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What to Say When Someone You Love Is Grieving with Shelby Forsythia · Friendship IRL: Real Talk About Friendship, Community, and What It Actually Takes

• 0:00
  Podcast Intro/Outro: All right, gang. Here's to nights that turn into mornings and friends that turn into family. Cheers. Hello, hello, and welcome to the Friendship IRL podcast. I'm your host, Alex Alexander. Each week we talk about what is working(and what is not) in our friendships, community and connections. Have you ever wished you could sit down and have a conversation about what is really going on in your friendships? Well, you found your people. Join us as we dive into real life stories and explore new ways to approach these connections. Together, we're reimagining the rules of friendship
• 0:57
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: Have you ever stood next to someone who is going through something really hard, could be a friend, a family member, a community member, a neighbor. Could be anybody. You care about them.
• 1:07
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: You want to say the right thing.
• 1:12
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: You can tell this person is really struggling, and then when the moment comes where you need to respond, your brain goes completely blank, and something comes tumbling out of your mouth. And as you're saying it, you're almost like cringing before you even finish the sentence. Or maybe something came out of your mouth, and you thought it was fine, but you can tell that the other person that you're talking to who's struggling, whatever you said did not land right. They feel like offended. Maybe they've crossed their arms. They've pulled back. I think this is a universal feeling. We have all been here. It is so common to feel like we don't know what to say when someone in our life is going through something hard, you see, most of us have heard plenty about what to do when
• 2:06
  someone is grieving: bring the casserole, show up, take the kids, run the errands, and those things matter, right? But the words, the words are where I find most people panic. The words are where friendships quietly break down because someone said the wrong thing, or they said nothing at all, and the griever felt completely alone. Our guest today has spent a decade working with grievers, and as she was working with them, she started to notice a pattern. Every single griever, no matter the loss, big or small, was telling themselves one of the same three stories.
• 2:43
  someone is grieving: I'm crazy. I'm alone. My life is going to feel like this forever.
• 2:50
  someone is grieving: And once she saw this pattern, she built three phrases, three ways to respond, and then variations of each of those phrases, and she's been using this method for a long time now, and realized if you know those three phrases, you can always pull them out of your back pocket anytime someone you love is struggling. Shelby Forsythia is a grief coach, author, and podcast host, she is the founder of Life After Loss Academy and the author of, "," a book that gives you actual words to say when you don't know what to say.
• 3:34
  someone is grieving: Her work has been featured in Huffington Post, Bustle, and Oprah Magazine. This episode, the one you're about to listen to, if you give me this one hour of your time, it will completely change how you are able to show up for the people in your life, whether they are struggling because they've had a bad day, because it's the anniversary of a loss, because they actually just experience something completely life-altering. These phrases always work. You will always know what to say, and knowing what to say is going to make it a whole heck of a lot easier to lean in to the people that you love when they need you the most. With that, let's get into today's episode.
• 4:25
  Alex Alexander: Shelby! Thank you so much for being here today. I'm so excited that you found me on the internet, and you were just like, "Wait, I think we need to talk.
• 4:36
  Shelby Forsythia: Yes, there was a beautiful convergence of circumstances on Threads, which is my new favorite social media platform because I call it Nice Twitter.
• 4:43
  Alex Alexander: Yes,
• 4:43
  Shelby Forsythia: and as a writer, I really appreciate a break from images sometimes, but also like appreciating the profoundness of of words. It's like a double edged thing. It's like I appreciate an absence of constantly moving videos and images, and I also appreciate the depth and the weight. That that words have so yeah threads one of my favorite platforms
• 5:03
  Alex Alexander: Threads because I feel like it's just like this big group chat and you see your your friends talking to other people and you're like wait who's that cool person I want to go click on them and then I feel like people just reply with abandon you know it's like how we should be acting in our friend group chats, but people overanalyze it. But on Threads, somebody's just like, "I have a solution for that, and they tell you the most random information, and you've never met them before.
• 5:32
  Shelby Forsythia: Yes, well, and from a grief perspective too, people are they feel more comfortable, at least right now, sharing grief experiences on Threads and treating it like a personal diary of sorts, and I never know as a grief coach if I'm responding to somebody with hundreds of 1000s of followers, or if I'm responding to somebody who just started a thread account to privately journal about their grief, and just happen to enable the public profile setting. And so when people are out there asking questions of how long does grief last? Is this normal to feel I'm so angry this week, or their death anniversaries this week?
• 6:04
  Shelby Forsythia: What do I do to honor it? I never know, like the societally measured stakes, heavy air quotes around stakes of like who I'm responding to, and I actually really like that.
• 6:13
  Shelby Forsythia: Seemingly, there's a lot less of the vanity metrics that is present in so many other social media platforms, and it feels a little in in this day and age.
• 6:24
  Shelby Forsythia: Despite Threads creators, the same people that created Facebook and Instagram, I believe.
• 6:29
  Shelby Forsythia: Yes, it feels slightly more human so far, and there's a lot less ads so far. So that's it's just like we're having this conversation in May of 2026.
• 6:36
  Shelby Forsythia: We'll see how this ages. We'll see how this ages.
• 6:42
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: So true, but also please don't come for our threads because it's such a nice space over there, and I just love it so much. You know, you were talking about how it was like this little thread that was pulling us together. Do you want to know another thread I discovered? What's up? I opened your book, and the is it the very first page. No, it's not the very first page because you have a bunch of reviews and testimonials and pages and pages of people telling you amazing things about your book. But we get in the book and you write your dedication for Tami. Yes, my mom's name is Tami, and it is spelled the exact same way. And do you know how rare it is to have the T A M I?
• 7:29
  Shelby Forsythia: I almost...
• 7:29
  Shelby Forsythia: everyone spells it wrong all the time.
• 7:31
  Alex Alexander: Never when I tell stories about Tami, they spell it wrong. And I seriously opened your book and was just like, "Wait a minute, this is wild. So, anyways, my mom, who I also lost, named Tammy. That's how I opened your book.
• 7:49
  Shelby Forsythia: That's the universe winking, I believe.
• 7:51
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: I think so too. Which I'm so excited to talk about your book today. Of course, I'm here right Now, three actually helpful things to say to someone grieving. Yes, and I thought we could start by talking about just your belief about the power of words, because I kept coming back to that in the book, and the reason I want to start with that is because so often I think what we are societally told when it comes to someone grieving is to take an action, right? Run to the store for them, bring them a meal, drop off a nice cozy blanket, bring them a candle.
• 8:32
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: Like it's a lot of action, and I even in the past, have encouraged people to take action because it does seem like a low-hanging fruit. But as I read your book, I was just reminded, like, wow, no matter what, we need to be practicing the words.
• 8:52
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: They matter so much.
• 8:56
  Shelby Forsythia: Yeah, absolutely. I I agree with you, and I'm not here to demonize actions, yeah. If you like your actions, you may keep your actions. I'm not here to tell you to stop bringing casseroles or offering to walk their dog or offering to go to the post office for them or something like that. Two things I'll say about that: the power of words, and one of the biggest reasons this book came to me is that my best friend Tami died from COVID in 2022 very suddenly, and it was a season of my life. Unlike my mother's death, my mom died from cancer in 2013, where the support I received, by and large, did not happen in person.
