Are you looking for a way to make co-parenting easier? Talking parents can help you streamline your shared parenting responsibilities and minimize conflict by keeping all interactions organized and documented. With talking parents, you can stop worrying about the he said, she said, and focus on what really matters most, your children. Go to www.talkingparents.com backslash jbd to start a 30-day free trial today. You grieve the relationship as an entity. You grieve who you were.
inside the relationship, the roles that you played or didn't get to play, the ways you played into maybe conflict or lack thereof. You grieve those same things for the other person in the relationship. But then I received a letter for Dear Grief Guide recently from somebody who was widowed
And she said, I'm not just grieving my husband, I'm grieving the father of my children, the protector of the household, the manager of the money, a fellow breadwinner. These are all roles that another person plays inside of a relationship. welcome to the journey beyond divorce podcast where we explore the many facets of complex divorce and invite you into a journey of healing and personal transformation that will radically change your divorce experience
and set you up to be effective and feel empowered. I'm Karen McMahon, your host and founder of Journey Beyond Divorce. Let's dive in. Hello, friends. Today we're talking about unpacking the emotional toll a deep dive into divorce grief. You've experienced the pain of divorce. It's a season that can leave us lost, alone, overwhelmed, and you're not alone.
Today we're delving into how often... grief isn't acknowledged during divorce and how it can manifest in unexpected ways that take us by surprise, affecting our relationships, our self-esteem, even our overall well-being. With me today is an expert in this field. It is Shelby Forsythia. She's a compassionate grief guide and author. Shelby's the founder of Life After Loss Academy.
and the host of Dear Grief Guide podcast and has dedicated her life to helping others navigate the complex journey of grief. She also has some books that she'll talk about and that we'll have in the show notes for you. find out more about Shelby in the show notes. But with no further ado, welcome, Shelby. Thank you so much. I'm so glad to be back, Karen. Yeah, it's good to have you. Before we dive in...
So that our listeners can maybe get a little bit more flavor of who you are. Could you share something that you've done in your life that you're most proud of? I love that question. Well, this is funny and this might be. We were talking about astrology before we got on the mic, but this might be my Leo self talking and Leos are considered very prideful and very extroverted and flair for the dramatic. So my immediate answer is like, wow, there's actually a lot of things that I'm proud of.
which I think is kind of the opposite answer that a lot of people would have. I think there's like different categories of being proud for me. And I don't know if this is true for you or for people who are watching or listening, but there's like pride for... surviving, there's pride for accomplishing, and then there's pride for
kind of just finding joy and being alive. Pride for surviving would fall under grief space for me, which I know is what we're here to talk about today. Being proud of myself for finding ways that worked for me to get through the loss of my mother.
the death of my best friend, most recently the death of my cat, but also the breakup of an engagement that really racked my life. And it's not necessarily, I didn't feel proud in the moment, but it's a kind of pride that comes with looking back and being like, holy crap, I made it. through and not just survived, but actually in a few really important ways managed to take care of myself within.
the surviving and then there's like pride with accomplishment and like nothing makes me prouder than being an author in this lifetime i wanted to write a book at the age of five i never thought it would be a grief book i'll tell you that i thought it was going to be about ponies or fairies or
unicorns to the point where I was up through middle school writing fantasy books about ponies and fairies and unicorns and when my first self-published book came out in 2019 and it was on grief I'm like I guess I'm a published author but this isn't how I pictured it looking and so
Pride came in through the back door, I guess you could say, but accomplishing things like that that you've always wanted to do and part of this life. And then the third category for me, pride through simply being alive or finding joy in this lifetime in a world that can feel very dark and heavy a lot of the time. it's kind of like these blips of pride or these blips of joy of kind of
putting myself out there or trying a new thing or starting before I'm ready. My most recent example of this is I joined a queer jazz band here in Chicago and we did a gig at a swing dance club and I have not danced since high school.
There was a moment where the director was like, we've got multiple pianists, we've got multiple instrumentationalists, and they're like, they don't want us to be too loud in the space. So if you're not playing an instrument, go dance. And it was one of those kind of when life gives you an invitation.
you have the option whether or not to take it. And that night I took it and it was the happiest I had been in a very long time. And it was about two weeks after the presidential election here in the United States when everything felt very dark and heavy. And I think a lot of people, especially here in a big city like Chicago, big blue.
city like chicago were feeling the ache yeah and so to come together in a room where people were dancing and making live music and teaching each other and really receiving All the invitations that were being extended by hand or by dance or by foot on the dance floor was so much fun. And that was kind of like a small and wonderful fleeting pride that I had myself as saying yes to going out and dancing. And I danced till midnight. It was wonderful.
Beautiful, beautiful. The concept that comes to mind in that last piece of your story is surrender. That surrendering and accepting whatever the invitation is in front of us rather than resisting it. I can't do that. I haven't danced in a long time. I'm not going to try that. And so as you're talking that surrendering to what we're invited to.
stretching beyond their comfort zone in the moment is always so uncomfortable and scary. And then your experience was so joyful and lovely, which it often is. Yeah. And I think, and this relates to grief too, but especially. In a world that has now seen a pandemic, it's still really hard to trust people, just generally, to look at your neighbor and know, or believe, I guess, that they're good, just as you are good.
And to be in a room full of people whom I'd never met with the exception of like the 15 people in the band and to have 50 other people extending invitations in. metaphorically and literally. It was really, can I, yeah, can I surrender to trusting that whatever this experience is, it's going to catch me. If I say yes to this, will I be supported in that? And I think you're right. It has to do with surrender and resilience.
Yeah, a sort of trust that no matter what happens, you'll be caught or land somewhere. Yeah, absolutely. And I love your different categories of pride too. So thank you so much for that. Yeah, I love that question. I can't wait to hear others answers now. Me too. As we dive into this, it's complex and multidimensional, the entire concept of grief, and especially when it comes to divorce. And I'm just going to start where.
At this point where so many people, I was just talking to a client yesterday and all of her loved ones are like. come on, let's get you on a dating app. Let's go out. It's the holidays. Let's be jolly. And so I want to start at this place where if you lose a loved one, grief makes sense. If you're going through a divorce. People don't necessarily welcome it as much or accept it as much. And then grief isn't very comfortable. And so when it's not comfortable for the people around you.
Like, how do you deal with that? So let's just open up the conversation on those two fronts to begin with. Yeah, a thousand percent. The fact that divorce isn't really seen as a grief event in society and then the people around you don't know what the hell to do with it. So I think one of the first things.
