Shelby Forsythia on Navigating Grief

Shelby Forsythia helps grieving people move through the pain and overwhelm of loss to experience peace, purpose, and joy again. She believes everyone deserves a good life, even if it’s not the one they thought they’d be living. Shelby Forsythia (she/her) is a grief coach, author, and podcast host. In 2020, she founded Life After Loss Academy, an online course and community that has helped dozens of grievers grow and find their way after death, divorce, diagnosis, and other major life transitions.

After her mother’s death in 2013, Shelby became a “student of grief” and now devotes her days to reading, writing, and speaking about loss. She never planned to become a grief coach, author, or speaker on grief. Like many who enter this line of work, she was profoundly changed by loss. Growing up in North Carolina, her childhood was idyllic—soccer, piano lessons, theater. Her parents stayed together, and she faced no major losses until her father lost his stable job, marking the beginning of what she calls the "four years of hell." This period included her father's brain aneurysms and surgery, her coming out as queer, and ultimately, her mother's death.

The cumulative losses were overwhelming, not just her mother's death but a loss of faith, home, and family structure. Her grief was multi-layered, a common experience shared by many she works with. Initially motivated and excited about life, she became uncertain if life could ever be good again. Almost ten years later, she finds herself in a space where life does feel good again, which sometimes feels like a miracle.

Being queer has taught her resilience and creativity, valuable in grief. Coming out prepared her to seek alternative support systems and healing methods. The intersection of queerness and grief brings a unique perspective, allowing her to reimagine life in more colorful, softer, and fluid ways. This adaptability is a blessing, offering new possibilities in loss.

Her podcast, Dear Grief Guide, is a gateway for listeners to connect with her work. It stands as a testament to her jou

I’m thrilled to share my new line of death-positive apparel and items; a great way to bring meaningful conversation into style and support a small, death-positive business.

These shirts are designed for those of us who believe in open, honest conversations about death, dying, and grief. 

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Shelby: It feels like I'm restoring a lot of what felt broken and what felt lost and what felt missing at that time.

[00:00:06] Jill: Welcome back to Seeing Death Clearly. I'm your host Jill McClennen, a death doula and end of life coach. Here on my show, I have conversations with guests that explore the topics of death, dying, grief, and life itself.

[00:00:20] My goal is to create a series space where you can challenge the ideas you might already have about these subjects. I want to encourage you to open your mind and consider perspectives beyond what you may currently believe to be true. In this episode, I talk with Shelby Frisipia, a grief coach, author, and host of the podcast, Dear Grief Guide.

[00:00:41] Shelby faced many losses during her formative college years. profoundly impacting her identity and future. She shares how she found healing and a new purpose in life, now helping others through their grief with compassion and creativity. In 2020, she founded Life After Loss Academy, an online course and community aiding grievers through major life transitions.

[00:01:06] Shelby calls herself a student of grief following her mother's death in 2013. And she devotes her days to reading, writing, and speaking about loss. Her goal is to help grieving people move through the pain and overwhelm of loss so they can experience peace, purpose, and joy again. Join us as Shelby discusses her journey, the complexities of grief, and how she turned her pain into a source of strength and support for others.

[00:01:34] Thank you for joining us for this conversation. Welcome to the podcast Shelby. Thank you so much for coming on. I'm really looking forward to this because it's not often that I talk to other people that also have podcasts about death or grief or anything in the same realm as me. So I'm really excited.

[00:01:52] Thank you for coming on. 

[00:01:53] Shelby: Yes, thank you so much. I love meeting other people in the grief and death podcast space, because I mentioned off mic, even when I started doing grief podcasting in 2017, it felt like the field was enormously small. And now almost every day I'm meeting somebody else who has a grief or death related adjacent podcast, which is really, really cool because they're still so needed.

[00:02:13] Jill: They are definitely needed. People need to hear these conversations and people need also have a space to come on and have the conversation in a normal, comfortable way. So I love my podcast and I'm definitely excited to talk to you more about how you started all that. But can you just start us off, tell us a little bit about who you are, if you want to share where you grew up, anything like that, just so we know who you are outside of your podcasting and work.

[00:02:39] Shelby: Yeah, totally. I tell people that I, of course, didn't really set out to become a grief coach or a grief author or somebody who talks about grief for a living. I don't know that anybody really does. I think people who enter this line of work are people who have been changed by loss in some sort of way. So I grew up in North Carolina for the first 21 years of my life in what a lot of people would consider a very idyllic childhood, like soccer practice, piano lessons, recitals, being in theater, all that jazz.

[00:03:06] Parents always stayed together. No real major losses until shit hit the fan. And then I had what I affectionately refer to as the four years of hell, which began with my father losing his stable job and so experiencing financial loss for the first time and culminated after four years with the death of my mother.

[00:03:22] And in between that, my dad had brain aneurysms and brain surgery, which really kind of changed who he was as a person and was very scary to reckon as a 19 year old with my father's mortality for the first time. And. And then I also came out of the closet as a queer person in a southern state in the United States of America, which was both kind of accepted and kind of not.

[00:03:43] And so there was a reckoning between that and the faith that I grew up in. The entire time that it was happening, I was also in college. So this was happening between 18 and 21. And I was finding out who I was. I was trying to figure out who my friends were. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do in the world and who I wanted to be.

