Grieving the Person You Used to Be

As we grieve, we frequently encounter the shadow of who we used to be. Grief coach and author, Shelby Forsythia, joins me to share her deeply personal narrative of navigating the aftermath of her mother's death, revealing these intricate layers. Our conversation invites listeners to sit with the poignant truth that our old lives are forever altered, and our grieving reflects this transformation.

While discussing the  value of rituals, Shelby and I offer up ways to honor the past selves we've bid farewell, embracing our healing. We invite you to consider how personalized acts of remembrance can carve a path toward acceptance, making space for who we are becoming.

We hope to guide you through the tender process of redefining yourself in the wake of loss. Our episode is an open invitation to find solace in shared experiences, and a gentle reminder that self-care is paramount as you walk the delicate path of grief.

Contact:
www.asiliveandgrieve.com
info@asiliveandgrieve.com
Facebook:  As I Live and Grieve
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To Reach Shelby:
Shelby Forsythia (she/her)
Grief guide, author, and podcast host
Website | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | TikTok
Featured in O Mag, Huffington Post, and Modern Loss
Ready to grow through grief? Check out these free resources:

• Grow Through Grief Workshop—MOST POPULAR! Three easy, proven tools that help you stop feeling stuck and start moving forward.
• Dear Grief Guide: My weekly podcast where I answer anonymous letters from grievers with compassionate advice and gentle reframes.

Credits: 
Music by Kevin MacLeod 

Transcript

Stephanie: 0:01

Welcome to, As I Live and Grieve, a podcast that tells the truth about how hard this is. We're glad you joined us today. We know how hard it is to lose someone you love and how well-intentioned friends and family try so hard to comfort us. We created this podcast to provide you with comfort, knowledge and support. We are grief advocates, not professionals, not licensed therapists. We are YOU.

Kathy: 0:26

Hi everyone. Welcome back again to As I Live and Grieve. I so appreciate that you either pop in - maybe this is your first listen and, if so, welcome. If you're a returning listener, thank you again from the bottom of my heart for coming back. I really appreciate it. I don't know who you all are. Wouldn't it be fun to meet someday? Maybe I'll work on that. We'll just see how that goes. At any rate, today brings another great guest. You know I always say that, but it's always true, isn't it? Today I have Shelby Forsythia, and I just love her name, don't you? Shelby, I love it. But a last name of Forsythia? It reminds me of spring although when I look out my front window I don't necessarily see spring yet I'm in western New York. So, Shelby, hi. Thanks for taking some time out of your day.

Shelby: 1:14

Hi there, I am so glad to be here with you today. And, fun fact, my given name is Forsythe but my dad planted forsythia bushes in our front yard and when he planted them he looked at me and my sister and said now, girls, these are our flowers. Because they have our name in them - and I knew if I ever published a book, I would write it under that name.

Kathy: 1:32

I love it, love, love, love it. We have a very special topic today, but before we get to that topic, would you just tell our listeners a little bit about yourself, a little bit about your background, please.

Shelby: 1:44

Yeah, absolutely.

Shelby: 1:46

Professionally I'm a grief coach and an author and I'm a podcaster, just like you too, so I love being on your podcast.

Shelby: 1:52

And my experience with grief began with what I affectionately refer to in other spaces as the four years of hell, where the entire time I was in college and it had nothing to do with college, but both of my parents were either sick or dying.

Shelby: 2:06

I came out as a queer woman in the South, which was not really accepted, and then I experienced some things like some job loss and financial instability and kind of just that restructuring that happens when you're trying to be a young 19, 20- something and launched into your life, and it culminated, after four years of pretty unending, deep, close personal losses, with my mother's death on December 26, 2013. And it was pretty, I call it, sudden. I think a lot of people think sudden losses are things like car accidents and unexpected suicides, which, yes, I wholeheartedly agree, and also we got the news that my mother was going to die on December 19th and we were told she had a whole lot of time and we had time to say goodbye, and then she died in seven days, and to me at that time it was, it was so hard, I had no time to really reckon with what was happening, and it had already happened that does make it sudden.

Shelby: 2:55

Makes it sudden, and so everything that I had kind of, that I had known to be true before then, was like the whole rug of life got pulled out from underneath me and I was questioning everything from the faith I grew up in, of like a God that rewards good people and a God that kills bad people, like what kind of justice of religion was in there.

