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

by Megan Devine LPC

The first thing I discovered is that not everyone seems to view this disease with horror or dread. Instead, the only appropriate attitude is upbeat. This requires the denial of understandable feelings of anger and fear, all of which must be buried under a cosmetic layer of cheer. . . . Without question there is a problem when positive thinking “fails” and the cancer spreads or eludes treatment. Then the patient can only blame herself: she is not being positive enough; possibly it was her negative attitude that brought on the disease in the first place. . . . [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.4