• 9:31
  Shelby Forsythia: It happened over a distance, whether that was through text messages, online, even like door drop-offs or things like that.
• 9:39
  Shelby Forsythia: But because of the physical separation and isolation of COVID, a lot of times the only thing that people had available to give or to offer, besides money or like DoorDash gift cards or things like that, which not everyone has access to, is words, language, continual check-ins, thinking of you on her death anniversary, something like that. Or even like a shared Google Drive where we like shared stories about her and like dropped all of her photos and things like that. And so part of the reason this book came about is inspired by COVID because grief support books for supporters in the time before are almost entirely oriented around actions. And part of that too is like so much of our world is online now. We have friends on the internet. We have friends who are not geographically near.
• 10:21
  Shelby Forsythia: We're not in the same time zone as them. How do we stay in touch? We use words. We use email. We write them letters. We send text messages. We get on Zoom or FaceTime. And the other reason that I'm obsessed with words as support tool is going back to the the money thing, is that they're free. They're portable. They're accessible to anyone, anywhere, anytime, on any medium, and you do not have to be a therapist or be rich or be qualified in some societal way in order to use them. Like there's no prerequisite to using words, and you don't even have to have a lot of energy to type a text. It takes a lot of energy to get in your car to drive to a grieving friend's house to offer to do something for them, and then you have all these questions in your brain of: Are they home right now? Would this even be something they would appreciate? Would they find it offensive? Once I get there, what do I say? If they're not home, what do I do? Do I offer to do something else? Am I even good at the thing that I'm offering? Like, there's a lot of doubt and questions that get in the way of taking an action, whereas like words are literally as easy as having a general idea of a kind thing to say, and firing off a text or scheduling an email to be sent on their loved one's birthday or something like that-a day that other people will forget-and okay, I'm adding a third thing to this. The third thing to say is this: in more than 10 years of working with people as a grief coach, the number one thing that destroys a relationship after a loss is hurtful words.
• 11:44
  Alex Alexander: Yeah,
• 11:45
  Shelby Forsythia: God just needed another angel. Everything happens for a reason. The universe never gives you more than you can handle. You just need to stay busy. You can have more kids. It's okay. You'll get another dog. Don't worry. The sun will come out tomorrow. You don't need grief therapy. You just need to try lavender essential oils, like just the garbage that people throw at grieving people. I can't believe you're not over it right now.
• 12:05
  Shelby Forsythia: You think that's bad? When I was grieving during the war, I had to go uphill on the snow both ways, and all my children died.
• 12:11
  Shelby Forsythia: Like just the the suffering Olympics and the judgment and the unhelpful toxic positivity that people so often wrap around grief is breaking our relationships and our closest friendships. And grievers say if people just change the words they used, I would feel seen. I would feel supported. I would feel loved. I would feel like, pardon my French, but like someone gives a shit about me.
• 12:35
  Alex Alexander: Yeah, I would feel safe.
• 12:36
  Shelby Forsythia: And I would feel safe, which is incredible in the year of our Lord 2026, where really nothing feels safe anymore, and grievers know for sure because of what they've experienced-death, divorce, diagnosis, and so much more-that anything can happen to anyone at any time for any reason. The world feels inherently unsafe to grieving people, and when we stop saying words like "God never gives you more than you can handle, or "Everything happens for a reason, or "Time heals all, or you just need to be strong for your family, and instead give people other words that are kinder, more comforting, more consistent, or sort of wrap grieving people in like this is a really hard moment, and I see you in it.
• 13:13
  Shelby Forsythia: Even that changes not only how grievers see themselves in their grief; it changes how much they feel supported by the people around them, and that is what I argue in the book is literally world-changing. Changing our words is world-changing.
• 14:37
  Alex Alexander: Well, I would say I absolutely agree with you, and I'm happy you brought up that third point because in my head I was thinking good words, impactful words, nurturing words, words that hold someone, that hold a griever, are rare.
• 14:54
  Alex Alexander: And as someone who had lost at a really young age, I lost my mom when I was 13. I have sat next to friends while their parents passed away in college. I've got a long, I've got a long comforter resume. I do get a lot of questions from people saying,"What do you say? Because I think people know they don't know what to say, and so if you are somebody who opts in, right?
• 15:22
  Alex Alexander: Like I think you've seen some of this because I've actually posted some of it on Threads, and I feel like you reacted to one of it, a friend of mine lost her husband last year. I've talked about this a few times on the podcast, and I found out from her sister. I immediately called her sister to get details, and then I messaged my friend, and I was just like,"Hey, I love you. I'm here for you. Do you want me to get on a plane today, and you can say no.
• 15:47
  Alex Alexander: Like this is a completely neutral offer, but like, do you want me to get on a plane today?
• 15:55
  Alex Alexander: I knew I was one of a few people that maybe she would say yes to, besides her sister who actually already lives in the same city, and she said yes. Now, when people hear that. Often people are just like, and now you're in her house for two weeks. What do you say for two weeks? It's not what do you do. It's often what do you say.
• 16:17
  Shelby Forsythia: Yeah.
• 16:18
  Alex Alexander: The words are terrifying to people.
• 16:20
  Shelby Forsythia: Yes, I think the words are terrifying for a few reasons. I cover them in the book, but one of the biggest ones is I'm not a therapist.
• 16:25
  Shelby Forsythia: Like, what happens if they just start unloading their deepest, darkest thoughts and their childhood trauma and watching the person they love most in the world die slowly? Like, what if they unload all of that on top of me? And my argument-I'm kind of laughing here because I hear people's discomfort in this-but like my argument is like that is not just the job of a therapist,
• 16:48
  Alex Alexander: yes,
• 16:48
  Shelby Forsythia: to listen for and hold. In the society that we live in, we have relegated because of capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy. We have relegated the job of comforting people in crisis to people who are heavy, air quotes, like qualified enough to do so. Yeah, I agree that there are things that therapists and counselors are qualified to do and to help with situations of extreme self harm, crisis, tragedy, a trauma like acute trauma. Absolutely, and grief can be a traumatizing event, but to sit with someone we care about and to be present and not afraid or unflinching, as they say, this sucks. This is the very worst thing that's ever happened to me. I can't see a way out of this. I loved them so much. I love them still, or I'm so exhausted. Or especially in the case of like a best friend or something, you're trying to plan a funeral, putting together memorials or whatever. There's a bunch of moving parts and logistics of family members. You can say stuff about that. You can offer support. You can say,"Wow, your cousin's really obsessed with the photo board.
• 17:53
  Shelby Forsythia: Are you just as obsessed with the photo board, or is that not a priority for you right now?
• 17:57
  Alex Alexander: Do you care?
• 17:57
  Alex Alexander: Because if not, I will go tell her we're not doing the photo board. You just tell me straight up right now. Yeah.