[00:03:58] And I was on a podcast once about three years ago. that said, you had so much grief in four years in what a lot of people consider the launchpad years, when you are building up to kind of thrust yourself into adulthood. And at that really crucial time in my life, especially after my mother's death, I felt like everything I was building up to crashed and burned.

[00:04:17] And so, To now be in a field that acknowledges and recognizes so much of what I went through back then just as a practice in daily life, it feels like I'm restoring a lot of what felt broken and what felt lost and what felt missing at that time in losing a person. And in losing so many things all at once, it was four years of cumulative losses.

[00:04:41] It was layer upon layer upon layer of loss. It wasn't just her death and her physical body, but it was a sense of home in the world and a loss of faith in a God that I believed in growing up or was taught to believe in growing up. It was a loss of, you know, Hope for reconciliation, because my mom and I were fighting about my sexuality when she died, and just a loss of the family structure that I had expected to be intact for the rest of my life.

[00:05:04] And so there were many, many things that I grieved, and continue to grieve, in addition to her physical loss and the fact that she is no longer here. And I hear that from so many people that I work with and in so many spaces that I inhabit now. And I went from somebody who was so motivated and excited to be in the world.

[00:05:22] to somebody who didn't know if life would ever be good again. And so now, almost 10 years later, to be in a space where I've recognized and created a life that does feel good after devastating loss, it feels sometimes like a miracle. And sometimes I look back and I'm like, Oh my God, I tried really hard to make this real, to make this true for myself.

[00:05:42] Jill: Wow, that is, that is a lot of loss for anybody at any age to even experience so close together. And there's definitely that time in our life is so transformative. And one of my first questions, your mother died suddenly, or was she ill for a while? Because it sounds like you maybe weren't expecting it. So how did that all happen?

[00:06:07] Shelby: Yeah, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, I believe, in the summer of 2019, and went through chemo, surgery, radiation, the whole nine yards, and was actually declared cancer free in January of the year that she ended up dying. And she and my dad went on trips, and she was trying to grow her hair back out, and just doing a lot of things to reorient herself to the world again, and I think get back on track of the life that she thought she was supposed to be living in her really early 50s.

[00:06:35] And then, uh, November around Thanksgiving time, she just had like a cold or pneumonia. She couldn't shake. And she went into the hospital and she was thinking like, well, my immune system is, is trashed since going through chemo, it must just be, uh, an immune disorder or something that I can't get rid of.

[00:06:49] And they said, your cancer has returned and fluid is now building up in your lungs. And they tried a few different interventions across the course of about a month or so, but by mid December, they said, there's nothing more we can do for you. You should call in hospice. And that was December 19th. And we thought.

[00:07:05] Based on what hospice was telling us and what doctors were telling us that she had anywhere from six weeks to six months and she died in seven days. And it was as if getting the news that she was going to die. It's, it's not like it escalated her death. Cause I don't know that the world works like that.

[00:07:19] But I wonder sometimes if she was like, I can finally stop fighting. Cause it had been two years prior to that. She was taking care of my dad with his. brain aneurysms and his hospital stays and the cash rolls and the meal trains and the effort it takes to be a caregiver and also be a human who's alive on the planet and then it was her turn and to weather all of that medically herself.

[00:07:38] I wonder if it was her body's way of just saying I don't have to try so hard anymore and I, I can release this life. And so she died the day after Christmas 2013 and one awful and fortunate aspect of that is that both my sister and I were in college at the time when we were home for winter break. And so there was nothing in our lives that we had to pause in order to be there.

[00:07:59] We were simply there. And that being said, it was hell to be there and to watch extraordinarily rapidly. So I do refer to this as a sudden loss, even though we had some sort of warning that this was going to happen. Over the course of a week, just my mother be a person who was standing and walking and talking and conscious to rapidly declining to where within three to four days out from her death, I did not, I did not recognize her at all.

[00:08:23] It remains. Something that I remember in flashes, and also something that I remember as a great spot of blackness in the calendar of my life. There's a lot of it that I imagine I have forgotten because of shock, and a lot of it that I think will be embedded in my brain, in my mind's eye for the rest of my life.

[00:08:43] Jill: Oh my gosh, yeah, that is sudden. Even if she had the cancer, she was told that she was cancer free and then it all kind of cascaded so quickly. That is a sudden loss and it amazes me the way that our bodies work like that sometimes, where once we decide that this is it, we can't do this anymore, the body can like follow very well afterwards.

[00:09:08] And then some people, they're not willing to give up. And I don't like actually when we say give up or stop fighting because to me, all of us will eventually get to a point where there's not a quality of life. There's just this whole way that we're not living the way that we want to live. Right? So I don't see it as giving up.

[00:09:28] I see it as getting to the point where we're letting go, right? We're letting go of our attachment to what we think our life is should be like and could be like and whatever else. And we'd say, you know what, this is it. And I don't want to do it like this anymore. Was it something that your family, your father and your sister, did that cause the drama and trauma that you sometimes see in families?

[00:09:50] Did it bring you closer together? How did that work out with your family? I 

[00:09:54] Shelby: think it was, it was very much a mixed bag, which I could not have predicted at the time because as a lot of my students and clients will say, I have these expectations of these are the people who are going to be there for me because they've been there for me so far.