Shelby: 3:12

I was grieving a sense of home, because my mom was kind of like my home on earth, and then we were still fighting about who I was and kind of the conflict between queerness and religion when she died, and so I often say she died in the middle of the fight, and so instead of sadness or despair at her death which I did feel my dominant emotion was anger. I was angry that she died, we weren't done, we weren't finished, and that sense that the conversation was left open was even more amplified for me than I think I can't compare to other members of my family, but other people I've spoken to who felt really resolved at the time of death, and so much of my work the last 10 years since her death in 2013 has been really reckoning with ideas of guilt and forgiveness and acceptance and understanding where she was coming from as a mother, and it's been a real challenge and also a real if I can say this, 10 years later a gift to figure out how to grow through that loss.

Kathy: 4:05

Yes, and all of those challenges and trials and tension have shaped you into the person you are right now, and I believe in the deepest part of my soul that it makes you a great grief coach, because not only have you experienced loss, you've experienced loss with some struggles. You've made something that's not easy anyway, even more of a challenge. Yet here you are ready to help others, and that makes the world's grievers a lucky bunch. Truly that there are people out there that can, I guess, empathize, but it's genuine and sincere, because you yourself have gone down that path. And, yes, everyone grieves differently, everyone's journey is different, but there are so many parallels along the way.

Kathy: 5:00

We have chosen a topic for today. That's a very interesting perspective because so many times after a loss, one of the things you hear is now you just have to move on. Take your time, but you have to move forward. Keep going, one foot in front of the other, baby steps, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We don't often think, although in our hearts we know we just want to go back. We just want to go back to that person we were to, that life we had, but we can't. Our lives have been erratically changed for eternity. So in some ways there's another layer of grief on there, and that's what we're going to talk about, and it's talking about grieving the person you used to be. Many times we just stuff it in the back and grieve what we think we know we're grieving about.

Kathy: 5:45

There's that unresolved little piece of grief. So you have some thoughts on that. So go right ahead and start.

Shelby: 5:52

I do, and this is a small excerpt of something larger. I teach in my online course called Life After Loss Academy, and I included it when I created the course because so many grieving people I worked with most grieving a death of some sort, but others grieving a divorce or a major diagnosis things that change who you are as a person they come to me. They're like there are rituals for death, there are funerals, there are services. People bring the casseroles, people send you flowers, there's stuff to do when someone dies and it's acknowledged as a loss. You have experienced a loss and now there's a societal outpouring of support, but when a part of you dies or the person that you used to be tied, it's like there's no ceremony for that. There's no acknowledgement that who I used to be, the identities that I used to hold, have been forcibly broken by loss and can no longer be put back together. And how do you grieve that with no ceremony, with no structure, with no? And so I created one. I was like let's put one together, let's catch one together with some glue, and that's so much of what I walk people through in my course, and we always start by asking what I affectionately refer to as the Oprah question, and this is one of my favorite tools - A, because it's funny, because my mom used to love Oprah and B, we would get the magazine delivered to the house and I just associate this with her. But C, because this question can actually help you recognize what am I actually grieving. Because one of the stories we tell ourselves when we're grieving is all is lost, everything is broken, nothing is the same. And it's this extreme language of all, everything, nothing. And so it's either I'm totally different or I'm totally the same. There's no in between. And the Oprah question is inspired by a question she used to include the back of all of her magazines. It's like the final column that her sign off for the edition and it was what do I know for sure? And she would say something like you know, I know the world is full of good people, or I know we all have an activist inside us. She'd have some sort of life lesson.

Shelby: 7:46

But as it pertains to grief and asking people what do I know for sure? Sometimes there are things that come forward with us into our new grieving selves that are still true from our old grieving selves. The funny example I always use is I hated olives before my mother died. I still hate olives. I can't take that away from me. But to start with, what do I know for sure? I still live at the same address is a very common one. I still drive the same car. My hair is still the same color. My eyes are still the physical attributes. I still work as a, whatever your job title, you could have it be your role in your family I am still a daughter. Even though my mother is dead, I'm still a daughter. I am still a creative person, or an artist, like. There are still things. Before we start grieving what has been lost, we always make sure we take some sort of inventory of what still remains.

Shelby: 8:36

Because, then you shift the story from I have lost everything or everything is gone, to grief took away 99% of who I was, but not all of me is gone. So there are pieces of yourself you can still see and recognize and honor, as this loss did not take away from me or increase it.

