The Practice of Therapy

Gordon Brewer: Well, hello everyone and welcome again to the podcast. And I, I'm so excited for you to get to hear today from Shelby Forsythia and just in our short little introduction to each other here already before we started recording, you're, you're in for a treat and Shelby, glad you're with us.
And we're gonna be talking about grief, which is one of my favorite topics. Um, I think people that know, have been listening to the podcast for a while. Know kind of a little bit of my story and just how that grief folds its way into all of that. But Shelby, as I start with everyone, tell folks a little more about yourself and how you've landed where you've landed.
Shelby Forsythia: Yes, absolutely. I am right now a grief coach a podcaster and an author of now three books. But I think a lot of people joke, and I don't know if this is true for you too, that like I didn't set out to do grief work as a kid. Like if you had asked me what I wanted my life to be or, or look like as a child, I wanted to be an artist.
I wanted to be a singer. I wanted to be a painter. I wanted to be a lot of different things. And then. I'll condense this here 'cause I've done this on a lot of other different podcasts and you can go find them and listen to them. But I experienced when I was 17, what I lovingly refer to as the four years of hell.
And it happened to be the time when I was in college, but being in college had nothing to do with it within the span of four years when I was growing up after a pretty idyllic and like. Heavy air quotes, but like normal suburban childhood, my father lost his job of more than 19 years, which is a sort of grief event.
Like the financial stability of our family was changed. And then I came outta the closet as a queer person in the South, which was kind of accepted, but also kind of really not, and God was. Used as a weapon against me in our home.
Gordon Brewer: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Shelby Forsythia: My father was diagnosed with two of some of the largest brain aneurysms that have ever been recorded in the state of North Carolina, one on either side of his head, and there was a point where he was on a wait list for brain surgery and was contemplating.
His own mortality of, am I actually gonna go through with this? And watching him as an 18, 19-year-old reckon with his the fact that he may very well die, or one of these aneurysms might rupture. And he may die before even getting to surgery, watching him go into surgery, recover from that, become a different person as a result of that.
And then as soon as the meal trains and the casseroles and the carpools to Duke Hospital ended after his surgeries, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. And so our family was once again plunged into. Orbiting around her diagnosis as a reality of, as a grief event of our lives. And so we started doing carpools to do hospital, and we started having meal trains again.
And I'm not ungrateful for the support, but I, I say all of this to say it was four back to back years of unrelenting grief and change. And that culminated in December of 2013, where my mom's cancer that had gone into remission suddenly came back and there was. Nothing more that the medical system could do for her.
Mm-hmm. They called our family on December 19th and said, we can no longer cure you. We can only buy you time and you should probably call in hospice. And that's exactly what my family did. And they said, you probably have six weeks to six months to kind of put your affairs in order. Say goodbye based on what we've seen before.
And she died in seven days on the day after Christmas, which was her favorite holiday. And I tell this story. So differently and so succinctly now, but at the time, 13 years ago when I was 21 years old, it was like the entire world fell out from underneath my feet. It wasn't just the foundation of my life, it was the, the flooring and, and the house and the dirt and the center of the earth.
Like everything fell out from under me. And in losing my mom, I didn't. Lose her. Although I did, I lost hope for reconciliation or repair over me being a queer person. Mm-hmm. I lost her presence and existence at all of my future life milestones. I lost her. Glue ness of holding the family together. I lost the relationship as I knew it with my immediate family members.
I lost my faith in a God that if you're good enough, good things will happen. And if you're bad enough, bad things will happen. Kind of the duality, good God, bad God.
Gordon Brewer: Mm-hmm.
Shelby Forsythia: That I had been raised in. And I also lost things that I thought would always be true about myself, like my energy, like my creativity, like my desire to be alive and her death.
I, I often, I've experienced many more losses since, but I refer to hers as the first and the worst because it was the one that really opened my eyes to it is possible to lose anything, anyone, at any time, for any reason and no reason at all. And to have that. As a worldview is mm-hmm. Is absolutely life changing.
And, um, I didn't really pursue grief work or even acknowledging my own grief until three years later when I was in downtown Chicago and someone stole my wallet out of my bag. It was not a violent altercation or process, but I had had my bag on the back of a chair, which I now know not to do.
