I remember when my dad died & one year had passed.

I updated my status saying happy birthday and someone sent me a message asking me how long until I’m over my dad dying and if it wasn’t ok by now.

I never spoke to her again.

Lesson?
It’s not your business how long grief takes

It’s not your business how people handle learning to live with it.

If you have no important and useful words to offer them, shut up.

Your silence works just fine.

What we will not do is tell them how much they can & cannot do.

Unless you see them going down a path that’s damaging them or their mental & emotional health because of the grief, shut up.

If someone tells 1 story of their dead loved one 3million times, listen & laugh 3M times.

“You’ve said this before” is not something you say to a repeated story.

You can add “oh is it that one u said him or her did this or that, yes i remember. Go on.”

You won’t die, your life span will not reduce.

What you do is give them 3M chances to light up by the same story.

If one conversation turns into them remembering a story about a dead loved one and they go on to tell it, listen.

Go back in time with them, enjoy that moment, live in that story, live in the time of that story. Be grateful that they shared something that precious with you.

What you people lack in this generation is the ability to truly experience people. To genuinely experience people without inserting yourself.

Let people grieve and if listening to their stories, existing in that moment is what they need from u, do it.

Otherwise shut up.

You can listen so much that you’re invested in the story “wait you mean he or she did this & that? What a Wawu.”

Give commentary, follow up on the gist and be truly in that story.

Even if I’m sleepy and someone I care about wants to tell me about a dead loved one?
We pin.

Even if it’s not someone I personally know and it’s just a Dm.

I still pin.

You can state if I stop replying it’s not you o, I’ve had a long day at work so I’m really tired.
But drop the messages anyway, I’ll text back once I’m up.

But please let people grieve and be kinder.

Lastly, I didn’t talk about the comment so some of u can go at her.

I’m not mad, I forgave her a long time ago. Hopefully she knows better now.

If I had processed my grief at the time I would have called her out on it and corrected her. But I hadn’t so disconnecting was easier.

I was in the phase of grief where I processed nothing. If anything stressed me more than the threshold I could handle, I disengaged.

Refusing to engage was easier for me at the time.

So don’t go at somebody that didn’t know any better. Just please learn and do better.

Xx.