I teach my clients too. I tell people here grief coach and they think death of a loved one, but I tell people I work with the three Ds, death, divorce, and diagnosis. So these three huge things that can change your life and breakups are included in that. And then also the losses that often follow all of those things.
geographic moves, financial loss, pet loss, miscarriage, like the things that are lesser acknowledged by society can also go in there too. But yeah, society often looks at divorce and they say, the other person's still alive, so what's your problem?
is like the overarching sentiment. And it's not really said by a lot of people. Some people do say it out loud and you're like, wow, that's a really rude thing to say. But in divorce, in the disillusion of something, even if the divorce was your idea or your instigation.
There is something to grieve here. There is something that is ending. There is a threshold that you are crossing over that you cannot go back through. There's like a door that is sealed now that you can no longer access. And I think in divorce, there are so many things. to account for when grieving I think on the surface level people are like I'm grieving the relationship which like yes you're grieving the relationship
Within that though, and I'm going to miss a few. So apologies to anything that I miss in here. Any other things that people think of, I hope we'll hear from you because I know there's so much more to grieve than just what I'm going to list. But here's what I've seen when working with clients. So you grieve the relationship as an entity. You grieve who you were.
inside the relationship, the roles that you played or didn't get to play, the ways you played into maybe conflict or lack thereof. You grieve those same things for the other person in the relationship. But then I received a letter for Dear Grief Guide recently from somebody who was widowed.
and she said I'm not just grieving my husband I'm grieving the father of my children the protector of the household the manager of the money a fellow breadwinner these are all roles that another person plays inside of a relationship that you could also potentially be grieving
especially around the holiday season, who's the gift buyer? Who's the house cleaner? Who's the logistical organizer of when relatives are coming in and out of town? Who's the menu designer? Who's the tradition carrier honor? Who's the scrapbooker? Who's the family photographer? These are all like... teeny, major, tiny, big roles in relationships that we either slide into because they're comfortable for us in a twosome in a relationship or that we've...
that we take on very consciously and say, I am this person to my household. But then when you experience a divorce, the person who filled all those roles is no longer present. And so those are all individual griefs worth grieving inside of the larger umbrella of I am grieving the relationship.
And then you grieve the ways in which your life changes as a result of divorce. You become seen through different eyes by friends and family. You are not a person who's married. You're now a person who's divorced. If you're doing something like going on the dating market...
It's different than maybe the first time you were on the market, both technologically and otherwise. So the scene which you're entering is different. It may impact you financially, especially if you're a woman or a non-binary person. These people are often more affected financially by divorce than men. so many other
ways in which your world and your future is impacted. If you share children together, you think about future events like weddings and graduations not being the way you'd picture them in your mind. You may have to go back to school, find a different job, move neighborhoods, get a different... decide who gets the family pet there's so many
There's negotiations of what life looks like now that continue on into the future that must be grieved in and under that umbrella. And then to the second part of your question, there's people watching you do this. For lack of better phrasing, you are being witnessed as you are grieving and processing and figuring out where to put the clutter emotionally of this new experience. And they're wondering why on earth.
you aren't happier or more productive or have more energy to get back out in the world again. And the thing that we're not saying is whether or not I chose this, whether or not I signed on for this or instigated this, it is a grief event. And so I need a little time, a little tools, a little guidance from you or myself or anybody else to figure out where all this belongs now as I begin to pick everything up and...
begin to figure out who I am now, what my future looks like now, what I want, because desires and dreams often change as a result of a divorce because they're minus one person now, or circumstantially, geographically, sometimes they're different. And then...
Yeah, you are just being observed and often cast through the lens of other people's judgment or criticism or analysis or like... well-intentioned goodwill but sometimes cliches if you just need to get back on the horse again and so the first step often is just taking a huge breath and being like this is a grief event and then letting yourself treat it
As such, one of the exercises I teach inside of Life After Loss Academy is simply to call yourself a griever and take the lens, I call it like putting on your grief glasses, and to... Take your experience. I am now a grieving person. You could say I am now a divorced person. But how do you see every element of the world through the lens of being a divorced person?
From tiny things, how do you cook dinner when you're divorced? How do you get the mail when you're divorced? How do you clean your house when you're divorced? To how do you go to a cocktail party when you're divorced? How do you travel with family when you're divorced? How do you look for jobs when you're divorced? When you just add it.
like a prepositional phrase to the end of every sentence, it really helps you acknowledge the weight of the impact that this has had on your life and will continue to in the future. And it's not a bad thing. It's just you telling the truth about the fact that this is a grief event. Yeah. And then sometimes doing that for yourself can help other people comprehend too. A divorce is not something generally entered into on a whim.
It's a really big, it's a big freaking deal. Right. And so it makes sense that the impact of it would be big as well. And so even saying that to friends and family, this is not a decision me and former spouse entered into lightly and the impact. is literally every facet of our lives, it helps me when you can see that too and recognize that. Beautiful, beautiful description. It is so multidimensional.
And you hit on so many of the different parts of it. A lot of times my clients will talk about how the saying is death and divorce, death being number one. And so many of them are like, no, divorce and death because there. so multidimensional and especially if the other person is still in your life and it's difficult in other ways and just that whole not seeing the children as often as you see the children being worried about how they are at mom or dad's house because you're concerned.
about their behavior. It's so big. And then there are your loved ones who, and I would love for you to talk about this. There's two different avenues I want to go down. The first one is the loved ones who... They love you, and they're really bringing their own baggage to the table, and they're not comfortable with your sadness or your pain. And so, like you said, they...
Things can be said that are so unhelpful during that period of time. And if somebody's in that space, they're leaning on their family and they know their family or their friends, their best friend, whatever loves them. And yet. the way they're responding to their emotional experience of grief is not helpful. What are some suggestions that you can give the listener?
Yeah, I'm so glad you brought this up. It is my most popular workshop that I teach ever. I taught it six times this year. We're at the end of 2024. Of all the things I taught... and teach. This is the most requested. And it's a workshop called how to negotiate friendships after loss. And loss includes, again, death, divorce, diagnosis, but anything you can define as a major loss in your life.
I came up with this framework of the 11 toxic grief tropes, and this is from eight years of working with clients and hearing how their friends and family responded, and then of course having my own experiences too. But I've categorized the ways people talk about our grief into 11 categories, and I won't name them all for you here, but I'll give you some common examples, especially for divorce, but they're cheeky or silly names. But the reason I categorize them this way is so you can take stock.