[00:10:05] And then a loss happens, you're like, Oh, wow, I didn't see that one coming. I didn't see these people being my supporters and these people actually pulling away. I was very surprised what happened. My mother for sure was kind of the the guide and the glue that held our family together. So for any major events, especially ones that were more emotional leaning, she was the person who got us through.

[00:10:24] And in her death, she was not able to do that. She was not able to usher us through the experience of what it was like to have her die. I wish that would have So I think we all sort of split off into our own directions. My father is a quiet person and not very emotionally expressive, anyway, became more so.

[00:10:43] Myself, who am very emotionally volatile, and my go to emotion in grief is not sadness but rage, became even more so. And my sister, who is often the bridge between the family, similar to a role that my mother played, became more sad. And also tried to reach out for hope and meaning and faith, I think, a lot more quickly than the rest of us.

[00:11:04] And so I, I hear this quote sometimes that grief amplifies who we already are, or, or the emotions that we already have, it just makes them much bigger. And I, for me, I found that to be true. I don't know if it's true for everybody, but for me, I found that to be true. And for a lot of reasons, including my mother's death and how we choose to remember and honor it or don't.

[00:11:22] My father and I are not in communication anymore and that's another loss that I've had to grieve because he's still very much alive and to my knowledge very well. But my sister and I have become much closer despite the fact that even growing up we were very different. different people. And something I love that I did that I can look back and appreciate on myself is after my mother's death, I started reading to try and find answers about grief anywhere.

[00:11:47] I couldn't read for the first few months, but after about a year or so, I was like, I'm going to try some books. And ironically, one of the first books I picked up was called The Happiness Project. And I was like, why am I reading a book called The Happiness Project after mother's death? This is the dumbest thing I've ever done.

[00:11:59] But it said the number one measure scientifically of a good life is how strong your relationships are. And so the author Gretchen Rubin advised you to make a list of people, like three to seven people who you consider the closest to you and find ways to regularly interact with them. And so I proposed to my sister that we have a weekly phone call and 10 years later, we are still friends.

[00:12:18] calling each other once a week, and if we can't, we're rescheduling. And just staying in touch about our lives and remembering our mom through storytelling and catching up with my mom's two sisters, who are our godparents and aunts, and putting the four of us into a room. It's almost like four points of a compass, and in the center is my mother.

[00:12:35] It's really lovely to have that relationship continue and to have watched her grow without my mother, and she gets to watch me grow without our mother. And how are we finding Each in our own ways are unique expressions of how our mom shows up in her life, and to be the only person to be like, remember being raised in the same household where our mom was our mom, and this TV show she would always watch, or this quote she would always say, or this thing she'd always order at the drive thru?

[00:12:59] Like, there is nobody else in my life that I share those memories with. with. And so to have my relationship with her have gotten closer through the years has been really, really cool. And something that I didn't really expect as a side effect of my mom's death. I think I expected to be adrift and alone on my own sort of asteroid in my family for a long time.

[00:13:17] That's the story I was telling myself for sure. So for me to have closer relationships now with a lot of my relatives, including my sister and my mom's two sisters, my aunts has been really neat. 

[00:13:26] Jill: Well, that is beautiful. I'm sure it doesn't make up for your mom not being here, right, having a relationship, but it's still like you said, it's a way to bond together and to talk about the stories.

[00:13:37] And it's something that you share is her where there's going to be other people in your life. I'm assuming your wife has never met your mother that you met your wife after. Yeah, correct. Yeah. And so that's something that you can't ever make up for, right? I think we all want our spouses to know that. our parents and to have some type of relationship with them.

[00:13:59] But it's beautiful that her sisters and your sister, that you kind of formed this deeper bond around it. And I'm sorry to hear about your father too. That is a loss. And that's something my father and I have never been close. We never really had a relationship. He wasn't in my life much. And I had talked with somebody once who their father was estranged from them and then they had a relationship and then their father died.

[00:14:26] And so I had said, I've often wondered, it almost felt like it would have been easier if my father would have died. Because then it wouldn't have felt like it was me. It wouldn't have felt like he left me. It would have been like, well, he couldn't help it, right? It wasn't his fault. He couldn't help it. And after talking with this person, they were like, honestly, it was easier when he died than when he chose to leave.

[00:14:49] And I was like, Hmm, that's interesting. There's something I'd always been curious about that I was able to get a little bit of a idea of whether that would have been the truth or not. Because there is something that I feel like is different in the grief that you have when a parent is not around and they're still alive.

[00:15:08] And it's like, but it doesn't have to be this way. I'm sorry to hear that you and your father ended up in that type of space as well. And you don't have any contact with him at all? 

[00:15:19] Shelby: No, not right now. And I think to your point, It points to each of us having our own expectations of how the future was supposed to look and supposed to go and there really being no common ground in either of our visions for the future.

[00:15:34] And that was, that was really hard to come to terms with. That was a two and a half year long grieving process. And it's so much more than my mother's death. It's political, it's emotional intelligence and expression. It's so many things that I've been able to put words and language to and received responses that That just break my heart.

