Day 53: Grief Balm And then there come those moments that offer some balm for grief. Grief balm comes in many forms (and yes, can be maddeningly inaccessible in the first phase of acute grief). When these moments of balm arrive, notice them. Bathe in them. Yesterday, my grief balm came in the form of “Let go, mama.” AND let me be very clear--grief balm doesn’t take away the grief. It doesn’t block it. It eases it. And sometimes, these moments are confusingly both amazing AND

Day 52: Grief is Not Contagious One aim I have in my work is to spread the word that grief is not contagious. The people my clients (and I) feel the most compassion from on a grief journey are the ones who manage their own fears when they show up. And don’t tiptoe. And offer their presence and take a risk to act, even if they have no idea what to do or to say. And yes. This isn’t easy. Grief can look so scary from the outside. There is no denying that. There might be lots of

Day 50: Grace: It Changes Things I use the word ‘grace’ a ton and have been wondering why I’m drawn to it as grief professional. First and foremost, I am tired of the phrases self-care and self-compassion. They are perfectly useful for many, so I don’t want to diminish their importance. I just find that ‘grace’ feels more relevant when it comes to a grief journey. Secondly, ‘grace’ is a relational term, which makes it keenly relevant to how we show up for ourselves during the

Day 49: Just. Show. Up. When people ask me, what should I do for someone who is grieving? How can I support them? My answer is simple. Just. Show. Up. And keep showing up. Small or big ways—it doesn’t matter. Just keep showing up. And try not to tiptoe. Grievers are already scared of their own reactions. They have never felt this nor done this before. Try to show up without fear (I know, easier said than done). Showing up without fear means being willing to not know. It might

Day 48: The Chatter of Grief Waves As sad as this feels to admit, being a grief professional doesn’t substitute as “preparation” for massive grief in my own life. When I’ve encountered what feels like the endless cycle of grief waves, I fell right into them with deep frustration and some despair—“when do these soften, at all?” On my easier days, I was able to observe the waves with more wonder and curiosity. How many ups and downs make up a grief journey? How many waves does

Day 47: Anticipatory Grief Anticipatory grief is a normal human reaction to impending loss, including all of the thinking, feeling, and social and cultural reactions to an expected loss. While it can look a lot like grief after the loss, it is different. What I hear often is people expecting themselves to have been “more ready” or “more prepared” if their loved one had a long illness, or if they were estranged, or if the relationship wasn’t what they wanted it to be. Others h

Day 46: Grief is Not a Singular Event When we grieve a major loss in our lives, the truth is that we will grieve many things within that loss. Grief does not contain itself to the loss of the person. It ripples, just as relationships ripple into our lives, touching each aspect of who we are and how we exist in our communities and the world. This ripple effect of grief is what is often called secondary loss. However, I don’t believe that “secondary” can even come close to ca

Day 45: Maya Angelou’s Wisdom I hold Maya Angelou’s wisdom close in my work and in my life. I have noticed that deep grief offers a fertile ground for growing up (not that anyone wants to hear that nor cares at the beginning of their grief journey). On the path of grief, many moments arise when one must decide whether to acknowledge and experience the pain of grief, or to turn away from it, burying it deeper inside. I do not believe there is one right way to grieve, ever. A

Day 43: Grief and Suicidality, in honor of National Suicide Prevention Week In deep grief, it is normal to have thoughts about not wanting for this to be your life, to want to disappear, and even passive suicidality such as “I wouldn’t care if that bus hit me.” These thoughts are more common than most people might expect. And many I’ve encountered initially speak of these as secret admissions, feeling a sense of shame and stigma around their experiences. Let’s just name tha

Day 42: Styles of Grief We humans do better when we can name something, and one of the most maddening parts of grief is not always having words for our experience. Some terminology I introduce early on in people’s grief journey relates to styles of grieving. It is important to know that these styles are on a continuum, and I believe that from the time we are born, we tend towards one style or another. Styles of grief is terminology coined by Terry Martin and Kenneth Do

