Grief isn’t the thing that makes life harder, it’s actually there to help you sort through the pain and the mess. But, we often displace our anger at the loss we have encountered, and direct it towards the grief, instead. Please don’t confuse the grief for the loss. The loss is what hurt you, not the grief.

Grief is not something you are punished with. Grief is not an illness. Grief is not a battle. Grief is not a foreign intruder, taking up space inside you against your will. Grief is something that belongs to you. It is a part of you. It has always been there, and will continue to be there.

It’s my opinion that Americans don’t have a taboo around death at all. The taboo is actually around grief. If America had a taboo around death, it wouldn’t be plastered everywhere.

Journalists from the Cincinnati Enquirer covered my work serving my community as a Death Companion in 2018. Article and video are linked inside.

These things won’t make the grief any easier, but they might make the process feel a little smoother. They’re not classes, treatments, or exercises either. They’re just salt, fat, water and heat. In my years working with death, dying, grief and loss from all the angles that I have, I have found four things that tend to work well for 99% of grieving humans. Grieving people need salt, fat, water and heat.

I’ve made a change—I no longer recommend books directly about grief to people that are actively grieving. I used to reply with a selection of educational grief, death and dying books. But, my mind has been changed. I now recommend reading romance to those that are actively grieving, and suggest saving the more academic or education-type books for when the grief has settled a bit.

At a funeral, we become part of a temporary nation of people, founded on the same sad history. Death is what causes the ache in the heart but Shadowloss is what causes tears in the soul. Shadowloss can be the people that betray you, or don’t show up. The people that do show up when they shouldn’t. The people that don’t keep you safe. The systems that set you up to fail. The loss of safety, of family—that breaks the soul. Death comes for us all, but not all of us are visited by Shadowloss.

When you visit a place where you find the dying, you see that it’s also a place where the truth comes out. Everyone’s issues and insecurities bubble to the surface and as an observer, you watch a very important decision being made—to lean into the discomfort of the truth or to run from it. This is where families branch apart, or twist more tightly together—in the face of loss.

Before you read the rest of this column, the most important thing you need to know about sympathy notes is that done is better than perfect. It’s better to send a sympathy note than not to send one at all. Don’t get too hung up on it, and just get it out there. Done is better than perfect. A sent sympathy note is better than an unsent sympathy note.

I’ve seen losses tear friends, families and communities apart. But, it’s not the loss that brings them back together, it’s the grief.

You see, the tragedy is what destroys you, and its the grief that rebuilds you.

The secret for me, at least, is not to pursue happiness, but to pursue joy. You can’t control happiness, but you can control joy. No one can infiltrate the things that bring you joy because joy springs from within, and happiness lives outside ourselves.

Getting to speak at the Exploratorium about food, death and ritual was such a treat. The Exploratorium is a public learning laboratory exploring the world through science, art, and human perception.