EPISODE 34: “The Pressure To Do Grief ‘Right’"

So many grieving women quietly carry the pressure to do widowhood “correctly.”

To cope correctly.
To heal correctly.
To move forward correctly.
To parent correctly.
To honor their person correctly.

But grief is not a performance.
And widowhood is not something you master perfectly.

In this episode, we explore the invisible expectations many widows carry after the death of a spouse — the pressure to stay strong, stay productive, appear functional, and somehow navigate profound loss in a way that feels acceptable to both themselves and the outside world.

We discuss:
• Why so many grieving people monitor and judge themselves after loss
• How conditioning around emotions and productivity impacts widowhood
• The nervous system’s search for safety after trauma and uncertainty
• Why grief feels so contradictory and emotionally unpredictable
• The hidden exhaustion behind “high functioning” grief
• The quiet ways comparison and self-measurement show up in widowhood
• Why functioning does not mean someone is okay
• The difference between survival mode and healing
• Why grief resurfaces in waves — even years later
• Releasing the pressure to carry grief perfectly

This episode is a reminder that there is no gold star for grieving “well.”

There is no perfect timeline.
No perfectly measured way to heal.
No flawless way to carry profound loss.

There is only your way.

And maybe part of healing is learning how to meet yourself with more gentleness while living inside a life that changed everything.

If this episode resonated with you, please share it with another widow who may need this reminder today.

With love,
Lauren

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Follow along on Instagram: @imsorrywerefriends

