Dear Grief Guide, I'm Sick Of Fighting Grief

After the death of his dog, a letter-writer struggles under the heavy weight of grief. I read their anonymous letter and then offer them practical tools and compassionate wisdom for growing through their 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,

A few months ago I said goodbye to my beloved dog Beau.

People who don't understand pet loss say,

He was just a dog,

But he was so much more than that.

I adopted him after I got sober and through the years he was my confidant,

My exercise buddy,

And the one who could brighten my darkest days.

When my father died after a long battle with cancer,

Taking Beau to the dog park was the only thing that got me out of the house and kept me going.

His death,

Even though I knew it was coming,

Has flattened me.

Every day feels like a battle.

It's as if I'm carrying this heavy weight on my shoulders,

And no matter how hard I try,

The burden doesn't lighten.

My energy is consumed by the struggle to fend off the pain of loss.

It's exhausting,

And I long for a moment of relief.

I don't want to forget my dog,

But I am so sick of fighting grief.

I find myself replaying memories of Beau,

From the way he'd run to the kitchen every time I opened a jar of peanut butter,

To the warmth of his presence at the foot of the bed.

But these moments,

Though precious,

Are tainted by the knowledge that he's no longer here.

I miss him deeply,

And the pain seems to grow instead of diminish with time.

I've tried various coping mechanisms,

From journaling to seeking support from friends,

But the weight of grief persists.

I'm beginning to wonder if there's a way to coexist with this pain,

Rather than constantly battling against it.

How do I get out from under the heavy weight of grief?

Sincerely,

Crushed by Grief Hi there,

Crushed by Grief.

I think you're onto something.

This last little bit of your letter,

Where you use these very specific words,

I think in writing to me,

You are giving yourself,

Whether you know it or not,

The keys to unlocking what feels so stuck and so overpowering and so overwhelming.

And the word you used was coexist.

This is something that I teach grieving people both one on one and in Life After Loss Academy,

Is that the way that society teaches us to cope with grief,

Whether the death of a person,

The death of a pet,

But also other non-death griefs like divorce or a major life diagnosis,

Is to treat grief like an obstacle to get over,

A mountain to climb,

A thing to fight off and surmount,

And kind of,

For lack of a better phrasing,

To accomplish,

To move through and check off your list,

As if you will feel grief and go through it and then never experience it again.

It teaches that moving through grief and getting over grief is something to achieve.

And that to live a good life,

It is necessary to not feel grief anymore.

And if you are feeling grief,

If you are fighting grief,

If you are spending your days fighting grief,

Then there's something wrong or defective about you.

This is not a stance that I get behind.

This is something toxic that I feel that society tells us so that we can get back to doing what society would like us to do.

Being happy,

Being productive,

Being fine.

As if we cannot also do those things with the presence of grief.

And the secret,

The word that you used,

Coexist,

Is to perceive of grief not as something that is sitting on top of you,

That has overtaken your life,

That feels like it's crushing you,

But to instead perceive grief as an energy that is along for the ride,

That is there beside you,

That is adjacent to you,

That is present in the room.

But this sense or this story or this narrative that grief is this overwhelming,

Evil,

Crushing force that is out to destroy you is not helpful to you or to anyone else that I know who's grieving.

I once worked with a client who was grieving the sudden and unexpected death of her husband after a tragic accident in their home.

And she referred to feeling grief in those early weeks and months as living in frozen mode.

And I said,

What do you mean by that?

And she said,

I feel as if there's like a 300 pound linebacker sitting on top of my lap at all times.

I want to move,

I want to be able to do things,

I want to get out of bed.

But I feel as if grief is this force that is sitting on top of me,

Keeping me from breathing,

Keeping me from moving,

Keeping me from living my life.

And I resent it for that I'm using all of my energy to try and take what little breaths I can,

While grief is,

Is lording over me.

And I invited her to perceive of grief,

Even for moments,

For small moments throughout her day,

As relocating,

Not leaving,

Because oftentimes we cannot get rid of grief.

But we can,

In your words,

Shift its weight,

Shift the weight of grief from on top of us to beside us.

