The Truth About Feeling Relieved When Someone Dies

A client sat across from me not long ago carrying something she had never said out loud to anyone.

She was not sad her person was gone. She was relieved.

And the shame of that relief was heavier than the grief itself.

Most people in the grief space will not touch this conversation. But there are people carrying that exact feeling alone right now. In the quiet. At 2am. Wondering what it says about them that relief showed up where sadness was supposed to be.

This episode is for every single one of them.

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Transcript

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Welcome to Seriously Dead. I'm Jenny Shanks, a spiritual medium, and I talk to dead people for a little bit. This podcast is your beyond the grave look at what your loved ones in spirit actually want you to know. And spoiler alert, after 10 years of doing this work, here's the truth. Your spirit family wants you to know they're okay and you are too. How do I know? Because the dead are a lot of things, but one thing they're not is quiet. So get comfortable before you press play because we're getting seriously dead with your loved ones in spirit right now. A client sat across from me not so long ago hearing something that she had never said out loud to anyone. She was not sad that someone in her life passed. She was relieved. And the shame of that relief was heavier than the grief itself. Most mediums won't touch this conversation. Most people in the grief space will not touch it either. But I think it's one of the most important conversations we can have together. Because there are people listening right now who are carrying the exact feeling alone. In the quiet mornings of 2 a.m., wondering what it says about them, that relief showed up where sadness was supposed to be. So let's talk about it. All of it, the complicated grief, the sandpaper relationships, the apologies that never came while someone was alive, and what spirit actually has to say about all of it from the other side. Every soul does a life review, not a judgment, not a punishment, but a review. When a person arrives in the spiritual world, they get to look at the full picture of the life they lived, the moments that went well, the relationships that were beautiful, the times they showed up exactly as they were meant to be, and the regrets. The things left unsaid, the relationships that were never repaired, the versions of themselves that they never quite became, the moments where fear or ego or pain made them into someone they didn't want to be. And here's what Spirit shows me happens in that review. A soul does not sit in shame. A soul does not carry the judgment and the anger and the fear that define so many of those moments on earth. Because the spirit world doesn't have space for those things the way that our human world does. What happens instead is reflection, it's growth, and in many readings, it's accountability. Sometimes a person in the spirit world comes through with an apology, not because they are being forced to, but because that life review showed them something they couldn't see clearly when they were here. The impact of their choices, the ripple of their actions through the lives of the people they love. Sometimes a person in spirit comes through with context, not an excuse, but context, an explanation of what was happening inside of them that maybe the people that were closest to them never really got to see. The fear they were carrying, the pressure they were under, the versions of themselves that they were trapped inside. And sometimes a person in spirit comes through with the lesson. Here's what I did. Here's what it cost me. Here's what I want you to do differently. That is a life review. And is one of the most profound things spirit's ever shown me about what happens when we leave this earthly plane. The life review is not about making excuses for people who cause real harm. It's not about rewriting what happened or asking the people left behind to pretend the wound was not real. It is about a soul finally being free enough to clearly see. And that clarity is what makes the apologies that come through in readings feel so real from the apologies that never came through while that person was alive. A client came to me whose father had been well known in their community, someone who spoke the word of God, someone the outside world saw as a righteous and respected and larger than life leader. But behind closed door, that man was completely different. He was mean, he was cutting, someone who'd use words like weapons on the people closest to him. His wife knew the role she was expected to play in public. She showed up and smiled and supported the version of her husband the world all got to see. But inside, inside that house, she lived in terror. The client sitting across from me that day was their daughter. And she was carrying years of confusion and pain and grief that was complicated by the fact that the person she lost was not one person. He was two. And she was still trying to figure out which one she was mourning, if she was even mourning at all. In her reading, her mother came through first. And her mother didn't come through with comfort. Her mother came through with accountability. She told her daughter that she had been full of fear, that the world she was living in felt too big and too public and too locked in to walk away from. And she was deeply sorry for that. Deeply, deeply sorry. That she had not protected her children the way they deserve to be protected. The daughter's reaction wasn't relief. It wasn't immediate healing. She was still angry, still confused, and still trying to understand how a mother who loved her children could watch them be hurt and not stand between them and the harm. That anger and confusion, well, it's valid. Hearing an apology from spirit doesn't erase what happened here on earth. It doesn't rewrite her childhood. It doesn't undo the damage that was done. That daughter, well, she's allowed to hold both things at once, the love and the anger, the grief and the relief. The apology and the wound that that apology cannot fully close. But then her father came through. And what came through from him was not what I expected. He acknowledged everything the public persona, the private cruelty, and he said something that stayed with me ever since I heard him share it. He had built an ego he felt he had to keep honoring. He was trapped inside a version of himself that the world expected him to be. And instead of finding a way out of the trap, he took the pressure out on the people closest to him, the ones close enough to receive it, the ones that felt so much fear around him, the ones who could not walk away. That's not an excuse. He was not offering it as one. This was finally a man in spirit being able to clearly see what he could not see here, and doing the only thing left available to him, which was telling the truth. There's a kind of relationship I see come up again and again in readings, and I've started to call it the sandpaper relationship. The relationship that rubbed raw for years. The parent who was toxic or abusive or so unpredictable that you spent decades walking on eggshells, the child who struggled with addiction and kept you up every single night wondering if tonight was the night you were going to get the call. The spouse who made you feel so small and so afraid