Day 40: Morale Boost I’ve noticed the heaviness of my posts over the last few weeks. Even though this is reflective of a grief process, it isn’t the complete story. When grief is allowed to move through us, our system understands we need breaks from the heaviness, a reprieve. This natural oscillation in grief is what allows for us to catch our breath, get a tiny bit more rest, re-group for the next wave, connect with others, and maybe even enjoy a laugh at something. W

Day 39: Antidotes to Despair As I walk with people in their grief, I am in awe of how humans keep getting out of bed and navigate the pragmatic difficulties of their new reality (most name that there isn’t much choice in this). Yet in this work, I have come to see humans as incredibly gritty and stubbornly hopeful without even knowing it. One pattern I have noticed that sets some grief journeys apart from others is when people engage with something generative. When I s

Day 38: Grieving and Living Many of my clients arrive worried they are either 1) not getting grief right or not grieving enough or 2) not able to engage in life at all because of how they are grieving. The reality I have come to observe in grief is that if you get out of bed in the morning, you are living. AND, you are also grieving. Unfortunately, the two cannot be separated from one another. The maddening truth about grief is that it cannot be contained to a neat and tid

Day 37: The Mornings In grief, I often hear about that moment one wakes up to a pleasant fuzziness or comforting unknowing. This usually lasts less than a second, and early on in grief, can be violently ripped away by the sinking feeling of how different one’s world is, forever changed, and far from the expectation. It is that “is this is really my life? moment.” There is no fixing these moments. There is just having them, as painful as they are. Time allows for tha

Day 36: Guilt in Grief There are many ways we humans complicate our grief experience, and one that I see often is in our tendency to have emotions about our emotions, with guilt being at the top of this list. One reason guilt arises (almost universally) in the initial phase of grief (acute grief) is that during this time, our brain is trying to make sense of the loss. Our brain’s way of attempting to make sense of something that is nonsensical is by mulling over the details

Day 35: Grief PSA Knowing what to say and even more importantly, what not to say, to grieving people can be tricky. Even as a grief therapist with years of being with grieving humans, I mess it up sometimes. I don’t tend to offer a ton of “what not to say” or “what to say” lists because at the end of the day, grieving people are intuitive enough to know if 1) you genuinely care no matter what words you use and 2) if you actually want to hear about how they are doing, even if

Day 34: Grief is Physical I have been searching for years for a worthy description of the physicality of grief. I have finally found one in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s recent work, Notes on Grief , which she wrote following the sudden death of her beloved father in 2020. Thank you @chimamanda_adichie for your raw and honest account (see below). Finding words for such an experience is usually impossible. “I did not know that we cry with our muscles. The pain is not surprising

Day 33: Simply put, grieving at each developmental stage means grieving at each life transition. Such transitions might include marriage, a breakup, a move, a new job, becoming a parent, losing some physical functioning, navigating a chronic illness, or some other change that affects your daily life. Processing grief is not simple because our current grief can invite and even uncover grief from current, past, and anticipated life transitions and events. Knowing that our grief

Day 32: Where does my grief belong? With the current horrors and terror in Afghanistan, I have been asking myself a question that I hear clients ask so often. What makes my grief worthy when others are suffering so immensely in such extreme ways? When we ask this kind of question, many things may be happening: · Perspective taking: Being able to see our situation from a larger vantage point provides us some distance from ourselves in order to gain further insight. This i

Day 31: Something to Hold On To The reality of deep grief is that it often leaves us in a surreal fog, in which the world is unrecognizable and at times, we are unrecognizable to ourselves. Acute grief can be so intense that it can wipe out the capacity to hold onto hope, let alone being able to access a vision for the future. While people live in the intensity of this initial phase of grief, I often ask—“what do you have to hold on to?” The question is vague on purpose.