Permission to Grieve

A few days ago I spent a morning on a screen with people who answer the worst calls in their communities — crisis workers, health staff, peer supporters, the relatives everybody phones first. We were there to talk about grief. Not the tidy kind. The kind that follows an overdose, a suicide, a relative who is still alive but changed. Here is what I told them, and what I keep having to tell myself.

Permission

Grief is love with nowhere familiar to go. It is not weakness, and it is not a disorder.

Many of us were raised to be strong, stay busy, and keep it in. Some of that was survival. But we can practice something different: permission.

Your loss is real. Your feelings make sense. You do not have to carry this alone.

And here is the part I want the helpers to hear. We give everyone else that permission all day long, and almost never give it to ourselves.

Grief is what we feel. Mourning is what we do with it.

Grief is the natural response of a whole person to losing someone or something that mattered. It is not an illness to cure. It is something to be carried, witnessed, and honored.

Mourning is the other half — what we do with it. And every one of our peoples has always known how to mourn. Gathering. Feeding. Singing. Sitting with the family. Coming back after the crowd goes home. Those ways are medicine, not history.

William Worden gave us a frame I find kinder than stages: four tasks. Accept the reality of the loss. Process the pain. Adjust to a world without what was lost. And find an enduring connection with what was lost while moving forward in life. That fourth task matters most in our communities. We do not “let go” of our people. We carry them. Ancestors stay relatives. Moving forward and staying connected are the same task.

Loss is bigger than death

We grieve deaths. We also grieve losses no funeral is ever held for. Land. Language. Ceremony. Health. A marriage. A job. Safety.

And this one, for the recovery people reading: we grieve the drinking or using life, and the relatives who are still in it. Sobriety includes grief. That surprises people. It’s real.

The rule is simple. If it mattered to you, the grief is real.

The grief that goes unnamed

Some grief is never given a place to sit. Loss to overdose or suicide, silenced by stigma. Loss of someone incarcerated, or estranged, or still alive but changed. Miscarriage and infant loss. An ex-partner. The relative the family stopped speaking of. Kenneth Doka called this disenfranchised grief — grief that others do not acknowledge or make room for.

It is not rare. In a national survey published last year, more than forty percent of American adults said they know someone who died of a drug overdose. Forty percent. Most of that grief has never been spoken out loud.

When no one names the loss, the griever mourns alone. So this is the job, in our programs and in our families: say the name. Name the loss. Make the grief speakable.

What to say, and what to retire

Show up. Presence matters more than perfect words. Say the name. Say, “I’m sorry. I’m here. Tell me about them.”

Retire these: “At least…” “They’re in a better place.” “Be strong.” “Time to move on.”

Feed people. Sit with people. Come back after the crowd goes home — week six matters more than day one. Ask twice: “How are you really?” Then witness. Don’t fix.

Helpers grieve too

If you carry loss for a living — crisis work, health work, peer support, ministry — the losses stack up in the body with no pause between them. The signs: numbness at work. Dread. Irritability. Feeling nothing at the news of a death. That last one scares people, and it is a sign, not a character flaw.

Helpers deserve the same permission. Debrief. Memorialize the people you lose — a candle, a circle, a moment. Take grief leave when it is offered. You cannot pour from a dry vessel. Mourning is part of staying in this work.

When to reach for more

For most people, grief softens with time, support, and mourning. It never disappears — it becomes carryable. For roughly one in ten bereaved adults it stays stuck: intense yearning and shutdown that do not ease over many months, avoiding every reminder, feeling that life is over a year on. Stuck grief responds to help. Grief counseling and grief groups combine well with culturally grounded healing — science and ceremony work together. And 988 is there to call or text, any hour.

So here is the question I left that room with, and I will leave it with you. Whose grief in your community has never been given a place to sit?

Sources

Worden JW, Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy, 4th ed. (Springer, 2010) · Doka KJ (ed.), Disenfranchised Grief (Research Press, 2002) · Athey A, Kilmer B, Cerel J, American Journal of Public Health, 2024 (RAND American Life Panel, 2,072 adults) · Lundorff M et al., Journal of Affective Disorders 2017;212:138–149 · American Psychiatric Association, prolonged grief disorder (DSM-5-TR, 2022) · 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.