You Must Face the Grief – Lesson #1

Six-Word Lessons on Coping with Grief

A peaceful sunset over the ocean with a ship sailing across the horizon, bathed in warm orange hues.

You cannot outrun grief. You cannot outwork it, outthink it, or out-busy it. At some point in your life, someone or something will matter so deeply that when you lose it, grief will arrive.

And I say arrive politely.

Often it feels more like being hit—by a steamroller, a left hook, a garbage truck, or an arrow straight through the heart. It can knock the breath out of you. It can disorient you. It can make the world feel unrecognizable overnight.

A dear friend of mine—a hospice social worker who co-facilitated grief workshops with me—used to say, “Grief is what it is.” Simple. Honest. True. There is no tidy formula. No universal timeline. No one “right” way to do it. Grief is as individual as a snowflake. No two experiences are identical because no two loves are identical.

I have been doing grief work for decades. When my young son was fighting cancer, I attended a support group for parents walking the same unbearable road. Sitting in a room with others who understood the language of medical charts and midnight fear helped. There is something profoundly stabilizing about being seen by people who don’t need an explanation.

Then, when my son was diagnosed as terminal, the social workers asked me to stop attending. They believed my reality would be too upsetting for the other parents.

Hello?

Just when I needed support the most, I was “86’d.” It hurt deeply. But that experience did not destroy my belief in support groups. It strengthened it. So I started my own—one that welcomed families before, during, and after a child’s death. No one was excluded for being “too real.” Grief needs room. All of it.

I highly recommend seeking out a grief specialist. Grief itself is not a mental illness. It is the natural by-product of loving someone or something deeply. It is love with nowhere to go. But if you find that you cannot move forward at all—that you are stuck in an unrelenting fog for months or years—you may be experiencing complicated grief. That is when professional guidance can be especially helpful.

If your sadness shifts into clinical depression—persistent despair, loss of function, inability to engage in daily life—please see a qualified mental health professional or your physician. Medication is not a failure. It is a tool. Sometimes you only need it for a season, to lift the heaviest layer of darkness so you can begin to breathe again. Using help does not mean you are broken beyond repair. It means you are wise enough to care for yourself.

Facing grief does not mean collapsing under it. It means turning toward it with courage.

Talk about your feelings.Say their name.Tell the stories.

Eat nourishing food, even when you don’t feel hungry. Rest, even when sleep feels elusive.Allow yourself to laugh again without guilt.

Surround yourself with people who can sit with tears and with silence.Find a creative or physical outlet to externalize the pain—writing, walking, swimming, gardening, prayer, music.

Grief demands to be felt. When you face it—when you allow it space instead of stuffing it down—you begin, slowly and steadily, to integrate the loss into your life rather than letting it define your life.

You must face the grief.

Because on the other side of facing it is not forgetting.It is learning how to carry love forward.

Be well,

Shirley