What’s become really loud to me as I’ve gone through the profound grief of losing my brother is just how grief-illiterate our society is. Maybe I wasn’t in a position to recognize it after the losses I experienced before, but going through this has made it impossible not to noti
The excuses. The silence. The robotic or awkward things people say because they don’t know how to comfort you. The avoidance. The discomfort. The pressure to grieve in a way that makes other people feel more comfortable. There is so much about grief that people simply don’t understand.
So, these are some of the things I’ve learned about grief that I wish more people understood.
Read the Room
Stop and think about what you say and how you act around someone who is grieving. Sometimes, it’s the people in your life who you THINK should have the most social awareness who surprise you the most. And honestly, sometimes it’s your own people who piss you off the most.
When someone has lost a loved one, not everything needs to be about you. Think before you speak. Pay attention to the situation you’re in and the person standing in front of you. Don’t say or do things that center yourself when someone else is grieving.
READ THE ROOM.
Stop Walking on Eggshells
I feel like people treat you with kid gloves when you’re grieving. We’re not that fragile. I’ve noticed that when people refer to Austin’s death, they’ll say something like, “when that happened.”
Just say my brother died.
That’s what happened.
He died.
It’s okay to say it.
No one knows more than me that my brother is gone. I think about it every single day. You’re not going to trigger me any more than I already am. Trust me.
My brother’s death wasn’t “that event that happened.” He’s not some tragedy you have to tiptoe around. He was my brother. He was someone to me. He was vital to so many people’s lives. When you acknowledge that he died, you acknowledge that he was a person who mattered. He was someone who was loved. He was someone who meant something to people.
It’s also not helpful to never bring up someone’s lost loved one. It’s not hard to ask someone how they’re doing in their grief. I know why people don’t do it. People are uncomfortable. They don’t know what to say. They’re afraid of making things worse. But grieving people aren’t interested in all the reasons you can’t ask a simple question.
In fact, avoiding the subject can make it harder for a grieving person to move forward when the people around them act as if nothing happened. The trauma and pain are already too great. Stop avoiding it. You’re doing more harm than you think when you dance around someone’s death, avoid saying their name, or pretend their loss isn’t there.
You don’t have to have the perfect words. Just acknowledge that it happened. Say their name. Ask how they’re doing. Let them know you remember. Sometimes, that means more than you realize.
“Let Me Know If You Need Anything”
Please don’t say this to someone who is grieving. I know it comes from a good place. People want to help, but when you’re grieving, you often don’t even know what you need yourself.
I don’t know how many times I heard, “Let me know if you need anything,” and every time, I found myself thinking, What am I supposed to say to that? I hate how vague that phrase is. What I needed most was something no one could give me. I needed my brother back.
When someone you love dies, you are in shock. Your brain is overwhelmed. You’re trying to process something that doesn’t even feel real while somehow continuing to function in the world. So when you ask a grieving person what they need, don’t be surprised if they don’t have an answer.
If you genuinely want to help, take the initiative. Bring them food. Check in without expecting a response. Handle something for them. Give them space if that’s what they seem to need. Just show up in whatever way makes sense. And please don’t ask a grieving person a million questions immediately after they tell you someone they love has died.
For me personally, there was nothing anyone could do to make this better. I didn’t need someone to fix it. I needed space. I needed time. And most importantly, I needed people to understand that there was nothing they could say or do that was going to change what had happened.
Losing a Loved One Is a Different Type of Grief
Losing a job, ending a relationship, or losing a friendship can all be deeply painful experiences. They can be battles of their own, and I would never minimize the pain that comes with them.
But they are not the same as losing someone you love.
Comparing those experiences to the death of a loved one can feel almost insulting because it can unintentionally downplay the permanence and finality of death. With many painful life experiences, there is the possibility of healing, rebuilding, and eventually moving forward. Your life can change. You can grow from it. You can even reach a place where you realize your life became better because of what you went through.
Death is different. I didn’t choose for my brother to die. I don’t get to move on from this in the way people mean when they say “move on.” My life isn’t better without him in it. I’m different because of this. There is no fixing it. There is no going back to the way things were.