Kathy: 8:54

That's such an interesting concept. It really is. It's very dynamic, very impactful.

Shelby: 8:59

And it's easy. Wherever you're listening to this in the car, on a walk, doing the dishes ask yourself what did loss not take away from you? That's another way of saying it, but I like saying what do I know for sure?

Kathy: 9:10

And for sure, I know.

Shelby: 9:12

I hated olives before and I still hate olives.

Kathy: 9:14

I haven't liked an olive, since it's so funny I have not once. I've tried something Even more so now it's definitely a point, it's a principle, of the olive.

Shelby: 9:24

Exactly. And that's not to say you can't change in the future. You can't move from your address, or you can't drive a new car, or you can't dye your hair a different color. But to say this is still true. It's like it's. It changes the story from. Grief took away the foundation of my entire life. I still have a few pebbles to stand on and that's something.

Shelby: 9:41

So, after that in actually getting to grieving the person you used to be, I encourage grieving people to take what I call an identity inventory of literally just drawing a line down the middle of a paper, or you can do it in your mind, but sometimes I find it's easier when you write it all out, because then you can see it and say this is my before self and this is my after self. So maybe my before self was a morning person and now I'm sleeping 12 hours a day and that's something to grieve. Maybe my before self was really organized and now, as Megan Divine jokes, I left my keys in the freezer, like there are weird grief brain things that are happening that I don't fully understand.

Shelby: 10:17

Before I was a caregiver for my person who died. Now that role does not exist. I'm grieving that role to my loved one, so they can be as quote, unquote, shallow or insignificant, as like I used to be a morning person and now I'm not to. This was the role I held in my family and now that is broken and stolen from me. And the reason we do that is so we can see it all in one place, not to not to depress you or make you sad Okay, we're already sad.

Shelby: 10:42

I don't think it would get me worse for lack of better phrasing, but to see it all in one place and to actually name it, because we can say something like I am grieving the person I used to be, but what does that mean to you? Because things that I might grieve losing are things that you may not grieve losing, and when we name them, I am grieving the fact that I am no longer a morning person. Then we can come up with some sort of ritual to release it. And this is again something I teach in life after loss Academy. The whole module just called release and it's what to do with the pain and the overwhelm of grieving the person you used to be and the life you can no longer live as a result of what loss took from you.

Shelby: 11:20

And so I invite people for every item on that list and it may seem long, but grief is allowed to take a long time to create some sort of ritual for releasing.

Shelby: 11:29

So, for instance, if you were a caregiver for your person before they died and now that identity is no longer true, maybe returning caregiving items a hospital bed, a wheelchair, things that you can return to a health care facility maybe it's the act of taking them back to that facility and saying a blessing over them and privately in your car, before giving them off to a nurse or an attendant who can reuse them for something else.

Shelby: 11:50

So maybe you're just kind of just like blessing these items and saying I'm releasing this identity of caregiver now, and with all the tears, with all the emotions, with all the things that come with, that you don't just like, well, I'm just going to go drop it off in the parking lot and say goodbye and wave out the window.

Shelby: 12:02

You can make this as meaningful or as significant as you feel it needs to be. So, for instance, grieving a morning person, and now I'm a person who sleeps 12 hours a day. Maybe my ritual for this is like I'm going to treat myself to some really fancy pillows because my grieving body deserves more time in bed. Or maybe I make my bed in the morning and I thank it for taking care of me and being a safe place to land. So, with each of these things that you are grieving and releasing, to create some sort of ritual that feels personal to you because society doesn't give us one to honor that person you used to be, and then the reality that you are now living as a result of what's a way of acknowledging it's a way of it.

Kathy: 12:41

To me, it sounds like a way of acknowledging that, yes, this was before. This is now perfectly okay. Yes, this is now.

Shelby: 12:50

So I'm going to acknowledge and accept it and then keep going and to make it feel confirmed, like it matters, like it's significant, because I think a lot of people are like, oh, dry your tears. You're grieving your husband, not the fact that you're not a morning person anymore, but if that was so central to your identity that it's really sure messing with your head that you're not a morning person anymore, which, like for me it was I was like I've never been a person who sleeps this much, getting up with the birds and the sun and and and the day was who I was, and to have that taken away from me, with my mother's death especially, was a shock. I thought it would be like that forever. And here's another thing about grieving the person you used to be as you do these rituals. You may never be something like a caregiver again, depending on your life circumstances, but for something like a morning person, there can sometimes be hope of return. It's like I might be a morning person again. So to say, a blessing as you make the bed or thank you for giving me a safe place to sleep.