and like you were disappearing inside your own life. And then that person dies. And instead of grief you expected, or alongside the grief you expected, there's something else. There's relief. And then immediately after relief, shame. What kind of person feels relieved when someone they loved is gone? Or what kind of person feels relief when someone passes, whether they loved them or not? What does that say about me? What does that make me? If you are sitting with that right now, I want to say something directly to you. It makes you human. You are allowed to feel that relief. You are allowed to feel it fully and without apology. The relief doesn't mean that you didn't love that person or that you aren't a kind person. It doesn't mean that you wanted them gone. But what it does mean is that you were carrying something very heavy for a long time and that weight has finally been lifted. And here's what I have experienced in readings with people who carry that sandpaper relationship. Spirit validates the relief. I have sat across from numerous clients who were bracing themselves for the session, wondering if the person was going to come through angry or accusatory, or with more of the same energy that defined the relationship here on earth. And instead, what comes through is something completely different, something softer, something that finally has access to the truth it could not reach when fear and when ego and addiction and pain were running the show. And very often what comes through is permission. Permission for the person still living to stop carrying the weight of that relationship, to stop feeling guilty for the relief, to stop measuring their love by how much they suffered. You loved that person, you cared about them, and you are allowed to be relieved that the suffering is over. Both things can be true at the same time, and it's okay to feel both things at the same time. The relief and the anger are very often sitting right next to each other, and both of them deserve a space in this conversation. Some of the most powerful moments I've experienced as a medium have happened when spirit comes through to someone who is not grieving in the traditional sense, someone who is still angry, someone who came to the reading, not sure they even wanted that person to come through at all. And well, spirit came through anyways. Not to argue, not to defend, not to reopen the wound, but to do the one thing that was never possible here on earth for them. To set that person free. I have watched spirit come through to a child of an abusive parent and say what I did to you was wrong. It was my journey and my failure, and it was never yours to carry. You did not deserve that, and I'm sorry. Not a human apology where the person immediately goes back to the same behavior, but a spirit apology. One that comes from a soul that has done their life review, that has sat with the full weight of what they did and felt the impact of every single moment. That kind of apology lands differently. It does not fix everything, it does not close every wound, but it does something that years of therapy and journaling and trying to make sense of it on your own sometimes cannot do. It gives you permission to put it down, not to forget, not to pretend it didn't happen, not to welcome that person back into your life or hold them to a standard that they never met while they were here, but to just put the weight of it down, to stop letting someone who already took so much from you take up any more space in your energetic field. Because here's the truth about anger. Most of the time the person you are angry at has no idea. And in this case, they're gone. They're in the middle of their life review. And while you are carrying that anger, while you're letting it live in your body and in your energetic field and daily life, you are the one paying the price at this point in time. Let's shift into forgiveness. I think forgiveness is one of the most understood concepts in this human world. Forgiveness is not about them. Forgiveness is about you. When I hold anger towards someone, most of the time that person has zero idea that I'm angry. They are living their life, or maybe they are already in the spirit world, completely unaware of the space they're taking up inside of me. And while I'm holding that anger and while I'm letting it sit in my energetic field, I'm blocking something. I'm taking up space that could be welcoming something that serves me at such a higher level than what that anger does. Every unresolved piece of anger, every wound that has been tended to, every relationship that ended badly and was never made right, it all takes up space. Real energetic space in our field. Space that is not available for anything new, for anything better, for anything that actually serves the life you are trying to build right now. Forgiveness, well, it clears that space. And while I want to be very clear about what forgiveness is not, before I dive in any deeper, forgiveness is not saying what happened was okay. It was not okay. It does not become okay because you chose to forgive it. Forgiveness is not reaching back out to that person. You don't have to. You are not required to rebuild a relationship that hurt you in order to forgive the person who was in it. Forgiveness is not letting that person back into your life. Your boundaries are yours. They do not have to change. Forgiveness is not forgetting. The memory stays, the lessons stay. What you are releasing is the grip of it, the daily weight of carrying around in your body and your energetic field and your choices around forgiveness. What forgiveness is, though, is it's a decision you make for yourself to stop letting someone who's already taken up so much space in your field free. And here's what I know from sitting with spirit in readings where this has come through. When a person chooses forgiveness, something cracks open, something shifts in their energetic field that was blocked before. And what moves in to fill that space is almost always something that serves that person at a level that anger never could. That is what forgiveness makes room for. Not reconciliation, not forgetting, not excusing, but room for something better. If you walk away from this episode with one thing, let it be this. You are allowed to feel whatever you are feeling about that person's transition. The grief, the anger, the relief, maybe the love that existed along the side of all of it. Every single feeling is allowed. But I want to invite you to consider what forgiveness could make room for in your life. Not for them, but for you. The space you reclaim when you put down someone else's weight becomes yours, and you get to decide what fills it next. If this episode landed for you, let's not keep it in the spirit vault. Share it in the group chat, or even better, share it with someone who you know is carrying complicated grief right now. I'd love to hear from you, so jump over to Instagram and tag me over there at spiritual underscore medium underscore Jenny, or leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you're ready to understand the difference between your ego and intuition to really open the portal for guidance from spirit, grab my free guide to meditation in the show notes below. I'll be back next week with another episode of Seriously Dead. And until then, stay open, stay curious, and remember the dead are not quiet. You just have to learn to listen to the