The Snot, the Stoplight, and the Uninvited Guest of Grief
The Snot, the Stoplight, and the Uninvited Guest of Grief
Grief. 💭 Such a small word for something that carries so much weight. 🪨 It is layered, messy, and stubborn. At its core, grief is memory. 🖼️ It is the memory of someone you loved 💔, someone you connected with 🤝, or even someone who stirred up emotions like guilt 😔, shame 😳, or hurt 🥀.
I struggled with this month’s Book of the Month 📚 because, honestly, grief sucks. 😩 It is hard, and it is deeply personal. What I experience in grief may look completely different than what a husband 👨👩👧, a child 🧒, or a parent 👩🦳 feels. We can all lose the same person, yet the ways we carry that loss will never be identical. And here is where society makes it worse 🏛️. It tells us there is a right way ✅, and if we don’t follow it, we are doing grief wrong ❌.
But the truth is, there is no warden of grief 🚫, no broker of emotions 💼, no ruler of feelings 👑leading us step by step toward some tidy version of acceptance. Instead, society hands us scripts 📑: plan the funeral ⚰️, shake the hands 🤲, comfort strangers 🫂, as if to say, “Hey, you just lost the love of your life 💞, but it has been a week, so go stand in a line and politely comfort Tiffany, the lunch lady 🥪 your husband always greeted kindly, even though you have never met her before.” Meanwhile, your knees are buckling 🦵, you got to pee, and snot is dripping down your face 🤧.
It took me three different books 📖📖📖 this month before I found one that felt like it really spoke to my grief. To be honest, I am not even sure I have ever fully grieved my losses 🕰️. Some days it feels like I have ☀️, and other days it feels like it just happened 🌑. I think this is why society’s opinions about grief land so heavily for me. It feels like grief comes with an expiration date ⏳, like there is a statute of limitations ⚖️ on missing someone. And when you hit that mark and trust me the collective will let you know 🗣️ when “it’s time to move on,” it feels invalidating 🚫 and lonely 🌫️. It is as if the world is saying that the person who mattered so much to you has already been forgotten 🪦, and you should be done loving them by now.
Reading It’s OK That You’re Not OK by Megan Devine 📕 gave me permission to push back ✋against that. Her writing is blunt 🗯️ and raw 🩸 yet still comforting in the space it allows 🫶. I felt seen 👀 in her words, especially when she described the small, unexpected breakdowns 💥, like crying in the grocery store 🛒 because you reached for your loved one’s favorite deodorant 🧴. That kind of honesty was the first time I thought, “Finally, someone gets it.” 🙌
Her writing also captures the gut-wrenching anguish 💔 that grief can bring, the way it can suddenly take over your entire body 🫀 in the middle of an ordinary moment. You can be sitting at a stoplight 🚦 on a Saturday, listening to “Ice Ice Baby” 🎶 on the way to pick up your kids from practice 🏀, and suddenly it hits 💥. That wave 🌊 of emotion that makes no sense in context but feels all-consuming.
What stood out to me was her clarity 💡 and her suggestions 📝 for how to manage grief in those exact moments, not after it has passed ⏭️, but while you are right in the thick of it 🎯. The idea of holding space for grief while still experiencing it felt profound to me 🌌.
And here’s the thing: grief is not polite 🙅♀️, and it does not care what society thinks 🏛️. It shows up when it wants ⏰, stays as long as it needs 🛑, and has zero interest in our schedules 📅. What this book gave me was permission to stop pretending that grief is something to “get over.” 🚷 Instead, it showed me that grief is something we carry 🎒. And carrying it does not mean we are broken 🩹. It means we loved deeply ❤️, even if it sometimes means snot on our faces 🤧 and tears at a stoplight 🚦.
Reflection for you: ✨ If grief had no expiration date, what would you allow yourself to feel today? 💭
Reference:
📚 Devine, M. (2017). It’s OK That You’re Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn’t Understand……Found it, read it, ugly cried through it. 10/10 would recommend if you want a book about grief that doesn’t feel like you need to use the dictionary to understand it!