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

by Megan Devine

There’s a deep cultural presumption that creating something out of grief somehow makes it all even out in the end: That your deepest call is to transform your grief into a work of art that touches others. That when you do that, when you turn to creative expression in the depths of pain, you are, in fact, healing your grief. Creativity is a way to transform pain. The results of your creativity, if they’re good enough, can help others transform their pain. It all works out. At the very least, art and writing will make you feel better, and you can get to “acceptance” of this loss faster. That presumption does such a disservice, both to the creative practice and to you.

Creating something good out of loss is not a trade, and it’s not a cure.

When we separate the creative process from a need to solve or fix things, it becomes an ally. It becomes a way to withstand grief, a way to reduce suffering, even as it can’t change the pain.

Death doesn’t end a relationship; it changes it.

“In losing Coll, I’ve noticed that my normal coping mechanisms of achieving the peace that is brought on from the release of intense emotions haven’t worked. When I cry, I don’t feel better. When I yell and scream in an empty house, I don’t feel better. Many times when I speak to my therapist, I do not feel better. But writing—writing hasn’t failed me. Writing has been healing when all else has failed. The edges of my emotions are still fairly jagged and raw, but they have been sanded down so they don’t cut as deep with every breath. And that’s all thanks to writing. JENNY SELLERS, Writing Your Grief student, on the death of her partner, Coll

Whatever you do in your grief, please remember that it’s yours. No one has the right to dictate what your art should look like, or that it should make you feel better. Creative exploration is a companion inside your grief, not a solution. As a mirror of your own innermost heart, let it be whatever it needs to be.

Your life, and your grief, are a work in progress. There is no need to be finished. There is no need to be perfect. There is only you, and the story of the love—and the loss—that brought you here. Find ways to tell your story.

That hole torn in the universe will not just close back up so that you can go back to normal. No matter what happens next in your life, it will never be adequate compensation. The life you lost can’t come back. That loss can’t be regained.

There are some events that happen in life that cause people to cross a threshold that forever changes them, whether they seek out their transformation or not. Life is ever unfolding, and people are ever in a process of becoming. Resilience holds the etymological implications of resistance to crossing thresholds, and instead adapting an old self to new circumstances without offering space or time to be completely changed by new realities. Unlike resilience, which implies returning to an original shape, patience suggests change and allows the possibility of transformation . . . It is a simultaneous act of defiance and tenderness, a complex existence that gently breaks barriers. In patience, a person exists at the edge of becoming. With an abundance of time, people are allowed space to be undefined, neither bending nor broken, but instead, transfigured. SAMIRA THOMAS, “In Praise of Patience”