• 18:05
  Shelby Forsythia: And the thing I want to offer to supporters to validate for supporters of people, anyone who's grieving, is that you're correct in that grief is fundamentally changing your person, your friend, your family member, your coworker, your neighbor. Grief has fundamentally changed them, but there's a lot about your relationship that can stay the same. And the biggest thing that harms grieving people, and I'll
• 18:27
  reiterate this again: is if you say hurtful things, or number two, if you disappear because you fear all the ways in which they have changed. I think the other thing that supporters often fear, besides "I'm not a therapist" and "What do I do if they start talking grief at me?
• 18:41
  reiterate this again: is "I'm afraid I'll screw this up, yeah, and say something wrong. And I also talk about this in the book, but one of my favorite quotes from another book about supporting grievers called "There Is No Good Card for This, by Emily McDowell and Dr. Kelsey Crowe, they say something along the lines of,"Grievers don't need you to show up perfectly; they need you to show up with the kindness that compels anyone to simply try.
• 19:01
  reiterate this again: And grievers, I write, are fantastic bullshit detectors, and they will know intuitively, especially if they're a close friend or a family member, someone that you've been in a long-term relationship with.
• 19:16
  reiterate this again: They will know if you're saying something to simply offer platitude. I'm so sorry for your loss. My condolences. Which neither of those mention the person who died, which is just garbage to me. So, like, at least put a name in there, or their pet's name, or something like that, or they will also know if you're trying to genuinely comfort them. Even saying, "I don't know what to say, but this is really hard, or one of my favorites, which is in the of course chapter, "I don't know what to say, but I can see how hard you're trying to make it through every day, or trying to support your kids, or trying to stay alive, or trying to tend to yourself in the wake of your spouse's death-like those-are all beautiful and validating things to say that don't fix anything. She can't fix grief, but they are acknowledging that, like sometimes grief, yes, is a wordless experience, and also there are words you can wrap around the experience of grief that acknowledge the hardness and the wordlessness and the unfixableness of it all.
• 20:15
  Alex Alexander: Well, and since we're here and we're talking about this, I've been wanting to talk about this in the podcast.
• 20:19
  Alex Alexander: So for just a moment, I want to say something to people, which is that I think we all think that like when you go in to spend time with the griever, you're going to be doing all this talking, and you you might you might they might have a lot of words they want to say, but like when I got on that plane to go be with my friend, I packed my crappiest sweatpants, my most comfortable things. I spent so much time just staring at a wall, right? Not looking at my phone, not trying to get up and be busy, just sitting next to her. Quite frankly, like consumed by the grief that has taken over the house overall.
• 21:02
  Alex Alexander: And sometimes there are moments of like, okay, I got to get up and feed the kids. Somebody's got to feed the kids lunch and stuff. Not her, so I'm going to do that, and I'm like plotting how at certain point I'm going to get up. But a lot of it is you are just sitting, or standing, or staring, or laying.
• 21:18
  Alex Alexander: Like there is a lot of time that is spent doing nothing except being present and like existing in the feelings that are there, so I'm just throwing that out there for people. If you're worried, like part of it is just sitting, and that's hard. Yeah, that's hard because you're in the feelings and you're feeling things and you're crying and you're like, "Wow, this is like the worst, and I hate that this is happening to you in your head. Like you're thinking these things in your head, and it would be easier, as you talk about in the book, to just move on and move past and be like,"Well, I'm busy. I can't feel these feelings. But part of it is just feeling the feelings.
• 21:55
  Alex Alexander: For anybody who's wondering what it's like,
• 21:57
  Shelby Forsythia: yeah, absolutely. And there's a section in the "I'm Here" chapter which is about offering words that remind a grieving person of your presence, even if you can't be physically present, and it talks about the power of the pause, and simply sitting alongside someone in silence, and letting the weight of that have its power, have be as big as it actually is, and to say you are inside of a really massively difficult experience, and you are not alone inside of it. I am here with you, or I have not forgotten that you're grieving. It's another way to say I'm here, or I know the answer is probably no, but I wanted to make sure you got an invitation anyway. Those are all beautiful ways to say I'm here and to offer someone presence inside the pain, even beyond the first couple weeks, couple months after a loss, because that's when grieving people need it the most. One of the most reported experiences by grievers, like worldwide, at least in like Eurocentric cultures, is like after a few weeks, everybody went back to their normal life, and so even after you flew home from your friend's husband who died, even following up with it's this date on your grief calendar. I haven't forgotten about you. I don't have much to say, but I'm here. I remember too. Like those are all beautiful and very powerful ways to change the story in a grieving person's head. Of I'm alone. I don't have a friend in the world. For as untrue as that may be, you can be thinking as a friend like,"What am I chopped liver? But if you're not reaching out and reminding them that you are present inside their grief, it's very easy to forget. You change that story to, "Yes, I'm going through something really hard, but someone else is with me inside of it. And again, words change worlds. That changes the landscape of a grieving person's world, even if it's just the world inside their head. That is a very important world to rewrite the story of.
• 23:57
  Alex Alexander: Okay, so you've teased now. Like, I don't want to give away your whole book, but can you talk a little bit about? Of course, I'm here and right now, and why you chose these three phrases for anybody who hasn't read the book yet and should go pick it up.
• 24:11
  Shelby Forsythia: Yeah, absolutely. I'll do like an overview of the whole book. And in 10 years of working with grievers, and then sort of remembering and continuing to live my own grief experience with my mom's death, my best friend's death, my cat's death, I also include other life experiences and grief events, breakups. I've had broken engagement in 2017. I've been diagnosed with a few chronic illnesses. Like all of these are grief events. We all live through COVID. That's a grief event as well. Being a queer person is a grief event in and of itself, especially right now.
• 24:38
  Shelby Forsythia: I started to notice in working with clients and in going back through my old journals. I was like, oh, grieving people by and large tell themselves the same three stories over and over and over and over again, and they're told in different ways, and they're told in different life stages, and they're told for different types of losses, but they're all the same. And the
• 24:56
  three stories are: I'm crazy, I'm alone, and my life is going to be like this forever after any sort of major life-changing loss. I'm crazy, I'm alone. It's going to be like this forever.
• 25:07
  three stories are: Where someone has died, you've gone through a divorce, you've been diagnosed with something that's changing your life, even through COVID, these are stories people were telling themselves.