I encourage people to make lists of people they interact with on a daily basis and say, okay, my cousin whoever is this type of... toxic grief trope or my aunt whoever is this type and my best friend says this and my co-worker says this and so you can really identify I'm being hurt by this but what exactly about what they're saying is harmful or hurtful so there's the rose-colored reframer which is the person
and everything happens for a reason. They see the silver, you're meant for greater things. You'll find the love of your life again. He just wasn't the love of your life. And they have jumped to making positive meaning from your loss, like before you're ready.
That's one type. There's the judgmental jerk, which comes up a lot, a lot, a lot in divorce and breakups of they're judging your grief through their lens of it's been six months. Why aren't you over it already? They're big. That went on the top of the list. Bean counter.
These people are counting the days, counting the months. And they're like, it's been two years. What's the deal? Like, why are you still so upset by that? Or why are you still worried about your kids? Or why are you still worried about living arrangements? Why haven't you started dating? There's the distractors. There's a D word in front of that. I can't remember.
what it is right now but there's like the driven distractors which are the you just need to get out of the house people who are like you just need to go on some dates you just need to put yourself out there you just need to find a hobby and they believe that busyness will cure grief, which it does not, which is really frustrating. And then this is true, I see for a lot of people who get divorced within circles of married couples, the disappointing disappear.
The person who may show up for you once or twice and then absolutely ghost themselves out of your life. And it's really... disappointing. It's really frustrating and heartbreaking because a lot of people in divorce communities, similar to widow communities or child loss communities, say things like, it's like they think my loss is contagious.
like my divorce could somehow happen to them. Like if I stand too close and there's this sense of being ostracized by a person or by a group, that's really frustrating, but I have 11 of these and going through this exercise with people and saying, which of these things are you seeing?
show up most in your life. So my number one hated trope is the rose colored reframer. I hate when people try and cheer me up. I'm like, just let me be sad. For five minutes, just let me be sad. The second part of that is noticing if there's anyone anywhere in your life that offers you any helpful things, whether they...
Drop groceries off at your house, whether they call you every Friday, whether or not they actually talk is another thing. They might just be checking on you, whether they offer to pick up your kids or get your mail or take on a project for you at work, whatever the case may be, and listing out behaviors that are actually helpful.
or feel supportive. For people who've lost loved ones, a lot of times it's like they remember my grief anniversaries. They ask about my person who died. They bring me food. They hold me when I cry. The list goes on and on. For divorces, it's often like they remember that.
this is something I'm going through. They offer to take the extra ticket at graduation and sit with me in the place where my wife would have sat. They remember the date of my divorce and that it's a weird season for me. They offer to hang up Christmas lights outside the house during the holidays because they know that's a role. that I'm grieving that my husband used to play. And so all of these...
sort of positive actions are the counterbalance to the negative ones. And so you approach people who we categorize people, and I'm going out of order, but we categorize people as green light people who are always supportive, yellow light people who are unpredictably supportive. Sometimes they say shitty.
things and sometimes they sell helpful things. And then they're red light people who just don't understand what it is to be grieving what you're grieving and have no compassion for what you're going through. And for the most part, the yellow light people are the people that you can repair relationship with. And so I present a script in this little mini course. And you can find this also in Life After Loss Academy. It's one lesson out of the many that I teach in there.
Hey, insert person's name here. Last time we interacted, you told me it was time to suck it up and get on some dating apps so I can start to move forward with my life. That made me feel. So using person first language, I felt or that made me feel as opposed to you did this, which is finger pointing.
and not well received most of the time. It made me feel like I wasn't allowed to grieve the fact that I'm divorced, even if it was my decision, and that a new relationship can heal me from my pain, which is not true.
New relationships are just new relationships. They're not magical band-aids for anything. And if you're feeling spicy, you can put that in. New relationships aren't magical band-aids. They're really just adding another person to your life, which can be a whole source of other stress. You can offer some sympathy or compassion.
I know you hate seeing me in pain. I know you want to make me feel better. I know this is hard for you to watch. It's hard for me too. In the future, it would be helpful if you, and then insert any of the helpful behaviors that you love. I would love if we could talk every Friday. I would love if...
I could reach out to you when I am ready to do something like this. So maybe even setting a boundary, I would love if you could help me pick up the kids or take on a project at work, or if you could come over and we could cook together, or we could play games online if they're far away, if they're not able to be in contact, or if you could.
just ask how I'm doing every once in a while and just let me guide the conversation and then see what they say. And the last part of this that I always, always teach is don't just send the script. You gotta... form an action plan for taking care of yourself in the aftermath, because there's three ways this could go. What to do if they respond well.
Oh my gosh, thank you so much. I didn't realize I was putting so much pressure on you, et cetera, et cetera. What to do if they respond back? Well, I'm just trying to make you feel better. You deserve a love of your life and I can't believe you don't want to get back on the horse again. So making a plan for what to do if they respond badly, oftentimes it involves distancing.
yourself from the person or having family members or friends act as go-betweens for a little while, or what to do if they don't respond at all.
Sometimes text messages don't go through. Sometimes people aren't reading their emails. Sometimes people don't check their mail if you send a snail mail boundary through a letter. Or sometimes people don't listen to their voicemails. And so what will you do if the person doesn't respond at all? And then finally, how will you take care of yourself after setting the boundary?
sending the script in their direction. Because what a lot of people don't recognize, especially with grief for divorce, they sometimes recognize it for death, but especially not with divorce, is that It takes so much of your precious energy, which you do not have a lot of when you're grieving to figure out.
what you need, what you don't need, and then to ask for it. Because all of that is very vulnerable. The resources I often recommend are Nedra Glover-Tawab's book, Set Boundaries, Find Peace. She has some wonderful, tremendous scripts for setting boundaries.
kinds of circumstances. You just said that so fast I didn't. Oh sure yes it's Nedra Glover Tawab's book Set Boundaries Find Peace and she also has another book I believe called Drama Free but it's about setting boundaries inside of intimate relationships and It's just a wonderful collection of words to actually construct the architecture of relationships that you're in. But something I always emphasize with grieving people is you are not setting boundaries to be cruel.
You set boundaries because grief has changed you. People are like, I don't want to be changed by grief. And I'm like, I would be surprised if grief didn't change you. I would be more upset and more offended if this loss did not make you a different person.
