100 - Working together on helping people

A review for 100 issues.

Welcome back! (or welcome!)

“Finding Words in Hard Times” is a newsletter with stories and tools to help you be more comfortable as you help others in hard times.

This is our 100th time together in this newsletter. It’s worth acknowledging.

#griefliteracy

During the last year, I found a term for what I’m doing. Grief literacy.

“Grief literacy, I would suggest, is having words, concepts, skills, processes, and resources as a person, family, and community in order to be helpful to people in time of loss, particularly death.” (074 - Here’s the grief research initiative)

It’s a newish phrase, first articulated in “Grief Literacy: A call to action for compassionate communities” (2020). It isn’t a new concept, however. The idea of learning how to be helpful to each other by understanding grief and loss is probably part of being human.

What may be new is an awareness that supporting each other can be unprofessionalized. As we stop assuming grief is something to be fixed, and we stop telling people to get over it, and we learn to accept talking about grieving and about our loved ones, and we acknowledge that this is hard, we can help and heal.

Teaching is what I do, I guess.

I’ve been working to foster grief literacy for a long time, I think. When I start to learn something, I start teaching.

Nine years ago this month, I started working as a chaplain. And almost immediately started writing about it, offering ways to understand how to be helpful. (e.g. “Adjusting our lives” from 2/17/2016 gave an acronym for making visits: “PEACE is what I need to bring when I go to a room for more routine things. Pray. Enter. Assess. Care. Exit.” If you read 300wordsadaday.com, my blog that’s more about following Jesus, you gradually started reading more about following Jesus in hospital hallways.

Five years ago this month, I published Giving a Life Meaning: How to Lead Funerals, Memorial Services, and Celebrations of Life. I refer back to my own writing every time I lead a service.

Four years ago in April, I published This is Hard: What I Say When Loved Ones Die. Because it’s part of grief packets at our hospital, and because other people find it helpful, and because sometimes I give copies away, there are more than 8000 copies in print.

And then two years ago this month, I started writing this newsletter. And now we’re at 100 issues and more than 500 subscribers.

What I offer and invite you to offer to be helpful to people in loss.

So, what does grief literacy look like, at least in the way that I work? What do I keep saying in all these different ways?

I’m constantly offering Permission. We’re most helpful to each other when we are less about rules for grieving and more about “it’s okay that you can’t think right now.” If you want to be helpful to someone, give them permission to be sad for as long as they need to.

I’m trying to offer Perspective. I offer time perspective, thinking in terms of seconds, minutes, hours, days, years, lifetimes. I offer perspective about different personalities, different cultures, different ages. Though we say “Everyone’s grief is different”, we don’t live that way. And we daily have opportunities to learn about those differences.

Every shift as a chaplain, I try to offer Presence. I tell people that I don’t like people. But I’m aware of the value of being present with people. To sit with someone, to make eye contact, to be here and now. Even if I can’t remember it three days later. And I’m aware of presence as in the incarnation. If “being with” was the way Jesus decided to work, and was then with people in really hard times, “being with” is probably a helpful thing for us to do, too.

I try to be Practical. People who are grieving often say, “What am I going to do now?” Most often, they don’t want an answer. But sometimes, practical steps, practical actions, actual sandwiches, are what is helpful. Though consider saying “try this” instead of “do this.”

I try to encourage people to be Personal. There are websites and resources and articles and loud voices. But what is helpful to many people is a friend that knows their name talking to them. Or sending them a note.

And I remind people that often we don’t need a professional. Which is why helping you be helpful is so important to me.

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Going forward

In the research about the public health implications of grief, I’m increasingly aware of the gap between the knowledge we have about bereavement and the need that you have for support. In some healthcare disciplines, there’s a fifteen year gap between the academic research and the clinical practice. Minding that gap is where I’m trying to work these days.

I wish I could say, “And so, in the next 10 issues of this newsletter, I’ll lay out a plan.”

But I can’t. There’s something about regularly being present when the doctor stops compressions that keeps me from being able to say, “And so, here are my plans for the future.”

So I’ll keep writing and sharing and talking a bit at a time. And together we’ll be more grief literate, more helpful. And more capable of finding words, and silence, in hard times.

Thanks for 100 issues. Thanks for being around.

Jon

And thanks for the coffee. (Or PayPal)

And you can get 20 copies of This is Hard shipped directly to you.