The Permission Slip Nobody Gives You (But Everyone Needs)

Somewhere along the way, we decided that the strongest thing a grieving person could do was hold it together. 

Don’t fall apart at the office. Don’t make it awkward at the dinner table. Don’t cry in front of the kids. Don’t still be talking about it three months later. 

Be strong. Be grateful for what you still have. Keep moving.  

Okay-ness 

And so people do. People “perform okay-ness” — not because they are okay but because the people around them need them to be. Because tears make rooms feel uncomfortable. Because prolonged grief makes people wonder if something is wrong with you. Because at some point the world stops making space and grieving person learns to make themselves small inside of their own loss. 

Performing strength for someone else’s comfort isn’t resilience. It’s work.  

Taxing, invisible work. The delicate, daily negotiation of how much pain can be seen, how much emotion someone else can “handle”, when it’s okay to feel something and when it needs to be stuffed back down so we can make it through the next hour/day/year. 

It happens in hospitals. It happens in families. It happens around conference rooms and holiday tables and on particularly average Tuesdays. 

Someone you know loves loses someone they love. And in the weeks that follow someone loses a child. A husband loses his wife. A daughter loses the person who knew her best. And somewhere in those weeks and months and maybe years, the message is delivered — not verbally but emotionally. The time for grieving is up. You need to be strong now for the people who love you. Let’s keep going.  

“I’m fine, really.”  

What they’re saying but can’t: If I told you, I’m not sure you’d be able to handle it. 

So they swallow it. Not because it doesn’t still hurt. Because there is no space for it anymore. 

Giving Permission 

What most grieving people want, and what almost no one ever gives them, is permission. 

Permission to not be okay.  

• Permission to cry, six months later, a year later. Permission to not be over it.  

• Permission to say his name, or her name, without worrying it will make someone else uncomfortable. 

• Permission to fall apart in front of someone who will not try to stitch you back together immediately. 

But that permission doesn’t often come from within. Someone has to give it to you. It’s something we need to hear from outside of ourselves, from someone who says with their words, their body language, their follow-through: you don’t have to be okay for me. 

Be the Presence 

The majority of grieving people will tell you they never got that message. 

Not because their friends and family didn’t love them. But because no one taught us it was okay to say it. Because we conflate composure with healing. Because we see someone getting through their day without breaking down and we think that means they’re okay. Because we don’t want to say the wrong thing so we say nothing at all and our silence tells the grieving person: this is more than you should be carrying. Push it back down.  

Showing up for someone who is grieving doesn’t require a guidebook. Doesn’t even require any experience or expertise on grief. All it takes is showing up as someone they don’t need to perform grief (or lack thereof) for. 

Show up. Stay. Ask if they’re okay and actually mean it when you wait for their reply. Let them say yes or no or maybe or I don’t know. Don’t try to fix or redirect or anything else but listen to them. And if they fall apart let that be okay too.  

That is the permission slip. It doesn’t cost anything to give someone that, but for the person on the receiving end it just might change everything. 

Author, Timely Presence