10 Things You Should Know about Grieving People by Nancy Guthrie
This article is part of the 10 Things You Should Know series.
Grieving people don’t want to hear a story about your own or someone else’s loss.
My theory is that in our effort to fill up the awkward silence, or in our desire to demonstrate that we really do “get” what they are going through, our brains go on a search for a match to the current situation. That’s natural. But when a search result comes up, we don’t have to say it out loud. Instead, we can keep the focus on the
person who is grieving and how the loss has impacted them. We might think the story of our experience or someone else’s will be helpful. It won’t be. Their own loss is all they have space for in their thoughts, conversation, and hearts right now, so keep the focus on them.
You don’t have to be in the inner circle of a grieving person’s friends to be a welcome companion in grief.
Sometimes we stay away from people going through grief because we think they must have closer friends who are coming alongside them during this hard time and that we would be an unwelcome intrusion. But I have hardly ever met a grieving person who didn’t have at least one story of someone they thought would be there for them who disappeared. But when I ask these same people, “Were there some people who showed up in your grief in incredible ways that weren’t your close friends before your loss?” And they almost always say, “Yes!” These people may be in their lives for a short time or may be there to stay, but they will never be forgotten.
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