griever is ever just grieving the person or the relationship or the health or the thing that you lost.

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You are grieving the routines and rituals that no longer exist or the identity or the role that

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you held for years or the future that you had already started planning in your head, the version

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of yourself that felt safe or creative or certain about where your life was going.

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Said another way, you are probably grieving things that have no obituary, that nobody writes a

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sympathy card for and that no one won't bring you a casserole to tend to. If this resonates with you,

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there is a name for that and that name is, you guessed it, secondary loss. An understanding secondary

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losses can be one of the most validating and clarifying things that you do for yourself in your

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entire grief process. But before I get to secondary losses, it can be helpful to figure out like first

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what is a primary loss because if there's a secondary loss, there's got to be a primary loss.

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By and large, a primary loss is defined as the central defining loss, the one that is the most

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visible, most nameable and the most recognized by society or the people around you.

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Primary losses are the losses that society tends to have language for. These are the losses that

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prompt people to send you condolence cards or start meal trains or even the losses that are

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written down in bereavement leave policies on a state or provincial or federal level. These are losses

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that make it into the subject line of a company-wide email or a family group chat. Examples of primary

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losses can include the death of a parent, a child, a partner, sibling, relative friend or pet.

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It could be a miscarriage or pregnancy loss. It could be a divorce or the end of a significant

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relationship. It could be a life-changing or terminal medical diagnosis. It could be a job loss or

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the end of a career. It could be losing a home to foreclosure, disaster or displacement.

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And what I want to circle around here is that primary losses are significant. They are real.

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They deserve to be grieved fully, but they are rarely the only thing that you lose.

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This brings us to secondary losses. What is a secondary loss? Secondary losses are the losses that

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follow in the wake of a primary loss. Set another way they're kind of like the ripple effects

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that spread out work from the original loss event. And these ripples can happen months or even years

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down the road. So if you were to say like my primary loss is the stone that dropped into the water

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of my life, secondary losses are all of the rings that expand from that point of impact.

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Sometimes they are quieter or less visible. They generally go unacknowledged by society.

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And sometimes we fail to acknowledge them ourselves because we don't recognize that they're happening.

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Secondary losses can come in a lot of different flavors. They can be practical or relational or

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financial or social or personal. They can show up right after a loss or they can be things that

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sort of sneak up on you or emerge gradually over time. They can be things that you expect. Well,

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like of course when I lose my mom, I would also lose that. Or they can be things that catch you

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completely off guard, arriving long after you thought you had accounted for. Everything grief

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had taken from you. Simply put, secondary losses are wildly layered and multitude-ness. There's a

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heck of a lot of them. I have never tried to count all of my secondary losses. I have never met a

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griever who's tried to do that either. But if I did, if I tried, I bet my secondary losses from the

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death of my mom alone, not just from the death of my friends, the death of my cat, the breakup of

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an engagement chronic illness diagnosis. I bet my secondary losses would number in the hundreds

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or even the thousands. And here's what's important to understand. Secondary losses, as we'll keep

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getting into it, are not a sign that your grief is excessive or complicated or too much. They are a

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sign that your loss was significant, that the person relationship identity or future that you lost

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was deeply woven, deeply embedded into the fabric of your life. Naming your secondary losses does

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not necessarily make your grief bigger or harder or more complicated. It makes it more honest. The thing I

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love about studying secondary losses is that they give your grief the depth and the significance

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that it deserves beyond the single sentence of my mom died or I got divorced or I lost my job.

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Grief is never, ever, ever just about one thing. And identifying your secondary losses

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can help you capture this full picture of what it is that you're going through. Knowing your

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secondary losses can validate why your grief feels so enormous or life changing and even can help

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you give yourself more permission to feel all of the emotions that are arising inside of you as a result.

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It's truly one of my favorite things to look at in life after loss is not just what's the big thing

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you lost, but what are all the tiny little things underneath it that you have not yet named or

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recognized that need grieving too. So what I have developed in my 10 years as a grief coach, I presented

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this for the first time on the 2019 grief cruise is a three part framework for understanding and

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naming secondary losses because not all secondary losses arrive at the same time or in the same way.

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Some again show themselves right away, some sneak up on you and some arrive like bam lightning bolt

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completely out of nowhere. Long after you thought you had identified everything that you lost.

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So this is my three part framework for naming your secondary losses. If you're in a place to have a

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paper or pen or in the notes app of your phone, you can start listing them here or you can save this

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podcast to come back to later when you have time to journal. This is true especially for all of you

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out there who are driving as you listen to this. Please do not write and drive. That is not something I can

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tell. Okay, three categories of secondary losses. First category, immediate secondary losses.

