What to Say to Someone Grieving

Recently, I wrote a reflection for the Center for Mindful Psychotherapy’s blog on what to say to someone grieving, rooted in my own lived experience of loss. No two people grieve alike, so this is an offering or series of suggestions, rather than an “always applicable” how to guide. I hope you find something in here that sparks a way to support someone in your life or feel a sense of validation with your own experience. And if not, that’s ok too. In the “huh, not for me” I hope a deeper sense of your own self understanding unfolds from this:

Despite being a therapist who specializes in grief and has experienced my own losses, there are times when someone in my life suffers a loss and I find myself frantically trying to find the “right words” to show them support. This happened a year ago and, in a moment of uncertainty, I took my question to google. The results were terrible, predominantly clichés that I remember hating when I experienced the sudden loss of my father 16 years ago. Sayings like “They are in a better place,” “Everything happens for a reason”, or “Time heals all wounds.”

I ran a grief group a few years ago and one of our most engaging nights stemmed from a conversation about so many of those popular “grief” sayings. They may come from a good place, but can make those grieving end up feeling really empty, isolated, and dismissed. So if perhaps an uncertain Google search has brought you here, I want to offer up some alternatives of what you can say to someone grieving.