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

by Megan Devine

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.

Comparing one grief with another almost always backfires. One experience of loss does not translate into another. Grief is as individual as love.

Grief no more needs a solution than love needs a solution. We cannot “triumph” over death, or loss, or grief. They are immovable elements of being alive. If we continue to come at them as though they are problems to be solved, we’ll never get solace or comfort in our deepest pain.

No matter how many times pain or grief has entered your life, this time is the first time. This grief is unlike any other. Each new experience gets to unfold—and be tended—in the ways that best suit what hurts.

Sometimes you do not care one bit whether you live or die. Not because you’re actively suicidal, but because you simply do not care.

Sometimes I want to go looking for the pain. I want to marinate in it, allow it to soak into my skin. It’s a tonic of sorts. A flush of the system.

Respiration, heart rate, and nervous system responses are all partially regulated by close contact with familiar people and animals; these brain functions are all deeply affected when you’ve lost someone close.

Anxiety is patently ineffective at managing risk and predicting danger. Most of our fears never come to pass, and as I wrote above, in true emergencies, anxiety is often conspicuously absent. If anxiety is such a poor predictor of reality, why do we do it? What is it about anxiety that makes is seem so real, so logical, and so impossible to turn off?

For many people, their grief is their most vital connection to that which is lost. If happiness returns to your life, what does that mean about what was lost? Was it really not all that important, or special, if you can simply move forward with your life?

Not everyone deserves to hear your grief. Not everyone is capable of hearing it.

It’s OK—more than OK—to lead a conversation with, “I have no idea what to say, and I know I can’t make this right.” Or, “I want to give you space and privacy, but I’m also worried about you, and I want to check in.”