• 25:13
  three stories are: I'm crazy. I'm alone. It's going to be like this forever. And in working with grievers, I just talk to them. A lot of what I do through one-on-one work, through group work, is just like saying words and trying to find ways to describe grief together, ways to move through grief together, ways to eventually grow through grief together when we're like ready to do that, and the three phrases ", I noticed consistently unlock and transform those stories for grievers. And so, if a grieving person is telling the story of I'm crazy, my dad died seven years ago. I can't believe I'm still so sad. You could say, "Of course you're sad. Your dad is still dead, and instantly you rewrite the story in their head from "I'm crazy" to "Oh, someone else gets how I feel. Maybe I'm not crazy. Maybe I'm not as weird or abnormal or broken." As I think I am, for a grieving person telling the story of no one else gets how I feel, which is another way of saying I'm alone, you could say I may not be able to understand exactly what you're going through, but I'm here and I will not forget that you're grieving, or I haven't forgotten that grief is a part of who you are now, or I haven't forgotten that this loss is a part of like your heavy air quotes new normal because I do not like that phrase, but however you want to use it, you can use it, and that's a way of saying I'm here. And so suddenly the story of I'm alone, as we were talking about a little bit before, shifts to I'm in a really hard thing, and someone else is in it with me. Very different experience, and then the story of my life will be like this forever. This can be kind of subtler to pick up on, but if a friend or a family member says something like, "I just can't see a way out of this, or "I feel so stuck, or"Feel like the pain is going to last forever, those are all ways of saying it's going to be like this forever. Offering the phrase "right now" is a really, really quiet way of adding context to really hard things, and so you don't say this is just a season of your life. Look on the bright side. This one will come out tomorrow. You say, right now this is exactly as hard as you think it is. Right now I can see how hope is hard to find. Right now we don't have to do anything else. We can just sit here and stare at the wall.
• 27:23
  three stories are: And even if a grieving person doesn't recognize that you're doing that-that you're offering that prepositional phrase on the beginning or the end of a sentence.
• 27:32
  three stories are: It offers the possibility that something else could happen in the future, something good, something bad, something different than this. You don't have to promise a happy future.
• 27:40
  three stories are: You don't have to say you'll get married again, you'll have kids again, you'll get another dog or a cat or whoever died. What you are simply doing is framing this moment not as something that will last forever, but as something that is happening right now in this present moment. And this is one I pull out for like hard days at work.
• 27:58
  Alex Alexander: Yeah.
• 27:58
  Shelby Forsythia: This is when I pull out for political uncertainty. This is when I pull out for climate change. I mean, like right now it feels like the world is only warming up and the weather's only getting worse.
• 28:07
  Shelby Forsythia: That could change. Right now, it feels like the walls are closing in. It changes. The walls are closing into. Right now, it feels like the walls are closing in, and it's just such a subtle difference that can help anyone you're in your life feel as if there is just the tiniest bit of possibility in the future.
• 28:25
  Shelby Forsythia: You're not telling them possibility of what. You're not telling them to hope. You're not forcing them into happiness.
• 28:30
  Shelby Forsythia: You're not bright siding or silver lining their existence.
• 28:33
  Shelby Forsythia: You're just saying right now this is true, and what's unspoken about that is, and that is subject to change. And by incorporating, I'm here, and of course into that also, you say, and I will be here with you through it, as things change, as your life unfolds, as grief continues to be a part of it, and no part of you is broken or crazy, for however grief is showing up for you. It is truly transformative. The three scripts genuinely change grievers' lives. I've now been using them in grief work for about four years. I started writing this book four years ago, and they were inspired by the group of grievers I work with every week, and one-on-one clients that I've had, and and using them in my own life with family and friends, and over and over and over again, people say that actually, even though this wasn't my intention, that actually made me feel better, or I feel so hurt, I feel so seen, or I feel believed for the first time in my grief, or I feel like I could maybe have hope again, and just changing words has the power to do that.
• 29:34
  Alex Alexander: I mean, I love the phrases because you know when you are in those moments with the grievers, there is always this tricky balance, and you you've really distilled it down, right? Because there's always this balance of wanting to say, like you know, someday life will be different in one way, shape, or another. Life will be different, but this goes to that's a little harsh to hear. It's a little intense for somebody who is in like what might be. I don't like every grief event is different, but in the case of my friend, right, like the rock bottom,
• 30:12
  Shelby Forsythia: yeah,
• 30:13
  Alex Alexander: moment she's at, and so yours is just like so perfectly hopeful, but also neutral, which you're like, I know, because I wrote it. Not even that.
• 30:27
  Shelby Forsythia: I'm going to interrupt you for a second, but I love that you're bringing this up as an example because the first program I was ever trained in to support people who are grieving had a beautiful statement for this, and it was intellectually true, emotionally not helpful. And so, even grieving people often know I will not feel this way forever, but the feeling they're having in the moment is this pain will never end. The suffering will last and last for as long as he is dead. I will be in pain, or my heart will be broken, or I will, I will suffer. And so to say something like, it won't always be this way, or you can get married again, you can have kids again. Insert life can be good again. Tra la la. Whatever visioned future. Can have for them, or even if you know as a friend, and this is such a generous and lovely thing to do, you know their potential, you know their goodness as a person, like you know what they're capable of and what their biggest dreams are, and you know that that's not lost, but they may feel it is lost. Your job, and I write about this in the chapter of right now, is not to come into their grief house and do like extreme home makeover grief edition, and be like painting the walls and look at all the ways it could be, and hanging up posters and moving furniture around. Your job is to sit with them in that dark house of grief, and maybe crack a window. That's it. That's it.
• 31:37
  Shelby Forsythia: And I think for supporters, back to your point of like I'm just sitting and staring at the wall, it can feel like a whole lot of nothing.
• 31:46
  Shelby Forsythia: get thing, or what feels like the
• 31:47
  Alex Alexander: Yes,
• 31:47
  Shelby Forsythia: because their current emotional state is not changing very much, or at least that you can see in the moment.
• 31:53
  Shelby Forsythia: But and I talk about this way earlier in the book. There are a lot of other signs that you can look for that your support or your comforting words are actually helping, and it doesn't always look like them changing their point of view right away.
• 32:05
  Shelby Forsythia: In fact, that very rarely happens. Was I said
• 32:07
  Alex Alexander: when when you were talking about you know like the right now and of course I love a visual my brain just sometimes thinks in images which is chronical because I can't draw anything to save my life but I was just thinking to myself like if somebody is in that kind of like grief box you're trying to just carve like the tiniest sliver of light in it, that maybe someday that can kind of like crack open or be wider, and they can get out. But there is this like sliver of light coming into the box, but they're still in the box, and you're somewhere in that box with them next to the box. Can see in the box, like, like you're saying, it's not going to crack open when they're sitting in front of you in this deep moment, even if it's a year later, even if it's 10 years later. I mean, I don't know about you, but like I have this vivid memory. Gosh, I don't. I must have been. So my mom passed when I was 13. So this was probably about a decade later. I was going on a run at about 5 p.m. that day, and the day had been kind of weird, but I couldn't tell you why it was weird. And I just kept being like, "Gosh, I feel like I'm forgetting something.
• 33:19
  Alex Alexander: Something's off. Like, what's going on here?" And I realized it was my mom's birthday. Yeah, you know, I had made it all the way to 5p.m. and I had not realized that it was her birthday. And then that just opened, like I was back in that box 10 years later. I'm crying, just running in front of the waterfront by myself, like go home, crawl into bed, sobbing hysterically. Otherwise, I've been like
• 34:04
  Shelby Forsythia: and yank you right back out. Would not you, or I can see how you got there. Another way to say of course, or to like knock on the side of the box very gently and say I'm here. I haven't forgotten that you're grieving.
