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.

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

“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

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.

There may in fact be a spiritual solution to every problem, but grief is not a problem to be solved. It isn’t “wrong,” and it can’t be “fixed.” It isn’t an illness to be cured.

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.

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

And that’s the truth about grief: loss gets integrated, not overcome. However long it takes, your heart and your mind will carve out a new life amid this weirdly devastated landscape.