Dear Grief Guide, I Feel Relief After A Loved One's Death

A grieving mom is ashamed that she feels relief after her daughter's death. She wonders if it's okay to miss her daughter and be grateful that she's no longer suffering. I read her anonymous letter and then offer her practical tools and compassionate wisdom for growing through grief.

Dear Grief Guide is a weekly advice podcast where I answer anonymous letters from people feeling lost, stuck, or overwhelmed in the midst of grief.

Music © Adi Goldstein, Used with Permission

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Dear Grief Guide,

A podcast where each week I answer one anonymous letter from a listener feeling lost,

Stuck,

Heartbroken,

Or overwhelmed in the midst of grief.

My name is Shelby Forsythia.

I'm a grief coach and author,

And I'm here to help you create a life you love from the life loss forced you to live.

Let's get to today's letter.

Dear Grief Guide,

I lost my oldest daughter,

Age 25,

A few months ago,

And I'm struggling with a couple of things.

She struggled with her mental health for a few years,

But after finally getting a good diagnosis,

She was doing well,

And it really felt like 2024 would be her year.

She had about six months of doing well before she died of an unexplained stroke.

How cruel that she fought so hard,

Through multiple breakdowns,

Hospitalizations,

And losing her dream job,

And was beginning to create a new life when she died.

She was just getting her feet under her and starting to find a new dream for herself.

It's so unfair she didn't get to complete that turn into the new life she was creating.

I feel extremely guilty for feeling some sense of freedom from the daily check-ins and interpreting her tone and responses to see if she was starting to take a bad turn or not taking her meds.

I kept paid time off and savings in case I needed to drop everything and make sure she got the care she needed if she crashed again.

I feel a sort of emotional release because now I'm no longer second-guessing whether or not everything she did was a manic episode and the beginning of a downward spiral,

Or if she was being 25 and living carefree and happy,

As she should be able to do.

How can I feel relief when my baby is gone?

When she didn't get to live her full adult life,

We'd always assumed she'd have.

She wanted so badly to be a mom,

And we talked about how she could manage that by building support systems and so on.

She had a great boyfriend and was talking about how to manage a relationship with mental illness.

At times,

I'd feel overwhelmed by the prospect of her struggling with mental illness her entire adult life,

The future stretched out ahead of her.

How often would she want to stop her meds,

Spiral,

And then have to get back on them?

How would the hormones of pregnancy,

Childbirth,

And postpartum affect her?

If she stayed close by,

I could be on hand as much as necessary and be able to see how she was doing.

These are thoughts I would have about her future,

Living with mental illness and its cyclical rollercoaster.

I feel like a horrible person,

And I can't wrap my head around the fact I won't see her or hug her or hear her laugh again until it's my time.

I'm realizing I've been living my life in the margins,

Sitting on standby when she needed me for two years,

And now I don't need to.

I hadn't realized I'd set my life on hold to such a great degree.

My mother was never there for me,

Even when I asked for help.

I have no memory,

Even as a child,

Of trusting her or of her comforting me.

So it's extremely important to me that my girls always know I'm there.

It's the drive behind my mothering decisions,

Even now that they're adults.

I never wanted them to question,

If they needed mom,

I'd be there.

But now,

I can take a trip and not worry that my daughter will have an episode without me nearby.

I can spend that money I set aside,

Or just take a paid day off for myself and not worry whether I'll need to take PTO later to take care of her.

I feel so guilty and ashamed that I feel relief and freedom from this aspect of my daughter's life.

Her dying means that her care does not need to be managed in some part by me for the rest of my life.

I'd trade it all to have her back,

But the feeling is still present and I can't seem to reconcile it.

She cared so much about other people and wanted people to be happy and cared for.

I know she wouldn't want me to feel this way,

But I can't shake the thoughts from ashamed to be relieved.

Hi there,

Ashamed to be relieved.

I can feel the back and forth,

The pendulum swinging side to side in this letter that you've written.

Your massive,

Massive grief and pain and heartache at the unfair,

Unjust,

Too soon death of your daughter from something not even tied to her mental illness.

