Dear Grief Guide, There's No Room For My Grief In My Family

Within her dysfunctional family, a grieving woman feels like there's no space for her grief, especially in her relationship with her alcoholic mom. I read her anonymous letter and then offered 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, In a very short time I've lost my family dog, Uncle, Grandfather, And husband's grandfather. I come from a very dysfunctional family, And these losses feel like more pain, Keeped on top of years and years of strife. My mother is what some people might call a functioning alcoholic. Her grief takes up all the space in our relationship, So much so that there is no space whatsoever for my grief. I feel like all I do is listen to her and help her with the emotion she's feeling. It's very one-sided, And I'm starting to grow resentful and numb out to my own emotions. How can I set boundaries and be nice and respectful of her grief, But still take my own space to grieve and deal with my emotions? I feel like all the anger from the trauma of my childhood and her alcoholism is showing up, And I'm pissed at her. She can't see how much pain I'm in, Because she's so consumed by her own. And it hurts. From Grieving Child of an Alcoholic Okay, Grieving Child of an Alcoholic. This one is not easy, Because ultimately what you are saying in writing to me is there is no room for my grief anywhere in my family. I am the person to whom grief is spilled and unloaded and heaped upon, But I do not have the luxury or the privilege or the reciprocation of having other people do the same for me. And this is very common in dysfunctional relationships and in dysfunctional families, Where oftentimes there is one person or a handful of people on whom everybody, Pardon my language, But dumps their shit. And there is no space within that family for that person who is the carrier of all the things to unload that burden, Not just the burden of all the other people who have been dumping into or onto them, But their own, Their own griefs, Their own burdens, Their own pains that they're carrying. I know here at the end of your letter you asked for boundaries and ways to be nice and respectful of your mom's grief, But also create time for yourself. So the first thing I'm going to give you is a practical script, Simply stating, I get that you're hurting mom, I'm hurting too. And I would like some space to share what I'm feeling. Could be a really great start if, Huge, Huge, Huge asterisk here, Your mom has any capacity at all to hold space for you. If this has not been historically true, Has never been true of her, Or is true in ways that are unpredictable or unreliable, Go with the second option, Which is this. Say I get that you're hurting mom, I'm hurting from this too, And I need to take some time for myself right now. And then leave the room, Hang up the phone, Whatever the case may be, You can addendum this with, I care about you, I'm interested in your pain, I know that this is hard, It's been hard for all of us, You can pad this with more compassion, But ultimately the core statement that you need to make is, I get that you're hurting, I see you, I'm hurting too, I see myself, And I need to take some time for myself right now, And I know you can't see my hands, But I'm drawing like a big dotted line circular boundary with my finger around my body. That's the sense of space making, That I want you to feel the power to set for yourself with regard to your relationship with her. And for as many times as she needs to hear it, This is an easily repeatable statement, You can write it down, You can make it your phone background, You can send it to her in a text message, If she won't stop blowing up your phone, You can use this statement over and over again, And you can say things that these feel true for you of, I love you mom, I'm interested in your pain, I know you have relationships with these people and pets who died. Those are all true statements and compassionate statements that you can add to the exterior of this boundary setting statement, But again, At the center of it needs to be, I get that you're hurting, I'm hurting too, I need to take some time for myself right now. That is a clear but kind, Clear and kind, Compassionate way to set boundaries when you are feeling overloaded by her grief and feel as if there is no space for you to even have your own oxygen mask in the midst of this relationship that needs a whole heck of a lot of air. Here's the second thing I want you to do, And we do this in Life After Loss Academy, So I hope you will join us as a student there and you can find out more at the end of this podcast episode, But this is my online course with tools and exercises, But also community, One community of fellow grievers for building a life you love from the life that loss forced you to live, And this is one of the very first things we do because it is so grounding and centering and stabilizing in the aftermath of loss, Especially for losses like yours where it's been one after another after another, And that is to devote one percent of your day to grief. I call it the one percent rule, It has nothing to do with the one percent elites that are so often talked about in politics, It has to do with one percent of your day, And if you take all the minutes in the day and take about one percent of that, It's about ten to fifteen minutes, And devoting one percent of your day, Just ten to fifteen minutes, To focusing on grief, Working on grief, Feeling grief, Resting from grief, Whatever the case may be, Every single day, Making a rhythm and a routine and a habit out of this, This helps you not only start to practice grief and practice making room for grief, But it gives you dedicated time and space in your day to simply be with your grief and have nothing else be required of you. In this ten to fifteen minutes you could journal, You could listen to music, I have one Life After Loss Academy student who would sit on the edge of her bed and hold a necklace that reminded her of her son, You could create an altar of all of your loved ones and put your body there whether you're sitting or lying down, You can listen to a grief audiobook or a podcast like Dear Grief Guide. If you're not sure what to do with this time, A wonderful question to ask is what does my grief need right now, Or what does my grief need today, And it can vary day by day. I know for me, In the early days of my grief after losing my mother, Something that I often did was just lay down. It was the one moment of my day where I could be horizontal, I could be non-functional in the eyes of productive society that always insists we be creating something or doing something or moving our bodies and moving up and to the right, If that makes sense. And sometimes just this permission, This set aside dedicated time to say this is where my grief lives in the course of my day is a wonderful, Wonderful way to give yourself that space that you need, Especially in a house or in a relationship that feels suffocating for your grief to go, For your grief