Healing the Loss

19/06/2026

This is a difficult, but important truth to accept when trying to support a grieving person:

There is nothing you can do to take away their pain.

Getting your person to “cheer up” is not a realistic goal and trying to make it so can cause a lot of problems:

1. Your grieving person may feel like they need to put on a happy or brave face for you.
2. Your grieving person may receive your attempts to “fix things” as judgement that they aren’t grieving “correctly” in your eyes.
3. Your grieving person may find your attempts to “cheer them up” hurtful because (even though you may not realize it) your words and/or gestures of “comfort” come across as dismissive.

The result of these scenarios is:

1. They feel stress (on top of their grief).
2. They feel shame (on top of their grief).
3. They feel anger (on top of their grief).
They do not feel better. They feel worse.

No matter how good your intentions are and how much you try, if you approach grief support with the goal of cheering your person up, you are setting yourself up for failure.

So, let’s redirect that care and energy towards a different goal:

Assure your grieving person they are not alone.

Be there for them. Be there with them. It may not seem like much, but it’s the most important thing you can do.

For more, visit: speakinggrief.org/get-better-at-grief/supporting-grief/be-authentic

Speaking Grief is produced by WPSU with philanthropic support from the New York Life Foundation.

19/06/2026

Hello. I’ve realised I need to do this - so I thought I’d post it. Hope you’re doing ok wherever you are.

19/06/2026

There is a lot of talk about finding "closure" after a loved one dies, as though grief has an ending point we are meant to reach if we do it properly. But so many of us never find closure, and perhaps that's because there is no such thing.
How do you close the door on a person you loved, you still love? How do you neatly finish a relationship that shaped your life? Love doesn't simply stop because a life has ended.
Maybe society clings to the idea of closure because ongoing grief makes people uncomfortable. We like endings. We like problems that can be solved and pain that can be fixed. Closure offers the promise of certainty: that one day the sadness will be resolved and life will return to what it was before.
But grief rarely ever works that way.
There are seasons when it sits quietly in the background, and seasons when it crashes over us with the same intensity as the beginning. On the hard days, we can find ourselves right back at the moment everything changed. Not because we've gone backwards or failed to "move forward," but because grief isn't a race with a finish line.
Perhaps the goal was never closure.
Perhaps grief is simply the ongoing expression of love for someone who is no longer here. It changes shape. It asks different things of us over time. It can soften in places and sharpen in others. It is never exactly the same, yet it never completely leaves.
And that's okay.
You do not have to find closure to be living well. You do not have to finish grief to prove that you loved deeply. Some losses become part of who we are. We don't overcome them. We learn, imperfectly and repeatedly, how to carry both the love and the absence for the rest of our lives.
- TCFV
Artist Credit: Unknown via Pinterest

17/06/2026

For support:
Www.healingtheloss.com

15/06/2026

When we are grieving we are not looking for pity, nor do we need to be treated as fragile. We are simply trying to survive something that has altered the course of our lives and often feels impossibly heavy and beyond our control.
What we need most is understanding. We need others not to add to that burden with thoughtless comments, impatience, unsolicited advice, or expectations that we should be coping, functioning, or returning to who we once were within a timeframe that feels comfortable to everyone else. The truth is that grief changes us, and many losses reshape life forever.
Through our shared experiences at TCFV, we know the value of compassion. A little patience. A willingness to listen without trying to fix. Space to grieve without judgement or pressure to "move forward" in ways that no longer fit the reality of our lives.
Grief is already carrying the unimaginable. The least the world can do is not make it harder. While others cannot take away our pain, they can choose compassion over judgement, understanding over expectation, and presence over avoidance. Sometimes, those simple choices make all the difference to people learning to live with a loss that has changed their lives forever.
- TCFV
Artist Credit: Unknown via Pinterest

15/06/2026

14/06/2026

Father’s Day is one week away. And it can be complicated.

As next Sunday approaches, I’ve been thinking of the fathers who are missing their children, longing for their children, and carrying immeasurable love in one hand and immeasurable grief in the other.

When a child dies, everything changes. A house of joy becomes a house of agony. And dads can’t “fix” it. How helpless is that feeling? So many dads with whom I’ve worked somehow, against the proscriptions of the culture, allow their hearts to break open. Some weep freely, some more quietly, but they express in their own ways. Mostly, instead of their hearts hardening, their hearts soften even amidst the intense sorrow.

That’s because love does not end with death. And…Fatherhood does not end with death. And grief is not evidence of weakness, but of courage.

To all fathers, in all the ways fatherhood is lived and carried, may you be met with gentleness this week and on Father’s Day.

May your love be honored. May your children, whether beside you or beyond this realm, be remembered.

And to those missing a dad, I hope others honor him with you.

14/06/2026

Grief is a full body, physical, spiritual and emotional experience.
Www.healingtheloss.com

Grief is not just in your heart.

It lives in your body...

The exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix.
No matter how many hours.
You wake up just as tired.

The headaches that come from nowhere.
The chest that feels heavy
like something is sitting on it.

The stomach that won't settle.
The appetite that disappeared.
Or the one that won't stop
because eating is the only thing that feels like anything.

The jaw you clench at night
until your teeth ache in the morning.

The shoulders that live up by your ears.
The back that aches from carrying
something nobody can see.

The immune system that just gives up.
Every cold. Every virus.
Your body saying out loud
what you're trying not to say.

Grief is a full body experience...

It is not weakness.
It is not in your head.

Your body is mourning too.
Every single part of it.

And it will do that
for as long as it needs to.

Because your body loved them too.

13/06/2026

Www.healingtheloss.com

12/06/2026