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

by Megan Devine LPC

First, no one can live your life for you—no one can face what is yours to face or feel what is yours to feel—and no one can make it alone. Secondly, in living our one life, we are here to love and lose. No one knows why. It is just so. If we commit to loving, we will inevitably know loss and grief. If we try to avoid loss and grief, we will never truly love.

Loss and grief change our landscape. The terrain is forever different and there is no normal to return to.

As Megan so wisely says, “We’re not here to fix our pain, but to tend to it.”

As Megan affirms, “Real safety is in entering each other’s pain, [and] recognizing ourselves inside it.”

Our culture sees grief as a kind of malady: a terrifying, messy emotion that needs to be cleaned up and put behind us as soon as possible.

Even our clinicians are trained to see grief as a disorder rather than a natural response to deep loss.