Because that is the nature of grief. So you have been changed by loss. You have been changed by divorce. You have been changed by grief. And so that now changes your rules of engagement with everybody in your life. And I know it's exhausting. I know you don't want it.
And you set boundaries because you want to continue to be in relationship with these people. You don't want to have to grieve their loss or their exit from their life or you cutting them off. You don't want to have another thing to grieve. You actually really want to stay invested in the relationship.
need the terms and conditions to change a little bit. And if you want to phrase it that way, go ahead. You can say, Hey friend, I know my divorce was six months ago, two years ago. It's still a big part of my life. I need the terms and conditions of our relationship to change. You can phrase, if you want to use humor, you
right ahead and i find it works a lot for a lot of people because seeing that it's not it is something that they're doing but it's not necessarily personal it's what society has taught us is true about coming back from devastating loss like a divorce. And what society believes is true is another relationship complacent.
loss. If you stay busy, you can get rid of your grief or you won't even have grief at all. And this is a very short time limited thing that happens in a tiny pocket of time and it never affects you again for the rest of your life. And all those things just are not true. And our friends and our family.
most of the time I believe are doing their best to help us, but they don't have what they need. And sadly, oftentimes the burden falls on the people who are grieving to teach the people around them what to say and what to do. But that's like the easiest. tool I have to help grieving people do that. And I've seen relationships die as a result of this.
But then grieving people will come back and say, I have the clarity of knowing that they can never support me through anything hard because they have very clearly shown me they're not interested in growing in that direction with me, but it's the direction I'm forced to grow because of loss. And I've seen relationships saved and repaired and even improved. So it really...
No matter which direction it goes, the gift of this exercise is that you know where you stand with your friends and family members, as opposed to perpetually living in this enigma soup of... Sometimes they sell helpful things and sometimes they don't. And sometimes I feel supported and sometimes I don't. And these little micro jabs are...
Not big T trauma, but little T trauma. And they add up over time. And a lot of the times people don't even know that they're hurting you. And so saying, hey, ouch, different words would be great or different actions would be great. Can you help me with this? Is a really great way to start those conversations. You know, those are such great tips. And it sounds like a wonderful course because also when you're grieving, you've got your own lens on that could leave you being.
defensive or angry or snarky. And so being given some, let's assume best intention, but let's communicate clearly and set boundaries sounds perfect. It reminds me, I did a workshop on this Monday of this week, actually, and there was somebody lovely from Canada who attended the call. And my wife's from Canada. And there's this trope and stereotype of Canadians being more polite than Americans. And I said, and she told a personal story of...
Her daughter died and it's been three months and her friends kind of vanished. But then three months later now it's been have started reappearing, but they're kind of back to their usual sending memes and planning brunch and all this other stuff. And she's like, is no one going to say anything that my daughter died? Is no one going to?
Is no one going to acknowledge how that's changed my life? And I might not have the energy for brunch and memes might not be funny to me anymore. No one's saying anything. And I said, I'll give you two scripts. I'll give you the Canadian version and the American version. I said, if you want to be like me and you want to be very snitty and in the group. be like hey is nobody gonna mention that my daughter died it's really wild to me that
It's been three, just three months. And y'all are going back to making plans and stuff with no acknowledgement of how much energy I have, or it's the holidays and I'm thinking of her. That would be great to consider. Send. Or the Canadian version of, hey, I've noticed the whole group sort of gone back to what we used to do, but I've changed as a person.
can we have a larger conversation about that? And they're both, they both ask the same thing, but one's more direct than the other. But yeah, you're right. So many people just... They don't know what to say, but they also need to be called out a little bit. And it is a shame, and I will say this till the day I die, that grievers must do the job of educating the people around them. But if...
you have the energy to do so, or when you decide you have the energy to do so, because I know the holidays are hard for everybody. A lot of people are like, I'm setting that boundary in January. Right now I am putting a happy face and trying to survive, which is very valid. Once you do, the gift of that is clarity.
around your relationship and how that person or if that person is able to follow you into your life now with loss, life after loss. Beautiful, beautiful. Before I give you my next question, you have the most... lovely, soothing voice. I mean, what a beautiful grief coach. It's just so gentle, so soothing, so lovely. So I had to.
I'll tell you the best compliment I ever received. I did an event in 2019 right before COVID called the bereavement cruise. And it's exactly what you think it is. You take a bunch of gravers and you put them on a boat for a week. And we did a bunch of like expert led workshops and I got to be one of the experts and I ran.
ads on my podcast for six months leading up to it and saying hey i'm going on this cruise if you want to learn from me in person it'd be great to meet you because i know i have listeners all over the world as i'm sure you do
This woman walks up to me and we'd never met before. And she goes, hi, my name is Anne or whatever her name was. And she was like, I have to tell you something, but I'm afraid I'm going to insult you. And I was like, I don't know what this is about. It could literally be anything.
My life and my grief are on the internet and my face, it could be literally anything. And she said, I've been listening to your podcast for three years. And I was like, oh, here we go. And she said, sometimes I don't really listen. Sometimes I fall asleep.
And I was like, oh my God, that's the nicest thing you could have said. She said, my husband died two years ago. And your voice is one of the only things that's been able to help you rest since he died. And I was like, that's the nicest thing you could have said in response to, I might offend you. But I have used that as such a, like a grounding point going forward of what even a voice is able.
to do for people who are grieving. I know what I'm saying is helpful, but sometimes even just hearing a voice that sounds kind in the middle of everything. A soft, kind, gentle voice. Absolutely. Yeah. And you have a voice made.
for grief coaching. Thank you. Thank you very much. I tell people, I know, again, I never thought I'd be here. I never thought I'd write books about grief, but I spent my entire childhood taking voice lessons and doing musicals. And this is where it's paid off. I never landed on Broadway. but I got here. So I want to look at another piece of grief that I've read about. Tell me if this is true in your perspective and elaborate.
So I heard that each time we grieve, we're also grieving all about past loss, especially if one... didn't grieve. I had coached a woman once who came to me because she needed to end her relationship and leave her job and something else and literally within two sessions it turns out that she was never allowed to grieve her father for a second. when she was like six. So she went through her whole life. And so
It was a big eye opener for me. And so I think that most of my listeners and clients are maybe in the 45 to 65 year old. category. And so there may have been other losses. And can you just talk about how grief works when either you haven't grieved past losses and if does it in fact, does one impact the other? Or does each grief have some residue from the grief before? Divorce feels like an overwhelming perfect storm.