Shelby: 13:42

You can frame that your brain of I'm not a morning person right now. Right now I'm sleeping for 12 hours a day. Maybe I hold out hope, or I hope one day being a morning person will return to me and you can. You can kind of put that out into the world whatever that means to you. You can put that onto the road. You can write a letter to the sun, you can. You can tell all your friends that you're gonna set a new year's resolution to start trying to get up an hour like you can. You can construct ways for that to start to be true. Or you can just say I would love for that to be true in the future.

Shelby: 14:11

So like maybe I had the energy to host a book club before my person died and now I'm releasing and ritualizing the fact that I can't host a book club. I'm putting all my books back on the shelf. I'm saying thank you for being things I could read. Sometimes you can't read after a loss. I will return to you when I am ready, right and kind of just leaving a door open to parts of yourself that you, that you do want to return, because some of them do eventually. I have known so many grieving people who've come through the course, who've worked with me one-on-one, that are grieving things like creativity or momentum or drive, especially as it pertains to work. Sure, like I will never have ambition ever again. But I'm like let's, let's write a farewell letter to ambition for now, or right now in this season, but let's also write a letter to hope that that, potentially, things like ambition or drive or motivation or creativity just let it take a sabbatical.

Kathy: 15:01

There you go.

Shelby: 15:01

Oh, it's a great way to phrase that is you can, yeah, yeah, creativity is on sabbatical morning person.

Kathy: 15:08

On sabbatical everybody go do what you need to do and, uh, you know, maybe we'll catch up later on, Kathy.

Shelby: 15:15

The blessing of that is it is that i t takes away this story. That so many grieving and I told myself this after my mother died is because her death felt so permanent. Who I was in that moment felt permanent too. Yes, yes, and that, that just yes, I think you're gonna be there forever, exactly, but you can burrow, it's yours, it's yours.

Kathy: 15:33

Yeah, for me this is just a concept that it seems it certainly is pro healing, because you're allowing yourself and telling yourself it's okay, you don't have to feel so bad about what you think you left behind, because look at everything you still have, look at all you still are, and to go through that way and itemize it and take inventory, so to speak, is a great way to affirm all of that to yourself and allow you to keep going.

Shelby: 16:02

I like it and I think people I didn't have this experience so much, but I hear it from the people I work with a lot as people beat themselves up for changing. Like I am so mad I've become this person, or how could I let myself become this person, and my response to that is is some of my favorite two words in the whole english language are of course. Of course this changed you. Of course you have been massively impacted, but I would be surprised if you weren't like it seems so logical that these losses would change who we are at our core, and so to look at yourself in the mirror or to write yourself a letter and say, of course this has changed me and then allow it to be true, gosh, that's what a gift.

Kathy: 16:41

And you know, the other thing too I think of is that is you're working through this list and these rituals. It's giving you a way to move forward in the direction you really need to be looking. So many times we stand there and I remember saying to Stephanie on the phone, perhaps a week after my husband Tom died I feel like I'm redefining myself but I don't know where to start. But as you're doing these rituals, that kind of gives you some ways to start, kind of gives you some intention, if you will.

Shelby: 17:16

I'll give you another metaphor that's probably one of my favorites. I call it life after loss, the divine dressing room of grief. And we, we knew kind of like a cartoon character in life before loss we wore the same outfit every day. It's like we knew who we were, we knew what we liked, we knew what we were about, we knew our identities. And then loss just kind of strips us naked and plunks us in a dressing room. It's like good luck, yeah. And in doing the Oprah question, you're like well, my shoes might be the same, still hate olives, but like I need a pair of pants. I gotta get pair of pants somewhere.

Shelby: 17:45

And in life after loss, to treat every new identity you encounter is like a new article of clothing you're trying on. It's like this could be optional, but I'm gonna wear it around for a while and see how it feels. So it's okay if, when you're making this identity inventory list, if you're Answer in the who I am now column is I don't know. So if you're like I used to be a morning person, now I don't know, as opposed to now is sleeping 12 hours a day, you could say no, I'm not sure, I'm not really sure what I am or who I am and Kind of giving yourself that permission, like maybe need to walk around naked for a while, or maybe I need to try and appear. Pants or maybe a sweater or maybe some over there, maybe cowboy hat, like what am I wearing?

