Living Grief

Grief makes people uncomfortable, so we try to organize it, timebox it, and rank it. That’s how we end up with the quiet pressure to “be strong,” to stop talking about the person who died, or to act like the funeral is the finish line. I’m pushing back on that mindset and naming what so many of us feel: grief doesn’t follow rules, and it doesn’t owe anyone a schedule.

In this episode, we talk about why we judge each other’s grieving based on what we were taught in our families, culture, community, or religion, and how those assumptions can lead to painful comments that shut people down. 
I share personal moments that reshaped my perspective, including what it was like to see one person not cry at all and to hear another say they were “fine” soon after the funeral , while I was still deep in my own pain. 

We also discussed a simple truth: even when we lose the same person, our relationships, memories, and inner worlds are different, so our bereavement experience will be different too.

You’ll hear practical, compassionate reminders for coping with loss: listen to your body, leave room for rest, and stop comparing your tears or lack of tears to someone else’s. 

If you want to support a grieving friend, coworker, or family member, the goal isn’t to fix them. It’s to be a steady presence and a safe place.

If this helped, subscribe, share it with someone who needs permission to grieve at their own pace, and leave a review so more people can find this conversation.

Holding space for you,

Frances, The Caring Death Doula

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome back. I'm so glad that you were here with me. It really does mean a lot to me. I really do appreciate it. I really do. You matter. It's not insignificant that you are here, that you've taken the time. I I'm honored that you would take time out of your day to listen to this podcast. Now we've been really talking the last few episodes about grief and how we listen we need to listen to our bodies. How often we don't take care of ourselves. We don't rest. We don't listen to our

Welcome And Why You Matter

SPEAKER_00 0:41

bodies. We don't listen to our souls. We just keep pushing, pushing through not facing it, you know, stuffing it down, filling our lives with anything, whether it's work or activities, or sometimes some things that maybe are not healthy for us. But too much of anything is not healthy, and

Listening To Your Body In Grief

SPEAKER_00 1:04

and too much of stuffing down, ignoring, denying grief is not good. So we've been talking about that. And then I brought up on the last episode, I brought up how even in grief, we sometimes put everyone else first. And so if you didn't listen to the to last week's episode, that's what we talked about was how sometimes we we just put we put everybody else first. And how we really need to support each other and we need to be there because we never know. We never know if we're the person that's gonna walk into the room, sit down by the grieving person, and they will start crying. Now I know that scares many of us. It scares us when somebody breaks down and cry. But that means they felt safe with you. They knew that you would hold them. Not necessarily hold them physically, but hold the moment, hold their grief. That your presence meant something to them that they could let down, they could let go of being the strong one.

Being The Safe Place For Tears

SPEAKER_00 2:18

So I encourage you to be a support. Today in this episode, I would like to discuss how we need to not judge each other in our grief based on you know what how you deal, how you handle grief, how you express it, how you have seen other people in your circle, how you've been maybe raised in your culture, in your community, in your in your religion. There's so often that we think that grief should be one way, and we put a timeline on it, a time limit, restrictions, we box the people in. And I just want to encourage you that there is no timeline for grief. There are no rules, and we need the compassion so that we can connect with those who are grieving to be a support, and so that we're not judging each other, we're not saying words that are harmful, so that we can be that presence, that that safe place, that comfortable safe place presence that somebody needs. You know,

Why We Judge Grief

SPEAKER_00 3:42

I've mentioned this in other episodes, how when my when my father-in-law died, I did not see my mother-in-law cry at all. At all. I never saw her shed a tear. And how that affected my thinking, because I had only been married eight months, and so I didn't really know my mother-in-law yet. And of course, grief changed her. So I'm not even sure I really knew I really got to know my mother-in-law because they had been married, I believe, 44 years. And so I was so new to the family that the mother-in-law I got to know was the

There Is No Grief Timeline

SPEAKER_00 4:25

one that was living in her grief of having lost her companion, her partner, her husband. And I've also mentioned how, you know, when my dad died, I was going through my grief and all my feelings and all my reactions and all my struggles and the grief and the guilt and just everything that I was going through. And I had a friend who's who lost her mother-in-law, like a month, I think a month later, or just a few weeks later. And I remember being so shocked, running into her and asking how she was doing or, you know, how things were going, how her husband was because he had lost his mother, and how her reaction was so different from where I was at. And just being blown away and dumbfounded, and just not able to even comprehend how she could say, Well, they were perfectly fine after the funeral, you know, they grieved and they then they had the funeral and they were good. And I remember going, just not even going, but just in my head, just I could not understand that. I could not comprehend that because, you know, this was like what's six weeks, maybe after my dad had died. I was still grieving. I was still working through things. I still, like I said, I still had guilt and I still had, you know, all everything, you know, all the pain. And here she was saying, two weeks after her mother-in-law, you know, had died and they'd had the funeral, and they were all good. And I really struggled with that. And at the time, I was in my end-of-life practitioner course. And I remember going to the to the other uh students at, you know, in our in our group and just sharing that and just how that just brought a different perspective into

Two Stories That Changed My View

SPEAKER_00 6:22

my work, into my experience, into my education, that we all grieve so differently. We all grieve so differently, we feel so differently, we we talk about it differently, or we don't talk about it, we move on, and and and I think that's where maybe sometimes that that comes where it's like, haven't you moved on yet? Aren't you over it? Because you have people that you know, or maybe you yourself, you you buried the person and you were fine. You buried your loved one and you were fine, but that's not how it works for everyone. Or maybe your boss made you come back to work and you weren't ready. But yet you had to come back, you had to go back to work. There, there was no option. And so then there may be bitterness, so that when you do see someone grieving and they got to take two weeks off, in your bitterness, in your own pain, you make those kind of comments. They're like, well, it's time for you to move on. I mean, when you know, I think that's human nature, and I think that's just what we do. But I really want to encourage you, I really want to support you in just understanding that there are no rules, there's no guidebook, there's no timeline. There is no way to say that grief is this, this, and this. Because even if you have two or three or five people who loved the person that died, they each carry a different view of that person, a different relationship that they had with that person, a different love, a different experience, a different side of that person that they knew. And so their grief is based on that. It's based on their relationship, it's based on their love. It's not the same as yours. I mean, even children, when a parent dies, it's it's not all, you know, a flat line where every single child, when they lose their dad, they feel the same way. They're carrying the same grief, they're carrying the same love, they're carrying the same relationship. And it's got nothing to do with, oh, you know, one child is more special. It's got nothing to do with that. It's just that we are so different. Each of us is so unique, so special, that each relationship that you have is not the same compared to somebody else who has that relationship with that person. It's it can't be because we're all made up so differently.

Gentleness With Yourself And Others

SPEAKER_00 9:06

And so I think we don't understand that, we don't realize that. We need to be supportive in grief. We need to support those who are grieving. We need to understand ourselves when we're grieving, not to be hard on ourselves, not to sit there and go, Oh my goodness, I I only cried at the funeral and then I was good. There must be something wrong with me because she is still crying. She hears a song and she starts crying, or she, you know, sees something, drives by the park where her loved one would go fishing and she starts crying. Doesn't bother me. We need to be gentle with ourselves. We need to be gentle with each other. And I think that's why if we would just get comfortable talking about death and grief, we would start hearing these things, hearing the difference, and and knowing that it's okay. So I want to encourage you to be gentle with yourself, to be gentle with each other, to be gentle with others that you see at work or at school or in your neighborhood, in your own family. Because everyone grieves differently, and it's all okay. I am the caring death doula, and I am here for you.