107 - What do we think we know?

An invitation to learn more about what we know about grieving.

Welcome back! (or Welcome!)

I don’t often ask for help. I’m usually offering help.

But this week is different. I, and we, need your help in learning about how to be helpful.

Please. Five minutes.

Here’s a 5 minute, at most, survey about what we know about grief. Seriously, five minutes or less. And no open-ended questions.

Please take this survey: What research shows about grief.

As you know if you read these words, I want to be helpful in hard times. And I want to help you be helpful.

Part of being helpful is knowing what people know and believe. And helping them learn. And that’s why I’m asking you to be part of a little project. I want to know what you think we know about grief from the research that’s been done.

Asking actual people questions helps actual people.

How do I use what I learn?

A couple years back, I did a small survey. Four questions, some demographics.

One thing I learned was that some grieving people need what I called validation. They need to know that “This is hard” without any of the qualifiers. They need someone to look them in the eyes and confirm that the death, and the grief, and all the things are, indeed, hard.

I probably knew that before. But because of that project I’m able to say to myself, “This is an important thing to do because people who have had loved ones die have said that they needed this.”

These days (in the last two weeks), when I sit with people in really hard moments, I make eye contact, and I tell them that it is hard. That this is, indeed, awful.

Sometimes, often, I offer other things. But I want them to know that I know it’s tough. And I want them to know that there’s nothing wrong with them, other than the thing that is really wrong. Their inability to think, weeks later. Their extreme fatigue, their disrupted routines, your sudden moments of sadness. Those are all human responses to this death.

And the research gives me courage and confidence to be helpful.

That’s why I ask questions. And that’s how this weekly newsletter, “Finding Words in Hard Times” started. Because I learned things in that first survey that I wanted to teach. And some of you have learned things from this newsletter.

That’s why I’d love for you to take 5 minutes on this survey. Because we want to be helpful.

Please take this survey: What research shows about grief.

That’s all this week. A simple request for time.

Thanks.

See you next week.

Jon