[00:15:53] That I wish were different. And I can see this too because he's told me, for as little as he's told me about his life and his childhood, I'm like, I think this is all how to be in this lifetime. I think you have grown in so many incredible ways in this life. I don't even know if he ever thought being a father or marrying somebody as good as my mother was ever in the cards for him.

[00:16:14] So to have reached that height in his life even is something I think he impressed himself. With in his own life and reached for and what I am asking of him is is very big to continue honoring my mother to vote for people who do not oppress or terrorize people like me and people like my friends in the world and to respond in ways that are.

[00:16:35] emotionally that he has never responded. So I'm asking him to be a person he's never historically been. I know it's a big ask and I know it probably is impossible and also I know in order to feel deeply connected to him and to maintain a relationship with him that feels nourishing to me and not like a burden and not like something that breaks my heart on every interaction it is what I need.

[00:16:57] And it's something I've definitely worked through with multiple therapists and even in conversations with my wife and my friends and my sister have similar relationships with their parents. There are many things to grieve and also there are many ways in which no longer wrestling with the decision has made my life calmer.

[00:17:12] and smoother and less fraught. There's no longer this weight in my mind of the task of leaving one foot in a slightly open door. If that makes sense, it's like I get to close the door and on the other side of the door, I can sit down and take a breath. There's room to breathe there. And it may change in the future.

[00:17:30] I'm not sure. Having had one parent die, I'm always like, well, what's going to happen when my father dies? If he dies before me, how will I feel? What will happen? What will the new dynamic of my family be? I have many questions about that. And also, in sitting with that and in writing about it and working through it with therapists and grief guides and other professionals, I have come to this space in myself where I'm like, I'm okay.

[00:17:53] Having made this decision and that, that being the outcome that we have of him dying with us being estranged. It's heartbreaking to say and I don't want it to happen. Like, I didn't want my mother to die either. I don't really want anybody to die. And also this feels much more aligned with who I am and what I need.

[00:18:09] And in so many ways, I've said everything I can possibly say in every iteration I can possibly say it. I feel really, really aligned with that in this. Season of my life. 

[00:18:18] Jill: Oh, that's wonderful. I'm glad that you can feel good with your way of handling the relationship Because we can't control other people We can only control the way that we react to them and it is hard when we love people But it's also like yeah, but maybe this is not a relationship that I need to have in my life And were you ever able to get closure with your mother around your sexuality before she died?

[00:18:47] I hate to call it sexuality. The whole thing just drives me crazy where it's like, it's not about the sex people. Can we stop making it about the way that people have sex? It's heartbreaking to me as a mother. I like to think that I will be able to accept my children no matter what. I like to think that I like to believe that, but my husband and I are polyamorous.

[00:19:07] Like we both. We have a alternate lifestyle considering the folks around us, and we also vote in a way that kind of like aligns with that where we're like, all right, if you're trying to hurt people that we love and we care about, we're not going to vote for you. So like, Even though I can say to myself, like, I would never disown my children or be unhappy with their decisions.

[00:19:33] But then I'm like, yeah, but then if they swung really far politically and started getting into hate groups and things that I couldn't deal with, I don't know. I don't know. It just, it's one of the things as a parent, it's very hard to navigate what it would be like and what it potentially will be like to have my children just do things that I Don't agree with whether it's right or wrong for me to agree with it or not, you know, yeah 

[00:19:58] Shelby: Yeah, 

[00:19:58] Jill: and I hope that whatever they do.

[00:20:02] I don't want to ever have any of us die I don't want me to die. I don't want my husband I don't want one of my children to die and have it be that we're not in a place of Love and acceptance between all of us It really always breaks my heart to hear, especially like my mom and I, when I first came out about being polyamorous, we went through it.

[00:20:21] It was not pretty, but we were able to make our way around, right? We went through the storm and made our way around and now she's still kind of like, I don't get it, but whatever. If you're happy, I can support it. So I can imagine if she would have died before we made it to that place, you can still, I believe, get closure within yourself, but I would like to see people not die with that also having that type of relationship with a child.

[00:20:50] Did you ever get any of that? 

[00:20:52] Shelby: No. I wonder sometimes. The way I see the world, I think we've been here before in terms of living multiple lifetimes and believing in reincarnation and we'll be here again. And I think some sort of divine task I was assigned in this lifetime is wrestling with really difficult in totally different ways relationships with my parents and stories of being unloved or being abandoned or being condemned.

[00:21:19] And I often say that my mom died in the middle of a fight. I came out in 2010 and she died in 2013. And in those three years, we fought in circles about where I was going when I died. She was so distressed that I would be in hell, separated from the family forever. We hurled Bible verses at each other. My dad would partake in some of these arguments and then not partake in others.

[00:21:44] They would try and call me every Sunday night. at college just to do a check in and as soon as they made it clear where they stood I stopped answering the phone and so there was a denial of access to me because I couldn't handle just catching up and small talking with people who couldn't accept who I was and so there was a lot of, a lot of difficult emotions and a lot of back and forth.

[00:22:02] Something that she always expressed is that she loves me and I don't think I could hear it at the time because everything about her words and actions felt like a betrayal of that. And I always loved her as well, and I still do, and all the reconciliation that I've gotten, and I never use the word closure because I think closure's a myth, it doesn't exist, I think it's been invented by psychology to give us something to aspire to, but to feel good and settled and to close the book entirely.

