Ask the Blog Team: How Do You Grieve Well With Others Who Grieve So Differently Than You?

Welcome to our Q+A series, Ask the Blog Team. In this series, the Hope Mommies blog team joins together to answer questions that are commonly asked in grief. If there is a question or topic that you have wrestled with in your grief that you would like the opportunity to see how other Hope Moms have processed or answered, we would love to hear from you. You can submit your questions here.

---

Try to have no expectations, but also work on effective communication, especially with those close to you. The main relationship that you cannot ignore differences in is your husband. If you are grieving differently, commit to working through it together, allow him to express his ways of grieving, and accept that rather than trying to make him conform to how you’d prefer him to express his sadness.

I try to give them space to grieve how they grieve. But I also try to communicate how I grieve so they know what to expect from me and how they can support me. A lot of grief is not intuitive for people; it is so helpful to talk through things so no one misunderstands. When I have a strong wave of grief hit, I try to tell my husband, mom, and sisters. I tell them so they don’t feel alone when waves hit them, to remind them that Ginny is still such a huge part of our lives, and so they know that I may need extra grace or support. 

Grace. There is no right way to grieve. I know I probably said and did a few crazy things when I was grieving, and I am thankful for those people in my life who showed me grace and allowed me to get all that raw emotion out without judgment or conflict. Give your loved ones the gift of grace as they grieve. “Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body” (Proverbs 16:24).

Do not compare your grief with another’s. I failed at this a lot, but I have learned that my husband and I grieve very differently from each other. As long as we aren’t sinning in our grief, our differences are okay. He likes to work and stay busy, whereas I end up talking, crying, and writing. He wanted to work while I wanted to talk, and we both had to learn to compromise. However, what I have learned most is to never assume someone is not grieving just because his or her grief may look different than yours. 

For me, this is easy. I don’t want anyone to tell me how I should grieve so I cannot presume to know how others should grieve. Recognizing and accepting that everyone grieves differently is so very important.

You’ve heard it said that men and women grieve differently. But when you and your husband are that man and woman agonizing over the death of your precious child in such different ways, it’s not just a saying anymore. It is a grave reality that will test the very core of your marriage, and will require of you the kind of longsuffering, patience, and forgiveness that God showed us through His Son, Jesus Christ. 

This certainly rang true for my husband and I. We walked through the early days of our grief very differently from one another. Jesse needed to fill his time with people and places to keep his mind and body busy, and I preferred solitude and silence. Jesse wanted to “move on” to our “new normal” quickly, while I wanted to let the heaviness of grief settle over me so I could feel every ounce of missing my babies. I longed for people to mention our losses and speak our babies’ names, while talking about grief made Jesse feel “unmanly.” It only made sense to me to feel the way I was feeling. His emotions and reactions often seemed foreign and wrong to me.

Although his grief looked different from mine, I knew that his heart ached with missing our babies as much as mine did. I had to choose to be patient and understanding with him, and intentional to carve out space for him to grieve in the way that was best for him. He did the same for me. When we served each other in this way, we were able to encourage each other in far deeper ways than would have been possible if we could have insisted on each other’s grief to mirror our own.

By watching Jesse grieve in the way that he did, I was encouraged to engage with people more  instead of withdrawing to always be on my own. As Jesse observed my grieving process, he was encouraged to spend more time being still and reflecting on the lives of our Hope Babies instead of always finding something to distract himself. The Lord used our differences to draw us closer to each other and to Him.

---

Are you a writer who would like to join the blog team? Learn more and apply here.

---

---