Conversations on Grief

I was chatting with my sister-in-law the other day about conversations around grief and the fact that most of us simply don’t have them. The fact is that most of us are scared to talk about grief and until we are tumbled into experiencing it, we can generally avoid the topic. Grief is a difficult thing to discuss with our family and friends. It feels like there are many pitfalls we can encounter and so we veer away.

What is it that we are afraid of?

Well, first of all, I think we are afraid that we might upset someone by discussing our thoughts on grief. We are fearful of saying the wrong thing. We worry that we may bring up painful emotions in others.  Maybe it is an uncomfortable topic because we fear for our own potential grief in the future – like talking about it might make it happen to us. Grief is also very personal and discussing it in an honest way requires us to make ourselves vulnerable; not something most of us do well or readily. And yet, I firmly believe that we do need to talk about grief with one another. We need to share our stories and work towards understanding the journeys of others who are grieving. By doing so, we become collectively stronger and more empathetic. We need to embrace these difficult conversations in the proper time and setting. It is one of the reasons that I started my blog and published the book;  to start such a conversation in a way that others would find safe.