Supporting the Walk

Because I hope to help others understand the supporting of grief a little better through my experience, I’m going to focus a little bit on being with someone while they’re grieving. It’s incredibly difficult! Although we as a culture fail to support grieving people appropriately, it’s important to applaud your wanting to be supportive. By wanting to do the big, deep, heavy, hard work of loving someone inside their pain, you are doing a wonderful service!

Yet, to truly be supportive, we need a new image of what grief support really is. Devine writes:

"When a bone is broken, it needs a supportive case around it to help it heal. It needs a supportive case around it to help it heal. It needs external support so it can go about the intricate complex, difficult process of growing itself back together. Your task is to be part of that case for your broken friend. Not to do the actual mending. Not to offer pep talks to the broken places about how they’re going to be great again. Not to offer suggestions about the bone might go about becoming whole. Your task is to simply be there. Wrap yourself around what is broken. Your job… is to bear witness to something beautiful and terrible – and to resist the very human urge to fix it or make it right."

We’re all so uncomfortable with grief that we tend to want to fix it so that we don’t have to endure it. Someone going through grief doesn’t have that luxury. The grief must be endured in order to heal. To ignore it would be analogous to ignoring a physical illness. We wouldn’t ignore the broken bone, the burst appendix, the heart arrhythmia, etc. It takes time and support for physical healing just as it takes time and support for emotional healing. We need to allow that!

The biggest thing to remember today is to resist the urge to make it better. We need to notice that urge or impulse, then don’t act on it. Pause before you offer support. We will discuss what to do in that pause as we continue the support and walk through each week.

References

Devine, M. (2017). It’s OK That You’re Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn’t Understand. Boulder, CO: Sounds True. (ISBN: 97871622039074)