And also your relief in this lightening of a load,

This freedom of not needing to spend so much of your time and energy devoted to monitoring where she was in the world,

How she was in the world,

And who she was showing up as in the world.

Grief is so incredibly full of paradoxes.

It's like mind numbing sometimes how many things are true in grief.

And for you,

I hear just a few relief and agony,

A sense of freedom and a sense of feeling trapped by the guilt or by the shame of the feeling free,

The injustice of your daughter's death and the awful reality that we're all going to die and we have no idea when.

You are living in the middle of it all.

I want to invite you,

As you do your best to reconcile these thoughts,

To make as much room in your brain and your heart and your soul,

If you feel that's applicable to you,

For both and.

For as many ands as you can stand to hold.

I feel so much grief that she is not here.

I feel so much agony that I will never get to hold her again,

Or listen to the sound of her laugh,

Or hear the sound of her voice,

Or be beside her on the couch.

I feel so much relief and freedom and not needing to keep eyes and ears on her,

On the phone,

On the text,

The check-ins.

I feel so much shame for feeling relief.

Shouldn't it all just be a hundred percent grief all the time,

Maybe?

Usually not,

For most people though,

But I invite you,

Ashamed to be relieved,

To picture each of these emotional statements,

I feel this,

I feel that,

I feel this,

I feel that,

As individual entities,

Maybe as books,

Or juggling balls,

Or,

I don't know,

Articles of clothing,

And see how many you can hold,

Metaphorically.

See how many you can wear at one time.

Because underneath those books,

Underneath those balls,

Underneath those clothes,

You are still you.

You are the container where all of these emotions are happening.

And one of the great challenges of grief is expanding yourself big enough,

And it feels like real ass growing pains,

Especially in the early days,

To hold all of the things that are now true for you.

Truths are heavy,

And grief brings you a whole heck of a lot of them,

And says,

Carry these,

All at once,

Right now,

Because they are suddenly all true,

All at once,

And goodness,

It takes such a long time,

And such repeated practice,

To hold all of these things together.

And my etymology nerd brain,

Etymology is the meaning of words,

Has to pause for a second on the word reconcile.

Re,

The root re,

R-E,

Means to go back,

Or to go back again,

Like to revert,

Or to rewind.

So to reconcile,

Con,

Means to bring together,

Or to bring along with.

To reconcile something is to bring things together over and over and over and over again.

And I don't know,

Ashamed to be relieved,

If you're into what my wife and I call string sports,

Knitting,

Crocheting,

Embroidering,

Weaving,

But I often picture the art of reconciliation,

The act of reconciliation,

Of weaving something together,

Or a lot of somethings together,

Over and over and over again.

It is a repetitive motion,

Not because there's something wrong with you,

But because reconciling is simply a lot of work to be done,

And it is done on repeat.

I anticipate that you will be holding some semblance of these feelings for the rest of your life.

The trick is,

In reconciliation,

To not make them agree with each other,

It's not like cake batter,

Where you're stirring everything together and eventually it becomes one unit.

These feelings can't necessarily be broken up and blended in a blender,

Or a mixing bowl,

They may never become one thing.

They may always be their own individual threads in this larger piece that you are weaving,

But again,

Just like you held all the books,

Just like you hold all the balls,

Just like you wear all the articles of clothing,

The foundation underneath all of that is that you are still here.

You are the container,

The vessel that is containing and holding all of these things to be true,

And that is the balancing act of holding paradox and grief.

Another thing I want to offer you is the distinction between guilt,

And shame,

And disappointment.

This is something we talk about in Life After Loss Academy,

Because so many grieving people come to me and say,

I feel so guilty about this element of my grief story in particular,

And I notice you wrote it in your letter a couple of times too,

Is I feel so guilty for feeling relief in my daughter's death,

And I wonder,

And you signed off this way,

If what you're actually feeling is shame.

Because shame,

Okay let's start with guilt actually,

Guilt is I did something bad.

I went against some moral code,

Some ethical code,

Some legal code.