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These are the secondary losses that you experience right away often simultaneously with the primary

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loss itself. These are the things that disappear or that you lose. The moment the primary loss occurs.

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So this might look like losing the ability to touch or talk to a person or a pet who died. This could

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look like losing your identity as a healthy person. Air quotes here. The moment that you receive a

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life altering diagnosis. This could look like losing a sense of safety or security. The moment of

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relationship ends. This could look like losing a daily routine or sense of purpose after a job loss.

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And it could look like losing your role as a caregiver when the person you cared for dies.

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To share an example from my own life, one of my first immediate secondary losses was my ability

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to hug my mom. As soon as my mom died, I knew for sure that I would never be on the receiving end

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of one of her hugs again. And while there are many wonderful people in my world that I can receive

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a hug from at just about any time, I know they will never be anything like a mom hug for me ever

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again. It is a secondary loss that I continue to grieve the instant sense of home that I felt as her

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child being touched and held by her. If you've experienced parent loss, maybe this is bringing up

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some things for you too, but in the moment of her death, I knew I will never experience a mom hug

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ever again. I was grieving the death of my mother, but a secondary loss for me was being able to hear

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her voice, hug her, touch her, hear her laugh, watch her walk into a room, kind of all of the physical

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things that were associated with her presence. Immediate secondary losses often overlap with the

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shock and the acute pain, like the immediate pain of the primary loss itself, which is why sometimes

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they can be so hard to separate or tease out and name in the early days of grief, but they are there

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and they deserve their own separate acknowledgement. They deserve to feel significant too.

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The second type of secondary loss is what I call gradual secondary losses. These are losses that

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accumulate or build up or make themselves known slowly over time. They do not appear all at once.

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They often reveal themselves in increments, sometimes over the course of months or years. Examples of

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gradual secondary losses can include the gradual fading of memories, like the sound of someone's voice

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or the specific details of their face or the way that they laughed. Other gradual losses, and this

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is really significant for a lot of grievers, especially if you're kind of in charge of the administrative

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stuff after someone dies, is financial strain, gradual financial loss that builds in the months and

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the years following a death or another significant loss, like a divorce or a diagnosis.

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You might also include, under gradual losses, the erosion of friendships that could not hold or

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demonstrate to you that they were not safe for the weight of your grief. You might also experience

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as a gradual loss losing skills or confidence or professional momentum after an extended

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leave from work or after being laid off. And you might gradually lose your sense of who you are

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outside of their relationship or the role or the identity that was lost. One more thing you might

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lose gradually is the disappearance of over time, traditions, rituals, routines that no longer make

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sense without the person or the relationship or the life that you lost. After my mom died, one of my

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gradual secondary losses was the loss of, and I've talked about this on the show before, my lifelong

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identity as a morning person. After my mom died, I found myself sleeping in as late as and as often

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as possible. My energy was so low, which I did not expect after loss, it was all I could do every day

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to go to class, to go to work, and then to chip away at my thesis before crashing into bed. And I

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didn't know or like the version of myself that wasn't air quotes here, but like the phrase my

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mom used was "up with the sun." I was always up with the sun. And I had this bizarre thought that my mom

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wouldn't recognize me as a sleeper in her person. Even though she was dead, I was like my mom wouldn't

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recognize who this person is, and that makes that even more sad to me. And ever since I was little,

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my mom loved to tell the story of her oldest daughter who arose with the songbirds and sang to

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herself and her crib until someone came to get here. So when I ceased to be that person,

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gradually, I was like, I'm sleeping more and more and more after my mom's death. I'm no longer a

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morning person. I was like, my mom wouldn't recognize me anymore, am I still her daughter. Those were

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the thoughts that were coming up for me in the wake of this secondary loss. It wasn't my mom died,

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am I still her daughter. It was, I'm no longer a morning person that my mother knew in life. So am I

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still her daughter? Am I still her morning songbird? It was a different kind of secondary. You could say

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smaller loss that got me to that train of thought. So secondary losses aren't necessarily smaller.

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They're just byproducts of the primary losses. Something to know about gradual secondary losses

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is that they can be particularly disorienting because they tend to make themselves known or obvious

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right when you might be expecting things to be getting easier in grief. Instead of things getting

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easier, you find yourself grieving something new and wondering why the losses keep on coming.

