Episode 127: Giving Myself Space to Grieve, With Help From Shelby Forsythia

"What happens is our life grows around the bigness of grief and our life gets bigger, which is why it feels so intense at the beginning." - Shelby Forsythia

Life's unexpected twists and turns can reshape one’s purpose and path. Grieving a loss, navigating personal upheaval, and finding a way back to routine life is a journey many understand intimately. Shelby Forsythia helps individuals navigate their grief and reclaim their lives through empowerment, mindfulness, and intentional strategies. Shelby and Kellee discuss powerful tools for navigating grief in the many forms that can present itself in our lives.

Kellee herself has experienced many different levels of grief in the past few months that have caused not only upheaval in her personal life but also had her re-examine ways that she has been approaching her business. Kellee shares her experiences and ways that she has practiced self-care and compassion for herself.

Shelby shares her 5-step grief framework that supports individuals on grief journeys:

Grounded - Get grounded first, because grief shows us that we live in a world where anything can happen at any time to anyone for absolutely no reason at all, we need to find ways to feel safe in the world.
Release is the second part. This is diving into your emotions. This is releasing things like anger, like disappointment, grief, like, uh, guilt, envy, nostalgia, and things that hurt. We take an inventory of who were you before your loss, any loss, death, divorce, diagnosis, but any other loss in addition to those, and who do you see yourself as now, and graving all the differences between those two lists.
Integrate -. This is step three on your roadmap. This is where you start folding in memories of your loved ones, memories of your life that you want to take with you, even for divorce and diagnosis, non death losses. This is where you start to see grief as maybe not predictable. And so I encourage people to create libraries, entire lists Of how do you know that you're seeing your person out in the world or what glimpses of them can you get? And they start to fold them in throughout their lives.
Establish - The first three steps are all about doing grief by yourself. The fourth step is how do you do grief with others?
Foster - And this is the best part. This is what people are waiting for. As they go through the course is foster. How do I foster a good relationship? Lifetime partnership with grief. How do I see examples of other people who've lived with devastating loss

Grief has a profound way of reshaping our understanding of success. Shelby and Kellee discussed the importance of honoring grief as an ongoing process that requires patience and practice. For those struggling with grief and seeking constructive navigation, Shelby Forsythia offers a plethora of support avenues.

By embracing grief, we can transform it into a source of strength and growth.

Links Mentioned:

The Bookshelf Illustration of Grief

On Grief and Grieving by Elizabeth Kubler Ross

Confessions of a Funeral Director by Caleb Wilde

Permission to Grieve by Shelby Forsythia

Your Grief, Your Way by Shelby Forsythia