Kathy: 18:21

In this, let me do something different.

Shelby: 18:22

Yeah, yes, exactly, and so that's great. Give yourself permission to really not know or be certain of who you are is also a really great permission slip when you're. Creating, because you're like I used to be a caregiver. Now I don't know. Yeah, is is is an okay thing to say to you. Don't have to be certain of what the new identity is in order to grieve what the old identity was right, right.

Kathy: 18:44

What comes after the rituals?

Shelby: 18:47

More rituals. I often, I often joke with grieving people and and find this to be true in my own life that this is this is Really a never-ending process, but not in a bad way. It's a never-ending process in that we are always becoming new iterations of ourselves, and so we just practice this in new ways, and it may be intense. In some seasons, you might find yourself grieving Multiple versions of who you used to be kind of all at once, and then you may have seasons where you're like I don't really feel like I have a lot to release right now. I don't have a lot of old versions of myself. I feel pretty, pretty steady in who I am, but, for example, so my mother died in 2013, but my best friend died recently from COVID in 2022.

Shelby: 19:26

And to grieve the person I was with her who was training for a marathon, her next-door neighbor we were, we lived two blocks away here in Chicago to grieve these old identities that her death took away from me her Emergency contact, her best friend, her roommate like all these identities that lost, rendered no longer true. I was suddenly in a new season of having to grieve all the people used to be and also a person who was well. I got very sick after she died, and so to grieve my health and then to say I am now a chronically ill person as a result of the stress of her loss and to step into that new identity, that was something that was very, very big so often and the reason I have. You joined life after loss Academy one time, but you're in it for a lifetime so I never came people out of the group. I'm like you will experience more losses because we all do that's not a threat.

Kathy: 20:12

It's a reality on a daily basis. We experience loss of some type. Yes, I'm convinced of that. Maybe an itty bitty one, you know, yes, but but we, we deal with loss all the time.

Shelby: 20:24

We need to get better at those big losses, yes, and I and I encourage you to, even if this practice seems too big or too overwhelming to use, with grief, maybe use it in those small daily things like oh, I expected my daughter to call me at five and instead she called me at six, and so I'm releasing, maybe through a ritual, if you'd like that. I had an expectation, she would call it five and she actually called it six. There's these tiny micro losses, like you say. Or I expected to get this promotion at work and I didn't get it.

Kathy: 20:53

It's, it's the things with lower stakes than maybe all of who you are and all right, you wanted to be, and I'm sensing a new book idea for Shelby, about parenting and using these lessons on losses as teaching moments for your children. Oh sure even when a child loses their favorite toy, they experience grief, yeah, so it's a perfect moment to teach them to be better prepared and help them, as they grow, to be prepared for these losses.

Shelby: 21:21

Oh, that's lovely and well, and I'm not a parent myself, so I never claimed to be an expert in the topic, but but to say I lived four years of my life with Mr Snuggles and he has gone missing and you have some sort of ritual for grieving him, and now I'm a person Mr Snuggles. Whether you are going out and picking out a new Mr Snuggles, whether you're putting a picture of Mr Snuggles in your room, that's, that's what comes next. To answer your question integration. Now that you've raised all these things, how do you integrate the grief into your life? So, maybe you're grieving the fact that you were a caregiver, but how do you honor that season of your life? Maybe you put a picture of you and the person you were caring for in your four year where you see it every time you come in from Work. You honor that season of your life and let it live as a thing in the past, but also let it come with you into the present of something that informs who you are now.

Kathy: 22:07

Or maybe when you're ready. If you're ready, volunteer your time sure, or teach other caregivers.

Shelby: 22:13

How do you give it?

Kathy: 22:14

It was a rough life absolutely, or support someone else who's a caregiver and say you know what take the afternoon? Go get yourself a pedicure and I'll do the caregiving for a few hours. Yeah you know there are tons of ways. So integration and this is an entire process. Then you teach in your class, right?

Shelby: 22:34

And you want to hear something funny, it all spills out grief. So I teach people first how to ground, how to feel calm and centered in a world where loss has taught us that anything can happen at any time.