[00:22:29] I don't know that that's ever possible, at least for me, and so I never guarantee it. to the clients or the people I work with. I'm like, you'll think about this forever. Even if it's not painful, it will always be on your mind and always be part of your story. And so to me, it's never fully closed, but every form of reconciliation I've gotten has come either through conversations that I've had with other people, whether they're parents like yourself or other queer people.

[00:22:50] God, building a queer chosen family, especially here in Chicago has just been a godsend, but also through dreams. And one of my favorite grief podcasts, speaking of grief podcasts, is called Grief Dreams. And the host, Dr. Joshua Black, actually did his entire Ph. D. thesis on the presence of dreams after a loved one dies and what those dreams are made of and what topics they cover and whether they're nightmares or visitations or memorials.

[00:23:15] And so many times in dreams, especially for the first like five years or so after my mother's death, it's much fewer and farther between now, I had dreams where she and I would embrace. And I got this feeling, she never said anything in the dream, but I got this feeling that like she got it, like she understood and was sorry and was asking for some sort of forgiveness or where she was simply there to try and ensure that love was the dominant thing she was, you bringing to me.

[00:23:42] And one of the things that I think made the biggest difference for me was trying my best in my mid to late 20s and even now in my early 30s to put myself in the shoes of a parent who is watching their child. Be something, do something, have something that, to your belief system, puts them in danger. And knowing that the only thing you can do to protect them or to save them is to try and get them to stop.

[00:24:09] Or to try and get them to be, or do, or have something different. And, When I reframe her argument or her side of the story as trying to save my life, trying to save her baby that she gave birth to, that she raised, that she poured her entire heart and soul into, all she ever wanted to be was a mother, and I was essentially telling her, no, I don't choose you, I choose hell, which was very real for her.

[00:24:31] Having been raised Catholic and then being in a church for the rest of her adult life, I think fighting was the only thing she knew how to do and she was not a fighting mother. Like she was not a confrontational person at all. So even right now in this conversation to recognize that the only time she and I ever really fought was about this demonstrates to me how important she thought it was.

[00:24:50] And that doesn't make it okay and it takes absolutely none of the pain away of what I experienced in her death and like the rage that I felt at her having left me before we settled this. And also what looks like closure to me is a lot of coming to understanding, forgiveness, reconciliation, trying to see how she saw and to see me through that lens and to know very deeply through these dreams and visitations that the love never left.

[00:25:19] It just got very, very, very, as we're coming out of an eclipse, it got eclipsed pretty big for many, many years. I think sometimes that only in grieving have I really been able to re receive that love. I rejected a lot of it when we were fighting. Nope. Don't want this. Can't be true. Not real. Because it feels so bad to be loved and to be rejected by you at the same time.

[00:25:40] And now I'm like, I see how you got there. Still doesn't feel any better, but, but I, I can see how you got there. 

[00:25:47] Jill: Because you're right. As a mother, the biggest fear that I have is my children being harmed, my children dying, right? My children suffering. And so I can imagine that if I truly thought that the way that my child was living their life was going to condemn them to hell, that would be torture for me.

[00:26:08] It would. And you're right. It doesn't make up for the pain. But it definitely can help even me put into perspective some of what I see in the world and the idea that I can imagine as a mom, that if that was what I felt, I just, I would, I would probably do anything I could to, to try and save them because That's what you do when you're a mom.

[00:26:33] They're your babies. They're always going to be your babies, no matter what. I'm not a religious person. I was raised religious, but I'm not male. And I think that's the biggest quote unquote problem that I have with religion is that it just seems like it hurts so many people. And not on purpose, but just this idea that people do think that they need to save you and they think they're doing it for the right reasons, but if that's not what I believe is going to happen, because I don't believe that's what's going to happen to my soul.

[00:27:04] I truly don't believe it. I don't believe that hell is the thing that people think that it is. I don't know what it is. This idea of the dreams is interesting too, because to me, our soul, whatever it is, like the thing that makes me, me, that if it does go on at some point to some other place after I die, That it's going to lose so much of the human fears and judgments and learned behaviors and all that stuff so that it can see more clearly and be like, Oh, but no, it's just love.

[00:27:37] Like, that's all that's left is the love. Right? I know people have said they think that sometimes Loved ones will visit us in our dreams right after they die. And I don't know if that's true or if it is just our brain processing the way that it needs to process. I don't think it matters either way what it is.

[00:27:53] If it is beneficial for people, then that's great, but it's fascinating. I love to hear about it and I love to talk about it and I love to think about it. And the idea too of our chosen family, that's one thing I was with my, my partner's mother this past weekend and commenting just kind of like how.

[00:28:11] Unusual my family is now at this point because my partner my husband and I we text each other all day long Like we became this family unit, but it really fills my soul. It fills what I need in my life I've always felt like an outsider I never really fit in with the people in my towns Until I moved to like bigger cities and even now I live in a smallish town.

[00:28:34] I got the kids from the outside I kind of look quote unquote normal Except I think most people in the town know I'm not normal. And so I still kind of feel like an outsider, but it doesn't matter. I have my bubble, right? I have my friends. I have my family that I've created, I don't know, through again, just living life a little bit differently.