But someone just slid their hand in. Walked out with my wallet, and that was after three years of suppressing my grief, the straw that broke the camel's back for whatever reason. Having this thing that was so vital and precious to my life, my wallet, that my identity was literally in taken, broke me open to finally.
Grieving for my mother. And I write about this in my first book, permission to Grieve. But when I was done wailing and weeping over the lost wallet slash trap door into my mother's death, I heard this voice in my head and it was like, you just gave yourself permission to grieve.
And I was like, what is that?
What does that mean? And that was, uh, one of my favorite authors, Gretchen Rubin would call it the lightning bolt moment that sparked. This constant, lifelong investigation of what does it mean to give yourself permission to grieve?
Gordon Brewer: Mm-hmm.
Shelby Forsythia: Because despite the fact that in that moment before I had never felt worse, as soon as the grief.
Moved through me and I let all those emotions come through. I had never felt better. And that was really counterintuitive to me. That was not what I expected. Right. I lived in this world where you push down your grief and you carry on like normal, and if you keep busy, it all fixes itself eventually.
Gordon Brewer: Mm-hmm.
Shelby Forsythia: And so I have been on a lifelong journey ever since to become, continue to be what I call a student of grief. So I study grief, I write about grief, I talk about grief. I, I work. With grief with others, and mm-hmm. It is now it's now the work of my life, I believe to talk about grief even more in a world that is, that continues somehow to still be illiterate when it comes to talking about loss.
Gordon Brewer: Yeah. Yeah.
Shelby Forsythia: That's how I got here. Yeah.
Gordon Brewer: Yeah, yeah. Well, you, you're, you're so right. I think that we've, um, you know, throughout. Time, you know, I'm sure we could go back in history and look at the history of, you know, grief, which I know I, I did a lot of study around that myself. And just, um, everybody is, is taught to keep a stiff upper lip mm-hmm.
And put on the happy face and to pretend like you're not hurting inside or pretend like you've got to go on, or, you know, the one. One I hate the most is you will get over it.
Yeah. Yeah. You're like,
Shelby Forsythia: okay, great. Win. How?
Gordon Brewer: Yeah. Yeah. With
Shelby Forsythia: what, I have many questions.
Gordon Brewer: Right, right. And so yeah, I've, and as I've always said, you don't get over grief.
You move through it, and so it's just, yeah. And so, yeah. And so, yeah, so it, that's fascinating to me just thinking about your experience of allowing yourself to grieve and what it means to grieve. And so I'm curious about. If you have been able to put words to what it means to grief and what that's, yeah.
What that is.
Shelby Forsythia: Yeah. I actually, um, I, I didn't have 'em at the time, and this is kind of one of those things where I'm, I'm looking back later and I was able to put words to it, but this is a great deal of what I talk about in my first book, which is called Permission to Grieve based on that.
Bedroom floor, finally grieving moment. And in studying grief and reading about grief, and writing about grief, and talking about grief for quite a few years, about three or four years after the wallet incident I've lumped permission to grieve. Into three categories. And so there's permission to feel, which I think is what most people think of.
There's permission to have your emotions, to express your emotions, to let your feelings move through you. There's permission to do, which is permission to take your grief out into the world and to physically do something with it. So it's like, have a ritual, construct a memorial, run a 5K in honor of somebody carry a coin in your pocket, or wear a piece of their jewelry or something like that.
And then the last one is more subtle. It's permission to be, and this is permission for grief to change your identity. This is permission to become different as a result of grief because whether you like it or not, whether you consent to it or not, grief inevitably changes you. And so permission to be looks a lot like allowing your.
Identity to either change or to not be certain. Mm-hmm. And that's a really sticky, tricky one for some people. But if you are struggling with how to grieve or where do I begin grieving a question worth asking yourself is, do I need to give myself permission to feel permission to be, or permission to do?
And often starting there can give you a good roadmap of like, do I feel like I'm struggling to take action as a result of my grief or to honor. Someone through physical actions. Am I struggling to feel my feelings or am I struggling to let grief change me or admit how much grief has changed me?
