A Sorrow Shared...

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Grief is a strange thing. It settles in you like dust, heavy and unshakable, yet there’s a peculiar comfort in knowing that someone else has it too. It’s the kind of thing that you can’t really put into words, but when you’re with someone who’s been where you’ve been, you don’t need to explain. They get it. They know the weight of it. And in that unspoken understanding, there’s a strange solace, a kind of peace. It’s the quiet acknowledgment that this pain, this heaviness, isn’t something you have to carry alone.

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But still, there’s the rest of the world, the world outside the quiet spaces of those who understand. They look away. It’s almost as if grief is something to be avoided, like it’s contagious. As if feeling it is a sign of weakness, or worse, an inconvenience to others. So we do what we’ve been taught to do. We hide it. We bury it in the spaces where no one can see, in the places where it might not make people uncomfortable. We learn to smile when we don’t want to smile, to speak when we want to stay silent, because there’s a strange need in us to be accepted, even in the face of loss.

And it is a loss, isn’t it?

A loss of what was, a loss of what could have been - your future stolen from you.

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And maybe that’s why we seek each other out. Those of us who are grieving, who are carrying this weight of sorrow that the world insists should be hidden away.

We find each other because there’s some comfort in the shared silence, in knowing that someone else can bear witness to the heaviness. Because you can tell them, "I don’t know what to do," and they won’t try to fix it. They won’t offer you advice or pretend like time will heal anything. They’ll just sit with you in it. And somehow, in that sitting, you both find a little bit of peace. It’s the kind of peace that comes not from resolution, but from the knowledge that you don’t have to explain yourself, that someone else understands.

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There’s a strange thing about grief: it makes you want to disappear, but also to reach out. It’s isolating, but it’s also the thing that pushes you into the arms of others who understand.

You can’t bear to be alone, but you also don’t want to be surrounded by people who haven’t felt it. The ones who look at you with pity, who offer you empty platitudes, who tell you it’ll get better, as if time and distance could erase what you’ve lost. And it’s not their fault, really. It’s just that grief is something they haven’t experienced, something they don’t know how to live with. And so they look away, as if by not acknowledging it, it might somehow cease to exist.

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But in the presence of those who do understand, the weight doesn’t feel quite as heavy. It’s still there, of course, but it becomes something shared, something tangible that you can both carry for a little while. You don’t have to be okay in front of them. You don’t have to pretend that everything is fine, that you’ve moved on, because they know.

They know that there is no moving on.

There’s just living with it, day after day.

And maybe that’s the strange comfort of it all - the understanding that grief doesn’t need to be fixed, just accepted. Not explained away, not smoothed over with time, but simply acknowledged.

In those moments, there is solace, I promise.

And so we try to find each other, the ones who understand, because in their presence, there’s a quiet truth: we’re not alone in this.

Believe me when I say, I understand.