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In which case you might fling open the metaphorical door and say, "Well, hello, gradual secondary

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losses come on in." I guess there's room for you too. The third type of secondary loss is what I like

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to call surprise or unexpected secondary losses. These are the secondary losses that arrive

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unexpectedly. The ones that you could not have predicted or prepared for. They often surface when

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you encounter a situation or a milestone or even a new version of yourself that grief has quietly

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or subtly transformed. Then suddenly the volume of what has changed or what you have lost is cranked

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up to like a hundred. Examples of surprise or unexpected or sudden secondary losses include

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losing a sense of safety in the world after a traumatic or sudden loss. Not just grieving what

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happened, but grieving a sense of safety. It could also for so many of my clients looks like

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losing a sense of creativity or focus or ability to engage with work or hobbies that you once loved.

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It could look like losing relationships with people who could not show up for you in the way that

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you needed and that being suddenly clear to you out of the blue. It could be going through major

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life milestones like graduating or getting married or having a new baby without the person or the pet

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who should have been there to support you through that. It might also look like discovering that

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grief has changed your relationship to faith or community or a sense of meaning in the larger world.

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And the last example of secondary losses I'll give you is one of my surprise ones. It is something

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I grieved that I never even knew that I wanted. Mother's Day brunch with my mom and this is

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particularly appropriate in the Lehighptom Mother's Day. More than four years after my mom died,

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I was working as a server at a white tablecloth restaurant here in downtown Chicago.

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And I already knew I suspected that the Mother's Day shift would be hard for obvious reasons.

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I'm like I'm working on Mother's Day and my mom is dead. That record's constantly playing in the back of my

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head. But what I never saw coming the thing I could not have predicted was my anger, my rage, my

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like absolute heart on fireness at not getting to take my mom to a Mother's Day brunch. But here's

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the thing my mom was not a brunch person. My family generally spent Mother's Day at home. It made no

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sense that I was suddenly so angry that I didn't get to do this thing I never wanted to do in life

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with my mom who was now dead. But being surrounded by happy moms and daughters and grandmothers and

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seemingly intact families, this was my brain's assumption. This was not necessarily reality. But in

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that, the weight of what I could never have and having it appear right in front of me, it whacked

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me like an anvil, like a cartoon anvil right over the head. And this might be true for you too.

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Surprise secondary losses can feel like a second gut punch after a loss of reminder, an unpleasant

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reminder that grief doesn't follow a schedule or a checklist. They are not a sign necessarily that

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you're going backwards or that something is wrong with you. They're just a sign that losses woven

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into your life. And that grief continues to show up as life continues to unfold the two continue

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forward into the future together. So let's get to now how on earth do you grieve secondary losses?

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Once you can name your secondary losses, once you've got your list in place, you can begin to

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grieve them. And inside life after loss academy and here I can teach you four different ways to do

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that. The first one is to list them out loud on paper or both. There is very, very real power in the

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act of naming what you have lost. When you give language to a secondary loss, you validate it. You say,

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"Yep, this is real. This matters. It deserves to be grieved." So I invite you to do that to make a list

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of your secondary losses, not for the purpose of overwhelming yourself, but to bear witness to

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notice the full scope of what you have been carrying, what is all that you know to be now, that you

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have lost. You might be surprised by, and I see clients and students surprised by a lot,

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what kind of relief comes, simply from seeing everything you have written down all in one place.

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It's another way of showing yourself, this is as hard as I think it is. I have lost as much as I think

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I have lost. And you can name or organize your list using the immediate gradual and surprise

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framework that I mentioned, or you can simply let your secondary losses exist on the page without

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any particular order. There is no wrong way to do this. I will say that if writing feels like too

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much, you might try saying your secondary losses out loud to yourself, or to a trusted friend,

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or to a therapist, or grief coach, or even to the person or pet that you lost if you believe that

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you can communicate with them. If you are spiritual or religious, you might also consider talking about

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your secondary losses to God or your version of a higher power, or the universe, only and if that

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resonates with you. The second way that you can cope with secondary losses is to create a ritual

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to grief them, because grief always needs somewhere to go. Rich and wall gives grief a container.

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A ritual for secondary loss does not have to be elaborate or very expensive. It just has to feel

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meaningful to you. It is a deliberate action that you take that says, "I am acknowledging this loss

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because it is important." And examples from clients and students that I've worked with over the years

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look like. Maybe you rearrange or donate items from a closet to mark the end of an identity or the end

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of a role in your life. Maybe you write the names of your secondary losses on leaves or dissolving

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paper and you float them in a pool or down a river or somebody of water. Maybe you break plates or

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dishes in a safe, intentional setting as a physical release of accumulated grief. Please be sure to pick

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up after yourself. If that's something you do, that can be a ritual as well cleaning up. If that resonates

