FRIENDS

Most of the help we need and receive in our grieving

Must come from our friends.

Friends who walk beside us

And not try to take the pain away

Friends who accept us

Even when we are on the brink of insanity

Friends who never trivialize our pain

Or try to explain it away

Friends who learn that silence can be even more healing

Than words

And can be comfortable sitting with us while silence does it’s thing

UNFORTUNATELY

Much of the hurt we feel on the journey

Will also come from our friends.

Friends who think they know how we feel

Friends who think they know how we should feel

Friends who think they know when we should be “over it.”

Friends who avoid us

Friends who think they can change the way we feel

By changing the way we think

Friends who say the four words that cut the deepest

“Get ‘Hold Of Yourself.”

Friends who think their faith can take away my pain.

It seems like every email I receive from those who read these posts present about the same problem. Someone or some group is pressuring them to “Get ‘Hold Of Themselves” and “Get on with their lives.” I have often said on these pages that if you boil down everything all of the grief authors write it boils down to permission to grieve. Grief is a natural process that needs the freedom to develop over time without pressure to perform or time tables for completion. But finding safe places where this can happen is most difficult and finding safe people who are comfortable with us while it is happening can be so hard to find we may think they are an extinct species that vanished with the ice age. 

The pressure can come from anywhere. This week it was a family who is living in denial and will not allow the mother the freedom to grieve openly about her son. They gather for family times and never mention his name. His death is the elephant in the room they walk around and act like they do not notice. The husband, and father of the boy, gets angry at every tear the mother sheds. The son’s birthday is approaching. The first one since his death. And the mother realizes she will deal with the day in silence and alone. 

This week also revealed a boss who demanded his employee to return to work within days of her husband’s funeral and now is telling her that her sadness is hurting the business. Customers don’t want to deal with someone who is not smiling and cheerful. It is hard to determine which hurts the most, the death of a loved one or the insensitivity of friends, family and employers. 

I cannot tell how many times I have heard the plaintive cry wondering how folks could be so uninformed and cruel. “Why don’t they know?” are often the words used. I have to remind them that they did not know either until they walked the walk themselves. No one tells us how to help people in grief. No one teaches us what the grief process is, how long it lasts, and what helps and what hurts folks during the process. Most of the time we only know after we have been there ourselves, and strange as it may seem, some folks who have been there still don’t know how to help someone else. They tend to think that what worked for them will automatically work for everyone else so they run around with their formula for success and make themselves obnoxious in the process.

A minster came to my office a couple of weeks ago. He wanted to start a grief group in his church. That thrilled me of course. One of the dreams of my life is that churches will become involved in helping folks with grief. I told him that his idea thrilled me but the very best thing he could do was to have a course of study for the entire membership of his church to help them know how to help others. A grief group will reach a small number and do great things. A trained congregation will reach far beyond the membership and help more than can be counted.

The truth is we will have to train our own helpers. Find someone who feels safe to you and let them read this post or at least the first part of the post. Many people want to help, they just don’t know how. The ones that hurt instead of helping were trying to help, they just didn’t know how. Simply tell folks that you need what I have always called the three H’s. you need them to Hang Around, Hug you, and Hush.  

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Doug invites you to log in and post comments at the end of each blog entry. He looks forward to hearing from you. Any of Doug's books, CDs or DVDs are available at www.InSightBooks.com.