[00:28:54] And it works for us. And I think the biggest concern people have is like, what about your children? I'm like, What about my children? They've got lots of people that love them. What is wrong with that? It's just about having more love in my life and more love for my children and people that care about them and want to help them and want to support all of us.

[00:29:13] So I think it's great. I'm glad you found your chosen family, even if unfortunately it means that you lost some of your other family. It's 

[00:29:23] Shelby: another thing worth grieving, and it's something I really love that's been a byproduct of doing grief work in the world, is attracting a lot of queer. people to my corner of the internet when people find out, because I don't look, quote unquote, look queer, I look like a very straight white woman.

[00:29:39] And I am a white woman, but I'm not a very straight white woman. And once people discover or hear about this part of my story, I attract so many queer people into my work. And It's incredible because I think that there's a grief in being queer. Every April Fool's Day I make a reel or a post or something about here's things not to fake on April Fool's Day because you may be activating somebody's grief in your circle.

[00:30:03] So don't fake a pregnancy, don't fake a miscarriage, don't fake a breakup, don't fake a death or an illness, especially COVID. Don't fake coming out of the closet, especially if you're a straight person, you're just doing it for a laugh. And so many people in the comments will say things like coming out is not a grief event.

[00:30:17] And I said, you've obviously never come out of the closet in your life. Because, especially in the southern United States and other places in the United States and other countries where it's very much illegal to be a queer person, to come out can mean everything from rejection to death. So much of what I talk about in the relationship between grief and queerness is the awful parts of being queer, the things that we must grieve by nature of being queer, like grief of not fitting into the normal, grief of being misunderstood or rejected by friends and family, grief of being threatened when we're in public spaces, showing affection like straight people would do but we are kind of pointed out or highlighted or persecuted for that fear of simply existing fear of being killed especially for trans humans that exist in the world or non binary people who don't express in quote unquote normal ways but the flip side of this and the thing that people don't talk about as often is the gifts of being queer and how that assists in grief.

[00:31:10] And something that coming out gave me, and I don't know if this is true for you as a poly person, is this recognition that I have other options. There are other ways to do life, there are alternatives, there are creative ways to make this good even if it's not the expectation that I had for my life or that other people had of me.

[00:31:28] And I think something that Straight people don't often recognize until they're struck with some sort of major loss is that what they're living or what they're expected to live is not all there is. And one gift of being queer and having to come out and having to invent and announce, this is who I am, this is who I love, this is what I want, and this is what I'm going for, and face the truth.

[00:31:47] The consequences of that, good and bad, it really makes room for invention in the midst of what could be a lot of crisis and what could be a lot of grief. And so in coming out three years before my mother's death, some part of me knew that like my family, my biological family, is not my only support system.

[00:32:07] I am not limited to the standard tried and true grief support group. I can go off and try something weird and see if that works too. I can try going to a sound bath or getting reiki or getting a massage or, or dealing with a naturopath or a nutritionist or whatever I'm doing. Or I can try reading a book or listening to weird sound frequencies.

[00:32:23] Some of it worked, some of it didn't. But the freedom to experience I'm going to try something different or not be like, I need to sit down in front of a therapist for 50 minutes a week in order to process my grief, which would be in my brain a very like straight Westernized approach to coping with grief.

[00:32:37] I'm like, there's so much else out here. That's like a sideways backdoor lesson that I learned from being a queer person in the world. And even now more as I've grieved and talking to people like my wife and talking to people my best friend, Tammy, who also died in 2022, is that grief, like queerness.

[00:32:56] exists and is true for the rest of your life, but takes so many different forms throughout. I called myself one thing when I came out. I call myself a different thing now. There'll probably be new words and vocabulary invented in the future to describe what I am. These Gen Zers and Gen Alpha are doing some great work in vocabulary land.

[00:33:13] Also the expression of that and the needs that I have to change as well. And so to be a grieving person is permission to be fluid and changing across the course of your life. To grieve is the same thing. What I needed in the first. Two years after my mother's death is not the same as what I need right now, and very true for my grief, what I needed when I first came out is not the same as what I need right now, or what I want, or what I'm interested in, and all those things, and I can still be a grieving person across the course of my life, and I'm still a queer person across the course of my life, but what that looks like and how permutates and combinates.

[00:33:45] The whole time I'm here gets to change, and that's a blessing that queerness offers us, especially when we're grieving, is this imaginative, creative element of being different, of being a kind of outsider to a society that says, be this thing, get over it, move on, overcome the obstacle, and keep on truckin And queer people, and especially queer grieving people, are like, no, there's another way, and it can be softer and more colorful and seasonal, and I just think that's really lovely.

[00:34:11] I think so much of grief and queerness is focused on the hardship, and there is a lot of that, especially now. Also, there is so much richness and depth and beauty that comes from being a queer person and a grieving person all in one body and one experience. 

[00:34:26] Jill: And I don't think I'd ever really thought of it that way, that, you know, I think the way that you explain trying different things, right?

[00:34:32] I've always been that way. I just try out all different things and figure out what works for me in different stages in life. And I never really put it together with the fact that I always knew that a traditional heterosexual relationship was just not going to work for me. I knew it when I was in high school.

