Religions give mourners structured practices (bardo prayers, psalms for seven days, wakes), while secular culture has only the funeral and worries about wills and costs.
Where it appears 1
Connections
Themes and ideas
More insights from this episode
- Grief cannot be prescribed
Because grief is as personal as the love it reflects, no one can set a time limit or tell another person where to draw the line. Mia still feels a pull to a mother she barely knew, decades…
- Curiosity both heals and haunts
Investigating a loss can lift you out of depression, but without a clear answer it becomes a Gordian knot that tightens the more you look, a chase after an apparition. Be clear about what…
- Grief is not only about death
We grieve lost friendships, ghostings, divorces, pets and miscarriages (the hopes and dreams planted in a future), not just the dead.
- Control can be grief in disguise
Rigid structure, narrow-mindedness and a need to control everything can be a child's defense against grief that hasn't been dealt with internally.
- Fit with your therapist matters
If you don't connect with your psychologist, that isn't your failing: you share more with them than with a spouse, so they must be someone you trust, not a random name from the Yellow Pages.
- Healing starts with asking about yourself
Real change began when Mia stopped analyzing why others were the problem and asked why she was so angry and needed control.