• 34:36
  Shelby Forsythia: a box day. Right now it's a box day. In I've only talked about this on one other podcast, but someone who's like a longtime friend and fellow podcaster asked me. She's like, "What's been like your experience of leading up to this book being in the world? This was before it came out in March, and I said I am so surprised that I have never missed my mom. I have never felt like I needed a mom more than when this book was coming out into the world. This is my third book. I've published two other books that exist in the world, and I didn't necessarily feel like I needed my mom for either one of them, she was a crucial part of writing them and talking about her death was very much included in both of them. But I didn't feel like I needed her, and this was also the first time both my books were published around COVID times, peak COVID times, because we're still in COVID now. This is the first time I've ever thrown a party or like any sort of in real life gathering to celebrate anything I have made, and my mom always wanted a book. She always wanted to be a writer. She birthed two very creative children, and I didn't know when planning this party until about two months beforehand that the thing I would miss the most is seeing her in the audience, and I wept in my wife's arms as if she had died yesterday. Yeah, when I realized that that wasn't happening, and I had the exact same experience with my best friend Tami who died, and it was like, holy crap! This is the first time I am having an audience of people who knows me and knows this thing that is happening because my. And I eloped. We didn't have a huge wedding, or else this could have been my wedding experience. But like, this is the first time that we're all together in one place, and their absence is so loud. Yeah, it is so visible, and it was a box night. I had a whole box night. I had two whole box nights. If you count me grieving, both of them are like, I put myself in a box and I put that box in another box, they were just a box upon box upon box of grief support, and my wife was laughing with me that night, amazingly, because you know what we started doing? We started, of course, I'm here right knowing each other. She goes, "Of hardest part, and she was right.
• 37:11
  Shelby Forsythia: We were right together, and then we were laughing about. I said,"Did you just? Of course, I'm here right now, me. And then we started laughing, especially if you read this book as a group of friends or as a loving group of family. Like you can turn this into a joke of supportive phrases, but you know what? It wasn't. Is your mom's been dead for 13 years? You need to get over it, or they won't be there, but other people will. AKA, you can replace your loss, which you can't.
• 37:39
  Alex Alexander: Or you've had all the milestones. You've made it through. Why is it this?
• 37:42
  Shelby Forsythia: Correct.
• 37:42
  Shelby Forsythia: Right. Absolute great one. Such a great one to pick up on. None of those things came out of her mouth. Only this, only these kind words, and the result was yes. I felt like garbage, and also I felt seen and heard and companioned and loved in the moment, which is the goal of, of course, I'm here right now, and this is a gift that we can give ourselves, we can give our friends, we can give our family members, we can give our coworks, and you and I have been talking about death a lot on this podcast, but the whole entire book spans so many different types of losses. And at the very end, my favorite section I wrote like a day in the life of a comforter, just like using these phrases. Loved that, and it's like one of her kids is concerned that she is more nervous about getting a part in the play than happy, or one of her other kids is asking about a grandparent that died and wanting to share memories together. Her husband is concerned about wildfires happening in Western California.
• 38:35
  Shelby Forsythia: A friend of hers in knitting club, his mom has a chronic illness or a critical terminal illness, and she's dying overseas, and he can't get to her. And so, how does she comfort all these people? The local barista's cat just died, and she found out that day her boss is going through a divorce, her cousin is pregnant and having a baby without her mom there. Like there's so many different instances of how air quotes grief events exist in our lives from the smallest. I don't know if I'm gonna get a part in the play. I'm crazy. I feel alone. It's going to be like this forever, all the way up to natural disasters and terminal illnesses when we can't be there in person, and so there's these big scales that exist every single day in our lives, and all around us, people are telling themselves, "I'm crazy. I'm alone. It's going to be like this forever. And we can, regardless of the weight of the loss, or the long termness of the loss, or the intensity of the loss, these three phrases are always, always, always
• 39:32
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: If this episode has you in the feels today, something is happening in your life or in a friend's life. You've been struggling with what to say, how to show up. I want you to know that we have so many episodes in the Friendship IRL catalog about how to show up for people in hard times. We have everything from losing a best friend, infant loss, a friend who has lost an adult child, divorce, somebody who's experiencing friendship breakups. There are too many to count. So if someone in your life is going through something specific. Go ahead to like the overall list of every episode I have in the Friendship IRL catalog, and do a couple searches, because chances are there is a specific episode for exactly what you or your friend are facing. And if you don't find an episode, send me a message because I may know what episode would work for you. And if not, I actually really want your request. I keep a running list of topics that I'm on the lookout for, and I would be looking for a guest who has experienced what you're talking about. And your request might be the one that gets me searching for something very specific that a lot of people need, and I've just never considered.
• 40:56
  Alex Alexander: I, I'm a little speechless because, like, I know all these grief events. I, Shelby, just like kudos to you for distilling it down.
• 41:03
  Alex Alexander: Something that is like so all-consuming in all of our everydays. We do think of these big events, but there are so many micro things that are happening in our day. I mean, even somebody who's like, I mean, I'm thinking about, I'm about to launch my book, right?
• 41:23
  Alex Alexander: Somebody who maybe launched their book and it was disappointing. Somebody who didn't get the promotion that they wanted. Yeah, we have all these micro grief moments, and so to have built something that applies to everything from catastrophic life events to micro grief moments is pretty amazing. I love that. Congrats! helpful, and it is the thing I love most about them.
• 41:46
  Shelby Forsythia: I'm really really proud of it, thank you.
• 41:48
  Shelby Forsythia: Yeah, I'm just like having a tiny clap over here. I don't know that I that I set out to do that on purpose. Like these phrases very much came from a place of working with people who are deep in grief, generally lost to death. I call it the
• 42:00
  three Ds: death, divorce, and diagnosis, which is why I keep saying them in that order so often. Those are the three biggest losses that people work with me for, and honestly, the three biggest losses that have come up in my life. But as I kind of latched onto the three stories, crazy alone forever, and kept using the three phrases. Of course, I'm here right now. I was like, oh, this is good for everything. It's kind of like an all-purpose. I don't know how you feel about sauces, but I'm like, this is a mustard. Like you can kind of put it on everything from this to that, or like choose your sauce of choice.
• 42:29
  Alex Alexander: I'm a mustard gal. I'm with you. Mustard is great.
• 42:31
  Shelby Forsythia: I'm actually not a mustard person, so I don't know where that came. But I'm like ketchup. Put ketchup on everything. Butter. That's a good one. It's the butter of everything. You can put butter on everything from pancakes to steak. Like it works always, and it's never a bad decision. Toss these phrases in there. And one of my greatest wishes is that more leaders will read this book, like more CEOs, more politicians, more spiritual providers, like people who are in places of leadership. Because as you are guiding others through transitions, or even if you are like a community organizer, or like a mutual aid director, or like the head of a nonprofit, like anything, you could say right now we're in a world that prioritizes this, and our organization is trying to prioritize this. This is really hard. Of course, we're going to support each other. I'm here as we move through this transition in this season. Is another way of saying right now you can use this to construct comforting phrases for literally any kind of grief event that's happening in your life, whether it's for yourself or for other people, whether it's for one person or a large group, whether it's for something that's like very business oriented, like a transaction, or something very spiritual and transcendent, like it literally, I'm using this now. It's it's the butter of grief support language. Put it everywhere, slather it on everything. It goes with anything. It goes with everything.
