It's OK That You're Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn't Understand

[There is] an ideological force in American culture that I had not been aware of before—one that encourages us to deny reality, submit cheerfully to misfortune and blame only ourselves for our fate. . . . In fact, there is no kind of problem or obstacle for which positive thinking or a positive attitude has not been proposed as a cure.

“Over three years now since you left and I am still tired of having people ask, “How are you?” Do they really think I will tell the truth? I am tired of hearing how it was all planned before you were born and how you and I agreed to your death for my soul’s learning and for yours. No one here wants to acknowledge that there might just be chaos and

It’s easier to create sets of rules that let us have the illusion of control than it is to accept that, even when we do everything “right,” horrible things can happen. In one form or another, this blame-as-a-form-of-safety idea has been around as long as humans have.

We don’t need new tools for how to get out of grief. What we need are the skills to withstand it, in ourselves and in others.

Reexamine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul. WALT

Grief is not a problem to be solved; it’s an experience to be carried.

If it were true that intense loss is the only way to make a person more compassionate, only self-absorbed, disconnected, shallow people would experience grief. That would make logical sense. That it doesn’t? Well, it proves my point. You didn’t need this experience in order to grow. You didn’t need the lessons that supposedly only grief can teach.

Humans are such funny creatures. We’re quick with “comfort,” judgment, and meaning-making when it comes to other people’s losses. How many times have you heard “Everything happens for a reason” inside your loss? Those same people would be the first to refute that statement if something horrendous happened to them. We use words on one another we wou

To feel truly comforted by someone, you need to feel heard in your pain. You need the reality of your loss reflected back to you—not diminished, not diluted. It seems counterintuitive, but true comfort in grief is in acknowledging the pain, not in trying to make it go away.