The Do's and Don'ts

A while ago I was asked to share the “Do’s and Don’ts” of supporting a friend through grief.  This is a tough subject- hence avoiding it this long.  Its tough because grief is tough.  Its tough because it can be so subjective.  My experience and what was helpful to me could be the total opposite of what someone else needs.  But I do think I have learned a few things about how to be a supportive friend.  

First and foremost: as a friend that is looking to help someone stuck in the arms of grief, don’t disappear.  Grief is a time when you find out who your true friends are.  Your true friends are the ones that will step into the yuck of life.  They are brave souls who don’t shy away from a challenge.  They are the ones that step up, sit with you, cry with you.  It doesn’t take much.  Just your presence- just a bit of normal.  “Normal” takes on a new meaning when you are grieving.  You grasp for it, desperately.  Sometimes just the presence of a loving friend can help you get a sense of “normal” just in that moment.  I have a group of friends that I have written about before.  They are my girls, my tribe.  They didn’t shy away from me in my time of need.  They came as quickly as they could.  They let me tell my story.  They cried.  They let me be me, whatever me was there that day.  I remember many playdates where I barely said anything, just sat there.  But it meant so much to me that I didn’t have to “fake it til I make it” with my friends.  I could come with whatever struggles I had that day and it was ok.  My best friend Corrie and I talked about this a few weeks ago.  She confessed to me how she had no idea what to do or say at that time.  She didn’t know if she should ask how I was doing or try to cheer me up.  But what she did was exactly what I needed.  She kept inviting me to join her.  She kept coming over.  She let me just be in her presence- just a tiny slice of normal. 

Next, be honest.  I remember reading emails and facebook messages from friends who have been in our shoes.  A common thread in most of those messages: people say stupid things.  They say things like “They’re in a better place” or “At least they’re no longer in pain”.  While saying these statements are true, they don’t help.  The cliché statements are just that, cliché.  They are words used to just fill the awkward silence.  They are not sincere.  They are words said out of fear of the situation and not love for the person.  That being said, if you have said those words to me- don’t worry.  I was not offended.  I took the position of “If they are brave enough to talk to me right now, they win- no matter what they say”.  I knew it was so hard just to speak to me.  I gave everyone a free pass.  But my favorite comment that I got frequently was “I just have no words”.  I felt like that was sincere and from the heart.  Again, just being brave enough to say something, even that, was comforting to me.  That was someone saying “I’m trying to hurt the way you hurt for a moment, to be with you in this experience and I just can’t put this into words”.  This is where we lived for a few months- no words.  That response made perfect sense to me.

Next, if you are close enough to know the grieving person’s love language, feed into it.  Gary D. Chapman wrote a book called The Five Love Languages.  The idea is that we all feel love by one or two of 5 ways:

1.        Words of affirmation

2.       Acts of Service

3.       Receiving Gifts

4.       Quality Time

5.       Physical Touch

I’ve grown up taking quizzes to find out my love language.  I’ve taken it countless times.  However, my love language became clearer when I went through this experience.  I now know that my top love language is receiving gifts.  I’m not materialistic but I really love a heartfelt gift that shows that someone was thinking of me.  One of the hardest things about losing a baby (or two) is that you have nothing to hold.  Your mind has a hard time wrapping around the idea of your arms being empty when they should have had two little bundles in them.  My friends fed into that.  We received blankets, jewelry, stuffed animals, etc.   A friend of mine brought me a beautiful painting she created out of her grief for my kids.  I love that she used her creativity as a way to heal and that I have a beautiful painting to decorate my mantle!  To this day I think of my babies when I see cardinals because that is the way she depicted the twins in the painting.  We were also blessed with a meal train.  I never thought meals were that important until I went through this and had months without an appetite.  Who wants to cook when food doesn’t even sound good?  But when something was cooked for me, I knew that I would get a least one good meal in me a day. 

Lastly, check your expectations.  Everybody grieves differently.  There are no such things as “stages of grief” in which you graduate from one level to the next.  There are “phases of grief”.  They are fluid.  You can reach all the way to acceptance one day and be back at anger the next.  Right after it happened, I was in shock.  I reached out to anyone and everyone to hear my story.  I became this social butterfly.  My husband was in awe.  I told my story to anyone who would listen- sometimes I would cry but after telling it over and over it became natural.  It was part of my healing, the more I told my story, the more I accepted what happened.  I think people expected to see me dressed in a black shroud, a blubbery mess.  What they found was a surprisingly cheerful girl.  I was filled up to the brim with the Lord’s presence.  It wasn’t until about two weeks after the twins were gone that the loss truly took its toll.  It was then that I had tons of anxiety about what I should be like in public.  Do people still expect me to be mourning?  Do people expect me to be over it by now (not possible at any time, by the way)?  One of the hardest things about losing the twins was going on with life afterwards.  We lost them on October 19^th.  Their memorial was on Halloween- forever changing that holiday.  Thanksgiving and Christmas soon followed.  We had plans for Thanksgiving at my inlaws and Christmas at my parent’s house.  I’ll never forget loading the car to go to Florida for Thanksgiving.  Just as we got it all done and Trey was strapped in his car seat, I had a full-on panic attack.  I could not leave the house.  I couldn’t deal with celebrating when my heart just wasn’t there yet.  I wasn’t ready to put grief aside.  But I was so conflicted because I wanted to be there.  I wanted to be able to celebrate a wonderful holiday with my family.  My husband was so great.  He gave me permission to stay home and rest.  He gave me permission to bow out.  His expectations of me were to just be where I was in the moment.  He allowed me to put my healing first- above any social expectations.  As a friend, meet the grieving where they are.  Give them permission to be themselves.  Give them permission to bow out of activities (holidays).  They will come back to life as you know it.  It just takes time. 

Those are the four major lessons I learned from grief: don’t disappear, be honest, feed into love languages and check your expectations.  When you truly look at them though, those are four lessons that can apply to anything in life.  Those are just ways to be a friend, period.  All friends need to be present, honest, loving, and have proper expectations.  If you look at your life and you see an absence of this kind of friend, be this kind of friend.  If you put your energy into being the friend who is present, honest, loving and has proper expectations, you will see people return these qualities.  This is what I see when I look at my girls, my tribe.  In the beginning I put a lot of effort into these relationships.  I invested a lot of time.  We had very open, honest conversations.  We fed each other- physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  Because we are so open, I can communicate my expectations and they can do the same with me- no judgment.  God gave me the desire for good friends years ago.  He gave me the drive to make good investments into these friendships.  I truly believe that he did that knowing that I would be in this place right now. He knew that years down the road, I would be the one needing support and my investments would come back to me, with interest.