Sticks and stones may break my bones but words alone do no harm. Scratch that, words alone can cause a great deal of harm, especially to someone that is grieving and vulnerable. I do not say this is somebody whose words have been free of harm. I am just as guilty as anyone else. I have used words that have caused harm, some that I know about and others that I don’t. Yet that does not change how harmful or unhelpful a lot of words have been for me to hear or read over the last 18 months.
I know as well that it is so difficult for people that seek to provide words of comfort, as no two grievers are the same. Someone else may find comfort in the very words that made (sometimes still make) my blood boil. I’ve picked a handful of phrases I repeatedly heard, and try to explain why these hurt or were unhelpful. My personal feeling is that a lot of these words are hurtful because they come across as platitudes, rather than a genuine desire to show empathy. And therefore even when well-intended, the impact has often been that I felt further isolated, unable to share my emotions, or my pain was minimised.
- Be strong…
Any hint at a need for strength, whether for me personally, or for my family’s sake, aggravates me greatly. These types of statements communicated a need for me to be superhuman and to “rise” above my pain. Some went as far as to say God wouldn’t give me more than I can handle. As though this is a something that I have been uniquely pre-destined with the strength to endure, rather than the natural pain that any human would feel at losing a loved one so fundamental to their life. In the early days of grief particularly, surely fragility and weakness are the most natural human responses to losing my brother and my world crashing down as a result?
Instead, what would have landed better, is acknowledgement of my feelings and fragility. Compassionate reassurance that I could express how I felt and that it mattered. Because the truth is I was exhibiting strength every single day I got myself out of bed, every day I force fed myself, every moment I leant into vulnerability and expressed my pain, every time I stepped outside of my house, every time I made it through an entire workday. This all took (and still takes!) immense strength. Strength isn’t just keeping everything going as usual, holding your head up, or keeping it together. Strength is also letting everything fall apart, letting the pieces crash to the ground without trying to grasp at them as they fall. And that is far harder than the people urging me to “be strong” could ever realise
- You have an angel/ God needed an angel/ He’s in a better place…
Any variation of these statements instantly told me that the person uttering them was not a safe place for my emotions. I do not want or need an angel, I want my brother here with me. For all of my life. As is entirely reasonable to expect, and as he should have been. Why would an all-powerful and all sufficient God be so needy anyway?
If my brother is in a better place, then that is truly a good thing for him, and I sure hope so. However, that does not take diminish the pain of his absence, of never getting to see him and talk to him again. Of not having him here. I do want to differentiate here between a griever themself expressing that their loved one is in a better place and finding comfort in that, vs someone else trying to force them to accept their loss as a net positive. It is not for a third party to make them believe this and bypass what they may actually be believing and feeling. I have no alternative to offer for this phrasing. I would rather people just express their condolences and leave it at that.
This sentiment would often be paired with other statements that aimed to get me to see the “bright side” whilst inadvertently minimising my pain. I remain resolute in the fact that there is no bright side, you cannot view this with rose-coloured glasses. If there are any positives that people see, they pale as a consolation, I would happily trade them all to have him back.
- He wouldn’t want you to…
I find most expressions of what my brother would or wouldn’t want me to do tricky. Firstly, because they are often uttered by people that don’t know him, so they have a limited basis from which to speak for him. Heck, even as his sister and having known him all my life, I was not in his brain and could not accurately predict every word he would say or every action he would take.
Secondly, there are many things people think he wouldn’t want that he probably would, and vice versa. Finally, I have been forced to do things he wouldn’t like from the day he left this earth, so it makes no sense to me to start using that as a benchmark now as it would be a pretty unreliable one.
With these type of statements, what I ultimately hear is people saying that the way I am feeling is wrong, and that I should be doing something different. What I hear is an attempt to fix what can’t be fixed. And what I would prefer is for people to honestly share that they don’t know what to say. For them to acknowledge that they cannot fix my pain. Nor would anyone expect them to.
- What happened…
I understand that this question can come from a place of shock, as well as from a place of curiosity. However, when it is posed to me as soon as someone finds out my brother, particularly in the early days, it troubles me. In the early days of grief, I was so overcome with shock and disbelief, that I would answer on autopilot. As draining and re-traumatising as it was, it truly felt like a story I had heard somewhere else that I was recounting. Like a plot in a TV series that I was sharing, simply because someone had asked. But since then, as I have become more cognisant, I realise that no one is entitled to know the details of how my brother’s life ended simply because they ask. Particularly people that frankly don’t care beyond satisfying their curiosity and that won’t ever ask me his name or humanise him. My brother is so much more than how his life ended. Ask me about how his life started, how he lived, about him as a person, about the gaping abyss he leaves behind.
What I would have preferred is for people to follow my lead on this, to let me choose if I wanted to (and was ready) to share what happened. Spoiler – if someone had to ask, I most likely wasn’t poised to share. A choice I was unable to make early on, but thankfully I can be firm about today. For people to hold in mind that the mere fact that his life ended and that I am grieving is enough to illicit their compassion. That they can simply offer their condolences and move on, even without knowing further details.
- How’s your mum/ dad/ parents…
There’s so much I could say about this one, but I will try not to. This kind of inquiry into how my parents are coping, with no preceding inquiry into how I am coping, stings. It exceptionally minimises my pain, and paints my sisters or I as comforters or supporters. When we are direct grievers ourselves, situated at the centre of the circle of grief.
Let me be clear that I am not speaking about people that held space for my grief and additionally inquired about how each member of my family was/ is doing. Those people are treasures, and I cannot tell them enough how much I value their support. I am talking instead about people that see me standing in front of them and are oblivious to my pain. That have downplayed my ability to love and consequently be heartbroken by losing a loved one, because of their perceived hierachy of grief and pain.
What I would have preferred is for these people to see me first and acknowledge my pain as the one in front of them, and often times as the one that they know before inquiring about my parents.
Ultimately, while I may have had strong responses to these statements at various points, they did also make clear who was or wasn’t a safe place for my emotions. And who might not be well placed to support me. Like I said in the beginning, I too have spoken words that have caused harm, including to grieving friends or relatives no doubt. So I share these as someone who has gotten it wrong too, and not to shame those that said them. But to illuminate how some of these words made me feel as a grieving person. And to pull back a tiny bit of the curtain that separates grievers from those that want to support them and have not experienced a similar pain themselves. Because how can people know unless we the bereaved let them know?
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