Gordon Brewer: Yeah. And I think about it, you know, in, in terms of, you know, kind of the therapeutic world. You know, it's a, it's a process of it detaching from someone we know about attachment theory and all of that sort of thing and mm-hmm. Um, but when and when someone dies and we're no longer without them. Yeah, we, as you said, we have to totally redefine ourselves because that object of our attachment is no longer there.
And so trying to figure out what to do with that and filling that empty space that is left. Mm-hmm. And, and really just trying to, okay, who am I now? That's a, a total, you, you, you're right on the market. And you know, as I like to say, it's a process of finding a new normal. And
Shelby Forsythia: yes,
Gordon Brewer: being able to accept the fact that the old normal is never going to be and, and then how do you move forward with that?
Shelby Forsythia: Yes, absolutely. And, and something that, um, so many clients initially come to me with is not just how do I grieve the person I lost or the thing that I lost, or the relationship I lost the life that I used to live. It's like, how do I grieve myself? Because there's not a, yet, there's not a societal structure or a ritual.
Mm-hmm. Essentially having a memorial to the old you mm-hmm. To the person that lost. Forced you to, to leave behind.
Gordon Brewer: Mm-hmm.
Shelby Forsythia: Um, and so that's a, that's a very big thing that I do in, in working with grieving people in group settings and one-on-one is how do you grieve the person that you used to be?
Yeah, absolutely.
Gordon Brewer: Yeah. So tell us, tell us about your books and kind of that process for you and what they're about and that kind of thing.
Shelby Forsythia: Oh, sure. Absolutely. So the first one I've already mentioned a bit, permission to grieve, and that's just the. I say just that's the three part structure of the three permissions.
Mm-hmm. Um. Asking, do I need to give myself permission to feel permission to be, or permission to do? And it's kind of a self-helpy memoir how to book, but it's more of a workbook. It's full of exercises of if you know or can determine which one you're struggling with, you can flip to that section and figure out how to give yourself the three permissions as you.
Continue to move through grief. I will always give an asterisk for this one that there's swear words in that book. Mm-hmm. It's my first book. It was self-published Uhhuh, I, I retell in detail the moment I found out that my mother had died. So there's a lot of swear words involved. I believe grief, A swear worthy event.
Gordon Brewer: Yeah.
Shelby Forsythia: If you don't, it might not be the best book to start with.
Gordon Brewer: Right, yeah. And there's, there's a lot of colorful language that is appropriate for grief. Yes,
Shelby Forsythia: yes. And that's what I say, it's only in the first two chapters, so skip those. Uh, if you just wanna get to the, to the exercises. My second book is called Your Grief Your Way, and this is a daily non-religious devotional for.
A year after someone you love dies. So this is very specific to loss due to death. And it's also, I was approached by Penguin Random House to write this book because they were like, there's a lot of religious devotionals for grief, but sort of like me, people's relationship to God is tested or broken. As a result of grief.
And so they're like, we need absolutely something that has quotes, that has exercises, that has journaling prompts that are not tied to someone's relationship with God. God can be helpful with grief, but not always. Mm-hmm. Especially in the beginning. And so it's very much a guidebook for. 366 days of the year, there's an entry and there's an exercise and an entry and an exercise.
And you don't have to go in order. I say you can play book roulette. You can flip open to any page like the day your loved one died. Or their birthday. Or your birthday, and come away with something to think about or something to do as it pertains to your grief. And it has very some are very like mindfulness exercises, like picturing your loved one in the same room as you, and what are they wearing and what are they saying, what advice they would have for your life.
Some of them are very practical of like mm-hmm. One of the hardest things I had to do after my mother's death was call all the magazines that she was subscribed to and unsubscribe her. 'cause we kept getting mailed to our house with her name on it, and that was like activating for me and my dad, my whole family.
Cost money. And so one of the tasks I did of grieving was to call subscription companies and unsubscribe my mom. And a lot of people don't think of that or don't know how to move through that. And so that's one of the tips in the book too. Right. So it's kind of like the practical and the, and the more woo woo.
The meditative or the existential.
Yeah. The third book, the new one that's come out now in 2026 is not for grievers necessarily, and Grievers can read it. It's more for supporters of Grievers who say, I want to be there for someone who's grieving it. But I don't know what to say. I don't know the words.