[00:34:51] I didn't know what it meant, but I knew when I was in high school that I was like, this is not going to work for me. And so I started even down that path when I was younger of how am I going to figure out how to make life work and it basically came down to, well, I'll just never get married if that's the choice, because I'm not going to just do this one thing with this one person for the rest of my life, especially a man, and I was able to navigate it.

[00:35:16] My way through life and find people that accepted me for who I am, and I just happened to also marry one of them, which I'm very grateful and very lucky that even when we were younger, he was very accepting of me being me. And he was like, Alright, whatever. As long as you're happy, then I'll be happy. It's like, okay, perfect.

[00:35:36] That works for me. But to think of it in the way that also I have done really everything in my life. I think it just seems so natural to me that I didn't even really think of it that way of like, oh yeah, that's kind of just the way that I do everything, right? Like I just try a lot of different things in different stages and some things work and when they work, I keep going.

[00:35:56] And when they stop working, we kind of shake that one off and go down a different path. I went through an interesting period of, I didn't feel Like queer enough to be included in the LGBTQIA plus community because I didn't feel bisexual enough. And that there was a whole lot of people that were like, well, Polly doesn't fit in.

[00:36:17] So like, you're not included. And I was like, I still had to come out of a closet. I still got shamed. I still lost friends and family. How is that not part of it? Just because I can pass as a straight white heterosexual married. I could still pass as that. Of course. But I had like an interesting grieving period with that where I was like, oh, I finally found my community.

[00:36:38] And then so many people in that community were like, no, you're not one of us. And I was like, oh, no, I guess I don't have my community. And then with therapy and then also with having conversations with Pali people and non Pali people, other people that were in the community, they were like, no, no, no, you're fine.

[00:36:55] You don't have to pass the bi test to fit in. Like, it's okay. But the grieving process. Of even just acknowledging to ourselves of this is not how I want to live my life and knowing that how I want to live my life is going to make me lose people is a really interesting thing to navigate. 

[00:37:14] Shelby: I think that's true for grief as well.

[00:37:16] Talking about losing people, like one of the biggest. Elements of the online course that I teach is an entire module about navigating friendships and relationships after loss. We focus first on you doing grief with you because grief happened to you and grief is happening to you. So kind of orient that relationship first, but then we talk about how to form grief honoring relationships with friends and family.

[00:37:38] Because again, going back to that point of your biggest indicator of a good and happy life is the relationships that you have with other people and the connections you have to them. So many people are. Devastated by the people that leave, or that say shitty cliches, or that don't know what to do with their emotions, or try and fix them, or keep them busy, or encourage them to try for another baby, whatever the case may be, and so to examine all of those relationships, and to have the experience of a queer person, of like, I have grave friends that have not been able to handle all of who I am, And now I'm doing it from a grief perspective.

[00:38:12] I've done it from a queer perspective and now I'm doing it from a, from a grief perspective. And to take that wisdom into this and teach people of all genders, sexualities, identities, ages, how to walk through this sort of framework of here's how you identify what hurts you about the relationship. Here's how to set a meaningful boundary.

[00:38:29] Here's how to identify and ask for what you need. And here's how to take care of yourself if they respond poorly, if they respond well, and if they don't respond at all. I'm only putting these pieces together now, but having had this experience and gone through this once as a queer person, many times as a queer person, and now doing it again as a grieving person, I suppose, and this is not me trying to have a big head, but it's one of my gifts in the world is to help people navigate these relationships that feel painful, but they can't always put a finger onto why.

[00:38:56] It's just that they're not supporting me or there for me or accepting of me in the ways that I need. And I don't know more than that. And I'm like, let's find out more and then let's see if we can reshape. this relationship to be more of what you need, and if not, find ways to grieve it, release it. And also, uh, kind of the end cap of that is start seeking out people who do fit that criteria or that, that depth that you're looking for in relationship.

[00:39:18] I see so much overlap in, in grieving and being a queer person all at once. 

[00:39:23] Jill: And I don't think it's having a big head by saying that that's your gift because it's true. It is your gift and that's something that you're giving not just to the people that you directly work with but it radiates out from there.

[00:39:35] The people that we help just navigate whatever is going on in their life, then they're better able to be better humans, right? So it ripples out. It's wonderful that that's your gift, and you should totally have a big head about it, but just admitting that it's your gift is not having a big head. I think it's amazing.

[00:39:53] But we are almost out of time. Tell us a little bit about the work that you do, about your podcast, whatever you want to share. 

[00:39:59] Shelby: Yeah, I'll start with my podcast because it's a really lovely free doorway into getting to know me and the work that I do. A lot of people say, I just put on your podcast to sleep because your voice sounds so nice.

[00:40:09] You do 

[00:40:09] Jill: have a beautiful 

[00:40:10] Shelby: voice. Which is one of the nicest compliments I ever got, and I'm like, all that musical theater training really paid off. It's a lot of vocal training. So the podcast that I host now is called Dear Grief Guide, and it's very similar to Dear Abby, or Ask Amy, or Savage Love Cast, or Dear Sugars, if you're familiar with that podcast.

[00:40:27] And every week on Wednesday, I answer an anonymous letter from a grieving person who's feeling lost, stuck, trapped. overwhelmed in some sort of grief experience. Most often it's the death of a loved one, but sometimes too it's a divorce or a major diagnosis that changes somebody's life or an estrangement or the death of a pet and offer both validation but also practical tips or advice or wisdom or exercises for beginning to move forward.