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by keeping all interactions organized and documented. With talking parents, you can stop worrying about the he said, she said, and focus on what really matters most, your children. Oh, I love that word. I've never heard it framed as like... griefs carry residue with them into the future, but I think that's very true. In a personal story from my own life, I was not always good at grief because I don't know that any of us are inherently good at grief. I...
I pushed down the grief over my mother for about two years after her death. I did not become a grief coach until about like six years after she died. Three to six years after she died is when I started training and reading. blah, blah, blah. But for the first two years after she died, I just knew I was mad and sad all the time. Mad, sad, mad, sad, and exhausted. Mad, sad, and exhausted. It was a divine trinity.
I did not fully allow myself to feel the emotions of her life being no longer on this planet until my wallet got stolen. I was working at a tea shop in downtown Chicago. I'd hung my bag on the back of a chair, which I know now you're never supposed to do in a major city. And someone just like slipped their hand and took the wallet and walked away. And I did not even know it was gone until I left. In that moment, it was like I had been...
And I write about this in my first book. It's like I'd locked grief in the basement of my life and I was living on the ground floor. And at nighttime, I would hear it howling and pacing and huffing around, but I would not allow it to come through that basement door because I was afraid of what I would find. I was sincerely...
at the age of 23-ish, my mom died when I was 21, that if I felt the full extent of my grief, I would either be committed to a mental institution or I would die. That's how intense it felt to me. and i know that seems very dramatic if you've never grieved before but i really truly felt that the impact of my grief i would not be able to contain it in my body and i had never had that feeling before so i'm like well i'm just gonna combust like i don't
I'll just explode. I have no other, I don't, I have no other option. I just won't do this. I just won't. Right. And so I just won't do this. And I'd also never seen any other examples of it, even in movies and television and media and stuff. I'd certainly not seen it from real living people in my life. And I really had not seen it.
for me anywhere else. But that day that the wallet was stolen, it was like the straw that broke the camel's back and I slammed the door to my apartment close and I, in losing something that was so precious and essential to my life. I was then grieving my mother, someone so precious and essential to my life. And so it was like the wallet was a trap door to grieving the death of my mother. And I just saw.
and wailed and I was like slamming my fist on the floor I put screamo music on my neighbors must have thought I was going crazy which like I can't really blame them I am sincerely surprised to this day no one called the police because it was that loud and that
violent what came rushing out of me but at the end of that experience I was like lying on my side on the floor of my apartment and this voice popped into my head and it said you just gave yourself permission to grieve and I was like What is that?
What does that mean? That was great. And I didn't die. I was so surprised I was still on planet Earth. I was so surprised I didn't have a heart attack or seize or simply cease to exist. That's everything I thought would happen because I really did not know any better.
and grief has us prone to all this magical thinking. But I think you are right on the money that at any age, current losses... unlock themes or residue or trauma or similar feelings from past losses, even if those losses are not death-related losses.
A lot of times I have heard, oh, this is one, these are some of my most heartbreaking stories from clients, but oftentimes people don't let themselves feel grief over a death until some physical object goes missing, such as a piece of heirloom jewelry or a Christmas ornament that...
never be replaced or something is broken for example like a favorite photo or like an old sweatshirt finally wears out and it's like the last physical remnant of a person who was alive is now disintegrating or lost or gone and then it's like the grief hits but i a thousand percent agree that
current losses and future losses can unlock losses from the past. And the flip side of that, if you want to reframe for it, is that everything that you learn from how to cope with old bosses, you can take with you into the future. So when my best friend died, And I did a lot of grief for my mom alone.
And by myself, because I didn't really want to share my pain with anybody. So my best friend died in 2022. So almost a decade after my mother died, she died from COVID very suddenly. My mom died from breast cancer very suddenly. So very similar echoey losses. And I was like, really, we're doing this again? f the universe i am so fed up and in both cases i was very very close
to the point of impact. I was not my mom's emergency contact, but I was living in the house when she died. It was over winter break. She died the day after Christmas. For my best friend, I was her emergency contact. Her entire family lived out of state. And so I was the person who got the call that she died. Very similar.
situation to my mother's death and in both cases they each died within the course of seven days of receiving either hospital admission or a diagnosis so i was like all right we're doing this again in this case I got together with a group of eight, nine, ten of my closest friends who all knew her. She was in our circle of friends. And we went to the pier out here on the beaches in Chicago because we are on the lake. And we had a joint screaming session two days after she died.
And having the expression of grief, and I know screaming is not for everybody, but having the expression of pain and wailing and grief come so close after the loss, as opposed to two years later, it's two days later, I was like, we're getting this out of our bodies right now. It was pouring rain. It was beautiful. And it was like the middle of May. And every single one of my friends came up to me and they're like, I did not know I needed that. And I thought if I felt something that big.
that I would surely die. And I'm like, I know what that is too. But the wonderful thing about your loss is coming with you. is that you learn from each one what works for you in grief. And you can take those practices or tools or habits or meditations or teachers, whatever you compile or draw closer to you as you're grieving, you can take things like that with you for future. losses. You can also do this with like foods you love to eat or outfits you love to wear. I have grief outfits.
all right, I'm grieving again. I'm putting on the same uniform day after day. I have some jumpsuits that I have and I'm like, that's my grief outfit. I have grief foods. I'm like, these are my grief foods. These are my grief TV shows. These are my grief teas. These are my grief rituals. These are my grief books. These are my, when people.
talk about comfort shows or comfort movies or comfort foods, a lot of what they're pointing to is I am grieving and I need something that makes me feel home and whole. And people just don't call it grief foods or grief outfits or anything like that. But when I'm in the house in a bodysuit and sweats, I'm like, I'm in my grief outfit. I am doing the bare minimum to survive, but it's also a comforting way to take care of myself. So I think...
you're definitely pointing to something. And it's a shame, to your original point, that we live in a world where we can only know what we know when we know it, especially with regard to grief. And so to be grieving... A father that you lost at six. When you're grieving a divorce right now, you don't just grieve the divorce and you don't just grieve the father. You grieve not knowing differently sooner.
And there's that there's a lot of pain in that because you don't just see the divorce and the father you see.