He is gone. And I will never get to see him or talk to him again.
That is the part people need to understand about losing someone you love. This isn’t something I’m going to get over. It’s something I’m going to have to learn to live with.
“You’re So Strong”
Not really. You just don’t see me falling apart.
You’d be surprised by how well someone can function while grieving. I can get up, go to work, answer texts, laugh, have conversations, and even have moments where I genuinely feel okay. None of that means I’m not grieving.
There is so much that people don’t see.
You don’t see the moments when I’m alone. You don’t see the thoughts I carry with me every day. You don’t see how much energy it takes to simply keep moving forward when part of you is still trying to process the fact that someone you love is gone.
So when you tell me I’m strong, I understand what you mean. But I don’t feel strong. I’m surviving. And sometimes, surviving is all I can do.
Everyone’s Grief Is Different
Not all grief looks the same, and not all loss feels the same. So please don’t try to compare your experience to mine or assume you know what I’m going through because you’ve experienced a different kind of loss.
If you haven’t lost a sibling, you probably don’t know what it feels like to lose one. And that’s okay. You don’t have to understand exactly how I feel. You don’t have to have the right words or know what to say. You just have to acknowledge that what I’m experiencing is real. My grief is mine. You don’t have to understand it to respect it.
“It’s Okay If You Don’t Want To…”
I know it is.
I’m going to do whatever I need to do to get through this, and I’m not going to worry about whether other people agree with it or feel comfortable with it.
Ask How the Siblings Are Doing
This is very specific to my own experience with grief, but in the earlier months, I came across a lot of conversations about how people often ask about the parents after a loss, but forget to ask about the siblings.
I know it usually doesn’t come from a bad place. Most people understand that losing a child is an unimaginable kind of pain, so naturally, a lot of the attention goes to the parents. But I think it can unintentionally contribute to the idea that sibling loss is the “forgotten loss.”
Losing a child is devastating. But losing a sibling is devastating, too.
We are grieving someone who was a part of our lives, our childhood, our memories, and our future. There is an entire lifetime of memories and experiences tied to that person that we are suddenly expected to figure out how to live without.
And honestly, I never really know how to answer when someone asks me how my parents are doing. I don’t know what’s going on inside my parents’ heads. They put on a brave face, just like I do, but I know they’re grieving just as deeply as I am. I know how hard this is for them, even when they don’t show it.
But I also need people to remember that I lost someone, too. I’m not just the daughter watching her parents grieve. I’m a sister who lost her brother.
Please don’t forget the siblings.
Sibling loss is unfathomable. We are also vulnerable to depression, anxiety, complicated grief, substance use, and even suicide due to the loss of our sibling.
Our grief matters. Our loss matters.
Allow People Space
Telling someone you miss them or haven’t seen them in a while might seem harmless, but when someone is grieving, it can create pressure they simply don’t have the capacity to carry.
During grief, you are already trying to figure out how to get through each day. The last thing you need is to feel like you’re disappointing people because you haven’t been able to show up for them the way you normally would.
For me, it created anxiety. It was especially difficult being around people and feeling like no one acknowledged what had happened. It felt strange to be expected to socialize and carry on normally when my entire world had changed.
Constant messages can also become overwhelming. Seeing notification after notification gave me anxiety, especially when the messages had more to do with other people’s lives and situations than the fact that my brother was gone.
Sometimes, I didn’t need another message. I didn’t need another invitation. I didn’t need another reminder that I hadn’t been around. I just needed people to give me some space to grieve. Sometimes, you really just need to chill and let the grieving person breathe.
Understand That Everyone Is Different
Friends and family should already understand how you react to things, how you process things, and how you handle difficult situations. Grief shouldn’t suddenly change that. I’m not a talker. People who know me should already know that about me. So the constant push to talk about my brother’s death immediately after it happened was overwhelming. I don’t want to constantly talk about the most traumatic event of my life while I’m still trying to process the fact that it happened. I need time to process what I’m feeling, and I don’t process things by talking to everyone about them.