Mm-hmm. And it is rooted in my 10 years now of working with grieving people as a coach and as a guide and. It contains three unique phrases that when you use them appropriately, they are consistently helpful for all forms of loss, not just death, I say. Mm-hmm. I say I work with the three Ds, death, divorce, and diagnosis.
Mm-hmm. But any other loss that radically changes your life and, um, it is all about. The power of words by themselves as a support tool to help people through grief. Mm-hmm. Because I think every grieving person can tell a horror story about somebody who said to them their child dies and they said God just needed another angel.
Mm-hmm. Or my story that I tell is two months after my mom's death, I walked into a college course 'cause I was still in college when she died. Two months to the day I walked into a college course about politics and unbeknownst to me, we were covering political funerals. And so what we were watching was JFK's assassination and the funeral that followed.
Same thing with MLK. There's people in black, there's hearses, there's crying, there's all of the stuff happening. And two months to the day after my mom's death, I couldn't handle it. So I quietly picked up my bags and walked out and came back at the end of class to get my coat. And my professor looks me in the eyes and said, you can't be sad forever.
And I absolutely. Was devastated, just leveled by that statement. And so many grievers have stories like this. Mm-hmm. But so few have stories about words. Mm-hmm. That actually help. And in working with Grievers for more than 10 years, I'm like, oh, these three phrases, the book's, titles. Mm-hmm. Of course I'm here right now.
Those are the three phrases. Of course I'm here and right now, these always help no matter the loss. Mm-hmm. And it, i'm already getting reviews from people who are saying, I'm grieving, and this is helping me understand how to tell people about my grief. I'm getting reviews from grief professionals who are like, I've started using this daily with friends and family members for all kinds of stuff.
Somebody didn't get a part in a play, or they lost their wallet, or, mm-hmm. They got the news. Their sister has cancer or something like that. And it is just absolutely changing how people support each other through grief. Whether it's the loss happened yesterday or mm-hmm. The loss is 10, 15, 30 years old.
Yeah. Right. So that's my newest one.
Gordon Brewer: Yeah. Yeah. That. So, yeah. So, um, now I'm curious, this makes sense to me, but you might want, would you say more about why these free phrases. Are so helpful for people.
Shelby Forsythia: Yeah, absolutely. The, the, the book opens with a theory that I have that all grieving people are telling themselves one or more of three painful stories.
I'm crazy, I'm alone. And my life is going to be like this forever. And so mm-hmm. In griever's heads, whether or not they ever say it out loud, there's kind of these records that keep playing of, I'm crazy, I'm alone. It will be like this forever. I'm crazy. I'm alone. It'll be like this forever. Crazy alone, forever crazy alone forever.
Just on repeat. Mm-hmm. And so many grievers right away, when I say this out loud, they can point to, oh, I feel like I'm crazy. No one gets how I feel, or I'm alone. No one understands me. Everyone has moved on. The world's gone back to normal or. It's gonna be like this forever. I can't see way out.
I'm stuck in my grief. This pain will never end. Mm-hmm. I will feel this bad for the rest of my life. Like some iteration of those three stories is something that grieving people are telling themselves at any given moment in time. Again, the loss happened yesterday all the way to decades and decades later.
If you can determine as a supporter, which story your grieving person is telling, and even if you can't, the three phrases are direct. Like counterweights to those stories. Mm-hmm. So for someone who says, I'm crazy. My dad died seven years ago, I shouldn't still be so sad. That's another way of saying I'm, I feel crazy for still being sad.
Gordon Brewer: Mm-hmm.
Shelby Forsythia: You could say, as a supporter, of course you're still sad. Your dad is still dead. Mm-hmm. And suddenly they're not crazy anymore. You've like broken a spell that this mm-hmm. This painful story has over them. For a grieving person who says, I'm alone. No one understands me. Even in a crowded room, I'm all alone.
You could say as a supporter, I may not understand entirely, but I'm here and I will not forget the fact that you are grieving. I'll keep checking in on you. And again, that kind of breaks the spell of I'm alone, someone cares about me. Someone understands and knows that I'm grieving and is gonna keep remembering that I am a person who has lost, and that is a core part of my identity.