Shelby: 22:48

And then the second part we talked about ritual yes, releasing the person used to be grieving, the used to have and the loss that you faced. Then integration, folding it all together science and symbols, kind of finding patterns to grief and then Establishing, which we'll talk about on another podcast episode, is the first three lessons are all about how to do grief by yourself. Establishing is establishing grief, honoring relationships with friends, family, co-workers. So how do I talk about grief with other people?

Shelby: 23:19

Because inevitably you don't grieve in a vacuum, nobody does and so how do you, how do you say to your friend that was kind of hurtful, could we try something different? Or how do you tell your boss I need some more time off to grieve this, is that possible for you? Or how do you tell your neighbor Can you stop telling me to look on the bright side, because that's not helpful at all. So that's established. And then the last one is foster. And this is how do you foster and build a good Lifetime partnership with grief, so that your life feels rich and full and meaningful, without having to fake a smile or forget your person who died, or get over it or leave the past in the past, like all the cliches? This is where they go to die. This is how do I move forward into a life that feels so meaningful and so whole, not because I was broken by loss, but because loss gets to come with me and grief gets to come with me right.

Kathy: 24:04

I will get to come with me into the future, right well, I wish I had had or known about your workshop, especially six years ago. It's been almost six years ago that my husband died and his was the most recent big loss, as well as the toughest one for me. But I think it was the toughest because through all of this, through the podcast, through reading and talking with my guests, I have discovered that I never fully grieved, or even grieved the three major losses earlier in my life.

Kathy: 24:37

Yeah so those kind of came along with it and I have been continue and until the day I die will continue to grieve those losses. But I have kind of gone on my journey, which if I had to draw it out, it would be the worst looking map in the entire world and I certainly couldn't give anybody else directions. Yet I am in a much better place. I am a much happier person, I'm far more chill than I ever was and I love life now, when so many days before were really really tough. So I can only thank everyone that has been a part of that, and I couldn't even begin to list the names or the people themselves. There have just been so many people that have contributed to that and fortunately I was able to open my mind and say give me everything and anything. I need to redefine myself, still working on it, still got some projects to go on.

Kathy: 25:38

You know time slips away far too quickly and we're already at that mark in the podcast where it's time for me to turn it over to you for a little bit. So, yes, Shelby is going to be returning as a guest. Yes, we are going to talk about the E and the F of grieving the person used to be, and we've got some other great topics too. So get used to hearing Shelby. She's going to be around and I love that. I couldn't be happier that our paths crossed. But for now, for the moment, I'm going to turn the microphone over to you and let you tell people how they can find your workshop, workshops and what you have to offer them, because I know I'm going to be recommending your workshop to probably close to a dozen people I know right now, because it sounds like a perfect fit for everyone who's grieving. So the mic is yours.

Shelby: 26:30

Thank you, and just as a host, as somebody who's hosted podcast and guest on podcast, it's so beautiful to just kind of feel gratitude pouring off of you just in interactions with you. So thank you for that. Also Because I read this I think it's a study or an observation once that so many other animals like giraffes and cows and horses and stuff, when they're born the first thing they do is stand up and it's in their nature to kind of fend for themselves and go off into the world. And what we do as humans is we cry for help. And one absolutely bizarre twisted blessing of grief is that it puts us in such a state of need that our only posture towards the world is hands open, help. I became so. I'm just like you, was so open to everything and anything that would help me feel not so much alone and not so much in pain. And I'm grateful to everybody who came before me too, because, god knows, I was checking out books from the 1980s from the Chicago Public Library, trying to find some answers.

Shelby: 27:28

I'm like give me some information. I don't care who wrote it, I was all about it, so I'm gonna. I'll make this really easy. Everything I do you can find it at shelbyforsythia. com. It is spelled exactly how it sounds. And if you're looking for the free workshop all about my online course, life after loss academy, it's at the top of the page. It's comes up in a little pop up window. It's on the homepage. Every everything on my website points to that free workshop because, a it's free and B it is so much grief, information and help for grief all in one place.

Shelby: 27:59

I teach you the three things that can help you stop feeling stuck and start moving forward right away. And there's no tools required. There's no, you don't have to buy anything in order to make it happen. There's just three things that my students have all loved that I felt called to share. And then, at the end of that workshop, if you'd like to, there's an invitation to join life after loss Academy, which is where I teach the grief method ground release, integrate, establish and foster. But of course, you're just welcome to take the workshop and walk away with that. You will come out having learned something about yourself as a griever and learning a new way to see grief. Whether or not you choose to actually enroll in the course, but if you do, it's a lovely community of people. Admission never ends, so you never get kicked out after a year because grief keeps going just like we do.

