Grief made me keep their shoes right where they left them. Am I normal?

Grief affects so many things – including how you feel about items that belonged to your person. Are you normal if you’ve kept their shoes or other possessions exactly where they left them?

Leaving their shoes by the door is #perfectlynormal in grief.

It’s perfectly normal to leave all sorts of things, entire rooms, exactly as your person left them. Evidence that they were here, that they lived, that they were part of you is important. When your life has evaporated, those touchstones become the whole world.

You don’t have to change anything until you’re ready. Never is OK too. Remember to use the vomit metric for decisions you have to make or feel like you’re “supposed” to make. It will never feel good, but if it makes you feel sick, now is not the time.

How about you? Are there things you’ve left untouched or perhaps even taken with you when moved? The more we talk about this stuff, the more we tell the truth about what grief is really like, the more people realize they’re not alone.

Grief is hard. It impacts every aspect of life, big and small. There are so many things grieving people experience, things they do or don’t do, that they (or the outside world) might think are unusual or weird, but are actually perfectly normal. You aren’t weird. You’re grieving.

The problem is, people often don’t realize they’re normal until they discover they aren’t alone in feeling a certain way or doing a particular thing. And feeling alone makes grief even harder than it already is.

Because it’s such a relief to find out we’re not alone, we’re creating a series of posts acknowledging as many of those things as we can, one #perfectlynormal thing at a time.

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These posts were created using personal contributions people just like you and from our awesome Grief Revolution patrons. My patrons get to see everything we create before anyone else, suggest topics to cover in future projects, participate in live Q&A sessions, and more. Join the Grief Revolution at patreon.com/megandevine/