Grief is not something we “get over;” grief is something we grow through.
Society treats grief like an inconvenience—an emotional detour on the straight and narrow path of life. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Grief is a deeply human experience, one worth not only engaging with but learning from. Because when we stop treating grief as our enemy, it can become something else: our teacher.
Learning to coexist with grief is vital to building not only a “good” life, but a meaningful one—rich with the memories we carry, the struggles we’ve faced, and the precious fragility of what it means to be right here, right now.
I’m Shelby Forsythia.
A grief coach, two-time author, podcaster, and—most importantly—fellow griever.
After a loss that (quite literally) brought me to my knees, I dubbed myself a “student of grief” and began sharing what I learned online, taking thousands of grievers along for the ride.
Grief taught me that it is not a burden, a curse, a threat or a monster. It is a part of us, and what’s more: it is a doorway to our greatest values.
Leaning into grief helps us understand what we care about most, how we perceive ourselves and our lives, where we’d like to grow, and who we most want to grow with.
Buried underneath the pain and overwhelm of devastating loss is the recognition that heartbreak is the end of life as we know it—but it is not the end of us. Because even through grief, we are growing.
Since 2016, I’ve helped grievers build lives they truly love from the lives loss forced them to live.
I know I can help you do the same. 💚
How did I get here?
From griever to grief coach, it’s been a wild ride.
December 2013 - Mom’s death
My mom died suddenly from a recurrence of breast cancer the day after Christmas. I was 21 years old. Life as I knew it absolutely fell apart.
Honoring my mom’s last wish, I returned to my final semester of college less than two weeks later. Devastated and exhausted, I had no idea how to be a person in a world where my mom wasn’t, much less feel happiness, hope, or joy again. Despair was my dominant emotion, and I couldn’t see any way out of it.
April 2016 - My “bathroom floor” moment
I graduated (on Mother’s Day—ugh), moved to Chicago, and started my first “big girl” job, but my grief loomed large, accosting me with reminders of my mom’s death in waking life and in dreams.
One random spring day, a stranger in a coffee shop stole my wallet. All the pain and rage I’d been holding inside burst forth and I found myself literally screaming on the floor of my apartment. In that moment I heard a small, quiet voice say, “You just gave yourself permission to grieve…”
August 2016 - Baby’s first Facebook Live
Intensely curious about the concept of “permission to grieve,” I began working with experts and guides, and doing my own self-driven “student of grief” research. I posted the things I was learning on my private social media pages.
After a chorus of friends and family told me, “You should do something with this!” I founded my grief coaching business and streamed my first Facebook Live, sharing my thoughts about life after loss for the world to see.
May 2017 - Coming Back podcast launch
With more than a thousand people tuning into my weekly Facebook Live broadcasts, I knew I was onto something. I launched my first podcast, Coming Back, from my bedroom.
Featuring interviews with more than 100 grief experts, authors, and thought leaders, I released regular episodes of Coming Back until celebrating its finale in December 2020. It remains in the top 2% of podcasts internationally.
September 2019 - Self-publishing my first book, Permission to Grieve
After repeated encouragement from my listeners and followers, I recorded my grief story and my framework of “the three permissions” in a self-funded, self-illustrated, self-published book, Permission to Grieve. To date, it’s sold more than 1,300 copies. That’s more than FIVE TIMES the average number of books sold by self-published authors!
November 2019 - Interview with Rob Bell
I sent a pitch on a whim to one of my favorite grief teachers, spiritual author and speaker Rob Bell, and he invited me to his “back house” for a chat. We sat and talked about why grief is “the great levelator” and how we can all shift grief from a problem to be solved to an experience to be had. We were two peas in a grief pod!
Our podcast episode aired on 11/11 (a meaningful number for me) and introduced my work to tens of thousands of listeners—several of which became friends.
December 2019 - Life After Loss Academy opens for the first time
On New Year’s Eve 2019, 15 grievers said YES to learning from me in my private course + community, Life After Loss Academy. This first “tester” group was made up of diverse people facing all sorts of losses and it was beautiful working through shared lessons, struggles, and triumphs together.
