Giving Ourselves Permission to Grieve with Shelby Forsythia

Today, I'm talking with Shelby Forsythia, the author of Your Grief, Your Way and Permission to Grieve, and podcast host of Coming Back: Conversations on Life After Loss. Shelby will be looking back to her early twenties when grief pulled the rug out from under her in the form of losing her mom. Life as she knew it ended, forever changed by this event. We're talking about this crushing blow, the aftermath, and most importantly, the comeback that put her on a different course, one that allows her to help others reclaim their power and their peace of mind after a devastating loss.

What to Listen For:

Who was Shelby before grief turned her life upside down?

"I loved myself before my mom died... and I think there's a temptation that a lot of grieving people have... because they can't go back to the old self.

They hate them, but I actually really loved the girl that I was before my mom died. I was in college. I was in my senior year of college, and I had these grand extraordinary dreams of becoming a C-suite executive in an advertising firm. I knew that I had a gift for words, and it was reinforced by my professors and my classmates.

And I thought I would be writing copy for the world's biggest brands and helping sell things or sell services or sell causes that were going to change the world."

The worst possible cherry on top of four years of back-to-back losses
Fracturing with several smaller losses before the biggest loss broke her
Rejoicing after her mom had been declared cancer-free
Thinking her mom had pneumonia and discovering the cancer was back and had rapidly metastasized

"By the time we got the news, that there was nothing more they could do. It was December 19th, and they said now's the time to call in hospice. Anything that we could do now at this point would be a matter of time, not a matter of cure. We can buy you time. We can't buy you life anymore.

And so we called in hospice and got everything set up at the house. And I think they predicted, I mean, whoever knows what doctor's numbers are based on, but we thought we might have six weeks to six months or so. And then she died in seven days."

The black hole that followed her mom's death
The moment she felt the line was drawn in the sand

"I got a call from my dad as we were getting our coats and getting up to leave. We were literally getting sliding out of the booth at this diner. And I got the call from my dad, and I remember walking outside, and there were two sets of doors. I remember pushing both sets of doors open and getting about five feet away from her car, but still where traffic was coming in and out.

And I just dropped to my knees on the pavement. And I immediately started crying. I felt it was as if I couldn't hold up my own body anymore. All the strength I had, almost all of the life force that I had was just gone in an instant. And I had to be picked up off of the pavement.

I was literally weeping and wailing in the parking lot of this diner, December 26th, 2013. So it was the day after Christmas people were, you know, treating their Christmas hangovers with French fries and diner food, and gosh, I remember it being cold and hard.

I think those are the sensations I remember the most. It was cold outside, and the ground was hard... and thinking back now, I've never thought about this before, but it was very metaphorical of a world without my mother felt very cold and very hard. And so that feels very appropriate as the place where it all came apart."

Feeling like she was no longer a participant in her life but simply along for the ride
Feeling like she'd been wandering in the woods with no GPS for over two years
Losing her passion for her dreams

"In my mother's death, it was like, all of my dreams for the future also died. And it wasn't even that the dreams themselves died; it was that my passion for the dreams died. And so I would look at those things and be like, yeah,