That Particularly Great Book

I mentioned, in my first post, that there was a particularly good book that I read after my losses, that reframed everything for me. The title is “It’s OK That You’re Not Ok” by Megan Devine. She is on a one-woman crusade to reframe grief and loss in our society. She is “meeting grief and loss in a culture that doesn’t understand.” Megan is a therapist, as well as someone who experienced traumatic loss herself.

When I read that book, I felt understood.

I felt finally understood, by someone other than another bereaved soul, by someone other than my grief therapist. I was five years into my grief at that point. The book offered a new approach to the experience of grief and to helping those of us who have endured traumatic grief or loss in general. As the cover says “she debunks the culturally prescribed goal of returning to a normal, “happy” life” and replaces it with a healthier path. One that “invites us to build a life alongside grief rather than seeking to overcome it.”

I had read books about Transcending Grief, but hadn’t grasped how that was possible, because I was still so unhappy. She wrote, in no uncertain terms, that all the frustration, anger and even disgust, were normal and ok. It gave me permission to feel the way I still did, five years later. ( and to some degree, still do) I found myself in a place of intense loss and the world was continually telling me the “right way to get back” to being someone I would never again be. I wanted to make everyone I knew, read the book!

Devine undoes the stereotypes and all the expectations of society, that add even more suffering, on top of your already broken heart. She comes right out and says it. The book is dedicated to “those who are the stuff of other people’s nightmares.” I like it when people tell it like it is, with no sugar coating.

The book is broken up into four parts.

Part I is about the reality of loss (‘yes, this is all just as crazy as you think it is.”) My favorite quote from the book is “Some things cannot be fixed. They can only be carried.” So good. So true. “There is pain in this world that you can’t be cheered out of.” She talks about why words of comfort can feel so bad, about our broken concept of grief and about our emotional illiteracy. There are so many concepts that made such sense to me.

Part II is concerned with what to do with your grief, about how (and why) to stay alive, about the physical side effects, about anxiety with grief, and also about how good creativity is for those with great loss. (“Pain, like love, needs expression.”) She discusses the skills that are needed to face the reality of living a life entirely upended by loss.

Part III is about friends and family not knowing what to do, when to stay away from painful people and how to help them with do’s and don’ts. “Being dismissed, cheered up, or encouraged to “get over it” is one of the biggest causes of suffering inside grief.” As she says, suffering “rearranges your address book.”

And the Part IV discusses the way forward, the “tribe of after” and companionship. You find your people. You “find a place where your loss is valued and honored and heard.”

I found out I wasn’t the only one who felt like platitudes and advice, even well intended, reduced the situation to something in a self help book.

I wasn’t the only one who eventually stopped talking to family and friends, and just began to pretend that everything is fine. It’s just easier. And the only people who I can talk to about it, for the most part, are my grief therapist and other grieving parents.

When I got the book out to write this, I remembered that I had to read it with pen in hand - there are notes, asterisks, underlining and circling on almost every page. I remembered reading it - I was on vacation at a pool and the person in the chair next to me asked what I was reading, because it must be really provocative.

The book is for grieving people, people that have experienced any type of great loss, and the people who love them. If you are one of those people, I highly encourage you to read it. You will feel acknowledged or you will finally understand how your person feels.

“There’s a difference between solving pain and tending to pain.” And it’s ok that I’m not ok.

PS - She also has a wonderful Instagram feed - @refugeingrief and a Podcast called Here After with Megan Devine