Making Space for Grief

For yourself and anyone who needs it right now.

I debated a lot about what to write this week… I have a whole nerdy spreadsheet of topics and ideas, but none of them felt true to how this week has felt. Every idea on the list felt too small—too trite and meaningless—amidst the questions I’ve been asking myself this week. Questions like:

How do we navigate grief? How do we reconcile inconceivable loss? How do we be there for each other amidst grief and loss so big it could swallow us whole?

These questions are all too real for those near and dear to me right now. So in the wake of an unexpected family loss, somehow it feels disingenuous to talk about anything else.

I don’t want to talk about the specifics. It’s all too new and raw and not mine to share on a public platform. But I do want to talk about making space for grief—because that is a reality for all of us at varying levels of magnitude across our years. And selfishly, I can’t seem to think or write about anything else this week.

There is a hierarchy of loss. We know this instinctually—culturally—because of how we arrange those seated at a funeral. The immediate family sits in the front row: the spouse, the parents, the “next of kin.” The rest of us back them up. We sit behind them and our hearts break on their behalf. We love and cherish that front row. We don’t know what we’d do if we were them. We sit behind them like we’re ready to hold them up. Because we are. We are here to hold them up.

I’m just backing up the front row in this instance. Trying to hold them up in small ways that are no doubt insufficient.

Here’s a sketch I did this week to try to capture a specific type of disjointed, out-of-body, grief-processing feeling I kept having. It’s super rough and I was planning to make a polished version to share today. But after giving it some more thought, the rough and raw version feels more right… more honest.

Grief is complicated and omnipresent, and oddly has been at the heart of a lot of things I’ve been writing and thinking about over the past couple months. I made a comic called “You Are With Me Always” about the people you love being with you even when they aren’t around. You can read the entire comic for free here. I wrote a post called “Indelible, Sharpie-Level Relationships” about how much Susan Cain’s book Bittersweet resonated with me (particularly her section on grief). If you missed that post, you can read it here.

I have no tidy or brilliant way to end this post. I’m just processing, trying to better understand grief, and hoping my loved ones are finding solace in small, beautiful things amidst their loss. If you are experiencing loss right now, I hope this post made you feel a little less alone and made some space for your grief.

Thanks for reading

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