What happens when you're no longer under the weight of grief,

But it is sitting beside you on the couch or lying beside you in the bed,

Suddenly,

There's room to breathe here.

But there is also room to ask questions,

To make choices,

Potentially to get up and move if that's something that you feel called to do.

You are not asking grief to leave the room or to leave the space or to leave your house or to exit your life permanently.

Because that's not something that when we're grieving,

We have the power to ask.

What we do have the power to ask of grief is can you can you scooch over just a little bit?

I would love some room to breathe here.

There's a myth I think too,

Especially in the way that society tells it that because grief is this crushing force and enemy,

You have to fight an obstacle you have to overcome that you cannot communicate with it.

That it is this stony,

Immovable,

Non human force that exists to torture and torment you.

Yet when working with people one on one and in Life After Loss Academy,

We invite them to see grief in a way that is human,

Even as a part of themselves,

If you can stretch this far,

What if you were talking to a part of yourself that is grieving,

Then you can talk to it,

Then it can talk back,

Then you can have a conversation about what you need or what you want or where you'd like to go or what you'd like to do with that information.

What a change from being under the weight of something to being beside it.

Another way you can view this,

And I picked this up from relationship therapists,

Is that people have much different conversations with close people in their life when they're sitting beside them at a table versus sitting across from them.

This is true for business relationships as well.

There's something about psychology,

Body language,

Whether real or imagined,

That sitting across from something means we're fighting,

Means we're opposed,

Means we're against each other,

Means we're negotiating something or we are at odds about something.

Yet when we are both seated next to each other and traveling in the same direction,

Whether at a restaurant or in a car,

Or simply just walking around the neighborhood,

Suddenly we both feel like we're on the same path,

We're on the same team,

We're in this thing together.

And when you can move grief mentally from this space of I am fighting grief to grief exists and I am in the same room as it,

It opens up so many more possibilities for what you can do with it.

Crushed by grief,

I am not going to ask you to remove grief from your life.

I cannot give you some sort of secret formula for defeating grief and erasing it and vanquishing it from your life once and for all.

That is not something I am capable of.

I have yet to meet a grief coach,

A therapist,

A mental health practitioner who has that ability.

Grief persists because we were connected to the thing that we lost.

Some people say that grief is love persevering.

Sometimes that resonates,

Sometimes it doesn't.

What grief is though is a reminder of things or people or pets that we were attached to.

We loved them,

We lost them,

We were attached to them,

They were a part of our lives and now they are not.

And for that we grieve,

Whether it's logical or illogical.

Grief exists all the same.

You say grief persists all the same.

I wonder if you can take a word from your own letter here,

This word of coexist,

And sit with that and your grief and see what comes up.

You can talk to grief.

You can say,

Hey,

Having a little trouble breathing down here,

Having a little trouble moving about my day,

Having a little trouble finding the energy to get up in the morning.

Would it be okay if instead of sitting on top of me,

Applying force to my head and shoulders from above,

That you came alongside,

That you sat beside?

What comes up then?

You are not dismissing grief,

You are not shoving it down in the basement,

As I say in my first book,

Permission to Grieve.

You are not insisting that grief be somewhere else.

You're letting grief be beside you,

You're letting grief show up in all of its griefiness.

It's just that the force of its energy is no longer resting,

Pressing down squarely on your shoulders.

What happens to your energy then?

What happens to your focus then?

What happens to your motivation then?

What happens to your peace of mind,

To your sleep,

To your memories of Beau then?

What happens when grief moves beside,

Instead of,

On top of?

What happens instead of existing under the weight of grief?

You invite it to coexist.

Yeah,

It's a little against what society teaches.

It implies that grief will be with you for the long haul,

Plot twist,

It will be.

And that's not bad.

This is how you live with grief in the long term.

This is how you start to move forward again,

Is by allowing grief to be a force moving beside you.

So that instead of figuring out how to solve grief's presence in your life,

To fix it,

To get rid of it,

To clean it up,

To make it go away,

Grief gets to exist beside you the whole way.

Now what will you do?

Now that grief is coming along for the ride,

Then what?

You get to make different decisions,

Ones that honor your experience and the experience you're having with grief,

Too.

Good luck.