Going back to talking about identity. Mm-hmm. The last one's the sneaky one, but it's my favorite. For someone who says, I feel like I'm gonna be stuck in this grief forever, this pain will never end. Instead of saying, this is just a chapter of your life, just stay busy. Time heals all you could say, yeah.
Right now I can see how hope would be really hard to find.
Gordon Brewer: Mm-hmm.
Shelby Forsythia: You can say, right now I can see how you would never wanna date again.
Right Now I can understand how you would never wanna try for more kids. And what that phrase does is takes what was a period on the end of a sentence, I'll never have children again, is right now I can see how you would never wanna have children, and it takes the period and turns it into maybe not.
Future could be different without saying, let's, you know, everything could change tomorrow. Or it won't always be like this. They're there, which is so patronizing to grieving people and so to say in this season. I can totally see how you can't see a way out. Mm-hmm. Or how all you see is grief or how every in the month of October for me, breast cancer awareness month, how you are so sick and tired of breast cancer ads right now.
I can see how it's hard to be here.
Gordon Brewer: Mm-hmm.
Shelby Forsythia: And, and that phrase, it just. Anchors them in this moment, in this time, as opposed to telling the story, my life will be suffering forever and ever.
Gordon Brewer: Right?
Shelby Forsythia: Amen. And so these three phrases, there's a bunch of different ways you can say them. Mm-hmm. But by using them consistently with people in your life, with your coworkers, with your clients, with your friends, with your family, you become through your words.
A recognizable safe place that they can bring their pain to. Mm-hmm. Because you're not trying to positive it up or explain it away or judge them for it. Like, why haven't you moved on or apply some sort of weird religious stuff to it.
Suddenly you become the person through, of course, who validates their feelings through, I'm here, accompanies and remembers them, and right now anchors their pain in this moment in time.
Right. And, and it, it really is. I hesitate to use like magical language, but it is kind of casting a spell. Yeah. That you're rewriting a different story that changes how they see themselves as grieving people. They're not crazy, they're not alone. It won't be like this forever. But you don't contradict their reality.
You don't say that. Mm-hmm. You're not crazy. You're not alone. It won't be like this forever. You use different words that change what they tell themselves. And so your relationship, instead of falling away after a loss, which so many grievers grieve their friends and family who don't understand or can't show up for them, your relationship gets stronger and then they trust you to be a companion in their grief.
And then we all get to live in a world where we know what to say when someone is
grieving.
Gordon Brewer: Yeah. And I think I, yeah, I love that. I love the way that you've. Put all that together. And I love the fact that you've taken what we all experience around grief and reframed it in a way that makes, it, makes it easier, not necessarily easier, but a better way to talk about grief.
And I think, um, the difficulty that most people that are on the kind of the helping side or the supporting side. Have is, is that they just are so uncomfortable with it. Mm-hmm. It's like they're afraid they're gonna do more harm maybe, or they're gonna, they're gonna bring up something that's gonna upset the other person.
Or they don't know how to, don't know how to just sit with the tears and the grief and the agony of it all.
Shelby Forsythia: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. I, um, one of my favorite parts of the book that I point to when people mention things like that is in the first couple of sections, there's a guide for, how do I know that what I'm saying is actually helping?
And one of them is that your grieving person keeps talking or that they feel safe crying in front of you.
Gordon Brewer: Mm-hmm.
Shelby Forsythia: Or that they keep sharing more about their loved one, or about their divorce, or about the diagnosis that they just received. Like the fact that your griever keeps going into their emotions.
Mm-hmm. It's not something to fear. You can be afraid of it and you can use them on yourself. Of course, you would be afraid of sitting with someone in their grief. Right now, your job is to witness them in that grief. Like you can use the phrases on yourself if you want. Mm-hmm. I've had a few, um, friends start to do that.
Yeah. But to turn it on its head and, and be like, this is not an upset. It's a, it's a blessing.
Gordon Brewer: Right.
Shelby Forsythia: It is a kind of beautiful reward of your words. To have that kind of an impact on a person that they continue to open up with you that the depth goes deeper mm-hmm. As opposed to feeling like the conversation gets shut down and you just both go back to your day, whatever you're doing.
