Dear Grief Guide, I Don't Know What to Do With All This Pain

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,

My heart feels like it's engulfed in flames.

My younger sister,

My confidant,

My partner in crime,

Was taken from me in a tragic accident at just 22 years old.

Every morning when I wake up,

I remember she's not on the planet anymore,

And I sink into despair again.

Sometimes even sleep is not an escape,

And I find myself reliving the night she died in nightmarish dreams.

Our bond was more than blood.

It was a tapestry woven with shared secrets,

Dreams,

And laughter that resonated through the years.

She was the one who understood the unspoken words,

The silent cues that defined our relationship.

We could just look at each other,

And I knew what she was thinking.

Losing her feels like losing a part of myself,

A part that I can never replace.

Her death was sudden,

A car accident over the holidays,

And the shock of the news still reverberates within me.

The details of that fateful day are etched in my memory,

A memory I wish I could erase or undo.

But I won't burden you with the gory details.

I want to focus on the essence of our connection,

And the emptiness her absence has left behind.

She and I navigated the rollercoaster of life together,

Supporting each other through thick and thin.

Now,

Faced with the harsh reality of her death every single morning,

I feel lost in a deep,

Dark forest,

Like a backpacker without a compass.

I don't know what to do with all this pain.

It's an ache that permeates every waking moment,

A void that nothing seems to fill.

How do I process and let go of all the swirling emotions I feel?

Anguish,

Guilt,

Regret,

Anger,

Longing,

They wrap around me like a suffocating,

Inescapable fog.

The air I breathe.

I hope you can offer me a beacon of hope in this dark wood of despair.

I'm looking for solace in a path that takes me anywhere towards healing.

Please,

Help me find my compass again.

With a shattered heart,

Brokenhearted Brother.

Hi there,

Brokenhearted Brother.

I hear the level,

And the depth,

And the gravity,

And the intensity of the pain that you're in.

I see how you wake up every single morning,

Knowing,

Not just mentally,

Not just logically,

Not just in reality,

But in body,

And mind,

And heart,

And soul,

The absence of your sister.

Gosh,

I just,

I receive your pain.

I see all of it,

I stand as a witness to it,

And the ways that you've written about it here in your letter.

I resonate with this sense of feeling like your heart is on fire all the time.

Every morning you build it back up as much as you can,

But then when you wake up and realize the reality of what's happened,

It all burns down all over again.

It's like it's being set ablaze all the time,

And you think eventually,

I'm going to run out of heart to burn.

And somehow,

You don't,

You can't,

You will never run out of heart to burn.

Yeah,

Yeah,

I resonate with where you are.

Your question here,

How do I process and let go of all the swirling emotions I feel?

I'm really proud of you in this moment for being able to name them.

That's a very difficult thing to do when you're grieving,

Is to name what you're going through.

Grief is often,

At least early on,

An extraordinarily felt experience.

It's very difficult to put language to.

So the fact that you could name anguish,

Guilt,

Regret,

Anger,

Longing,

Like these are very specific emotions that you can interact with,

That you can put words and story and meaning to,

And find a place for.

And this is,

For lack of better phrasing,

The homework that I want to give you on this episode of Dear Grief Guide,

Is to give all of these emotions places to go.

I'm not going to say the word containers,

Because they may not feel containable in this moment,

But to give them places where they belong.

One of my very dear relatives,

My aunt,

Who guided me through the very early months of my mother's death,

Taught me this trick where you see emotions as characters outside of yourself.

So for example,

If you were to create,

Personify anguish,

Who would that look like?

What would that look like?

Is it a person or an animal?

How old or young are they?

Are they wounded in any way?

What color are they?

Are they wearing anything?

What gender are they?

What does their voice sound like,

If they have a voice at all?

And interact with each of these emotions,

Anguish,

Guilt,

Regret,

Anger,

Longing,

As if they are living beings,

Because in some way they are,

They are a part of you,

And ask where they would like to be placed within the grand woods of your grief.