The breakup and the cross-country move and the college graduation without your friend and the time that you were ostracized and the other breakup that you had and the time you were left out of this and you didn't get the promotion. You see every other micro loss in your life too and not having the tools for that and all of the... things are worth grieving in and of themselves but then also grieving not having the tools or the resources or the
community to know how to do that differently. And I know this sounds like so much grief. People are like, Shelby, you really bum people out because you talk about big lists of all the things you got to grieve now. But even sometimes saying that's a thing worth grieving is grieving. I'm not you don't have to go to a therapy retreat or.
a grief cruise in order to process each and every one of these losses, even looking back on that and saying, I'm grieving that I didn't know better or didn't have better community or parenting when my dad died at six or more permission to express what I'm feeling. Even saying that out loud is a beautiful permission slip to continue to carry that grief and notice it as you go forward into the future. That's beautiful.
I want to share something with you when you were talking about being on the beach. My mom passed three years ago this past October. Very suddenly. And we did not have a good relationship. I've actually barely shed a tear. It's like my dad died and I grieved for three years. My mom died and I'm still waiting. However, when you were talking, what I remember is I went down, I was outside of St. Pete, Florida, and a friend of mine was doing a sound bath every Wednesday night.
Brilliant musician, stunning sound bath. And I think I had done one once before and it was weird. And so I laid down and the most amazing thing happened to me over the course of the hour. Very quickly, as soon as the sound bath began, I had this wave of emotion. And of course, my ego was like, because my body started gyrating. I started crying. And then I started laughing hysterically. And I really had to say, just let go. Because my ego is like, you probably look ridiculous. Stop.
And I was like, just let go. Just be with it. Just be with it. And almost for the entire hour, I must have looked crazy because I was crying. I was laughing. My body like a snake on the ground. And when it was all over, there was this incredible peace, like this cathartic, I just wanted to go home and lay down and go to sleep.
So I was exhausted, but I was also, I felt like I had been emptied out of so much frenetic energy of different types. And yeah, I call it the glass in the dishwasher feeling. Because when I wrote about the stolen wallet and the screaming and permission to grieve, I felt like a clean glass that had gone through the dishwasher.
But I didn't even know I needed to. Yeah, I really resonate with that. I think you point to something else too. And I hope that people who are divorced or in the process of divorcing or facing any other grief will hear this too, is that grief lives in the body. And things that...
appeal to your body whether they be dancing or going to a sound bath or being worked on by somebody and thinking massage body work reiki whatever appeals to you playing contact sports especially if you're more of a i gotta get it through some sort of aggression type of body movement. These are all wonderful ways for grief to be expressed. I've seen people take up hula hooping. I've seen people take up Tai Chi, seated yoga. I've seen grief kind of come as through lines for all of these things.
And it offers you a different way of moving through grief that's not just thinking about what you're feeling. And Westernized Society is really good at that. It's like, let's find some words or some frameworks or some tools and tips and reframes, which is a great.
portion of the work that I do, and I'm sure you do as well, is we're rewriting the story that you're telling yourself in your head about what's happening. But there's also another component. My wife says that she would love to just be a brain on legs because maintaining bodies are so hard. but engaging your body with what's happening with your grief too.
can be extraordinarily helpful for moving it through too without the need to think about it or have words for it or define it or something else, especially for like yours, like difficult relationships or relationships where maybe you ran out of words or there were never words in the first place or the... words were
so rage or anger or hate-filled that they weren't productive. Or maybe all you ever received was toxicity or pain. And yeah, there's an article I wrote many, many years ago about grieving toxic people, abusers, and assholes, which a lot- lot of society thinks you should not grieve because shouldn't you be so happy that you're dead and rid of them you're dead they're dead and you're rid of them or that you're out of the relationship and so you're rid of them but I one of my favorite um
People who talks about this is Sunny McMillan. She used to host a radio show called Sunny in Seattle, and she talks about her divorce from her toxic husband and how that was still a grief event for her.
because yes similar to everything else you grieve the relationship but you also grieve the person you were or who you thought you would be in this relationship the person they were who they said they would be and then they turned into or who they showed themselves to be and then all the rules that you played to each other positive negative and neutral in each of that and then especially taking stock and looking back how life was supposed to go versus how it actually unfolded
And there's so much of that you can say in words. And then there's also so much of that that simply just needs to be felt. And that's a hard thing to do when you're living in Westernized society that loves words and moving through things as quickly as possible. not always tuned in with what's happening below neck level. You know, I've told this story a few times on my podcast. I was, many of my listeners and clients are in.
very high conflict. It is the toxic person, the dysfunctional person that you're divorcing. And so for me, I knew I struggled for years before I made the decision. It was three and a half years of a really high conflict divorce. I lived in the attic. lots of yelling, screaming.
I pretty much was certain that there was no grief needed to happen. And then after it was all done and I was like, woohoo, it's all done. Like really glad it was all done out of the house, had my own little place with the kids. I found myself sitting on the beach one day.
And I grew up on the beach. So for me, going to the ocean is like going back to the womb. So I'm sitting on the beach and all of a sudden I stop bawling my eyes out and rocking back and forth like a baby. And out of my mouth comes, it wasn't supposed to be this way. It wasn't supposed to be this way. No one was more surprised than me. I'm like, where did this come from? And yet...
It just, it was ready to bubble up. And it was, I'm not going to say the last remnants, but remnants that I didn't even know. And to your point, and I say this to everyone, it's like none of us. stood before whatever that altar was and said, until death do we part. with the expectation that we would be where we are. It's like the whole dream of what that was supposed to be and what we had hoped for. And there's so much in there that we have to let go of and grieve.
Yeah. And also something I see too, especially when there's some flavor of toxicity at play is I never thought I would be a person who would stay so long. Or put my, or abandon myself like this. And there's a bit of, we use extreme caution in sessions not to turn this into some kind of self-hatred, but there's this sense of, I never thought I would try to stick it out like that.
