Grief needs to be witnessed. Whether that is listening to someone share stories about their loved one, walking in nature with other grievers, or simply sitting in silence.
Those in grief are no longer the person they once were. Their place in the world changes. Their roles change, and so does their identity. Relationships with friends and family are not the same. Their future is no longer as they imagined it.
And then, somewhere around the fourth month, the casseroles stop and the calls slow down and everyone else's life resumes. Yours does not. People stop saying their name, so eventually you stop saying it too, and the loss gets quieter and lonelier at exactly the point where you needed it to get easier.
That is the part almost nobody prepares you for. It is also the part I work in.
I am a bereaved wife and daughter who wants to turn my pain into purpose.
Grief hurts, and there is no magic bullet that gets you over it. We live in a grief illiterate society where the D words, death and dying, do not get spoken. So people carry it alone.
Like many others, I am living proof that even after the most devastating losses, in time and with help, we can grow forward so that we remember with more love than pain.
Grow forward. Not get past.
One to one, at whatever pace you need. This is not therapy and it is not a treatment plan. It is a person who is trained in grief, who is not uncomfortable when you talk about the death, and who will not tell you where you should be by now.
Grief witnessed in company. A small facilitated group where you can say the name out loud and nobody flinches. For many people this is the piece that has been missing, because the loneliness is often the harder half.
Grief moves better when the body is moving and nobody has to hold eye contact. We walk, and we talk, or we do not talk. Both are allowed.
Congregations, workplaces, and community groups that want to get better at supporting the grieving people already among them.
More about workshops and speakingI am building a six-week series for people who are at least a year out from a loss, which is the point where most formal support has ended and the grief has not.
The series is not finished yet, and I would rather say that plainly than take your name for something that does not exist. If you want to know when it opens, send me an email and I will tell you.
The most useful thing you can say is usually the simplest: that you are sorry, that you care, and that you are still here. What helps is presence and specificity. What hurts is anything that puts a deadline on their grief or tries to explain the death away.
These two lists come from David Kessler and Grief.com. Print them, forward them, or hand them to the people around you. That is what they are for.
Lists adapted from David Kessler, Grief.com.
I am a Certified Grief Educator through David Kessler and Grief.com. The training ran twelve weeks and covered the foundations of grief, how to be with others in loss, the way a death shapes the grief that follows, releasing feelings, releasing the burden of guilt, healing older wounds, integration and meaning, specific kinds of loss, how belief and culture change what grief looks like, and how to lead groups.
Before any of that, I spent ten years as a volunteer facilitator at The WARM Place in Fort Worth, a grief support center for children and their families. I sat with kids aged ten to thirteen every week while they figured out how to talk about the person who died.
Grief is not a club any of us want to belong to. I am grateful that places like The WARM Place exist, along with the groups run by hospices and churches, so that grief can be witnessed somewhere.
Someone trained specifically to understand grief and to support people who are living with it. My certification is through David Kessler and Grief.com, a twelve-week program covering the foundations of grief, how to be present with someone in loss, guilt, integration and meaning, and how to lead groups. It is education and support. It is not therapy.
No. There is no schedule and no correct duration, and anyone who tells you otherwise is describing their own discomfort rather than your grief.
There is nothing to sign up for and nothing you owe. Write to me and tell me as much or as little as you want.
From Laura’s camera
