Grief made me cry in public. Am I normal?

Grief affects so many things – including when, where, and how often you cry. Are you normal if you cry in public places?

Crying in public is #perfectlynormal in grief.

Everyday life is full of grief landmines. Tears suddenly flow in the most ordinary moments or for no clear reason at all. Sometimes the most mundane activities can be the most upsetting. Take a minute to take a breath, one good inhale/exhale, and check in with yourself. Give yourself what you need in that moment. If that means abandoning your shopping cart or not getting out of your car and driving back home, that’s OK.

While we’re on the topic, not crying is perfectly normal too. Grief looks like a lot of different things. Some people cry all the time, some never do, and then there’s a vast in-between. Every expression of grief is valid.

How about you? Have you experienced sudden bouts of crying at unexpected moments? How did you handle it? 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/