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

by Megan Devine LPC

Every object in your life becomes an artifact, a symbol of the life that used to be and might have been. There is no place this loss has not touched.

Grief is part of love. Love for life, love for self, love for others. What you are living, painful as it is, is love. And love is really hard. Excruciating at times.

We don’t talk about the fragility of life: how everything can be normal one moment, and completely changed the next.

There is not a reason for everything. Not every loss can be transformed into something useful. Things happen that do not have a silver lining.

We assume that if something is uncomfortable, it means something is wrong.

As though loss and hardship were the only ways to grow as a human being. As though pain were the only doorway to a better, deeper life, the only way to be truly compassionate and kind.

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.

There’s no comfort in “becoming a better person” when you were already happy with the person you were.

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

We think “happy” is the equivalent of “healthy.” As though happiness were the baseline, the norm to which all things settle, when we’re living as we should.

with a loss of this magnitude, “just happened” could mean eight days ago as easily as it meant eighty years.

A happy ending inside grief like yours cannot be a simple “everything worked out for the best.” That ending isn’t even possible.

When you are broken, the correct response is to be broken. It’s a form of spiritual hubris to pretend otherwise.

Instead of our usual tendency to want to get over something, to fix it, to make it go away, the path of compassion is totally different. Compassion allows.

Continuing to show up, continuing to look for support inside your pain, when all the world tries to tell you it’s a problem, is an act of fierce self-love and tenacity.

None of this is something you would ever choose. When you’re trying to make a decision, you can’t wait until it feels good.

There are weird family politics to contend with at times for sure, but for the most part, what you do with things in your home or on your body is up to you.

No time is the right time. Nothing is too early or too late.

You will not “move on.” You will not return to “who you used to be.” How could you? To refuse to be changed by something as powerful as this would be the epitome of arrogance.

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.

It is true that the pain you feel now is intimately connected to love. And—the pain will eventually recede, and love will stay right there. It will deepen and change as all relationships do. Not in the ways you wanted. Not in the ways you deserved. But in the way love does—of its own accord.

Hope is a word that needs an object: you have to have hope in something.

That’s the problem with hope. It’s so often presented as end-goal focused: hope for how things will look, how things will turn out later. It’s tied to a sense of control over the physical outcome of life: what you hope to get.

If we change our orientation to hope—moving from what we might get, to how we might get there—then hope is a concept I can get behind.

Grief changes you. Who you become remains to be seen. You do not need to leave your grief behind in order to live a newly beautiful life. It’s part of you. Our aim is integration, not obliteration.

Other people may have insight, yes, but the right to claim the meaning of your life belongs solely to you.

Part of living with grief is learning to discern who is safe and who is not, who is worthy and who is not. Part of living with grief is also learning to discern, for yourself, your own right timing in sharing this with others.

Defending yourself against someone who cannot possibly understand is a waste of your time and your heart.

Steps one and two—addressing their concerns and clarifying your boundaries—often

often get combined in one statement: “I appreciate your interest in my life. I’m going to live this the way that feels right to me, and I’m not interested in discussing it.”

If the people in your life can handle, even appreciate, you staying true to your own heart, then they’ll make it through with you. If they can’t, let them go: gracefully, clearly, and with love.

There was love in this world before your loss, there is love surrounding you now, and love will remain beside you, through all the life that is yet to come. The forms will change, but love itself will never leave. It’s not enough. And it’s everything.