Who Needs to Learn the Lessons of Grief? Probably Not You.

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Today’s post lives over on Huffington Post. When you click “continue reading” down below, you’ll be taken to the post on that site. Do be sure to come on back here, though – the toolbox page has some cool stuff, as does the resource page.

If you’re living intense grief, I bet you’ve heard some crazy things: reasons why this happened, why you might have “needed” it, wild speculation about what it all means.

There is such a pervasive weirdness in our culture around grief. We judge and we blame, dissect and minimize. We look for mistakes made, or warning signs missed.

People look for the flaws in what you’ve done to get you to this place: She didn’t exercise enough. Didn’t take enough vitamins. Took too many. He shouldn’t have been walking on that side of the road. If he’s that upset, he must not have been very stable before this happened. I bet they had unresolved childhood issues – see what unhealed issues do to you?

These are all things we think and say when we want to distance ourselves from someone else’s pain.   continue reading…