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Head over to: LaurenLentz.com
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome to the Widows Collective, where grief meets hope, healing, and community. I'm Lauren Lentz, grief coach, fellow widow, and the heart behind this space. There is life before loss, and then there is life after. If you're here, it likely means your life has been turned upside down by the death of your person. Maybe you've just found yourself in this new world that feels unrecognizable, or maybe you've been walking it for a while, trying to figure out what healing looks like now. I want you to know you are not alone. This podcast is a gathering place for widows living in the after. Together, we'll name the eight, honor the love, and share tools, truths, and stories that help you feel supported along the way. My hope is that every episode gives you a sense of community, comfort, and permission to meet yourself exactly where you are. Hello, and welcome back to the Widows Collective. Today I want to dive into this expectation many grieving people carry to do grief and widowhood the quote unquote right way, to cope correctly, heal correctly, to move forward correctly, to parent correctly, to honor their person correctly. And this pressure doesn't just come out of nowhere. In many ways, the need to function this way is something most of us were conditioned into long before grief ever entered our lives. From a very young age, many of us are taught both indirectly and directly that there are appropriate ways to handle our emotions, our pain, our discomfort, and our hardship. We learn what emotions are acceptable and what emotions make other people uncomfortable. We learn what earns praise and what earns concern. And we learn what gets rewarded and what gets minimized. We're often taught to push through, stay productive, keep going, be strong, not burden others, to regulate ourselves quickly, return to normal as soon as possible. And while this resilience absolutely matters, many of us also internalize the belief that struggling for too long is somehow failure, that if we're hurting visibly, emotionally overwhelmed, unable to function the same way, or still deeply impacted months or years later, something must be wrong. So when grief enters our lives, especially a loss as life-altering as the death of a spouse, people may unconsciously approach grief the same way they've approached everything else in life, as something to manage well, as something to get through correctly, as something they should somehow be able to improve or organize, optimize, or succeed at. Your life, your identity, your nervous system, your future. And when human beings experience this type of uncertainty or trauma, we naturally start searching for safety because safety helps us feel more anchored inside of something that feels extremely unpredictable and unanchoring. And sometimes that search for safety turns into trying to do grief right. We start looking for the correct timeline, the right emotional responses, the right pace of healing, the right amount of functioning, the correct way to move forward. And underneath all of it is usually fear. Fear that we're grieving incorrectly, fear that we will be stuck, fear that we're falling behind, fear that we're becoming too much or becoming too numb, fear that we're not honoring our spouse correctly, fear that we're somehow failing at widowhood. This is where many grieving people begin monitoring themselves constantly after loss, wondering: Am I coping normally? Am I doing this right? Why does this still feel so hard? Why can't I seem to keep up? Over time, that self-monitoring becomes another layer that just adds to our exhaustion. But many widows don't even realize all of these invisible expectations they're carrying until they finally slow down long enough to notice how exhausted they actually are from trying to meet them all. There can be this constant internal pressure to stay grateful and functional or stay emotionally balanced, productive, stay hopeful, stay connected, stay resilient. Sometimes those expectations come from other people, and sometimes they come from within. The death of a partner turns our life upside down. And oftentimes, in a desperate attempt to regain some sense of stability during a time that feels so chaotic, many grievers begin unconsciously managing themselves all of the time, monitoring how emotional am I today? How productive was I today? Am I doing worse again? Am I healing? Am I becoming bitter? Am I moving forward too quickly or not moving forward enough? I also think many widows become deeply afraid of being perceived as too emotional, too sad, too angry, too needy, too affected, too brokenhearted. So instead, many begin performing functionality. And the complicated thing is sometimes you actually are functioning when you consider that functioning can be going through the motions. You're still parenting, working, showing up, answering texts, paying bills, making dinner, but internally you may still feel completely overloaded. And when your internal world looks nothing like your external functioning, it can become really isolating. It's part of why so many grieving people feel unseen. Because functioning and suffering can coexist. You can be surviving and struggling simultaneously. You can look high functioning while internally feeling completely depleted. And so often widows will start second-guessing themselves. If everyone sees me continuing to take steps forward because I don't have a choice, will they think I'm okay and then I don't need support? As though productivity somehow cancels out pain or takes away the continued need for help, but it doesn't. Sometimes functioning is not evidence that someone is okay. Sometimes it's evidence that survival mode is incredibly strong. Part of this pressure also comes from the reality that grief itself is contradictory. Sometimes you want to move forward and simultaneously never want life to move forward without them. Sometimes you desperately want relief and then in the same breath, fear what relief means. Sometimes you want people to stop treating you differently while also wanting them to understand your life has fundamentally changed. Sometimes you want support, and sometimes support feels very overstimulating. Sometimes you want to talk about them constantly, and sometimes saying their name out loud hurts too much. And because grief contains so many contradictions, grieving people often start searching for certainty and places where certainty simply does not exist. So we create internal rules. If I stay busy, maybe I won't fall apart. If I cry less, maybe I'm healing. If I cry more, maybe it proves how much I loved them. If I keep functioning, maybe I'm okay. If I stop functioning, maybe I'm failing. But operating according to those rules will often lead to disappointment, confusion, and self-judgment because grief does not actually move in predictable or measurable ways. And that can feel deeply frustrating because humans naturally want progress to make sense. We want to know: am I doing better? Am I healing? Am I moving forward? Is what I'm doing going to help take away the ache? But grief more often moves in spirals, not straight lines. And I think social media contributes to this in complicated ways, because now grief is visible in ways it never used to be. And while I want to say that there is so much beauty in feeling less alone, there is also this subtle tendency to compare ourselves, to compare our timelines, our emotional expressions, our functioning, our relationships, our healing, our meaning-making, our parenting, our dating, our rebuilding. And suddenly grief becomes something we're trying to quantify. But grief is far too human, too relational, and layered to fit neatly into timelines or categories. There is no gold star for suffering the most, and there is no prize for functioning the best. There is just survival and adaptation and learning how to live inside a life that is forever changed. When we are comparing our pain, we start to make stories about our experiences. And it can sound like, should I be doing better by now? Why am I still struggling with this? Other widows seem