Or try to gloss over red flags or whatever the case may be. Or I never thought I would allow myself to sit in survival mode for so long. Or take so long to get out. I never thought I'd put up with that crap. There's this... vision or this view that we have of ourselves of I can't believe I became that type of person who at first only belonged to other people. And wow, it is truly, and I mean this.
scientifically, but it is truly brain changing. There's another wonderful book. I'm sorry, I'm just throwing resources at you, but there's a wonderful book called The Grieving Brain. by Mary Frances O'Connor. And it's about how, and I believe she only speaks through the lens of losing a loved one to death. And so you might have to like.
reconfigure some of the words and exercises for divorce, but she talks about when somebody significant to us goes missing, whether through death or divorce, our brains. It's like they take a while to catch up to the new reality. And so not only are we looking for them in places they used to be, whether through happy nostalgia or through terror, looking over your shoulder, are they still coming after you? Are they still telling bad stories? Has their family still got their sticky fingers?
life? Or are you missing how it used to be and aching for how the future was supposed to go? Your brain takes a while to... to reboot itself or do the full software update for lack of better phrasing to the new reality because you're right it wasn't supposed to be this way it A grief event of any kind misaligns with your brain's expectation for how your life and your future and yourself.
we're supposed to be. And it's a lot of work. And that's why I say that grief requires energy because it's like processing energy, like CPU, RAM, computer energy happening up here. But then also like physical energy and emotional energy. And sometimes if you believe in the spiritual energy.
energy about what this all means or why you're here or what's your purpose in life or what is it all for. That's a type of spiritual energy that gets processed when you're grieving too. So I love that you brought that up. Yeah. Thank you. I have one last question before we wrap up. I'm thinking I could talk to you for the next few hours. I always feel that way when we talk. I love it. I want to talk about getting stuck in grief.
Right. Because it's like we just talked about how give your loved one time and space. And I think it's an interesting question. I know I had a friend many years ago and it was a couple of years after my dad died. And I was I talk about grief coming from the ocean. It starts off as the tsunami and then just becomes the tropical storm. And then the waves are smaller and they're further apart. But then an event happens and it seems like you've slipped back. Right. So this is what I was.
used to with my dad but then my a good friend of mine her dad was like 10 or 15 years since he had passed and her grief was so much bigger than mine And I think back then I judged it and I was confused. And so I think that I would love to end this with, can people get stuck in grief? And what does that look like? Can deep grief last for years or decades? Yeah.
I like this question. It's one that a lot of people have. And I'll tell you, my answer might be against the grain of what society or a mental health or medical journal would tell you. And that is... for me and how I talk about it with my clients and students and kind of the structure we create for ourselves is that a loss describes the event where something is lost, person, place, relationship, pet, what have you.
dream. You can also grieve the death of a dream or the death of an ability or the death of your health. You can grieve a lot of things. The loss is the thing that happens and grief is everything that happens afterwards. including the sadness, the mourning, the bereavement, the anger, the nostalgia, but also the joy, the rebuilding, the connecting to community. And when I say you wear your grief glasses, those are super glued to your face for the rest of your life.
The intensity of the grief and how often you're thinking of your person or how often you're actively mourning your relationship, that changes like the waves, like you talk about. And it can come with different seasons of the year. It can come with different milestones. A lot of people I work with say like their kid's graduation is a big activator for them or weddings or other kind of big life events that were supposed to look different. The expectations in our brain.
but i firmly sit in this belief that once you your life opens to grief or once grief befalls you for lack of better phrasing you're grieving forever but the intent that it's not a death sentence which i'll
Puns intended. It doesn't mean your life is terrible forever. It doesn't mean pain and suffering forever. It means you are remembering the things that have happened to you and the losses that you've endured and you've had to make space and room for them for the rest of your life. This can include...
setting up an altar in your home for somebody who's died. That's like a small microwave grieving for the rest of your life. It can be taking yourself out for a dinner on your divorce anniversary every year. They are the rituals and the stuff that makes up how you remember and how you honor. Even if you don't have anything to honor the fact that you're divorced, there are still moments in your life, maybe you do enter into a future relationship and you see old patterns or old...
kind of toxicities pop up and you're like, oh, I didn't realize that was still hanging on there. Got to grieve that, got to process that. It's just another word for you are carrying this thing with you for the rest of your life. To your point of being stuck in grief, because I think this is something a lot of people are curious about.
of is said in other ways, when does grief become a bad thing or turn toxic or start to negatively impact our lives? And I think that's really defined on a per person basis, which is not always a helpful answer. But for me, Being stuck in grief.
was the first two years after my mom died. I would not have called myself a grieving person at the time, but looking back, I'm like, oh, your mom died and then you started grieving. You just didn't have a way to express what you were grieving. You were mourning her. You were missing her. You were trying to find out how she fit into your life. and that's grief, but you didn't have a way to express it. So for me, being stuck in grief is having no...
outlet of expression whatsoever. No screaming, no dancing, no yelling, no singing, no nothing. And those are the tools that work for me. So for a lot of people, being stuck in grief is not having a place for grief to go or a way to get it up and out of their bodies. That's being stuck in grief. For a lot of people, being stuck in grief looks like or sounds like having no community to process with. And so being stuck feels a lot more like isolation or aloneness in grief.
For other people, feeling stuck in grief feels like an inability to get their brain back, for lack of better phrasing, or it has to do a lot with focus and motivation and productivity, especially as it pertains to work. And for a lot of people, being stuck in grief feels like not... having or seeing purpose in the world.
or not knowing where they belong, or again, kind of these spiritual questions of what does it all mean? What's it all for? What's the freaking point? And that can manifest as a type of stuckness and grief. And so I think it's a little bit different for everyone and something that I'm learning from the teacher, Megan Devine, I'm in process of being.
certified as a grief professional through PESI right now. And Megan Devine teaches, when someone says they feel stuck in grief, ask them what that means to them. Because your definition of stuck in grief might look different than theirs. And even in you telling your story, were talking about your friend's expression of grief looking or presenting so much bigger than yours, but maybe to her, that is what her grief looks like months and years and decades.
down the road and that is her continuing to grieve and remember and mourn and miss but also feel joy and gratitude for the person her father was in her life and maybe her expression is just more facially visually emotionally obvious. But something I love that I learned really early on as a grief coach is that griefs can't be compared.
The intensity of our griefs, even if we lost the same type of person, even if we both lost a father, for instance, there is no way to put those things side by side and say, hey, what's better or worse or how are we doing? And it's crappy because that's what society teaches us to do is to look at people.
people on social media and movies and music and the news and our neighbors and our family and our coworkers and be like, well, they're coping like that. I must be doing something wrong. And I did a heck of a lot of that after my mom died. I was like, why is everyone so calm? I was like, why is everyone so calm? I could not figure out why no one was yelling.
