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Screw school pamphlets, unhelpful grief groups, and people saying “sorry for your loss.” It’s time to get real about grief. We’re in this together.

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DO YOU LIKE WHEN PEOPLE SAY "SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS"?
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On our minds
Is it weird that my close friend died and I feel numb?
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8 Useless Things to Say to Grievers
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Should I feel guilty if I hate going to the cemetery?
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Why don’t I get signs from my person who died?
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What we're lovin'
Want to know what actual tears look like?
Want to know what actual tears look like?

Ever wonder what tears are made of? What they'd look like if they were magnified under a microscope?

Rose-Lynn Fisher did. That's why this artist created a book called The Topograpy of Tears, which is an investigation of tears, which are made up of proteins, minerals, hormones antibodies, and enzymes.

Rose-Lynn started the project in 2008, while she was experiencing grief. She wondered whether tears of joy would look the same as tears of sorrow. Would tears caused by cutting an onion look different? So Rose-Lynn collected her own tears as well as those from volunteers and then studied and photographed them under an optical standard light microscope. 

What did she learn about the looks of tears?

Tears look a lot like aerial views of land. Also, every tear she captured had it's own visual qualities or "signature." So even tears of grief look different from one another.

As Rose-Lynn put it, "It's as though each one of our tears carries a microscosm of the collective human experience, like one drop of an ocean."

 

"One Day" and dozens of tissues
"One Day" and dozens of tissues

"One Day" is based on a book by David Nicholls that was then turned into a 2011 movie (starring Anne Hathaway) and then recently was made into a Netflix series (what's next...a Broadway show?).

Anyway, the series is a romantic drama about Emma and Dexter, who meet in college and experience immediate sparks. But it's the end of the school year and their relationship doesn't get a chance to really take off.

Still, they do find their way back to each other, and the series follows their friendship (and screaming matches and romantic flings) over the next decade.

Without spoiling the story for you...grief shows up in a BIG way by the end, and we're telling you right now to have your tissue box(es) sitting right next to you because you'll need it.

What we appreciate is that the person grieving (trying so hard not to spoil the story right now) does such a good job of showing all the feels and how grief isn't just something that we just get over after a few months. It's messy and awful and sometimes beautiful and everything in between.
 

"How Do I Say Goodbye"?
"How Do I Say Goodbye"?

by Olivia, age 17

The song that I think about a lot when it comes to grief is "How Do I Say Goodbye" by Dean Lewis. This song is about how Dean found out about his father's cancer in 2019. It’s about how hard it is to say goodbye to the people we love because there is so much you want to tell them with little time. This song is easy to relate to if you have lost someone close to you. I feel that when you are trying to say bye to someone, you don't always know what to say. 

I love these lyrics:

So how do I say goodbye
To someone who's been with me for my whole damn life?
You gave me my name and the color of your eyes.
I see your face when I look at mine.
So how do I, how do I, how do I say goodbye?
When I couldn't, you always saw the best in me.
Right or wrong, you were always on my side.
But I'm scared of what life without you's like.
And I saw the way she looked into your eyes.
And I promise if you go, I will make sure she's alright.

I can relate to the line where it says that "you gave me my name and the color of my eyes.” My brother looks so much like my dad when he was a teen. I think it helps you to remember them more.

I also like where it says "if you go I will make sure she's alright" because I think that when a parent dies, you want to make sure that the other one is going to be okay. This is a great song about grief and some of the emotions that people go through.

"To Live in this World"
"To Live in this World"

We've been seeing this poigant short poem by Mary Oliver from "In Blackwater Woods" posted on social media, and it always makes us stop and take a deep breath...

To Live in the World

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go, 

to let it go.

On grieving her mom and brother: "I have definitely seen the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows. You don't know how strong you are until you are placed in that kind of moment."

– Jennifer Hudson
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