It’s Okay to Grieve

We’re all feeling a lot of things right now. Some of these feelings are easy to pick out—Anxiety. Fear. Loneliness. Disappointment. We’ve felt them before, we know how they work.

Other feelings, however, look a bit different than we’ve seen in the past. They’ve taken on a new shape. They’re harder to recognize, but they’re there.

One of these feelings is grief.

We might think that we already know what grief looks like. Most of us have lost someone we love at some point in our lives. We know the familiar sights and sounds of grieving—funerals, cemeteries, sympathy cards, homemade casseroles. We’re used to THIS being grief. So, when we look around and don’t see these things, we think we must not be grieving. Because that’s what grief is supposed to look like, right?

But what if it’s not?

We’re used to grief in response to death. But grief is not limited to death. Grief is simply the pain that accompanies loss.

And loss is EXACTLY what we are experiencing right now. Our routines. Our plans. Our privacy. Our freedom to move. Our jobs. Our connection. Our normal daily life. Some of the things we’ve lost are merely on hold; others we will never get back. Some of the things we are grieving haven’t even happened yet. We’re not just grieving our present losses; we’re grieving the loss of our future.

Grief has taken on a lot of new shapes. And there is no playbook for this grief. It is unlike anything we have experienced before. We might recognize some of the signs of grief—sadness, anger, restlessness, trouble sleeping. But we might not recognize it for what it is—grief.

Your pain matters

Or, if we do recognize it as grief, we worry that it’s not legitimate grief. We worry that it would be petty for us to grieve the things we have lost—graduation ceremonies, dinner with friends, our ability to take our kids to the park—when others have lost so much more.

But as psychologist Lori Gottlieb reminds us, there is no hierarchy of grief. “Suffering shouldn’t be ranked,” says Gottlieb, “because pain is not a contest.”

The fact that someone else has lost a parent or grandparent or friend doesn’t mean that it’s not painful for you when you lose your job or your school or your kid’s dance recital or your daily way of life.

There is no scarcity when it comes to pain. Acknowledging your own pain does not take away from other people’s pain. There is plenty to go around right now.

And when we experience so much pain and so much loss, it helps to call it what it is—grief.

Grief helps remind us of what we care about

Things that are important are painful to lose. In that sense, grief helps remind us of what we care about. When we minimize our grief, we minimize the things we care about. When we pretend their loss is not painful, we’re either saying that they’re not important enough to care about or that we are not important enough for our pain to matter.

When you acknowledge your grief, you are acknowledging that your life matters. That your pain matters. That what you have lost matters. That you matter.

It’s okay to acknowledge that you have lost something that hurts to lose. It’s okay to acknowledge that your pain matters.

It’s okay to grieve.

Your pain matters. You matter.

---

Also published on Medium.