Grief: The Pain That Doesn’t Need a Cure

When I left my career in government to explore the immense grief I was feeling, having lost both of my parents by age 30 and my own divorce, I thought I was taking 2022 as a year off to heal. I learned two things very quickly: 1) There is no linear “healing” when it comes to grief, and 2) This wasn’t a year off at all– it was a year on. It was the start of creating a community around the very thing I thought was making me crazy. Since then, I’ve been building Grieve Leave – today a community of over 25,000 grievers all over the world, across platforms.?

What’s become clear from day one of working in the grief space, and even from my own mindset about grief at the start of this journey, is how much we pathologize grief and loss in our society. And how harmful that mindset of “healing” is to each of us getting the accessible support we deserve in our grief.?

Grief is as old as humanity, itself. Yet, somewhere along our more recent history, grief began to be seen less as an innate, universal emotion and more as a condition to be diagnosed, treated, and, “cured.” Our approach to understanding grief has become increasingly clinical, boxing it into stages and symptoms.?

But grief, in its essence, is not a problem needing a solution.?

Yes, a clinical framework has its merits, especially for those whose grief leads to severe, prolonged, and debilitating symptoms. However, it’s crucial to understand that not every expression of grief requires a medical lens or intervention. When we pathologize every instance of grief, we risk invalidating the very human emotions at its center.

If I’m being honest with you, this is hard for me to put into words. I come from a very medical family – the proud daughter of a Duke University Medical Center physician and the director of their medical center library. I grew up in a household where we’d have a medical problem, we’d seek diagnosis, and a solution. We’d seek to feel better.

But the thing about grief is the ambiguity of what “symptoms” look like, what “better” means, and how you get there.??

It reminds me of the old parable of the blind men and the elephant. The story basically goes that a long time ago, a new animal called an elephant was brought into a town. Blind men each felt a different part of the animal, leaving with a completely different takeaway as to what an elephant was: one who felt its tusk said elephants were smooth like spears. Another who felt its trunk said it was like a snake. And another who felt its tail said it was like a rope. The moral of the story? When we isolate or seek to define something by just its parts, one at a time, we might miss the big picture.?

Grief is the elephant in the room we don’t know how to talk about.

And when we do talk about it, we’ve internalized that grief should happen in a linear set of five stages. But, that’s simply not true. Grief is a deeply personal– and, again, a very human – experience. We don’t all go through denial and anger and acceptance. Some of us might leapfrog these stages, or experience something entirely different (I’m petitioning for a widely accepted Netflix stage, myself). Grief is messy, unpredictable, and deeply personal.

Grief is not an illness to be cured, even though it can feel really awful sometimes. One of the most beautiful and heart-wrenching aspects of grief is its simultaneous individuality, and universality. Each of us has had, or will have, an experience (or many) with loss.?

Understanding grief should not be confined to “experts” or those with medical degrees. Each of us, through our own experiences, holds valuable insights into grief’s complex tapestry. Your losses, your moments of introspection – these help you grasp grief's intricacies, when you have the space to speak up about your grief. This collective wisdom is something we should honor and share, not silo from the masses and reserve for white coats and closed offices.

As a society, we need to shift our perspective. Our approach to supporting those who are grieving needs a recalibration.

Instead of “curing” or “managing” grief, we should be facilitating environments where grief is celebrated, not condemned for not getting “better” before their bereavement leave clock is up. Instead of focusing on “treating” grief, we should be creating spaces where individuals can actually talk about their grief, without judgment and without huge medical bills.?

Communities like Grieve Leave aim to do just that – provide a space where grievers can come together, not for “treatment,” but for understanding, compassion, and shared humanity. To truly support those in grief, we must recognize it for what it is – an inherent, human emotion. Instead of aiming to “fix” those of us who are grieving, let’s listen to their stories, validate their feelings, and remind them that they are not alone.

Grief is not a condition. Grief is the shared emotional thread that weaves us all together, reminding us of our vulnerabilities, emotions, and the undeniable strength that emerges from community. By reframing our understanding, we can build a society that celebrates the profound connections drawn from shared pain– a grief-informed society.