Grief Is Not a Problem to Solve

We live in a culture that is deeply uncomfortable with grief. We give people three days of bereavement leave and expect them to return to full functioning. We offer platitudes — "they're in a better place," "everything happens for a reason," "at least you have other children" — that are really just requests for the grieving person to stop grieving so we can feel comfortable again.

But grief is not a problem. It is not an illness to diagnose and treat, a wound to close as quickly as possible, or a state of malfunction to push through. Grief is one of the most natural and sacred experiences available to us as human beings. It is, in fact, love — love with nowhere to go.

Grief as Sacred Passage

In most traditional cultures around the world, grief is held communally and ritually. There are specific practices — periods of mourning, communal gathering, ritual acts — that acknowledge the reality of what has been lost and create a container for the necessary disintegration that grief requires.

Because grief does require a kind of disintegration. When someone we love dies, or a relationship ends, or a dream collapses, or our health changes — a part of our world dies too. The self that existed in relationship to what was lost must be renegotiated. This is not malfunction. This is the work of becoming.

What Grief Needs

Grief needs time — more time than our culture allows. It needs space — more spaciousness than productivity culture permits. It needs witness — the experience of being seen in our pain without anyone trying to fix it. And it often needs ritual — concrete, embodied acts that honor what has been lost and mark the passage we are making.

This is why I offer Grief & Remembrance Circles and one-on-one grief accompaniment sessions. Not to help people get over their grief, but to help them go into it — with support, with presence, and with the dignity their grief deserves.

An Invitation

If you are grieving, I want you to hear this: your grief is not too much. It is not wrong. It is not a sign that something is broken in you. It is a sign that you loved, and that love was real. That matters.

You don't have to grieve alone. Our next Grief & Remembrance Circle is open for registration.