What to Say When Someone Is Grieving: Shelby Forsythia on Secondary Loss, Words That Actually Help, and Rewriting Success After the Worst Days of Your Life

When Shelby Forsythia's mother died unexpectedly in 2013, she was 21 years old. She didn't grieve -- not right away. For three years, she wandered. Then, without warning, she cried over a stolen wallet. Not for the wallet. For her mother. And that moment, a phrase appearing in her mind, you just gave yourself permission to grieve, became the seed of an entire career.

Forsythia is now a grief coach, author, and podcaster. Her third book, Of Course, I'm Here Right Now, is a practical guide to comforting people in grief. She joined Emily LoMenzo Washcovick on Success, Rewritten to talk about the losses that shaped her, the phrases that actually help, and what a decade of grief work taught her about showing up -- in life and in business.

The Losses That Made Her

The grief that launched Shelby's career didn't arrive in one wave. It came in layers, each one compounding the last.

During her four years of college, Shelby's father lost his job. She came out as a queer person in a religious Southern family. Her father was diagnosed with brain aneurysms on both sides of his head. And then her mother got breast cancer. After a year and a half of surgeries, chemo, and radiation, her mom was declared cancer free. Eleven months later, the cancer returned -- metastasized. On December 19th, the hospital called and said they could no longer treat her. Hospice predicted six weeks to six months. She died in seven days.

"It was like the foundation of my life fell out from under me," Shelby said. "But also the rug and then the floor and then the center of the earth."

What followed was three years of fog. She pushed the grief away, researched it in corners, didn't name it. Then a stolen wallet broke something open. "I was crying for my wallet," she said. "But really I was wailing for my mother." That internal language -- you just gave yourself permission to grieve -- sparked everything.

By 2016 she was a certified grief recovery specialist. By 2017 she had a podcast. By 2019 she had published her first book, Permission to Grieve, self-funded, without knowing if anyone would want it. A lot of people did.

Penguin Random House came to her in 2020 to write a daily guidebook called Your Grief Your Way. And now, nearly a decade in, she has a third book -- the one that brings everything together.

Life After Loss Academy: What She Built

Alongside her books and podcast, Forsythia founded Life After Loss Academy in January 2020 -- timing she calls "fortuitous," given that grief support would move almost entirely online within months.

The Academy now serves nearly 100 students. Some have been there since 2020. Some joined 30 years after a loss, having never had a space to process it. "I've been through a lot of shit, but I haven't had a space where it's appropriate to keep talking about it," she said, describing what those students often tell her when they arrive.

Shelby structures the Academy around four grief support styles she identified through years of coaching: self-checkout grievers who want the tools and want out, road trip grievers who move at their own pace over time, workshop-style grievers who process fast but want community, and classroom-style grievers who want to learn with others over the long term.

"You can get grief coaching from thousands of people in the world," she said. "But once people are in my orbit, they're like -- this is the gift she uniquely offers. This is the service I can uniquely expect from working with Shelby."

What that gift turned out to be wasn't exactly what she expected.

What Her Audience Told Her She Was

For the first several years of her grief business, Forsythia believed her purpose was to guide people through loss. Then, gradually, her clients started telling her something more specific.

"People have said, you have helped me put words to my grief. You have helped me find language for something I thought was wordless. You have helped me help other people in my life understand what I'm going through, because now I have the language to bring them."

She didn't go looking for this identity. It came from paying attention. "What I specialize in is grief," she said, "but underneath that, what I really specialize in is the words about grief." That distinction, the one her audience gave her, became the foundation of her third book.

Her advice to other business owners is blunt: stop trying to niche down in year one. "Start with a big or broad audience and then you will slowly understand what you are the best at within this field. Your audience will tell you what you are to them."

The Health Crisis That Taught Her About Grace

In 2021, during the height of the pandemic, Forsythia was living in Washington State when she had a sudden, unexpected seizure in her sleep. She had no prior diagnosis, no warning. A perfect storm of dehydration, travel, and illness had dropped her sodium so low her body shut down.

A neighbor came to check on her when she stopped responding. They broke down the door. Shelby was unconscious.

She woke up in the hospital three days later. "The first thing I remember thinking is, I think I still have contacts in my eyes," she said. Parts of her brain had gone offline. She couldn't remember her social security number. She could remember her childhood home phone number because her mother had made her memorize it as a song. She recognized the faces of people she loved before she could name them.

When she was released, she sent emails to her clients and community. She'd gone dark, dropped everything, and had no idea how long she'd be out. The response floored her.

