A Partnership With Grief

I had to write this. The complexities of all emotions weave through our society and culture – and our lives, like mist through a screen door but grief stands alone in its uniqueness to the suffering of the individual forced to endure it. I write this in honor of a very dear friend who taught me such an important lesson in how we approach the people in our lives who have suffered unimaginable personal loss.

My friend is a caring and loving mother who is dealing with the passing of her adult children, both in their twenties, in a relatively short span of time. While grief is one of the most universal human experiences, it remains deeply individual in how it is felt, expressed, and processed. There is no single, predictable path through grief. Instead, it unfolds as a complex and highly personal journey shaped by personality, life experience, culture, relationships, etc. It needs room to unfold and germinate – to express itself.

To that end, sometimes our greatest contribution is not in the instinctual or traditional recitations of sympathy and compassion – but in our steadfast and foundational presence and support. We have no shortage of traditional bromides or taglines that seem appropriate in the moment but ring hollow to a devastated spirit. The ones that come to mind are, “everything happens for a reason” or “time heals all wounds” or any number of well-intentioned, but ultimately hollow and ineffective gestures of compassion and sympathy.

The bottom line? You don’t heal or recover from losses of this magnitude. Period. Offering healing sentiments, while notable and understandable, don’t accomplish much because they fail to acknowledge the task at hand. Survival! Which requires a pretty difficult and comprehensive plan on managing the grief – not healing or recovering from it. Their life’s journey has been forever altered and understanding that and being part of facilitating that via our unwavering love and support is our most valuable (and coveted) contribution in moments like this.

As friends of these survivors – our value will be in how we embrace the reality that healing is not the goal – but reshaping their lives in a way that lets them live it with dignity and purpose while learning to cope and manage their way through the infinite emotional corrosiveness this degree of loss represents. It’s a burden easier born with the knowledge that strong hands are behind them. Supporting them. Loving them while understanding not just the magnitude of their burden – but also its nature.

Importantly, grief is not a linear progression. The commonly referenced “stages of grief” can be helpful as a general framework, but in practice, people move through emotions in a non-sequential and often unpredictable way. A person may feel acceptance one day and overwhelming sorrow the next. This ebb and flow are a natural part of adapting to loss, rather than a sign of failure to heal. The lesson my friend taught me is that no gesture of sympathy or compassion can take the place of our bedrock support in the form of things we don’t say or do but allow our actions and unspoken spiritual attentiveness to punctuate.

Ultimately, the complexity of grief lies in its deeply human nature. It reflects not only what has been lost, but also the depth of connection that existed. Because every individual’s relationship, experiences, and inner world are unique, so too is their grief. Recognizing this variability allows for greater compassion as we support and assist those closest to us in navigating one of life’s most profound and challenging paths forward. In short, just being there – in whatever capacity is deemed crucial, will be our ultimate gift to their new journey.