The example that the author Brene Brown often uses is I took a candy bar from the store when I was a kid and I knew it was wrong,

And I felt guilt about that.

I broke some sort of societal or written down rule,

Some agreed upon way that we are humans together.

I broke a rule,

And I feel guilty about an action that I took.

A lot of people use the word guilt to describe what they're feeling in grief,

But most of the time,

Through some definition,

Through some more word nerdery,

We can see that what most grievers are feeling is either shame or disappointment.

So shame,

What you signed off as a shame to be relieved,

Is a belief that you are bad as a person.

This is heartbreaking in grief because a lot of times,

Society tells us that because we feel paradoxes,

Because grief is not 100% mourning or 100% despair that they're not here,

Or 100% longing,

That there's something wrong with us,

And we should be ashamed of how we feel.

And in fact,

Grief is a very,

Very,

Very complex beast.

In my own mother's death,

I felt sadness,

Yeah,

But if I had to put it on a pie chart,

Anger was at least 50%.

I was mad that she died in the middle of a fight,

And I was pissed that I would never ever get to have my say.

I was also relieved to see her out of pain,

Relieved that I didn't have to fight her anymore in life and wouldn't have to feel the anguish she pointed in my direction with her words and her actions.

I was also grieving for a future that I didn't even know was coming,

Grieving for our past together and her role as a historian,

And also grieving intangible things like a sense of home,

And my role as her daughter,

And the thing that we called family,

The four of us as a whole unit together.

There was a lot in there besides 100% sadness.

And kinda like you,

I felt some shame for not being able to adhere to society's expectation of grief,

Which is,

This person was so great,

And in their death,

We feel all sad.

It's a nice story for a movie,

For a TV show,

But in real life we know things are different.

I want to discuss one more definition with you though,

Because I wonder if we might shift some of what you refer to as shame to disappointment.

And I know disappointment feels like maybe too small of an emotion to describe what you're feeling,

But disappointment is simply,

I expected things to go one way,

And they went another.

I had expectations,

And reality slammed a friggin' door in my face.

And the author Brene Brown says that the weight of disappointment is equal to the weight of expectation.

You expected your daughter to live longer.

You expected her to continue to struggle with mental illness.

You both expected her to become a mother,

To live a full,

Joyful life.

You expected to always be able to be there for her in life.

You expected to constantly be setting aside time and money to tend to her,

To keep watch,

To be a sort of sentry over her,

A mother over her,

To offer that protection from nearby.

You expected things to be different.

And in feeling disappointment,

You are grieving all the ways that all of those expectations have been shattered.

And we also set expectations of ourselves as grievers.

I expected to feel sad.

I expected to miss her at 100%.

I expected to look at my paid time off,

To look at my savings accounts with resentment,

Not relief.

I expected to only feel agony at her absence,

Not relief that she's out of pain and out of the suffering,

The mental anguish that she felt.

So to have our expectations meet reality in grief,

Too,

Can also be a kind of disappointment.

We can be disappointed by how the loss went,

How everything unfolded.

And we can also be disappointed by how we are expressing our grief.

So I'm not going to tell you you're disappointed.

And I'm not going to tell you that you're full of shame.

I want you to decide what that experience is for you.

Are you ashamed to be relieved?

Or are you disappointed that your daughter died the way she is and relief is a byproduct of that?

Or is it some mixture of both?

Is there I am 80% ashamed and I am 20% disappointed?

You decide.

And it may change by the day.

It may change by the hour.

But I invite you to see yourself through slightly more compassionate goggles of I am not a bad person for feeling this way.

I am disappointed,

Severely,

Massively disappointed in how this all unfolded.

I want to offer you another thing,

Too,

Ashamed to be relieved.

You never called yourself this in your letter.

But you were a caregiver to your daughter.

Maybe not in the hospice end of life sense.

Maybe not in the bedside sense.

Maybe not in the I anticipatorily grieved for them.

Because they had a terminal diagnosis sense.