I led two more group programs in 2020, coaching a record 44 students through their grief in one year!
January 2020 - I got “the call” from Penguin Random House!
After hearing about my first book, Permission to Grieve, an editor at Penguin Random House emailed asking if I would write a non-religious daily devotional for grief. I eagerly accepted and wrote Your Grief, Your Way during the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It felt eerily appropriate to work on a daily guidebook for grief as the world was waking up to new, unavoidable losses every single day.
May 2020 - Motherless Mother’s Day Interview with Cheryl Strayed
Yet another pitch-on-a-whim email landed me a live broadcast with the author of Wild, Cheryl Strayed, on Mother’s Day, 2020.
We spoke for an hour about each of our moms and took real-time questions from listeners. Her heartfelt wisdom—from nearly 30 years of living without her mom, Bobbi—resonated. The video was watched more than 5,000 times and connected the work I do with even more grievers across the globe.
September 2020 - Your Grief, Your Way hits shelves
Just nine short months after Penguin Random House reached out to me, Your Grief, Your Way appeared in bookstores worldwide. One year later, it was released in Portuguese as Sobre Viver O Luto. To date, Your Grief, Your Way has sold more than 20,000 copies, and it can be found in hospices, hospitals, and libraries internationally.
I am so proud of this little day-by-day book and love receiving notes from grievers about their favorite entries.
March 2021 - Near-death experience
A bizarre, random combination of circumstances caused me to seize and lose consciousness while I was home alone. I woke up in the hospital several days later (thanks to the instincts of a friend who thought to check on me) foggy and disoriented. Over many months, as my brain came back online, I realized how close I’d come to death, and how much I wanted to live—both to continue doing grief work and to feel grief do its work on me.
Inspired by a touching email from a griever, I celebrate my personal “Alive Day” every year on March 31.
May 2022 - Best friend’s death
Suddenly and unexpectedly, my best friend of over a decade, Tami, died from COVID-19. She was just one month shy of turning 30—which she’d been looking forward to her whole life. My heart burst open and pain poured out. She was my running partner, my confidant, my roommate, and my cheerleader.
My wife and I got married less than two weeks later with great love and heaviness in the room. It was a long-awaited joyful occasion smack dab in the middle of unfathomable loss.
I turned 30 in August of 2022 and hated every minute of it, recognizing that for the first time, I was older than Tami.
January 2023 - Life After Loss Academy gets a makeover
Inspired by my near-death experience and Tami’s death, I revamped Life After Loss Academy to guide grievers not just for 12 weeks, but for a lifetime—because grief keeps happening!
With course-building experts, I restructured it around my 5-step GRIEF Method and added weekly group calls to coach students through questions and milestones.
Testimonials poured in, and I knew “LALA 2.0” was exactly the roadmap grievers needed to reorient to the world, honor their loved ones, and imagine a happy future.
Life After Loss Academy is now open to new students year-round.
May 2024 - Cat’s death
Just three months after my wife’s official move to the States (we’d been long-distance dating-then-engaged-then-married since 2021), my sweet, social cat, Jiji, let us know it was his time to leave Earth. He’d been with me since before my mom died, and it was very hard to say goodbye.
I took everything I learned from grief to make his dying experience as good and meaningful as I could, making a flower collar for his neck and requesting extra time with his body to hold him and take pictures.
He died peacefully on my lap just days after Mother’s Day and Tami’s death anniversary… and days before our wedding anniversary. I call May my “pain sandwich” month.
September 2024 - A third book is in the works!
Thanks to my wonderful agent and the team at Broadleaf Books, I’m currently working on Of Course I’m Here Right Now, a book that helps people supporting grievers know what to say to comfort them—without clichés, platitudes, or inflicting accidental pain.
Inspired by over eight years of working with grievers 1:1 and in group settings, it’s a short, actionable collection of my best phrases and scripts for supporting a grieving friend. Coming Spring 2026!
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That’s enough about me. What about you?
Discover your unique grief support type inside my free quiz: What’s Your Grief Support Style?
And if you’d like to email me your results, I’d love to connect with you!