E60: When You Can't Fix It: Caregiving, Grief, and Masculinity with Therapist Gordon Brewer

Written By Shelby Forsythia

When you love someone through a long illness, grief comes long before death does. Today, therapist and widower Gordon Brewer shares what 13 years of caregiving, anticipatory grief, and loss taught him—including why men often struggle most with the parts of caregiving they can never fix.

You'll learn:

  • Why caregiving can feel like continual surrender—especially for men socialized to protect and fix

  • What anticipatory grief actually looks like from inside a long-term illness

  • How being a grief professional doesn't protect you from the pain of personal loss

  • How faith, spirituality, and your relationship with god can change with grief

  • What to do when grief unexpectedly pops up—and how to "ride the waves"

Listen to This Episode:

E60: When You Can't Fix It: Caregiving, Grief, and Masculinity with Therapist Gordon Brewer
Shelby Forsythia, Grief Coach and Author

You can also…
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on YouTube |Listen on Insight Timer

Or Watch on YouTube:

Learn more about Gordon and listen to his podcast The Practice of Therapy:

https://practiceoftherapy.com/

Order my new book Of Course I’m Here Right Now: Three Actually Helpful Things to Say to Someone Grieving:

https://www.shelbyforsythia.com/of-course-im-here-right-now

Get FREE grief workshops, quizzes, and so much more:

https://www.shelbyforsythia.com/links

Keep Grief Grower ad-free by becoming a Patreon supporter:

https://www.patreon.com/shelbyforsythia

Join my online course + community, Life After Loss Academy:

https://www.shelbyforsythia.com/life-after-loss-academy

Listen to more episodes of Grief Grower and submit a question for the show:

https://www.shelbyforsythia.com/grief-grower-podcast

Download the transcript for this episode here.

Shelby Forsythia

Shelby Forsythia (she/her) is a grief coach, author, and podcast host. In 2020, she founded Life After Loss Academy, an online course and community that has helped dozens of grievers grow and find their way after death, divorce, diagnosis, and other major life transitions.

Following her mother’s death in 2013, Shelby began calling herself a “student of grief” and now devotes her days to reading, writing, and speaking about loss. Through a combination of mindfulness tools and intuitive, open-ended questions, she guides her clients to welcome grief as a teacher and create meaningful lives that honor and include the heartbreaks they’ve faced. Her work has been featured in Huffington Post, Bustle, and The Oprah Magazine.

https://www.shelbyforsythia.com
Next

E59: Supporting Someone #9: 3 Phrases to Help Someone Grieving (LIVE Book Party Talk Replay!)