To be honest, if I don’t talk to you about something, it’s because I don’t want to. Maybe I didn’t feel supported in the way I needed. Maybe I didn’t have the energy to explain myself. Or maybe I simply didn’t want to hear another performative response from someone who didn’t know what to say. And that’s okay.
I did talk to the one person I can be completely unfiltered with. The person who doesn’t respond with performative responses, doesn’t try to fix anything, and actually listens to me: Danny. Besides my family, he’s the only person I feel like I can truly talk to about this, and honestly, that’s good enough for me.
Because sometimes, talking to people who haven’t experienced what you’re experiencing can be more draining than helpful. You open up, only to receive a response that leaves you feeling angry, misunderstood, or even more exhausted than you were before.
Not everyone grieves by talking. And not everyone needs the same kind of support.
If you know someone who is grieving, remember who they were before their loss. Their personality didn’t suddenly change because they’re grieving. If they needed space before, they may need space now. If they weren’t someone who talked through their feelings before, don’t expect them to suddenly become that person now. Let people grieve in the way that feels natural to them.
Sometimes the best way to support someone is to stop trying to make them grieve the way you think they should.
Grief Isn’t a Series of Stages
I think one of the biggest misconceptions about grief is the idea that there are five stages you’re supposed to move through in order: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. What a lot of people don’t realize is that the five stages of grief were originally developed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in the context of people who were facing their own terminal illness and anticipating their own death. They were never meant to be a roadmap for someone grieving the death of another person.
And yet, we’ve taken these stages and turned them into a checklist for grief. That’s not how grief works. Grief isn’t linear. There is no timeline. There is no correct order. There is no point where you check a box and graduate to the next stage. Some days, I feel everything all at once... anger, sadness, shock, guilt, confusion, numbness, disbelief.
Sometimes I cycle through an overwhelming number of emotions in the same day. Other days, I feel nothing at all. And then there are days when I feel okay, only to suddenly be hit by grief over something completely unexpected. That doesn’t mean I’m going backward. It means I’m grieving.
Grief can change from day to day, hour to hour, and even moment to moment. You can think you’re doing okay and then hear a song, see a picture, smell something familiar, or remember something completely random, and suddenly you’re right back in it.
And grief doesn’t have an expiration date. It doesn’t stop after one year. It doesn’t stop after five years. It doesn’t stop after ten years.
There will be people who expect you to be “better” by then because enough time has passed. But time doesn’t erase the person you lost. It doesn’t erase the love you had for them, and it certainly doesn’t erase the fact that you have to live the rest of your life without them.
I may learn how to live with my grief differently over time, but that doesn’t mean I stop grieving. I don’t need to be in a particular “stage.” I don’t need to be moving forward on anyone else’s timeline. I just need to be allowed to grieve. Because grief isn’t five neat stages. It’s unpredictable and complicated.
What I Wish People Understood
I don’t expect everyone to know what to say when someone dies. I don’t expect everyone to understand grief, especially if they haven’t experienced a loss like this themselves. But I do expect people to try.
Try to understand that grief is not something you can fix. It isn’t something you can rush. It isn’t something that follows a timeline. And it certainly isn’t something that should make the people around the grieving person more comfortable at their expense. There is no perfect way to grieve, and there is no perfect way to support someone who is grieving. But there is a difference between not knowing what to do and not making the effort to understand.
I’m still learning how to live with the loss of my brother. I’m still figuring out what I need, what I can handle, and what grief looks like for me from one day to the next. And I know this isn’t going to end just because time passes.
A year from now, I will still miss him.
Five years from now, I will still miss him.
Ten years from now, I will still miss him.
I will continue living my life, but I will always be living it without him. So if you take anything from what I’ve written, let it be this:
Remember the person we lost.
Give us space when we need it.
Show up when we need you.
I understand that some of us can be difficult to support (hi, it’s me lol), but I promise we appreciate the people who continue to stick by us, keep showing up, and keep trying to do the right thing, even when we don’t always make it easy.
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