Grief made me hate small talk. Am I normal?

Grief affects so many things. What’s happened to your capacity to make small talk? Are you normal if you can’t stand it anymore?

Hating pleasantries and small talk is #perfectlynormal in grief.

It’s really hard to have people ask “How are you?” or “How’s your day going?” when you know they aren’t actually asking or when the last thing you want to do is share how you are, really. And small talk often feels meaningless, exhausting, or downright irritating after loss.

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.

So how about you? How do you experience everyday interactions like small talk and pleasantries? 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.

Want to share something with project #perfectlynormal?
Contribute here.

Submissions are anonymous. Share as many things as you like.

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/