Not Censoring our Grief Stories

I was recently in a bookstore on vacation with my wife and adult daughter. As we sat at a table drinking our afternoon pick-me-up beverages, both asked if I had seen a particular book on the shelf with books signed by the authors. I had not and went over to look. It was a grief book, not surprisingly, and I brought it back to the table for review. I liked the chapter and section titles and descriptions. I liked the people listed in the acknowledging of “grief guides.” And I liked the title and the subtitle.

The author, Lisa Keefauver, was a social worker, and I have a soft spot for fellow social workers. She had experienced the death of her husband, and it sent her on a journey to better understand both her own grief and how grief is understood, supported, and not supported, at least in the United States. And as advertised, she had signed the book. So, I bought it.

But here’s the problem. It’s the title. It has language that I wouldn’t use around children and that I actually don’t use around anyone. The title does go well with the subtitle, “An Uncensored Guide to Navigating Loss,” and it raises the question about how often the raw reality of grief gets censored.

Grief Stories can be Brutal

After we’ve experienced a great loss, concerned friends and family ask us how we’re doing. Sometimes we get this question from those we don’t even know very well. Whoever is doing the asking, we are left to decide if we really tell them. Do we want to and can we “go there?” Being honest, brutally honest, can be brutal for the teller and for the receiver. Pain and discomfort all around. It’s not easy to lift the lid on great suffering and describe it to another. And it’s not easy to hear and support the sharing of great suffering. Maybe we’ll just say that we’re doing fine.

If, however, we decide that it’s the right time and place and the person is one who not only really wants to know but can tolerate the unvarnished truth, we are faced with the challenge of our vocabulary. There are some words and descriptions that are not acceptable in polite society but are just the best words and descriptions when expressing deep emotions.

When we hit our finger with the hammer, back the car into a pole, drop the keys in the water or down the drain, or accidently hit “send” on that angry email, words like “shucks” or “darn” just don’t do the job. Our feelings are intense and raw and they need intense and raw words.

Why Censor our Grief Stories?

Of course, these examples pale in comparison to deep losses like the deaths of friends and family or losses of health, home, jobs, or relationships. These are huge losses and whatever language we choose for our inside or outside words will not do them justice. Our grief takes us to the edge and sometimes our language and our descriptions of how it feels and what’s it’s like need to go to the edge, too. How does it feel? It feels like (fill in the blank). What’s it like? It’s like (fill in the blank).

Words like hurt, heartbroken, angry, sad, and despair only begin to scratch the surface. We search for words and descriptions that do our experience justice, and then we temper our words and descriptions because, well, why do we do that? Why do we censor ourselves?

Some say that we here in the US are a death-denying society. There’s a good argument against that, however, as we talk about death all the time. Our news stories are about how many people died in a particular event. In our movies, books, and TV dramas, people are dying all over the place. Talk, reports, and stories about death are so common that we can become numb and not even notice how present death is in our lives.

Grief-Denying Culture

Grief is a different story, and there is a stronger argument that rather than a death-denying society, we are too often a grief-denying society. We hear the news story of deaths and quickly move on to the next story. We experience deaths in our electronic and written entertainment and move on to the next scene or chapter. We’re practiced at moving on and not as practiced at pausing and reflecting, experiencing and expressing.

There is a scarcity of spaces and places for really telling it like it is in our grieving not only when it happens but how it is days, weeks, months, and years later. As time goes on after a great loss, there is less and less opportunity and invitation to express what it’s really like in whatever language gets as close as possible to the rawness of our experience.

So, we censor ourselves for our own benefit and the benefit of others, pretending that it is not as bad as it really is. And in truth, most of us are at times accomplices in this mutual conspiracy of silence.

Not Censoring

But it doesn’t have to be that way and things are changing. We are making more safe spaces for the true breadth and depth of our grief stories. We are learning that there is healing in saying the words even when they make us or others uncomfortable. And we are even putting some of these words on the covers of books.

In recent years, my older brother exposed me to a phrase that has been helpful as we think about making supportive space for uncensored stories. My brother’s friend commented to him, tough firmly in cheek, that he was going home to give his wife “a good listening to.”

That is what grieving people often need and always deserve. Permission to tell it like it is without censorship and for friends and supporters who will willingly and without judgment provide them “a good listening to.”

So go forth with ears and hearts wide open for your grieving friends and family, and if we’re the storyteller, let’s leave our censor-selves at the door.

And now it’s time to read that book about grief and how it truly is a “sneaky (fill in the blank).”

Greg Adams is Program Coordinator at Center for Good Mourning: www.archildrens.org

Read more from Greg Adams on Open to Hope: https://www.opentohope.com/after-a-major-loss-so-now-what/

Greg Adams

Greg Adams is a social worker at Arkansas Children's Hospital (ACH) where he coordinates the Center for Good Mourning, a grief support and outreach program, and works with bereavement support for staff who are exposed to suffering and loss. His past experience at ACH includes ten years in pediatric oncology and 9 years in pediatric palliative care. He has written for and edited The Mourning News, an electronic grief/loss newsletter, since its beginning in 2004. Greg is also an adjunct professor in the University of Arkansas-Little Rock Graduate School of Social Work where he teaches a grief/loss elective and students are told that while the class is elective, grief and loss are not. In 1985, Greg graduated from Baylor University majoring in social work and religion, and he earned a Masters in Social Work from the University of Missouri in 1986. One answer to the question of how he got into the work of grief and death education is that his father was an educator and his mother grew up in the residence part of a funeral home where her father was a funeral director. After growing up in a couple small towns in Missouri south of St. Louis, Greg has lived in Little Rock since 1987. He married a Little Rock native in 1986 and his wife is an early childhood special educator and consultant. Together they have two adult children. Along with his experience in the hospital with death and dying and with working with grieving people of all ages, personal experiences with death and loss have been very impacting and influential. In 1988, Greg’s father-in-law died of an unexpected suicide. In 1996, Greg and his wife lost a child in mid-pregnancy to anencephaly (no brain developed). Greg’s mother died on hospice with cancer in 2008 and his father died after the family decided to stop the ventilator after a devastating episode of sepsis and pneumonia in 2015. Greg has a variety of interests and activities—including slow running, reading, sports, public education, religion, politics, and diversity issues—and is active in his church and community. He is honored to have the opportunity to be a contributor for Open to Hope.