03/22/2026
They expect you to collapse at the funeral. You're supposed to cry at the right moments, during the eulogy, when they lower the casket, when someone plays that song. You're supposed to need holding up. Supposed to be inconsolable for a prescribed amount of time, then gradually better in increments they can measure and feel relieved about.
But if you don't cry, if you stand there dry-eyed because shock has turned you into stone, or because you cried yourself empty at 3am for the past six nights, then people start wondering. Start whispering. Start deciding that maybe you didn't love them enough. That maybe it wasn't real grief after all.
I learned this at a young age when my brother died, and I didn't cry at the funeral. Couldn't. My body had locked down, gone numb, protected me the only way it knew how. It didn't feel real to me. Then I heard my aunt say to my mother, almost sympathetically: "She's taking it so well."
Taking it well. Like grief is a test you can pass.
We have these scripts, these unspoken rules about what grief is allowed to look like, how long it's allowed to last, what counts as loss worthy of falling apart over.
Lose a parent and people give you maybe a year. After that, you're supposed to be healing. Moving forward. Getting back to normal. If you're still crying six months later, they start suggesting therapy like it's a character flaw. If you mention them too often, bring them up in conversation when it's not an anniversary or holiday, you become "that person who can't let go."
Lose a grandparent and you get a week. Two if you were close. After that, it's expected. They were old. They lived a full life. Time to move on.
Lose a pet and you get a day. Maybe two if people are generous. After that, you're being dramatic. It was just a dog. You can get another one. As if love is replaceable. As if thirteen years of something waking you up every morning and greeting you like you're the best thing in the world doesn't leave a hole when it's gone.
Lose a friendship and you don't get anything at all. You're supposed to just absorb it. People drift apart. That's life. Never mind that you talked to them every day for five years. Never mind that they knew you better than your family did. Never mind that their absence has rewritten your daily life in ways that make you feel like you're learning to walk again. It's not death, so it doesn't count. Grieve quietly if you must, but don't expect anyone to sit with you through it.
Lose the future you thought you'd have, the marriage that didn't happen, the baby that didn't come, the dream that died slowly instead of all at once, and no one even recognizes it as loss. There's no funeral for the life you thought you'd be living. No casserole brigade for the person you thought you'd become. Just you, alone, grieving something invisible while everyone tells you to stay positive. To be grateful for what you have. To stop dwelling on what didn't work out.
They measure grief by proximity to death. If it's not someone dying, or not someone dying tragically enough, young enough, suddenly enough, then it's not real grief. It's just sadness. It's just life. It's just something everyone goes through so why are you making such a big deal about it?
And God forbid your grief doesn't look the way they expect.
If you're still functioning, going to work, paying bills, showing up places, then you must be fine. Never mind that you're running on autopilot, that you've been dissociating for three months, that you can't remember the last time you felt anything other than numb. You're not falling apart visibly, so you must not be falling apart at all.
But if you do fall apart, if you can't get out of bed or answer emails or pretend to care about small talk, then you're wallowing. Being dramatic. Making it about you. Grief is supposed to be dignified. Private. Something you do quietly in your own time without inconveniencing anyone else with your sadness.
Grieve, but not too much. Feel it, but don't let it interfere with your productivity. Be sad, but not in a way that makes us uncomfortable. Move on, but not so fast that we think you didn't care.
And the cruelest part is that we do this to ourselves too.
I've sat with my own pain and interrogated it like a detective looking for fraud. Is this real grief or am I just being dramatic? Do I have the right to be this sad when other people have lost more? How long am I allowed to hurt before it becomes self-indulgent? Before I need to just get over it and stop burdening people with feelings they didn't sign up for?
I've ranked my losses against other people's and decided mine don't count. My breakup wasn't as bad as my friend's divorce. My job loss wasn't as devastating as someone getting fired with no savings. My grief over a friendship ending isn't as legitimate as someone mourning a death. So I swallowed it. Minimized it. Apologized for mentioning it at all.
And then one day I realized: I've been waiting for permission to grieve. Permission that was never going to come. Because grief has no hierarchy. Your pain doesn't need to be 'tragic enough' to be valid. If it hurts, it matters.
The friend who ghosted you after ten years? That's loss. The version of yourself you can't get back? That's loss. The future you planned that isn't going to happen? That's loss. The pet who died, the place you loved that changed, the person who's still alive but became a stranger, all of it. Loss doesn't need a body count to be real.
And your grief doesn't need to look a certain way to count. It doesn't need to perform on schedule or resolve on someone else's timeline. It doesn't need to be the worst thing that ever happened to hurt like the worst thing that's ever happened to you.
And you don't owe anyone an explanation for it. Don't owe them a performance that fits their expectations. Don't owe them recovery on their timeline. Don't owe them the kind of grief that makes them comfortable or the kind that resolves neatly so they can stop worrying about you.
You just owe yourself the truth: that if it hurts, it's real. And it deserves to be held with the same tenderness you'd offer anyone else who's lost something that mattered.
Even if what you lost doesn't fit anyone's definition of tragedy. Even if no one else understands why you're still sad. Even if you're the only one who knows what you're grieving.
It still counts. You still count. And your pain doesn't need permission to exist.
