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

by Megan Devine

It was random, unexpected, and it tore my world apart.

Here’s what I most want you to know: this really is as bad as you think. No matter what anyone else says, this sucks. What has happened cannot be made right. What is lost cannot be restored. There is no beauty here, inside this central fact.

You don’t need solutions. You don’t need to move on from your grief. You need someone to see your grief, to acknowledge it. You need someone to hold your hands while you stand there in blinking horror, staring at the hole that was your life. Some things cannot be fixed. They can only be carried.

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.

Telling the truth about grief is the only way forward: your loss is exactly as bad as you think it is. And people, try as they might, really are responding to your loss as poorly as you think they are. You aren’t crazy. Something crazy has happened, and you’re responding as any sane person would.

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.

There are losses that rearrange the world. Deaths that change the way you see everything, grief that tears everything down. Pain that transports you to an entirely different universe, even while everyone else thinks nothing has really changed.

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.

Grief is visceral, not reasonable: the howling at the center of grief is raw and real. It is love in its most wild form.

That you were here, that moment, just a regular moment, and then you were gone.

And my god, they are going to want to protect me, and my god it’s going to torment them that they can’t,

Telling the story of this loss over and over—it’s like we’re looking for an alternate ending. A loophole. Some way the outcome might have changed. Could still change. Maybe we missed something. If we can only get the story right, none of this would be happening.

No matter who wins the battle over memorials or possessions, the person you love is still dead.

All emotion is a response to something. Anger is a response to a sense of injustice. Of course you’re angry: whatever has happened to you is unjust. It doesn’t matter whether “fairness” is logical, or whether there’s a reason something happened.

Shown respect and given room, anger tells a story of love and connection and longing for what is lost.

Feelings of anxiety are normal for those who have survived an intense loss or trauma. Inside your grief, the whole world can feel like an unsafe place, one that requires constant vigilance: searching for early warning signs of trouble, guarding against more loss. You rehearse what you would do if you were faced with unthinkable trauma again.

We push our brains into exhaustion, trying to keep ourselves safe.

It’s true in all of life, but even more so inside grief: there is no time for relationships that make you feel small, shamed, or unsupported.

Grief is not a problem. It doesn’t need solutions.