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

by Megan Devine

There is no obvious evidence of the destruction that came before. But for those who did the work, for those who saw what lies beneath all that new growth, those wounds are clearly evident. There are whole lifetimes buried beneath what now appears so beautiful. We walk on the skin of ruins.

There is no going back. There is no moving on. There is only moving with: an integration of all that has come before, and all you have been asked to live.

“Recovery” in grief is not about moving on. It’s not about resilience or a return to “normal” life. Recovery is about listening to your wounds. Recovery is being honest about the state of your own devastation. It’s about cultivating patience, not the kind that implies waiting it out until you return to normal, but patience in knowing that grief and loss will carve their way through you, changing you. Making their own kind of beauty, in their own ways.

If we talk about recovery from loss as a process of integration, of living alongside grief instead of overcoming it, then we can begin to talk about what might help you survive.

For many people, their grief is their most vital connection to that which is lost.

things get different; they don’t get “better.”

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

We might not hope for a specific physical outcome, but instead hope to live this experience of loss in a way that is beautiful and personally meaningful.

Recovery is less about becoming “good as new,” or even moving past your intense grief, and more about living this experience with as much skill, self-kindness, and peace-of-being as you can. Recovery takes patience, and a willingness to sit with your own heart, even, and especially, when that heart has been irrevocably shattered.

You may become more empathetic, as you know how the wrong words can cut, even when well-intentioned.

Sovereignty is the state of having authority over your own life, making decisions based on your own knowledge of yourself, free of outside rule or domination.

If you choose something for yourself, as a way of living this grief, it’s perfect and beautiful. If something—even the very same thing—is foisted upon you by an outside force, it’s probably not going to feel very good. The difference is in who claims it as the “correct” choice.

This is your life. You know yourself best.

grief itself is not a problem, and as such, cannot be fixed.

In telling the truth about how our support systems fail, we begin to create communities capable of bearing witness to pain that can’t be fixed.

Being dismissed, cheered up, or encouraged to “get over it” is one of the biggest causes of suffering inside grief.

“Everything happens for a reason.” What a ridiculous, shame-based, reductionist, horrible thing to say to anyone—let alone someone in pain. What reason could there possibly be?

People say the most incredibly insensitive and cruel things to people in pain.

I’m not afraid to say, out loud, “You are not helping.”

If someone truly wants to help you inside your grief, they have to be willing to hear what doesn’t help.

sudden, accidental death and its aftermath really highlights even the smallest relational mismatch.

Good people will show up as they can, for as long as they can. That they leave is not a failure,

even though it hurts.

If there are people in your life causing more harm than good, it’s OK to cut them out. Your life is very different now, and some people simply do not fit.

Grieving people expend a lot of energy defending their grief instead of feeling supported in their experience of it.

When you shift to thinking of grief as an experience to be supported, loved, and witnessed, then we can really talk about what helps.

Your task is to be part of that cast for your broken friend.

Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to bear witness to something beautiful and terrible—and to resist the very human urge to fix it or make it right. And that’s hard.

Acknowledgment of the reality of pain is usually a far better response than trying to fix it. Bearing witness is what is most called for.

the way to truly be helpful to someone in pain is to let them have their pain.

Grieving people would much rather have you stumble through your acts of bearing witness than have you confidently assert that things are not as bad as they seem.

From the griever’s perspective, it’s a huge relief to be around those who are willing to be uncomfortable and show up anyway.

Do This, Not That: A Handy Checklist

Good things and horrible things occupy the same space; they don’t cancel each other out.

Remember that evidence of “helping” is not in the reduction of pain; it’s in knowing the grieving person feels supported and acknowledged inside their pain.

the intentions of the person giving the attention. How it lands is everything.

That other people have experienced pain, even pain that looks a lot like yours, is not meant as a solution to grief. It’s meant to point the way to those who understand. It’s meant to introduce you to your tribe.

It’s meant to tell you who can hear your pain, who can stand beside you, listening, bearing witness.

having others recognize the depths of your pain is lifesaving. When someone can look at you and truly see, really recognize, the devastation at the core of your life, it changes something. It helps. It may be the only thing that does.

When the center has been torn from your life, you need the company of others who can stand there beside the hole and not turn away.

Survival in grief, even eventually building a new life alongside grief, comes with the willingness to bear witness, both to yourself and to the others who find themselves inside this life they didn’t see coming. Together, we create real hope for ourselves, and for one another. We need each other to survive.

Track your people through the wilderness of grief until you find their campsite, or make one of your own.

Survival in grief lies in finding the connection between the life that was and the life that has been thrust upon you.

Love is brutal at times.

You make that middle ground by offering yourself kindness. By refusing to give in to the dominant emotional paradigm that says your grief is a problem to be solved. By giving yourself all the time and space you need to be as broken as you are.

Finding your middle way inside grief is about finding friendship with your own heart, making a home inside your own heart. It’s in learning to bear witness to your own pain, in treating yourself like someone you love.

As best I can, I’ve tried to tell you the truth about grief as I know it.

In telling the truth about our own hearts, we let others around us begin to find their own truth. We begin to shift the dominant paradigm that says that your grief is a problem to be solved. We get better at bearing witness to what hurts. We learn how to survive all the parts of love, even the difficult ones.

In telling the truth, and in hearing the truth, we make things better, even when we can’t make them right. We companion each other inside what hurts. We bear witness to each other.