[00:40:53] The tagline that I have at the end of the show is even through grief we are growing and it's something I've used in all my podcasts since I started doing them in 2017. And what I want people to. come away with after having listened is like, even in the darkest, stuckest place you could possibly be, you are growing, even if you are just observing how you're different.

[00:41:13] Like, you don't have to be growing by leaps and bounds, which I think is what society tells us we should be doing when we're grieving, is like, you should be grieving, then you should be over it. And it's very much a permission oriented podcast of whatever you're feeling right now is valid and true, and if you're looking to start moving through it, here's how you can do that.

[00:41:28] And then the rest of the work that I do all lives on my website, shelbyforsythia. com. So I just always direct people there as a blanket. You can buy my books there. You can listen to podcasts there. And the thing that is the closest to my heart that I've mentioned a few times, but probably haven't said the name of yet is called Life After Loss Academy.

[00:41:44] And it's my online course and community for people who are looking to grow through their grief. And so it takes you from being lost, stuck, trapped, overwhelmed, not knowing how to move through a loss. to actually being able to come out the other side of it and feel like my life can be good again. I can have balanced relationships that honor my grief.

[00:42:03] I can integrate my loved ones who have died. I know how to release pain and heartbreak and difficult emotions and I know how to feel safe in a world where loss has taught me anything can happen. at any time. And I launched it in 2020 and it's been four years of teaching and leading it now and I've had the honor of helping dozens and dozens of people through the deaths of loved ones but also a ton of other losses just build lives that they really love from lives that loss forced them to live.

[00:42:30] That they never wanted, that they never opted into, that they never wanted to be true, and to come out the other side of it and say, I actually feel so connected to my people who have died. I have, one person said, I have actually quit my job and moved on to another workplace that can honor my grief, talk about friendships and relationships.

[00:42:45] Some people have said, I've actually set up a place for my loved one in my home and I felt so much shame and embarrassment about doing that before. Some people said, I finally know what to do with all these feelings of numbness and rage and disappointment that have just been swirling in here forever.

[00:42:57] So the outcomes that people have are all. different but the overarching theme is that they grieve and then they find ways to integrate grief in their life that feel nourishing and sustaining as opposed to this is the thing draining all of my life and all of my energy from me. I just love it. I really do.

[00:43:15] I'm going on to eight years now of being a grief coach and an author and a teacher in the space and it just keeps getting richer and deeper and that's probably my favorite part of it. Yeah. 

[00:43:26] Jill: Yeah, amazing. I'm so glad you're here and you're doing that work because it is really needed. We do not honor grief well in our culture.

[00:43:34] And so many of us hold it all in and it's nice to know there are spaces like yours that not only can you honor your grief, but then you can learn how to work with it. And you can learn how to do different things that, you know, Like, I love setting up spaces. I have a little altar on the other side of this room, and it's got my grandmother's pictures, and it's got all of her little stuff, and I just add to it over time from different people that have died, and I love it.

[00:44:03] It makes me happy. But I can also understand that there's probably people that walk in here and they're like, what is that thing? So I could see some people would feel shame in being like, I'm going to have this place. But again, I tend to not be one. I don't care what people think. So I just do what I want.

[00:44:19] I don't care without hurting people. Of course, like I don't do what I want in a reckless way, but if it's not hurting somebody else. Then if it works for me, I'm going to keep doing it. 

[00:44:29] Shelby: Yeah. Yeah. And just allowing that kind of permission and grief is really beautiful too. We do a lot of that. 

[00:44:35] Jill: Beautiful.

[00:44:36] Well, I will for sure put links in there and hopefully people listening, if it's something that feels like it could benefit them, hopefully they'll reach out to you. If nothing else, listen to her podcast, but thank you. I appreciate you taking the time today. 

[00:44:50] Shelby: Thanks 

[00:44:50] Jill: Jill. I'm really glad to have met you too.

[00:44:53] Thank you for listening to this episode of Seeing Death Clearly. In my next episode, I talk with poet Sean Lynch about his latest collection of poems titled, Halo Nest Poems on Grief. Sean discusses how his mother's battle with ovarian cancer and her death at 59 years old influenced his writing. He reflects on the emotional experiences of visiting his mother at the hospital.

[00:45:18] And how these moments heightened his connection to his surroundings. Sean shares the healing process of writing about his grief initially unintended, but naturally emerging as he documented his raw emotions. Listen, as Sean reads a poem from his book titled the day after. And discusses the universal yet unique experience of grief.

[00:45:39] If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or family member who might find it interesting. Your support in spreading the podcast is greatly appreciated. Please consider subscribing on your favorite podcast platform and leaving a five star review. Your positive feedback helps recommend the podcast to others.

[00:45:56] The podcast also offers a paid subscription feature that allows you to financially support the show. Your contribution will help keep the podcast advertisement free. Whether your donation is large or small, every amount is valuable. I sincerely appreciate all of you for listening to the show and supporting me in any way you can.

[00:46:13] You can find a link in the show notes to subscribe to the paid monthly subscription, as well as a link to my Venmo, if you prefer to make a one time contribution. Thank you. And I look forward to seeing you in next week's episode of Death clearly.