Coming Back: Conversations on life after loss · Shelby Forsythia, Intuitive Grief Guide

E94: I Met God at the Sunrise with Miami Knight

·57 min·5 clips

Miami Knight met God at the sunrise in Miami, sparking a spiritual awakening that changed her life after loss.

This episode features host Shelby Forsythia, an intuitive grief guide, in conversation with Miami Knight, a grief coach and Reiki master who experienced three profound family losses. Miami discusses the deaths of her father from a heart defect, her sister from a brain hematoma, and her son Taiki, who died by suicide after surviving a traumatic brain injury from a 2011 shooting. She details her son's six-month recovery, his testimony in a trial that resulted in life sentences for the shooters, and his subsequent move back to his hometown before his death in January 2017. Miami describes an intense period of anger at God and emotional scarring, followed by a decisive moment on February 1st when she chose to stop being consumed by her grief. A pivotal tool in her healing was a vision board party she attended shortly after her son's death, which built upon a 90-day life plan she had created just two days before his suicide. Miami explains how changing her diet to a plant-based vegan lifestyle, practicing fasting, meditation, and exploring ancestral healing and Reiki helped her process suppressed emotions and childhood trauma. A significant turning point was visiting her son's grave a year after his death and then traveling to Miami to watch the sunrise, an experience she describes as a spiritual awakening where she "met God." This moment, connected to her father naming her after the Miami sunrise, shifted her perspective and led her to pursue grief coaching certification. Miami argues that faith can be "repressed" in grief rather than lost, and its restoration requires an active decision to seek a renewed relationship with God. She emphasizes that grievers must choose to participate in their healing and visualize a future different from their present pain. The conversation is deeply personal, educational, and spiritually reflective, blending narrative storytelling with practical advice on transformative grief practices. Listeners interested in spiritual approaches to loss, stories of resilience after multiple traumas, or non-clinical healing modalities would find this episode compelling. Those seeking a secular, clinical, or brief discussion of grief might prefer a different episode.

As heard by us

A plainspoken grief conversation about faith, anger, and the habits that help life keep going.

This episode stays in the rough middle of grief, where faith and anger keep running into each other. It is direct and unsentimental as it talks through loss, the death of a son, and the small routines that can still hold a life together when nothing else does.

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Why you'd press play

For when grief and faith are both still on the table.

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