My, one of my, one of my biggest goals is to help supporters reframe, if they feel emotionally safe sharing with you, that is not something to be afraid of. That is something that is a blessing, to, to hold and to witness. And obviously I think there are moments when. And I write about this in the book too.
There are moments when we do feel we need more help than we have to give. We're out of our depth.
Gordon Brewer: Mm-hmm.
Shelby Forsythia: One of the biggest, another big fear that supporters have is, I'm not a therapist, I'm not qualified to talk about this.
Gordon Brewer: Yeah.
Shelby Forsythia: But I think we are qualified as humans to talk about. Feelings and memories and mm-hmm.
Relationships we may not be qualified to talk about. I have feelings or, or thoughts of taking my life. That's when, yes. Mm-hmm. Absolutely call on the help of a professional. But for 99.9% of grieving people, what they wanna talk about is how hard this is right now, or mm-hmm. What they're going through that it seems like nobody understands, or a person or a memory or a relationship that it seems like the rest of the world is forgotten.
All of us have the capacity to. To bear witness to that. And it's not, it's not a problem. It's not a crisis.
Gordon Brewer: Mm-hmm.
Shelby Forsythia: It is. It is simply grief. And I think we live in a world still that treats grief like a crisis. It conflates those two things.
Mm-hmm.
Shelby Forsythia: And I'm like we could all do well and be better at simply acknowledging that grief is not a crisis or a problem to be solved.
Mm-hmm. Unless it's like the 0.1 instance where it is, for the most part it's just people wanting. To share their pain and to know that they're not alone inside of it.
Gordon Brewer: Right.
Shelby Forsythia: And that is something we can all give to each other. There's very much a tenor or a tone of the book that's like we all deserve.
This kind of support from our friends and family when we are grieving, and so here is how we can become these supporters to other people, and it becomes a very cyclical, sometimes you're the griever, sometimes you're the supporter, sometimes you're both, sometimes especially I'm thinking like grieving spouses who are also supporting children who are grieving.
You are grieving yourself, but you are also supporting people, and so you can totally be, of course I'm here. Right. Nowing your kids. Mm-hmm. While you are supporting yourself as a griever and grieve, we are often grievers and supporters at the same time. Oh,
Gordon Brewer: absolutely. Absolute.
Shelby Forsythia: And you don't necessarily and I don't want to dampen on counseling or or psychiatry or, or psychology at all as a profession.
Mm-hmm. But like you don't always need professional help for grief. Mm-hmm. We can all simply witness each other in pain and be like, yeah, that is hard. It is the seventh anniversary of your dad's death. Of course. You would be dysregulated at work. I had a coworker recently whose dad died, and I said, oh, of course you'd be a little off kilter.
On your dad's death anniversary. And then I asked, what, if anything, do you do to honor him? And she's like, I'm going to get barbecue. 'cause that was his favorite thing. Mm-hmm. And I was like, tell me more about that. That's not a thing that requires professional support.
Gordon Brewer: Right.
Shelby Forsythia: That's a thing we can all be and all do and all have for each other.
And it can also take place in professional settings. These are phrases that, that therapists and practitioners can use as well.
Gordon Brewer: Sure. Yeah. The thing, the thing about it is, is um, and I remind myself. About this when I'm working with people that are grieving is, is that. The bottom line is, is I can't fix this for them.
Right. I can't make the grief go away. And I think just being able to accept that, but also recognize as you're saying, so well, Shelby, is my job as a therapist is just to be with them. Mm-hmm. Is just to be present with them and hear what they're saying and then just acknowledging and validating what they're feeling.
And that's, there's nothing in, in many ways it's kind of magical when you do that, but in other ways, it's just that simple. Um,
Shelby Forsythia: yes.
Gordon Brewer: And it's just, yeah. And so it's just, um, it, to, like you've said, you know, remind, helping them understand, of course you feel this way, this is quote unquote normal grief.