Shelby: 28:41

And every Thursday I hop into a live Facebook group with everybody and answer their questions and kind of come on as a group and we all talk about our griefs and who we're missing, what milestones we're honoring and we celebrate our successes too. Even last week somebody posted in there about feeling uncomfortable after their mom died, putting articles that reminded her of her mom in her home. And she's like now, thanks to this course, working through the integrate module, after releasing all this pain, she's like. I have finally put up almost like a shrine or an altar to my mother in my home. I have her picture, I have some candles, I have her favorite flowers, I have a bottle for perfume there and she's like now. When my friends come to visit they ask about it and for the first time in my life I get to tell stories about her. And it is changing my life to be able to just have created a space where she is welcome in my home and where friends and family can ask about her.

Shelby: 29:26

And so, in ways, small and large, people's lives are changing because of this five step method, and I am so grateful to the dozens of people who've taken the course so far and, hopefully, the hundreds and thousands more to come, because it is its work I truly love doing, and there's funny stuff in it. There's the Oprah rule that I shared today. There's the dressing room of grief. There's all these different ways of seeing it that make it not necessarily easier to get through but more relatable, because I don't know that I can make grief easy for anybody. But you don't have to go it alone and there is a very clear path forward for anyone who would like to come along for the ride.

Shelby: 30:02

Oh, yes, my book. My second book is called your Grief, your Way, and that's another super easy thing to pick up. It is a non-religious daily devotional for grief, and the cool thing about it is that the entries are sistered together, so every odd numbered entry is a quote and every even numbered entry is an exercise that matches it. And so, for instance, if on July 17th, you're reading a quote about I don't know.

Shelby: 30:26

Friends and family disappearing after a loss from a famous grief author. The next entry is a tip on what to do when friends and family start disappearing after a loss. One of my favorite tips is for when people give you invitations and you're just too tired to go because you're grieving is say something like I have to decline today because my grief is just too heavy, but keep asking me, because one day I'll say yes and my energy will come back. It's kind of like grieving the person who's grieving the person who's having energy, but then I'm hoping that my energy will come back and most of the time it does for so many freebers. But keep asking me. I don't want to lose you because of this.

Shelby: 30:57

Please keep asking me, I'll say yes and so, like, those two passages are stuck together in the book and the whole book is laid out by that, and you can do it by date. You can turn to March 21st and read that date, or you can play your grief your way roulette and just open it wherever you want and it's helpful. Either way, it's a wonderful book and I'm so privileged to have gotten the invitation to write it.

Kathy: 31:16

Well, I know, probably before I even leave my room, my copy will be on its way from Amazon.

Shelby: 31:23

Oh good.

Kathy: 31:25

It was on my list to do anyway, but now, especially that I hear it's a daily, I love those books. It's so short because little chunks at a time sometimes is the only way we can really absorb it. It took me a while and I'm an avid reader. Always have been since grade school. I think I read Gone with the Wind when I was in sixth grade, but at any rate it's something that after a loss, it's really hard to sit down and read a book.

Kathy: 31:53

Yes exactly Because you've got that brain fog going on. Well, on with it. Thank you so much for being here. I so look forward to more conversations and can't wait to hear what else you have in store. Everyone, please know that Shelby's contact information will be in the podcast notes and available on our website as well. I want you to remember.

Kathy: 32:16

Not only does she have workshops, but she uttered a very important word, especially when it's after a loss and you can't even figure out where your groceries are going to come from. It's that word FREE. You could do this by yourself, in the privacy or your home, in the same clothes you've worn for six days. Yes, but just please get yourself some water to stay hydrated or something, a bite to eat with some protein, and take this workshop and get started. There's no better time than today. I talk about self care and how important that is. Let this be your first step. Go to Shelby's website. That's all I'm saying. Just go to her website and click the button for the free workshop and see where it takes you. Until next time, everyone, take care of yourselves. Please keep looking at those episodes so you'll be sure to catch Shelby when she comes back again. And Shelby, thank you so so much. Let's take care of ourselves as we all continue to live and grieve.