• 43:47
  Alex Alexander: But, yeah, because it really does, and that is just like so helpful to anybody, you know, to have. I think about this a lot because I get a lot of DMs from people who panic. Is the word I'll use, right? You are in a social situation, you are in front of someone, you want to get it right. You care about the outcome, and there is like sheer panic about what comes out of our mouths way more than text messages. Because text messages not only can we edit them a million times before we hit send, but now we can like edit them after they've been sent on some platforms. So we have some opportunity to refine, but when somebody is standing in front of somebody, people are like,"Anything could come out of my mouth, and I kind of black out sometimes. And then I say it, and it could have really bad repercussions for something I really care about. So to have scripts, to have things in your back pocket that you can just always default to when your brain is panicked is so useful to so many people. I mean, myself included. Honestly, I'm like, I feel like I need to just walk around for the next few days and repeat. Of course, I'm here right now. Of course, I'm here right now. Like, yeah, you have it locked up here, but I feel like I need to just tattoo it in my brain,
• 45:09
  Shelby Forsythia: yeah. And I'll tell you too. I think that's a very valid thing to say and to bring up. Like, oh my gosh, they're right in front of me.
• 45:15
  Shelby Forsythia: I'm panicking. What do I say?
• 45:16
  Shelby Forsythia: And I actually tell the story in the very beginning of the book, like the intro chapters. Like someone places their grief in front of you, like in a real life interaction, and your brain's like digging for like what to say and gets like error 404 response not found. Have no idea what to do or say, and one of my defaults, which I didn't include in the book but is helpful here, so I'll give it to y'all. Y'all can have a free one. Is that sounds really hard?
• 45:38
  Alex Alexander: Yep.
• 45:38
  Shelby Forsythia: And then see where they go from there. They may say, "Yeah, it is really hard, and I feel like nobody else gets how I feel. Huh? I'm alone. Then now you know what to say next is some version of "I'm here, even if it's just in this present moment. Even if they're a stranger to you, you can absolutely use that. Or they say, "Yeah, it is really hard, and I feel like the paperwork of administrating his death is going to last forever and ever.
• 45:58
  Shelby Forsythia: The paperwork will never end.
• 46:01
  Shelby Forsythia: That's a way of saying it's going to be like this forever.
• 46:03
  Shelby Forsythia: You can put a hand on their shoulder if you feel comfortable doing that, or. Look them in the eyes if you feel comfortable doing that, and say, "Yeah, right now, I bet paperwork is your like biggest focus. That's really real. Or if they say,"Yeah, this is really hard, and I feel crazy every time I go to the grocery store because I'm breaking down in the cereal aisle. That's a form of "I'm crazy" or "I'm broken. That first story, you can say, "Of course, grocery stores become harder after a loss, that makes perfect sense to me. Then the conversation just keeps going from there. But yeah, absolutely, practicing them over and over is helpful. But there's another exercise in the book where I encourage you to like look for them on movies and TV and in music and other media podcasts, other things that you consume on a regular basis, where people are saying kind words to each other. If I hope you consume some of any kind of that media in your life. Don't just consume true crime and game shows, but there's definitely scripts that I have borrowed from TV shows, from movies that I personally find comforting.
• 46:58
  Shelby Forsythia: That kind of fit somewhere in this framework, or maybe not.
• 47:01
  Shelby Forsythia: But I'm like, oh, those are going in my comforter dictionary or my comforter log, and some part of the practice of being a comforter is not just saying I have the words to say when someone is grieving. It's it's an identity that you hold. It's like I am a person who cares about the suffering of others or the pain of other people, and I want to get good at having the words for those moments. I want to be a person someone comes to when they are in pain and can trust to not shut them down or judge them or pretty it up. It's a very sacred role to hold in any friend or family group.
• 47:35
  Alex Alexander: Well, as somebody who's done a lot of this too, I would say like part of that identity is knowing you're going to mess up. Yeah, right. Like knowing I'm not going to get it right 100% of the time, and I'm probably going to have to apologize, and I'm probably gonna have said something, and then walk out of the room, and 20 minutes later be like, "Oh, that was not the right thing to say, and go back in and be like, "Hey, you know that thing I said 20 minutes ago? I'm so sorry I said that, and just really making it like an open conversation, kind of like a dance almost that you're in while you're trying to figure it out, because as much as somebody can do it a million times, every person is also different. You learn new nuances. You learn new cultural things. You talk about that in the book, right? You could think that something is totally fine to say because in the culture you grow up in, it is, and in somebody else's culture, it's not. Was it the Navajo culture that you can't speak somebody's name?
• 48:34
  Shelby Forsythia: Yes, preferably. Yes, absolutely. In Navajo and it is sort of frowned upon to say the name of the person who died because there is a belief that that calls them back to Earth, like calls them back to the living plane, when the goal is to let them essentially go be a spirit.
• 48:48
  Shelby Forsythia: I cannot speak on behalf of all Navajo people, obviously, but there's a lot of research I did, or or there's other. There's so much. I'm a person with ADHD, and there's so much in there. I include about like signs you're comforting is working, and I include things like if they're not making eye contact with you, that's not a sign that you're not helping. Like they may be neurodivergent, grief may be messing with their brain, which is very true for even people who are not neurodivergent. And then there are other things too, of like generational misunderstandings and grief.
• 49:16
  Shelby Forsythia: Like a boomer or a silent generation person may not understand like why a Gen Zer would want to make a carousel of a dead friend on TikTok. Like they would be like, oh my god, why you need to post a video of yourself crying on social media?
• 49:28
  Shelby Forsythia: Like that makes absolutely no sense to me. When that could be a very important part of their healing, their processing, their journaling or diarizing publicly about their grief, which is a thing that a lot more people are doing these days. Which is grieving digitally can be baffling for a lot of people, but that's a very real part of our culture right now, and so there's a lot of different ways that we can miss each other. But the goal of this book was to not focus on all the ways that we get things wrong or could say things wrong because there's so many lists online. Google what not to say to somebody who's grieving, and you're going to get 100,000 million results, and it falls in the camp of, and this is kind of a divergence, not really, but kind of. But like, there's a lot of policing in the queer community. I can say this as a queer person, of like, it's not transsexual; it's transgender. Or we don't say hermaphrodite anymore; we say intersex. Like, there's a lot of policing and like new language that's popping up all the time, and I think it's frustrating to people who aren't in the community, who are trying to get things right, and so when they try and are wrong, and they heavy air quotes fail and are corrected, there's a sense of shame. There's a sense of you know you're being hurtful on purpose. There's all this like accusation. I'm just like that frustrates me a lot. I am a person who cares deeply about words, and I want people to be called and want people to be comfort in in ways that resonate most with them, and also very similar to what I was talking about with the Emily McDowell Kelsey Crowe quote is that grieving people they can stand your fumbling. Grieving people can tolerate your grasping for words and trying to get it right. What they cannot tolerate is if you disappear. Yeah, and that is like the number one thing that breaks grievers hearts. Like if they could tell that to you, that is what they would say. Because all these clients come to me all the time.