Shelby Forsythia: Sure,
Gordon Brewer: yeah. Yeah. It's normal to grieve and what you're feeling, the craz craziness you're feeling, the anger, the emotions, the, you know, all of that is normal stuff. And so yeah, you can, but you can move through this. You, and I'll be here to help you move through this.
Shelby Forsythia: Absolutely. And that reminds me there's so many sections in, in the book where I talk about, I kind of acknowledge that professionals might be reading this book as well.
Mm-hmm. And another way of saying of course, is. I've seen something like this before. Mm-hmm. Or other people I work with experience something similar and it's not a way mm-hmm. Of saying, my grief is like your grief. It's not comparing. Mm-hmm. But it's saying, this experience you're having, it's not unique to you.
You're not going crazy. It's another way of saying you're not going crazy. Mm-hmm. But it is, it is a pattern or is it part of normal grieving or it is folded into the whole experience. Like this is not scary to me. This is not unfamiliar. Yeah. And so to say that as a professional, when someone very genuinely feels as if their grief is making them crazy right in front of you, Uhhuh, what a beautiful validation.
To give them mm-hmm. As a professional. And so I have little sections for each of the three phrases. I'm like, here, if you're a professional, here's another way of saying that that helps a client or a patient know that you are witnessing them in, in their grief and that they can break or, or rewrite these stories of, I'm crazy, I'm alone.
Or it will be like this forever. And, and to your point of supporters saying something like, like, it doesn't feel like enough. Like, I need to fix their grief. I need to take their problems away. The counter. I always have to that, and I wish I wrote about this in the book, but I didn't. It is every, almost every single griever I've ever come into contact with, when I ask them what they wish they would've had from friends and family is I wish someone would've showed up.
I wish someone would've validated my pain. I wish someone would've remembered my grief anniversaries or just remembered that I was grieving in general to say, Hey, it's the holidays I haven't forgotten about you, or something like that, and I wish I wouldn't have felt so. Alone in my despair. Mm-hmm. The, the, it's going to feel like this forever.
That kind of belief and, and in so many different ways. All they're saying is, I wish someone would've texted, I wish someone would've called, I wish someone would've put a hand on my shoulder at the workplace or at my church group, or at my hobby club or whatever, whatever it is, and say, Hey, haven't forgotten that you're grieving.
I know this time of year might really be hard, or I know right now you're going through divorce proceedings right after your dad died. That's gotta be really hard. I'm here for you. Mm-hmm. Like for anyone to have done that, that's what Grievers are asking for. Mm-hmm. And that's like such a bare minimum that we can all meet.
And so for supporters who say, that's not enough. I need to fix their grief. I need to take away their pain. I'm like, why don't we start by giving Grievers what they're actually asking for?
Gordon Brewer: Right.
Shelby Forsythia: Which is simply to be remembered. Acknowledged and mm-hmm. And to feel as if they're not alone in this experience to grievers that is enough.
And that's what we can all give them.
Gordon Brewer: Right. To be seen.
Shelby Forsythia: Yes, exactly.
Gordon Brewer: Yeah. Yeah. Well, Shelby, I know we can talk hours about this and I've gotta be respectful of your time and tell folks how about, uh, where to find your books and how they can get in touch with you and do coaching if they need to or want to, and that sort of thing.
Shelby Forsythia: Yes, absolutely. I know that grief brain is very real, so I like to keep it as simple as humanly possible. Everything I do, if you wanna buy one of my books, if you wanna work with me, if you want to listen to my free podcast, if you wanna read the blog everything, everything is@shelbyforia.com and I'll just leave it there.
Gordon Brewer: Awesome. Awesome. And, and tell folks again the, if we hadn't mentioned it already the title of your podcast is Grief Grower.
Shelby Forsythia: Yes, absolutely. Grief Grower. Mm-hmm. Um, helpful Tools and Hopeful Conversations for Life After Loss. Awesome. And that's free anywhere you listen to podcasts and on YouTube.
Gordon Brewer: Awesome. Awesome. Shelby, we'll be talking again, I'm sure, and do take time to, uh, follow her on social media and all the places, and we'll have links here in the show notes and the show summary for people to get to this easily. And Shelby, this has just been a pleasure.
Shelby Forsythia: Thank you so, so much, Gordon. I'm so glad to have met you.