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How do you live with grief in a culture that doesn’t like to talk about it?

Grief is on everyone’s minds these days and yet people are still intensely uncomfortable around it and go to great lengths to avoid acknowledging or talking about it. This means grieving people end up feeling even more isolated, lonely, and unsupported.

It’s why unacknowledged pain turns into outwardly destructive and self-destructive behaviors. It’s why grieving people don’t know if what they’re experiencing is normal.

The only way any of this will ever improve is by talking about grief, by normalizing the grief experience and normalizing openly talking about it.

 

We need to talk about what it’s really like to be a grieving person in this world, about what truly helps and what doesn’t help, and why.

Talking about grief is exactly what Nelba Marquez-Greene and I did on this episode of The Colin McEnroe Show.

From the show description:

We don’t do grief very well in this country. We don’t talk about it, we get uncomfortable around it, and in some mind-twisting way, we hope grief will leave us alone if we pretend it doesn’t exist. But that’s not how grief works.

Even professionals trained in grief tend to pathologize it when those living in grief don’t ‘get over it’ or ‘recover ‘ from it fast enough.

Today, a hard look at grief, including how to survive it and how we can all better support those who are living in it.

 

Click here to listen to the episode.

flame-heart-100Wishing for some company inside your grief? Now, as always, the very best place I know to connect YOU with other grieving folks is inside the Writing Your Grief community. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, there is always someone there: when you feel invisible inside your grief, these folks see you. Registration for the October 11th session is open now! Follow this link to join us. We’ve got room for you.