Shelby Forsythia > Quotes

“Insisting that life stay the same post-loss is essentially the same as saying, “Let’s just pretend this never happened.” That’s an incredible disservice to the person, place, or thing that you lost. Did you love what you lost? If you didn’t love it, was it important, significant, influential, or a large chunk of your life? Did you have hopes, dreams, or expectations attached to it? Then it’s worth grieving its loss. And that loss will change your identity on some level.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss

“We don’t grieve things that don’t matter to us. Grieving is just another way of saying, “I care a whole, whole lot about the person I’ve lost, and it’s hard not having them here.” The next time you start to beat yourself up for feeling grief, gently remind yourself that grief is not a sign that something is wrong with you; it’s evidence that you had a strong connection to the person you’ve lost.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss

“Grief is less like a predictable sequence and more like an amorphous blob of uncertainty. You can’t forecast your way out of grief, because there’s no way to determine when the next wave is coming. This may seem disheartening at first, but when you recognize that there is no structure for grief, you can stop trying to pinpoint exactly where you are on your journey. If there’s no road map, it’s impossible to be lost.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss

“Grief is not a linear slide into darkness. It is a cyclical path that eventually rotates into light. Spring comes after the cold, harsh winter. Yes, there are seasons when grief is louder and more disruptive, but there are also seasons when grief backs off, your strength returns, and night turns into morning.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss

“Grief looks, feels, and shows up differently to each person. Just like no two losses are alike, no two griefs are alike, either. You cannot know the full depth of another person’s experience and they cannot know the full depth of yours.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss

“Death is an ending, but it is not the end. The day your loved one died marks the beginning of a new life for you, a life where your loved one is no longer present in the physical world. It’s a horrendously painful ending, and simultaneously, it marks a new beginning for you. Their death is not the end of your story as a whole, but the end of a very beautiful and important chapter in your life. Your task in this new beginning is to grieve the painful ending— and to learn how to navigate life in the aftermath of loss.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss

“What if grief is not a consequence of love but another expression of it? What if our deep sorrow is a reflection of deep connection? There is no grief with- out attachment, investment, and some kind of emotional bond. The fact that we grieve is evidence of how completely we are able to love.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss

“There is so much more to grief than just death. In losing someone, you lose their presence in every single moment and milestone that appears after their death. Every hope, dream, and expectation you had for the future must now be reworked, because the person you love can no longer be there. It’s normal to feel like you’re grieving multiple losses when someone dies.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss

“You may quickly realize after the death of a loved one that the day they died is not the hardest part. It may be the worst day of your life, but it is not the hardest part. The hardest part is returning to life again. Because while you had no say in your loved one’s dying, you do have a say in your living. And choosing to live after someone you love has died is one of the hardest choices we make. It’s okay if life after loss feels more like a struggle than the day your loved one died . . . because often, it is.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss

“Grief is a heartbreaking, soul-crushing, brain-warping experience that not one of us would voluntarily choose to have. We would never sign up to experience the losses we’ve lived through or the pain that follows.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss

“Recovery from the death of a loved one rarely looks like grand gestures and soaring moments of triumph. In fact, living well after loss more often looks like gradually giving ourselves and the people around us just a little more compassion, just a little more permission, and just a little more love every single day. Healing doesn’t need to be grand to be worthwhile; it’s the littlest moments that make the biggest difference.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss

“With permission to grieve, we stop yelling at ourselves to be stronger or different or better in our pain and shift to witnessing ourselves instead.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss

“In grief and loss, it becomes incredibly hard to recognize who we are. Grief makes us different people. Everything that we identify with—from our emotional states to our patterns to our dreams to our fears to our preferences to our core truths— everything fractures and shatters under the weight of loss.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss

“If you’re grieving, you have become—at least partially—someone you don’t recognize.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss

“Society doesn’t give us permission to grieve, but we can.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss

“Once grief enters your life, it remains a part of your life whether you acknowledge it or not.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss

