“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear…There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty.” -C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
Our present culture is particularly bad at grieving. Instead, it prefers either to pathologize grievers with clinical language, diagnosing them for having negative emotions, or to avoid grieving altogether by engaging in unhelpful myths about grief. How many of us have heard, after a loss, the phrase “time heals all wounds” or “just keep your mind off of it?” Usually, the people who say these things to grievers are just trying to help in the moment. Yet well-intentioned as they may be, these suggestions still perpetuate inaccurate messages about grieving. Here are a few of these grief myths: don’t feel bad, replace the loss, grieve alone, be strong for others, just give it time, keep busy, or blame someone else. Such responses engage in a quick-fix mentality for what is more of a prolonged, process-oriented emotional need. In short, these myths temporarily numb the pain of loss without working toward emotional completion.