But in the sense that you were on call,

You were monitoring,

You were on standby,

You set aside time,

Money,

Energy to tend to your daughter with a mental illness that is taking a caregiver role and holding a caregiver role in her life.

I hope,

I hope,

I hope,

If nothing else from this podcast,

That you will research,

Do a Google,

Caregiver resources specifically about the relief of feeling unburdened or feeling free when a loved one dies.

But also the mourning that takes place and the shame or the self-hatred of feeling relief in their death.

This is an experience that so many caregivers have,

Whether they're related to the person who died,

They're married to the person who died,

They're a friend of the person who died,

They're a medical professional for the person who died.

There is a very unique and specific experience of being a caregiver in any fashion,

Physically,

Mentally,

Emotionally,

Logistically,

Spiritually,

For someone who died.

The agony of witnessing their death,

Of grieving the fact they are no longer here and being so relieved that they're suffering,

And your devotion to that suffering,

To caretaking for that suffering,

Has come to an end.

Both are true,

And there are so many incredible articles and YouTube videos and speakers and grief professionals and books,

If you're up for reading at the moment,

That speak specifically to the grief of relief as a caregiver,

And I want you to refer to yourself as that.

And I hope you feel permission to attach that label to yourself,

Especially as you continue to grieve.

The last thing I want to say,

And this is with reference to how you spoke about your own mother,

How she was not there for you,

Even when you asked for help.

And I don't know where this is coming from.

So this may be a sort of blessing from your daughter by way of me.

I would like to think of it as that,

But these are the words that came to me specifically for you.

Mom,

You have completed the mission.

You have completed the mission for your daughter in life on earth.

You broke the cycle of abandonment that your mother passed down to you in a single generation.

It like this sometimes takes multiple generations to reverse,

To heal,

To come to some semblance of goodness,

And my God,

You did it in one generation.

I deeply want you to be proud of that.

You were there for your daughter until her dying day.

You devoted time,

Energy,

Money,

Resources.

I imagine sleepless nights.

I imagine busy,

Hectic,

Distracted days where your job as a mother was notice my daughter,

Keep track of my daughter,

Tend to my daughter,

Be a mother to my daughter.

And for her life on earth,

You have completed the mission.

You guided her into a good life.

I know it was cut short.

And you can continue to be a mother to her in death.

One of my favorite interviews I ever did happened,

I'm going to guess 2017,

2018 with somebody named Emily Ruth,

Whose twins died.

And she talked about how motherhood doesn't end when your babies die,

No matter how old they are.

Something you might ask yourself going forward is how can I continue to mother my daughter beyond her time on earth?

Can I create space for her in my home?

Can I talk with her through letters or through voice notes?

Or even by creating some sort of virtual with her sister?

Can I have a day or a week even with that PTO with those savings that I take off in her honor?

Grief vacations are a very real thing.

How can I carry her forward in a way that I know she would like to be carried?

You might consider the ways that she needs you differently in death than she did in life.

She may require less of your time,

Money,

And energy than she did in life,

But she still needs you.

You might imagine how you can use your resources as a mom,

Because you are still her mom,

To offer her mothering from where you are on planet earth.

As you said,

Until you meet again.

So if that's something that you believe in,

Or something that resonates with you,

That is how you can continue to take that mission of motherhood forward into the future.

So ashamed to be relieved.

My hope for you is that the shame lightens,

Softens,

Maybe gets fuzzy around the edges.

I hope you feel more permission to hold all of your grief things together in one place with no pressure for them to mix,

Because remember,

Reconciliation is about going back and bringing things together over and over and over again.

Not about forcing them to agree with each other,

Or to blend into one thing,

But to coexist together,

Both and,

Both and,

Both and,

Both and.

I hope you will perceive of yourself as a caregiver and seek out resources.

In that vein,

Many local places and online places offer resources for caregivers who are grieving and dealing with that complex emotion of relief.

And I hope that you will pause and recognize how you have broken a generational cycle in a single generation,

And find creative ways to carry your mothering actions and intentions forward into the future with you.

I am so,

So glad you wrote to me,

And I wish you the very best of luck.