• 51:10
  Shelby Forsythia: They're like, "Yes, I'm grieving my dad. Yes, I'm grieving my marriage. Yes, I'm grieving my son. Yes, I'm grieving my sister. Yes, I'm grieving my old job or my old life or my body before I got cancer. But the thing I'm grieving more, or the thing I'm grieving just as much, is the friends, family members, and coworkers that vanished, and most people say they vanish because they don't know what to say. And I'm like, this is the words are the bridge between
• 51:36
  these two groups of people: the griever who is suffering and the person who doesn't know what to say. I'm like, here's the words come together in the middle because they really help.
• 51:45
  Alex Alexander: I would put a note out there for anybody listening to that that like vanishing doesn't have to mean physically never seeing or speaking to somebody again. Like I get a lot of messages saying, you know, it feels like my friend group has vanished because I can't be myself in it.
• 52:02
  Alex Alexander: I can't talk about my grief. I can't be honest. Like maybe sitting in the room, but if you're noticing that this friend who has gone through something shows up every time and just sits there silently. They may be waiting for anybody to acknowledge what has happened to them in that room, and they're just like you're saying, like they are hoping because they don't want that ultimate heartbreak of losing all their friends because nobody is gonna.
• 52:26
  Alex Alexander: Well, everybody is vanishing.
• 52:30
  Alex Alexander: They're just not acknowledging some piece of you.
• 52:33
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: Okay, if you are listening to this, and this is you, or this is a friend, and all of their people in their lives are making them feel invisible, or you feel invisible, then I want you to go to the show notes right now. I want you to find episode 172, which is linked in the show notes. It's called "Unmuted Rooms and Judgment-Free Listening with Erin Snow". The reason I want you to go listen to this episode is because Erin's story is about being in rooms where she couldn't share her truth, where she knew on some level that being honest would lead to judgment. It would cost her her friendships. People would ghost her, disown her. So she stayed quiet for a really long time. And one day she realized just how miserable she was, shutting herself down, showing up as a smaller version of herself, just to stay in rooms that weren't feeling safe, and then she did something really hard. She walked away from all of her friends. She rebuilt everything from scratch, and what she found on the other side was so much better than what she'd been holding on to. You know, I talk a lot on this podcast about how to work through your problems with friends, but sometimes, and you know when, I can't tell you. It's a gut thing. You know, it is just time to go. And if that's where you are or your friend is, then I want there to be a hopeful story of what's possible because it can be scary to walk away from something that you know, even if it feels unsafe, to trust that you'll find something better on the other side-that's exactly what Episode 172 gives you. So go fire that one up, and I hope it gives you the courage you need to make the leap.
• 54:25
  Shelby Forsythia: Yeah, you may be physically present,
• 54:28
  Alex Alexander: yep.
• 54:28
  Shelby Forsythia: But you may also be emotionally absent, so that's worth taking an inventory of for yourself. Of like, is there a grieving person in my midst for whom I have never acknowledged their grief, or for whom I only acknowledged their grief when the loss first happened, or on the anniversary, or something like that? Yeah.
• 54:42
  Shelby Forsythia: And there's a section in the"I'm Here" chapter where I talk about the four different types of loneliness because there is a very real thing or a response that supporters can have, of like a griever out loud or on social media or somewhere else says I'm alone or I feel so alone, and their friends and family members can look at them and be like, What are we? Chop liver? Like we're here. We're checking in on you. We're doing casseroles. We're going to events. We're going to school together. We're going to work together, pardon me. All this other stuff, but it's not just always physically alone.
• 55:13
  Alex Alexander: Yeah,
• 55:13
  Shelby Forsythia: it can be physically alone. No one is here with me physically, which is especially true after like the death of a pet or the death of a spouse. It can also be true for emotional aloneness. No one gets how I feel. Mental loneliness is no one has the same thought process as me, and this can be related to a lot of like grief brain, or suddenly grieving people are very aware that like they could die, and everyone else around them could die, and not everybody's having those thoughts like 24/7, or just like replaying final moments is a thing a lot of grieving people can do, and to feel like nobody else is thinking this way can be hard, and then there's spiritual loneliness. You may be supported by family and friends, you may have people who get you. You may be living in a house full of people, but if you feel abandoned by God or the universe, or have no sense of meaning or purpose in the world, there is a great sense of loneliness in that. And to identify as a grieving person what type of loneliness you're facing, or as a supporter the types of loneliness your friend or family member might be enduring, right?
• 1:01:07
  Alex Alexander: There's probably a lot of bad days right now.
• 1:01:12
  Alex Alexander: Look at that, right now. Yep. Or of course, faster than you
• 1:01:14
  Shelby Forsythia: Yeah.
• 1:01:16
  Alex Alexander: That you know, you just experience that loss.
• 1:01:18
  Alex Alexander: This is so fresh. But anyways, always trying to find ways to like keep the door open if somebody does want to talk. But that's just me. If if you aren't somebody who feels like you're ready to bust out all your, of course, I'm here and right nows, just the like I'm thinking of you means so much, and all the other phrases we were saying.
• 1:01:37
  Alex Alexander: But I like to get into the nitty gritty. I like to be there. I obviously have done this comforter thing a lot of times, so I'm always trying to keep the door open. I had one final question for you, because I feel like I would be remiss if I have you here and I did not ask this question. Can we close out this episode? I know this is like kind of a bigger conversation, but I'm going to ask this. Can we talk about the impulse to fix? Because I do think that when you start talking to someone and you get into more than just saying like I'm here right now. Of course, you'd feel that way when your friend responds and starts telling you more and more and more. Like I was thinking about the paperwork example you gave earlier. I'm just like I feel like this paperwork is never going to end, and you're like, yes, it's probably all consuming right now. I think that is a place, even just that simple comment.
• 1:02:33
  Alex Alexander: Whereas the friend, there's like these choices, like, do I offer to help? Do I lean in? Can we talk about that, like fixer impulse, and maybe any guidance you have on being the fixer?
• 1:02:49
  Shelby Forsythia: Yeah, absolutely. I think, and I talk about this in 800 different ways in the book. In each chapter of", there are like who or what stops, of course, or "Who or what stops I'm here, or "Who or what stops right now? And it's things like the hidden grief clock, like expecting people to be over it by a certain time, or the myth of the perfect griever, like thinking you have to get grief right in order to heal think. Of course, you would be feeling that way.