Loss plunks us down in these dark woods of grief,

And,

I won't say but,

And,

Something that's possible here is for us to make things inside of the woods,

Including places for our emotions to go.

Will you pause on your path and build anguish a sturdy cabin in which to rest?

Or does anguish say,

Screw a cabin,

I would like to walk to a cliff with you and scream until I can't scream anymore?

Maybe that's what anguish is asking you to do in this moment.

That's the kind of release that it needs.

What kind of place in these woods,

Where does guilt reside?

What does its home look like in these dark woods of grief?

Where can you allow it in these dark woods that belong to you,

Because this grief is yours?

To set up shop,

To have a familiar location on this new map that loss is forcing you to build,

Sans compass.

And as you create these personalities or personas for your emotions,

I wonder if you could allow them to be interviewed,

Allow these pieces of yourself to be interviewed,

To say how would you like to be processed?

Where would you like to go?

What do you need to tell me?

Will you be around for long?

Sometimes they'll have answers for you,

Sometimes they won't.

You may find with time,

With repetitive grief anniversaries as the years go on,

That emotions like longing are lifelong companions.

And in offering them their own place to stay,

A dedicated piece of the woods,

In some way they cease to be things that you carry.

They cease to be things that are swirling inside of you and instead take up these homes or these residences or these places or these activities or actions outside of you.

They move from this thing that you can't digest to this thing that you have created and given voice to and name to and home to and dedication to.

It's very similar in some ways to saying,

I don't know how to remember my sister in my life.

She existed there as a physical person.

I could call her,

I could hug her,

I could drive in a car with her.

We could be driver and passenger side by side going on the same road together.

I do not know how to make a place for her in my life.

Everything all of that you shared with her is trapped inside you.

And when you grieve,

One of the invitations of grief is,

How do you move these things inside of you to somewhere on the outside?

Many clients that I work with one-on-one and people who are in my online course,

Life After Loss Academy,

They dedicate spaces in their physical homes for people they've lost,

Whether it's an entire altar or one picture in a frame on a desk or a crocheted pillow on the couch or a coffee mug that belonged to someone they love.

These tiny little spaces where you insist on seeing your person over and over and over again,

Bringing the memories you have inside of you and giving them,

Allowing them to take up physical space outside of your body.

So broken hearted brother,

As you are in these dark woods of grief,

What physical space,

Real or imagined,

Can you give these emotions?

Where would they like to live?

Where are they asking you to go?

They may be asking you to follow them along the path for a ways,

Whether they tell you exactly where you're going to end up or not.

See where anger takes you.

See what stories it has to share.

See what guilt may have hiding underneath its cloak.

Oftentimes emotions like guilt,

Regret and anger are ways to shield things like I just loved her so much and I continue to love her,

Present tense,

So much.

They have so much to say to you.

And I trust that you will find your own ways of listening because you have already given them names.

You know they are present,

These emotions.

Now I wonder,

Will you listen to what they have to say?

Will you build homes for them where they can operate independently of you,

Where you can visit them,

You can call on them with when needed.

They can come visit you.

And when you have had the experience of being in anguish,

You can say,

Okay,

It's time for you to leave.

I'm ready to experience another emotion,

Or neutrality,

A lack of emotion.

In this present moment,

You can say,

Okay,

This is where I,

Broken hearted brother end and where this emotion begins,

Where it lives,

It creates just a breath of distance between you.

So you are not guilt,

You are not regret,

You are not anguish,

You are not longing.

But you are interacting with longing,

You are visiting guilt,

Or guilt is visiting you.

You are having an experience with anger,

But it is not who you are,

It is not the identity you are carrying in these dark woods.

And I think offering yourself to this breath of distance between you and the emotions that you're feeling will also help you eventually,

This is not your job right now.

To know who you are in these dark woods,

What your compass now is made of,

Should you choose to take up a compass again at all.

To rebuild an identity and a life that you love inside of a life that loss very much forced you to live.

My heart is with you.

And you are not alone,

Even here in these woods.