“Pain puts us in close contact with ourselves. When we are wounded by loss, we become vulnerable. It’s in that place of helplessness and hopelessness that we are broken open enough to receive light—emotions like comfort, peace, and hope flow in alongside grief. It’s as if loss shatters us so much that we have no choice but to experience heartbreak and hope simultaneously. Where we most hurt is exactly where we will best heal.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss

“We tell the story of our grief for two reasons: first, to solidify in our brains and hearts that life without our loved one is our new reality; and second, to realize that we are not alone. Just as grief is not a one-time event, telling the story of our loss is not a one-time event, either. We must share the story of what happened, to make sense of it for ourselves and to connect with others who are experiencing similar pain.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss

“You cannot fix, change, or remove another person’s grief. You cannot “spare” someone the pain of grieving a loss. Your grief belongs to you; their grief belongs to them.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss

“As life continues, so will grief.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss

“Grief is pervasive. It cannot be quarantined any more than love can be quarantined. Grief affects all areas of life.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss

“Grief does not exist within a vacuum, but it also does not exist within just one life. It spreads out and affects the people “above you” in your family tree and the people who will come after you or “below you.” Grief also impacts entire races, genders, generations, and communities, and those beliefs about grief and the stories we tell ourselves about whether or not grief is acceptable, what’s at the root cause of grief, and whether or not we can recover from that grief have an enormous impact on how we give ourselves permission to grieve, whether we consciously acknowledge it or not.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss

“There’s a misconception that grief is about “looking backward,” mourning someone whose life has been reduced to memories. But grief is also about “looking forward,” realizing and grieving all the future events that your loved one will never get to participate in. Grief is half about mourning the past that was and half about mourning the future that never will be. You’re not weird or crazy for jumping months, years, or decades ahead to envision a life without your loved one present. In fact, when loss happens, we often feel like we’re losing everything all at once—past, present, and future. Sometimes in these moments, it’s comforting to know that while your loved one can no longer follow you into the future, your memories and love for them can.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss

“You are allowed to live and feel the experience of grief. By giving yourself permission to experience grief emotions and letting grief move through you, you are allowing grief (and by extension, yourself) to show up how it wants to, not how society wishes it would. There is immense self-love in that. In allowing yourself permission to feel, you are allowing your- self to show up as a whole human being, not just the parts of a human that you (or society) consider to be “appropriate,” “pretty,” or “worthy.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss

“While some people are born with a greater propensity for resilience, resil- ience is not a static characteristic. Resilience can be practiced, nourished, and built across your lifetime. If you feel like you’re not bouncing back, well, you’re in good company. The death of a loved one often marks the first time that people are forced to come back from something hard, scary, and life- changing. Each day that you are living beyond the day of your loss is another day you’re building resilience. You’re teaching your heart, mind, and body what it means to continue to live after the very worst has happened.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss

“Grief ripples out and sends powerful tremors through our foundation, through our hobbies, through our loved ones, and through our minds. For the first time in our lives, we can- not compartmentalize the hard, the bad, or the sad. There’s nowhere to tuck it away because every single aspect of our lives is infected with and tainted by grief.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss

“Even in the midst of grief, there is growth, compassion, and love to be unearthed. Loss buries us underground, but our broken hearts hold the seeds for our inevitable regrowth. Your grief belongs to you. But so, too, does your coming back.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss

“From the time we’re children, we’re taught that the path is more important than the obstacles that appear on it. We’re told to focus on the destination rather than the journey. We repeatedly hear the story of the phoenix rising from the ashes, but we fail to remember (or conveniently forget to remember) that the ashes are made of the charred, scorched remains of the phoenix’s “life before.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss

“The solution to grief is not a pain-free existence. It is allowing ourselves to grieve and witnessing ourselves in that process. Permission and presence are the remedies for agony and isolation.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss

“Sitting next to grief and allowing it to root through your former life while slowly unfurling into your new life requires the kind of patience, gentleness, and self-love that many of us have never had to summon before. Remember that at its core, permission is about telling the truth about where you are right now. And sometimes that truth means saying, “I don’t know.”
― Shelby Forsythia, Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss