In an effort to be a more personal help I started posting a special email address some months ago. The response to that has been very good and I am enjoying answering each one very much. I am sure this will become too much to handle at some point but I will do it as long as I can. I think I am learning more than the ones who write.

The one overwhelming theme of the emails I receive is "finding permission to grieve". It is expressed in many differing ways, but the bottom line usually is how to respond to the pressure and advice from well meaning people. I honestly believe that most of the help we receive in our grief comes from our friends, but I also believe a great deal of the hurt we feel also comes from our friends.

With the best of intentions they usually either trivialize our grief by trying to make it seem not so bad, (Your loved one is better off, etc.) or they pressure us to get over it a long time before we can possibly do so. I cannot count the times I have heard something like, “My friends are getting tired of my grief, or they think three months is long enough.” 

I advise nearly everyone I deal with to find a friend or so who makes you feel safe and stick with them. Safe people are the ones who do not try to “fix” you. They just listen, try to understand, acknowledge and accept your pain without giving advice or guidance. These are rare creatures but hopefully they are out there and you can find them. If not, email me. Everyone needs a safe friend to talk with. I do not believe in grief counseling, nor do I do that, I believe in grief companioning. People in grief are not mentally ill, they are crushed on a journey and need someone to simply walk with them and feel their pain. They need permission to grieve as long as it takes, and whatever form it develops.

We also need permission from ourselves. I hear a lot of folks fighting with themselves because they are not making as much progress as they thought they would or think they should. I often tell people that if they broke their leg and the doctor put a cast on it, they would wear that cast without feeling weak or silly for as long as needed until the bone healed. Then we would go through months of physical therapy. But we think a broken heart should mend in three months? 

Healing will come, but it will not come quickly no matter how tough we might be. Healing will come quicker if we do not fight ourselves in the process. We spend far too much energy telling ourselves where we should be and how we should feel. One person said she wrote on her bathroom mirror, “I will not should on me today.” Good idea. If we can simply acknowledge that we have been deeply wounded and that it will take a long time for that wound to heal, perhaps we can then give ourselves permission to be weak and weepy without adding any self hate to the mix. That is called permission to grieve.