What Your Grieving Friend Really Wants You to Know (video)

Nothing embodies “grit and grace” quite like a grief journey—and this is true whether the person grieving is you or someone you love.

Grief brings about a rollercoaster of emotions that vary with each individual. No one grief journey is the same as someone else’s. And because of that, it’s important to be sensitive to someone’s emotions and the memory of the person they lost.

This is often difficult, and, if we’re being honest, a bit awkward. Our natural instinct is to reach out and shoulder some of the pain for our friend, to erase some of the sadness that has infiltrated her life. But in doing so, we stumble over our words, offer empty phrases intended to be encouraging, or try to help in a way that makes healing from the pain even more frustrating.

Writer Amber Koehn experienced her own grief journey with the loss of her mom. Although she appreciated her friends’ efforts to make her feel better, Amber struggled to express the type of support that she really wanted and needed to process her grief. Having now walked through the trenches, she shares what things your grieving friend *really* wants you to know about how you can support them through a difficult loss.