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with you, you might light a candle and sit quietly with the thought of a specific loss or the memory

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of a specific loss for a few minutes. You might write a letter to the version of yourself or the life

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that you lost and then you could burn it or you could bury it or you could keep it and make a

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point to look back on it six months or a year from now. Something to remember about creating a ritual

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is that it doesn't have to make sense to anybody else but you because usually it will not be witnessed

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by anybody else but you so it just has to make sense to you. The third way to cope with the secondary

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loss or to process it is to connect with people who get it. Secondary losses can be really isolating

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to share with people because they can sometimes sound to outside observers or friends and family

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members or co-workers like complaints or focusing on the negative. When you try to explain that you're

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not just grieving your person, you're grieving the Sunday night calls with them or the identity that

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you had with them or the future that you dreamed of with them or the version of yourself who

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existed in proximity to them. People don't always know how to receive that and this is a direct

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result of living in a society that is grief illiterate. This is why community and loss matter so much.

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Finding people who understand the full complexity of secondary loss and how much it matters,

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the weight of it, the full picture of your loss, who will not ask you to simplify your grief

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back down to that one sentence, my mom died I'm going through divorce, I just got diagnosed with cancer.

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This can be one of the most healing things that you do for yourself so find community when and

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however you are able. The fourth one is to give your secondary losses the same compassion and

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support that you give your primary loss. This one, this last one is extraordinarily simple but it

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matters because despite their name and I mentioned this a little bit before, your secondary losses

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are not lesser losses. They do not require an apology or a disclaimer of you. You do not have to

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preface them with I know this sounds small or I know this sounds little or I know this sounds weird but

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grieving a secondary loss is not dramatic it is not excessive it's not you complaining it's not

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a sign that you are stuck or broken in grief it is a sign they are a sign that you loved or were connected

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to something or someone deeply and that the loss of them had an impact on your life that is all

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secondary losses are here to show you. The thing I want to leave you with from this episode today

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is that your grief whether or not you see it now or whether or not you knew the words for it

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coming into this episode is that your grief is bigger than the one sentence of your loss.

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Your grief is bigger than the primary thing that you lost so if you have been wondering why your

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grief feels so big or so vast or so layered or so much heavier than the words that you have been

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given to describe it secondary losses are the reason why you are not just grieving one thing

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you never were none of us is secondary losses are a testament to how significantly your loss has

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touched your life naming them does not make your grief heavier it makes it more true it tells the

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whole picture it shows the whole story it says this loss mattered in more ways than I can count

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and every single one of those ways deserves to be acknowledged you do not and probably cannot

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grieve all of your secondary losses all at once but you do deserve space to name them and to

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grieve them all of them eventually if you are looking for support grieving your secondary losses

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my online course in community life after loss academy isn't a great place to start inside of it and

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I've mentioned this on grief grow before I teach something called the grief method framework it's

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made up of five parts g-r-i-e-f and the second module release r is dedicated entirely to grieving

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the person you used to be and the life that you thought you would have this includes all of your

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secondary losses the identities the futures the relationships the versions of yourself that grief

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has taken from you you can join life after loss academy any time at the price that works best for you

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and the link in the show notes and if you would like a preview of what life after loss academy is like

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you can always start with my free grow-through-grief workshop all you have to do is go to shelbyfirst@thia.com

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and then you'll see in the upper right hand corner free workshop and you just enter your email

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address and I will send the workshop straight to you and you can watch it whenever you are ready to

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what I need you to know today is that your grief deserves and warrants more than the single

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sentence of your loss and so do you thank you so much for listening today I hope you learned something

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on this episode of grief grower and I will see you next time

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that's all for this episode of grief grower thank you so much for joining me today

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if you're looking for grief support beyond this show you can find my free workshop

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blog articles and my new book of course I'm here right now three actually helpful things to say to

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someone grieving at shelbyfirst@thia.com/links and if you would like to get support from me for your

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unique loss experience join me inside life after loss academy my online course and community as a student

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I'll walk you through my five step grief framework for rebuilding after loss and you can get live

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coaching from me every single week to answer your questions replays are always available if you can

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to 10 live it's just $33 a month to join or $22 a month if you're marginalized or financially stressed

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griver and you can cancel your membership in the group at any time if this podcast felt validating

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comforting educational or otherwise helpful to you please subscribe and leave a review on Apple

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podcasts or Spotify and be sure to share grief grower with a friend because you never know what

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someone you love is going through grief grower is hosted by me shall be for sitia with theme music

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by addy coldstein until next time I see you I am so proud of you and the work that you're doing in the

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world and I love you because even through grief we are growing

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[Music]