• 1:03:13
  Shelby Forsythia: from it. So there's a lot of things in our society. I'm talking mostly about like the United States or like other Eurocentric cultures that block us from simply giving ourselves permission to grieve, which for me looks like letting grief last and letting grief be weird. To put it very simply, and I think the urge to fix can come from so many different places. It can come from the belief that we need to get over it as quickly as possible. It can come from our discomfort watching somebody else suffer. I write very early in the book like our grieving friend's heart breaks our heart as well. A grievous heart breaks their neighbor's heart too. Like it makes sense that you feel their pain, and you would want both of your pains to stop. Like stop that. That hurts. There can also be a sense too, and this is not for everyone, but it is for some people. Of like, if you fix them, you have saved them from something that could be savior complex, but it could also be like, look, I found a way out of their suffering. I help them out of their suffering, so one less person in the world has to suffer. There's so, so many different reasons why we want to fix. The last one I'll say is under capitalism. If we fix something, it's become efficient. And so, if you're not suffering anymore, or if it's not ambiguous anymore, or if it's not hard anymore, then good. You can move on to the next thing and be a productive member of society. Heavy, heavy, heavy air quotes on all that that implies. As a supporter, something that I recommend in the book through an exercise called "Make a Menu of Your Gifts, especially for the paperwork example, we'll keep going with that one. Is like if you genuinely want to help and have the capacity to help in that way, totally offer it. I'm a person who could kind of help with paperwork. If it's legal paperwork, I'm not your girl.
• 1:04:47
  Shelby Forsythia: But if it's paperwork of like filling out forms or talking to customer service, yes, absolutely, I'm an extrovert, and I will make all the phone calls in the world to make the paperwork go by faster. What grieving people need, and what I circle around so many, so many times in the book, because I really want to drive this home for supporters, is that most often grieving people are never, ever, ever looking for a fix to their grief. They are looking to be seen, heard, held, perhaps understood, and companioned inside of it. The urge to fix comes from a supporter. It almost never comes from a griever. If you have the urge to fix and the ability to help, you could say, I have the ability to help you with this, or I have the time for this, or I have the energy for this. Does that sound helpful to you, or would that be helpful to you? Those are great questions to ask, and give them the option of yes or no. You could even say, Feel free to say no. It's okay to say no. I can accept a rejection. That's a very comfy thing to say to somebody who's grieving, because of course, grieving people don't want to offend you either, as the person who's supporting. But for the most part, like if the thing that they're struggling or suffering with is not one of your gifts, or if it genuinely is unfixable, the comfort doesn't come from the suffering being removed. It comes from the suffering being shared. And to say, I can totally see. How right now your status is buried under a mountain of paperwork-that's really hard. I hate that for you. Like that could be a comforting thing to say, or I imagine that's exactly as hard as it sounds.
• 1:06:19
  Shelby Forsythia: If you have a referral to a lawyer who could help, maybe like if it's legal paperwork, if you know somebody who said to do all the death paperwork before you could offer to put them in touch. Like there's so many different ways you could do to offer to fix. But the very first step, the thing you need to do before you get to that, is simply acknowledge the hardness of of what it is to be a grieving person. I don't know about you, but simply being alive and being a person who's lived long enough to experience losses, I wish more often anyone would come up to me in the world, even on a good day, and say, "You have survived a lot.
• 1:06:50
  Shelby Forsythia: You have been through a lot.
• 1:06:53
  Shelby Forsythia: Life is exactly as hard as it feels, and right now it's okay that it feels like this, whatever this may be. I don't think we're doing enough of that. I think we are a world or a society that rushes to fixing or doing. It's going back to that doing again, and the thing that grievers say they want the most is for anyone to simply show up and to say comforting words and to be with them in their pain and their grief without rushing them or forcing them through it or cheerleading them beyond it or judging them for still being there, and if we can train ourselves to do that first through the free, accessible, portable, universal tool of words. I genuinely think we could not only repair but strengthen our relationships with each other, and then just ultimately-and this is the goal I write about the very end of the book-is like create a world in which we all know what to say when someone we care about is experiencing any kind of grief or loss.
• 1:07:55
  Alex Alexander: I love those of us girlies out there trying to change the world.
• 1:07:58
  Shelby Forsythia: We're doing it
• 1:08:00
  Alex Alexander: truly, truly, because I do believe Shelby that if everybody could just even have the words 10% of the time, how much more seen we would all be, and how much that would impact the way we all move through the world, the way we all feel like we belong, that we all feel like we have somebody to call. So I just want to say thank you so much for your work and for being here today and sharing it with us.
• 1:08:25
  Shelby Forsythia: Thank you.
• 1:08:25
  Shelby Forsythia: That's a great goal for listeners. Swap out one in every 10. Yeah,
• 1:08:29
  Alex Alexander: like we're not asking for it
• 1:08:31
  Shelby Forsythia: with "I'm here for you" and see what happens.
• 1:08:34
  Shelby Forsythia: See how you change. Even
• 1:08:35
  Alex Alexander: just one for 10, truly, I think cumulatively would be world changing.
• 1:08:43
  Shelby Forsythia: Yeah, I agree.
• 1:08:43
  Shelby Forsythia: That's a great goal. Ugh, I love this so much.
• 1:08:48
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: There is so much gold in this episode.
• 1:08:52
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: We should all be repeating these three phrases. Of course, I'm here right now. Maybe a few times a day until they just really stick in our heads.
• 1:09:02
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: Because I do believe that having the words to respond to people that are struggling to make them feel seen and heard and like we are with them, not only is going to profoundly impact our relationships, but wow, what a ripple effect it could have for those people on this journey that they are on for ourselves if people did this back to us to create a friendship culture where this is normal. If you take nothing else from this episode, I hope you walk away with what I said here at the end. If you did this one out of 10 times, that would have an impact. And if you did it one out of 10 times, then maybe a few months from now, it's two out of every 10, and then somewhere down the road, not because you've studied for it, not because you became a grief expert, but just because it feels like the new normal. Maybe you get it right seven out of 10 times. You will never be perfect. Nobody will let that go. But seven out of 10, that is a different kind of friend than most people will ever have in their life, and wow, if that could be reflected back at you.
• 1:10:18
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: So what I'm here to say is, go pick up a copy of Shelby's book.
• 1:10:23
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: It's called, "." It is linked in the show notes, and I would tell you, like, pick up a copy for yourself, but pick up a copy for your friends. Being a little weird, like, make this your new hostess gift you give people.
• 1:10:35
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: Buy everybody this book for Christmas. Make it your go-to gift this year, because if we could change this, if we could show up and make each other feel a little more seen. Not only would it change your world, but it might change the world of every single person you come in contact with. The words matter.
• 1:10:55
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: With that, I'll see you next week.
• 1:11:02
  Podcast Intro/Outro: Thank you for listening to this episode of Friendship IRL. I am so honored to have these conversations with you. But don't let the chat die here. Send me a voice message. I created a special website just to chat with you. You can find it at alexalex.chat. You can also find me on Instagram. My handle, @itsalexalexander. Or go ahead and leave a review wherever you prefer to listen to podcasts. Now if you want to take this conversation a step further, send this episode to a friend. Tell them you found it interesting. And use what we just talked about as a conversation starter the next time you and your friend hang out. No need for a teary goodbye. I'll be back with a new episode next week.