and pain and loss and emotions to belong. And then, If this feels good to your heart to begin practicing this, I'd say after two weeks, After a month, Gradually expand your time with grief to a half hour, Maybe even to an hour, Taking the time you need to let grief keep moving through you, Expanding the amount of time and space that grief occupies in your day, Not to not to bum you out, Not to make you sadder, But to, To give yourself even more permission to feel what it is that you're feeling and to have nothing else required of you in that space and time, But to simply be a grieving person, To be with grief as a grieving person. You could also expand this time to a time with a therapist during the week. You could expand it to going to a support group during the week, Especially support group for adult children of alcoholics. If you can find one online or in person in your area, Because people there, Whether a therapist in a solo or a group setting or a support group for adult children of alcoholics, They will know what it is to not only grieve the deaths of multiple loved ones, But to also be impacted by the grief of a loved one's addiction. And this is something we also talk about in Life After Loss Academy. It's not true for every student who's inside the course, But it's true for enough that it comes up in conversation. And there are ways that we grieve, Not just the losses we've been through, But the childhoods that we've had and the relationships that cannot be because of loss or addiction. The last thing I want to offer you grieving is whether it's in this 1% of your day or somewhere else, Whether you dedicate a set day to it, Or it's something that gradually unfolds over time, I need you to grieve your relationship with your mom. All of her shortcomings, All of her limitations, All the ways that she and her heart and her focus and attention cannot belong to you, And maybe have never belonged to you, Or have been offered to you or given freely to you without any sort of reciprocation required. Maybe this is a relationship you never had with your mom, And this is something that you deserve and that each of us who are grieving deserves, Is to have this beautiful unconditional nonjudgmental space held for us in our grief. And the sad news is that not everyone is good at it. And the sadder news is, Is that when addiction and alcoholism come into play, It gets worse. Much much worse. And that cumulative loss of not just losing multiple people and pets, But to have this sort of awful, Poor communication pattern exist and subsist for many years, Even decades at a time, That is something worth grieving, Even though she is alive. Even though you still have a relationship with her, It is still worth grieving all the ways that she cannot be there for you in your grief and in your life. We also do this in Life After Loss Academy. After we do kind of this grounding, Stabilizing 1% of your day with grief, We then start to deep dive into the emotions of grief, All the things that need releasing again, Not just who we lost, But all the things that we can no longer have or can no longer be true as a result of loss. So you might consider doing some sort of exercise like writing a letter to your mom that you never intend to send. Make sure you keep this hidden, Especially if you live with your mom or she's somebody who regularly invades your privacy or has no sense of privacy. But consider all of the ways that your mom is failing you right now, Where her very clear boundaries and limitations lie, Even if she's never verbally expressed them to you. This includes her inability to support you, To hear you, To tend to your emotions, To remember that she is the mom and you're the child. These are all things you can write down, And please, Please, Please include all of the swear words and all of the anger and all of the resentment you'd like to put in there. This is a place to dump it. This is a great, Great place to put it. And then, Whenever it's all out, Tear it up, Burn it, Color it in with all black marker, Destroy it in some way that resonates with you. And take a pause and say, I am releasing that now. You can release it over and over and over again. We don't just release once, We practice releasing over and over and over again in grief. But when you've come to a place where it feels as if your soul is settled, And this is different for everybody, I want you to take out a new sheet of paper and write, I accept and acknowledge my mom's limitations when it comes to grief, And I'm willing to consider alternative ways of being in relationship with her. I am also willing to consider other forms of support from other people and groups. This acceptance does not mean being okay with it. Cheryl Strayed famously said, Acceptance is not about embracing what happened or embracing your circumstances, It's about embracing the truth, And the truth sometimes is horrible and ugly and awful and painful. So this is embracing the truth of who your mother is showing herself to be over and over and over again to you. But the second part of this, These I am willing statements, I am willing to consider alternative ways of being in relationship with her, I am willing to consider other forms of support. This is what opens you to what comes next. Whether you choose to become a student in Life After Loss Academy, Pursue therapy, A support group, Whether you choose to lean on your husband or other members of your family who are better at grief, Or can be better at grief with and for you, Whether it means looking for support through art or through TV or through media or music that resonates with your heart, It's a door opening for other things that can rush in and not necessarily take your mother's place because nobody can take anybody's place in any of our lives, But to tend to your wounds in ways that your mother can't. And that's something, Again, That you deserve because all of us who are grieving deserve love and care and tending to like that. I hope this is helpful to you grieving. I am so incredibly sorry that this is the world that you're living in right now when it comes to grief, Not just back to back to back to back to back loss in a short period of time, But also existing in a relationship with someone very precious and very significant in your life who is also very incapable of being there for you. It is another kind of heartbreak on top of the world's worst layer cake of heartbreaks, And right now it is the dish that you are being served. Your choice is how to decide to eat it or to be with it. Anytime you're feeling lost, Anytime you're feeling like there is no room for you, I hope you'll come back to this episode because the fact that you wrote to me at all and that I got to speak to you today is evidence that there is some corner of the world where there is room for your grief. I see you. I am so proud of you for continuing on and all that you are facing and have yet to face and that all you have faced before, It sounds like a heap ton of a lot. And I know that you can get through this. Good luck.