"The amount of -- oh my gosh, I hope you're okay. I'll be thinking of you. Let's circle back in a month. The grace that people gave me was truly astounding."

It changed how she runs her business. Now, when she's tempted to push past what she has to give, she puts herself back in the shoes of those clients. "They would want me to be well. And sometimes that's the difference between staying online until 11pm and going to bed."

Tammy

A little over a year after the seizure, Forsythia lost her best friend Tammy.

Tammy had been the friend in the hospital chair when Shelby woke up. She was the one who said, you're coming home, and meant it. She had been Shelby's closest person for a decade. She died on May 13, 2022, from complications related to COVID. She was 29.

"It was a loss that absolutely no one ever saw coming," Shelby said. "Very similar to my mom's death -- there was no decline. It was a blindsiding grief event."

Her first response wasn't meaning-making. It was rage. "Fuck the universe. Fuck people who choose not to mask in public. Fuck people who laugh at my pain."

But Tammy's death gave her something her mother's death hadn't: the ability to grieve out loud, with other people, from the beginning. Three days after Tammy died, a small group of her friends gathered at a pier in their Chicago neighborhood. Shelby told them she needed to yell. That screaming was her doorway to crying. And she invited anyone who wanted to join. Everyone did. They stood at the edge of Lake Michigan, held hands, and let it out.

"My friends came up to me afterwards and said, I didn't know I needed that. Not just the screaming. Doing this with other people who feel the same way. Who are mourning the same person."

It was the first time Shelby had ever grieved in front of (and with) other people. It became a practice she now teaches.

The Three Stories Every Griever Tells Themselves

Before introducing the phrases that help, Forsythia walks readers through what grievers are experiencing on the inside. Through nearly a decade of coaching, she noticed a pattern. Every griever, regardless of what they've lost or how long it's been, is telling themselves one or more of the same three stories.

"I'm crazy. I'm alone. It will be like this forever."

These aren't abstractions. "Even in a crowded room, I'm by myself. No one gets how I feel. If people knew what I really felt, I would be cast out." That's the aloneness story. The forever story sounds like: I can't see a way out. I'm stuck in my grief.

What doesn't help, Shelby says, is contradiction. "You're not crazy. You're not alone. It won't be like this forever" -- because that butts up directly against the griever's lived reality. They don't believe you. They can't see it yet.

What does help is something different entirely.

The Three Phrases That Actually Work

Forsythia's book, Of Course, I'm Here Right Now, is built around three phrases that align with the three stories grievers tell themselves. Each phrase does a specific job.

"Of course" validates pain. It doesn't argue. It doesn't minimize. It says: of course you feel this way. Of course you're sad. Your dad is still dead. "It is to validate their pain," she said, "by coming alongside them."

"I'm here" provides accompaniment. Not "I understand," because often you don't. But "even if I don't understand, I'm here for you. I have not forgotten that you're grieving." That's different.

"Right now" anchors someone in time without projecting. "I can totally see how hope feels far away right now." It doesn't promise the future will be better. It just holds the present.

"These three phrases work," Shelby said, "and they keep working. They're non-denominational. They're short. You can pull them out at any time."

And crucially: they're free. They don't require proximity, money, or a clear calendar. They can be sent in a text, said over FaceTime, typed in an email. What COVID taught her (and what Tammy's death confirmed) is that grief support has to be portable. "We need a grief support tool that allows us to offer comfort across time and space, but also with not a lot of time or energy. And words are the key."

The Secondary Loss That Changes Everything

One of the sharpest moments in the conversation is when Forsythia names what grievers consistently tell her is the second biggest loss they experience. Not the death or the divorce or the diagnosis itself, but what follows it.

"The biggest secondary loss that grievers say -- after the death, after the divorce, after the diagnosis -- the second biggest thing they lose is their relationships and their friendships. And the number one reason they lose those is because people say shitty stuff or they disappear at all after a major loss."

She lists the phrases that drive grievers away from their support systems: I'm so sorry for your loss, my condolences (said once, never followed up). You just need to get busy. Time heals all. Be strong for your family. God never gives you more than you can handle. All well-meaning. All landing wrong.

This is the problem her book is designed to solve -- not just for grievers, but for everyone who has ever wanted to show up for someone and not known how.

Where to Find Shelby Forsythia

Of Course, I'm Here Right Now is available from Amazon, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, and local independent bookstores.

Everything Shelby does lives at shelbyforsythia.com, including her free grief support style quiz, her books, her podcast, and information about Life After Loss Academy.

To hear the full conversation, including Shelby's breakdown of the three phrases and the stories grievers tell themselves, listen to Episode 5 of Success, Rewritten wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.