And then I realized people have such different ways of mourning. My father was very much a person of task oriented. We're getting all the medical bills taken care of and we're cleaning out the house and then we're getting remarried. It was like my father's.
plan of action. My sister's was to lean into God. My mom was a pretty religious person and she and my sister really have that in common. And so her spiritual journey and growth after my mom's death was, was enormous. Whereas mine was volume on that was way down, but I was like, I got to yell. No one else in my family was a yeller. And so...
I think if you asked any of us what being stuck felt like, you would get a different response each time. But only you can rank your losses. For me, I call my mom's death the first and the worst. But when you talk about losing a soulmate, my best friend tops that list.
was my best friend of more than a decade and just neighbor two blocks away we did almost everything together and i loved her like i've never loved anybody else in my entire life and then you talk about like pets and other non-human creatures losing my cat in may like he tops another list of like my soul cat he's the very first cat i got as an adult and
was with me when I got the news that my mom was dying and was with me again when I got the news that my best friend was dying, but also met everyone I ever dated. High school, college and beyond. He also was with me the day my wife and I got engaged and were married. He's just with us through so many milestones. And so I think if you ask somebody.
What's the worst loss that's happened to you? Even if you know some of their grief story, they might surprise you with what they say. They may say it was being traumatized in childhood. They may say losing this death of a dream job that I wanted so much because...
And for instance, I couldn't join the Air Force because of my eyesight, or I couldn't become a rocket because I was too tall. You may know that their grandparent died and it was their closest person in life, but the thing they may be grieving most is the death of a dream. And so you really have to...
Let people have their own individual experiences of what that means. And I sense that for people that you're working with who are going through a divorce, the divorce feels like the loudest and the worst thing right now. And I'll say this too, that I see griefs and losses and their intensities is like.
big volume knobs over the course of our life. And so in this season, divorce is the loudest loss. But then for people who have other losses, like the death of a father, maybe we're cranking up the volume of dad dying too, because holy crap, one...
They're both getting loud at the same time. But then in other seasons, it's the volume knobs of grief can all equalize or come down a little bit. And they change day by day, sometimes hour by hour. And then new events in the world, things we can't control. will spark our grief as well.
and have us either feeling stuck or feeling activated, depending what's going on. I know the election, the war in Gaza, every news headline that comes across my feed, I'm like, this is another activator for someone else's grief for wildly different reasons. Just honoring that's true for all of us and doing the best we can to take a deep breath and not...
compare as a first instinct, but to recognize or validate or empathize or give them that permission and space for grief to go on. Because when we let other people's grief continue and go on, we let our own grief continue to go on too. continue to make space for it just in our lives and communities and in the world in general I love talking to you about this topic thank you I really do too it's so I gotta tell you I have there is not enough in the world about grief
and divorce together as a theme and as a topic. It is one of the most searched topics on Google. regarding grief and no one is talking about it no one is writing about it and i'm sure there are people so i guess that's an exaggeration but people will search things like the five stages of grief for divorce or low search grief counselor for divorce and there's such a gap here
for recognizing divorce as a grief event. And I feel we're reaching this tipping point. We're going to start recognizing this soon. But one of my favorite things for this, I'll give you one tiny fun thing before we go, is one of my favorite things to do is look for grief themes in television. and in the movies. My all-time favorite show is The Golden Girls.
When you look at the relation, and if you know the Golden Girls, you can follow me with this, but when you look at the relationship between Bea Arthur's character, Dorothy's Bornack, and her divorced husband, Stanley, and how he visits her life over and over again, and sometimes they're talking about...
the conflict and how hard the falling out was and sometimes they're trying to get back together and make it work again sometimes they're talking about grieving dreams sometimes they're talking about how the the lean years were awful and the great years were good and the weird relationships they each had with their in-laws over seven seasons
since his relationship to her grew and evolved and changed and there was grief as a component in all of it. My wife and I are watching Marvelous Mrs. Maisel right now where her husband cheats on her and then they break up but then sometimes they're like negotiating the relationship and what happens with our kids.
and what happens when i go overseas and this is set in the 1960s so i know things were totally different back then in terms of laws and how things worked but it's a really remarkable thing to look closely at the things we're already watching that have divorce as a theme in them And see, notice not just how long it goes on, although that can be validating. It's like, wow, that's been going on for eight seasons.
can be really validating. I'm allowed to go on for eight seasons, continuing to have these issues. It's not just to further the plot. This is based in somebody's real life somewhere because somebody decided to write it down, but also recognizing all the different themes and all the different flavors, the freedom.
can come from it, the stress, the lonely nights, the different relationships with your in-laws, the way your relationship with your kids and your pets and travel changes. Like it's really, if you're willing to treat the media that we create as sort of a game of divorce, I spy or grief, I spy.
It's really neat to see how things come forward. And of course, nobody gets it perfect all the time. I'm sick of people talking about the five stages and that's a whole other conversation. The five stages aren't real as a grief modality, but there are some really phenomenal pieces of art out there.
movies, music, television, all that jazz, where you can see themes of divorce really presented in a healthy and a long-term way. And I think that really matters when you're feeling alone in that kind of grief. Shelby, how can our listeners find you?
Yes, I know grief is hard enough. So I'll just give you one link and it's to my website and you can find literally everything else there. It's shelbyforsythia.com and it's spelled just like my name with no dashes or spaces. And that's where all the social media lives. But the thing I'll give you is this. There's a...
button in the top right-hand corner that says free workshop and it's literally an hour-long watch whenever you feel ready to watch it workshop that gives you three tools for getting unstuck in grief whatever stuck means to you and to start moving forward regardless of
the type of loss that you faced. Beautiful. And that'll all be in the show notes so you can find it there. Shelby, thank you for the work that you do in the world. Thank you for coming yet again to speak with me and my listeners. Very much appreciated. I'm so glad to. I've loved every single one of our conversations. And if you tell me when you want to see me again, I'll be here. Absolutely. It's such an important topic. And I know every one of you are experiencing some kind of grief.
check out Shelby, do the workshop when you're ready, and it can only help. And I hope that this conversation supported you, confirmed something, comforted you in some way. And we'll be back again real soon with another episode. Thanks, Shelby. Thank you so much. Bye-bye. Thanks for joining us on the Journey Beyond Divorce podcast. I hope you found guidance and encouragement to help you along your journey.
If you like my podcast, please take a minute to subscribe and leave a review on iTunes. You can also visit us at jbddivorcesupport.com. where our team of coaches support both men and women throughout one-on-one coaching, group programs, online courses, and free resources. Stay tuned for our next episode, and I'll talk to you soon.