stronger than me. Why does it feel like I'm stuck in this while life keeps moving forward for everyone else? Is this just what my life is going to feel like now? Why does no one seem to talk about it still being this hard? Am I ever going to feel steady again? And sometimes it even shows up around moments of joy, laughing, feeling okay for a day, enjoying something, taking a toe dip into the dating world, and suddenly there's guilt. Like if we soften, if we open up again, we are somehow betraying the depth of our love. But suffering is not proof of love. And functioning is not proof that someone didn't love deeply either. Human beings adapt. That's what we are meant to do. That's what our nervous system does. And adaptation after loss is also not linear. Some days you may feel grounded, other days you may feel completely flooded. Some seasons you may feel hopeful. Other seasons may bring you right back to your knees. Doesn't mean you're failing. It doesn't mean you're regressing. It means that grief moves. I also think many grieving people become afraid of their own emotions sometimes after loss. Not because the emotions are inherently bad, but because grief can feel so consuming sometimes. There can be this fear that if I let myself fully feel this, I won't come back from it. So some people begin overfunctioning, staying busy and productive, taking care of everyone else, avoiding stillness. And others shut down. They disconnect, they withdraw, they numb out. But underneath both responses is often the same thing: a nervous system trying to survive overwhelming pain. And this is why I think we have to be careful about labeling grief responses too quickly. Because sometimes what looks like avoidance is exhaustion. Sometimes what looks like strength is survival mode. Sometimes what looks like releasing is acceptance. And sometimes what looks like falling apart is actually emotional honesty. So often widows become increasingly aware of how uncomfortable ongoing grief makes other people, especially because society tends to acknowledge acute grief much more comfortably than long-term realities of widowhood. People understand devastation in the beginning, but fewer people understand chronic loneliness, nervous system exhaustion, identity disruption, fear, anxiety, emotional unpredictability, the long-term weight of carrying life alone. And because of that, many grieving people start editing themselves and downplaying their pain and hiding their exhaustion and pretending they're coping better than they are. Because constantly explaining grief becomes an additional checkbox that they don't want to have to complete. I also think many widows quietly begin abandoning their own needs because they become so focused on making sure that they're appearing okay externally to help everyone else around them feel comfortable. And over time, that disconnect from self can become its own form of suffering. When you are constantly monitoring how acceptable your grief looks to others, you stop listening inward. You stop asking, what do I actually need today? And instead begin asking what version of me feels easiest for other people to tolerate. That's a very painful place to live. One of the things I wish more grieving people understood is this. You cannot perform your way through loss and you cannot busy it away. You cannot perfectly optimize your healing. I know sometimes we desperately want formulas because formulas feel safer. They feel like a light at the end of the tunnel. When everything feels emotionally unpredictable, human beings naturally start searching for certainty and relief and something that feels manageable. But grief is deeply human. It's layered, it's unpredictable, it's relational. No two people are going to move through it in the exact same way. Some people cry openly, some become quiet, some become productive, and some shut down. Some need community, others need solitude, some move forward quickly in certain areas and feel frozen in others. None of those things alone determine whether someone is grieving correctly. Sometimes small moments of healing begin when we stop trying to manage our grief perfectly and start allowing ourselves to respond honestly to what our body needs, to what our nervous system needs, to the reality that some seasons require more support than others. Part of healing is learning to tolerate the fact that grief will continue changing shape. There will be seasons where you feel more grounded and connected, more hopeful. And then suddenly you might hit a milestone or a smell or hear a song or just have a random Tuesday afternoon that can completely unravel you again. That does not erase healing. It reflects the reality that grief is relational. You are grieving a person who mattered to all of you, to your nervous system, to your routines, to your identity, your future, your body, your memories, your sense of home. Of course, grief continues moving. Love continues moving too. And I know it can feel frightening when grief resurfaces intensely because I think we often assume I thought I was doing better. Where did this come from? And the truth is, you probably are doing better, or things are probably feeling lighter as time moves forward. But grief is here for the long haul and it evolves just as we do. So we are continuously meeting our grief from new versions of ourselves. And that means grief may continue revealing new layers too. Over time, we begin to feel more familiar with the ebb and the flow and recognize that grief is something we continuously learn how to carry imperfectly, sometimes messily, is that a word? And I think there's freedom in releasing the pressure to do it correctly, to do grief right. So if you've been quietly judging yourself, wondering if you're grieving the right way or doing grief wrong, wondering if you should be further along, or why this still feels so hard sometimes. I just want you to know there is no perfect way to carry profound loss. You are not meant to navigate grief and widowhood flawlessly. You are meant to move through it honestly, and sometimes that is very messy. One of the most compassionate things we can do in widowhood is stop expecting ourselves to carry everything perfectly, to stop measuring whether we're grieving correctly or healing correctly or functioning correctly, and instead start asking, what do I honestly need right now? What is going to help me feel physically safe? What is going to help me feel emotionally safe, mentally safe, spiritually safe? Not what looks best externally, not what makes other people comfortable, not what proves our societal version of strength, but what actually supports the human being, you carrying this loss because grief is already heavy enough, right? You don't also Need to carry the pressure of performing it in a way that the outside world will clap at. Maybe part of healing is not becoming someone who has grief all figured out. Maybe part of healing is learning how to meet yourself with more grace, more gentleness, more compassion while you live inside something that has changed everything. As I like to say, there is no right way. Only your way. Thank you for being here with me today and for allowing this space to hold the parts of grief that are often difficult to explain and say out loud. Until next time, big hugs and lots of love. You've been listening to the Widows Collective. I'm Lauren Lentz, and it means so much to me that you spent this time here today. If you found comfort or connection in today's episode, I invite you to please subscribe, leave a rating, or share it with someone who might need a little support. You can also follow me on Instagram at I'm Sorry We're Friends and join my email list at LaurenLentz.com to explore my one-to-one grief coaching, group program, retreats, and other tools designed to help widows navigate loss with understanding and guidance. I hope you'll join me next week for another conversation where we'll continue exploring grief, healing, and ways to reimagine life after loss. I'm sorry you're here, and I'm so grateful that you are. Thank you for being a part of this community. Your presence is an act of courage and self compassion, and I'm honored to walk this path alongside you.