“Grief is not asking for solutions—it is asking for room.”

Grief doesn’t just wound the one who carries it. It unsettles everyone who comes near.

When loss enters a room, it changes the temperature. Conversations become cautious. Eyes search for the “right” thing to say. And somewhere in that discomfort, an unspoken gag order slips into place. Grief is allowed to exist—but only quietly, briefly, and in ways that make others feel more at ease.

We learn this quickly.
When we speak honestly about our pain, we feel the subtle recoil. The quick pivot to silver linings. The tidy phrases offered like bandages: It will get better. God has better plans for you. Time heals. These words are rarely cruel. They’re usually sincere. But they are often more about soothing the listener than tending to the brokenhearted.

Grief makes people nervous. It reminds them of their own vulnerability, their own looming losses. So they try to manage it—fix it, frame it, soften it. They tell us what they think we want to hear instead of asking the far braver question: What do you need right now?

And so the gag order tightens.

We edit ourselves.
We shorten our sentences.
We say “I’m okay” when what we mean is “I’m surviving today.”
We learn which rooms can handle the truth and which ones require performance.

But grief is not a problem to be solved. It is a reality to be carried. It doesn’t move in straight lines or obey timelines. It resurfaces on ordinary Tuesdays, in grocery store aisles, in songs we didn’t expect to undo us. And when we are rushed toward resolution, it teaches us to grieve alone.

What most of us need is not advice. Not perspective. Not optimism dressed up as wisdom.

We need permission.

Permission to speak without being corrected.
Permission to ache without being reassured.
Permission to remember without being told to move on.

We need people who can sit in the unfinishedness of our sorrow and resist the urge to tidy it up. People who understand that presence is more healing than answers, and listening is more loving than fixing.

Grief does not ask others to carry it for us. But it does ask them not to silence it.

So if you love someone who is grieving, consider loosening the gag order. Ask instead of assume. Listen instead of explain. Let their grief be as big, as messy, and as long as it needs to be.

And if you are the one grieving—know this: your sorrow is not too much. Your truth is not a burden. You are allowed to take up space with your pain.

Grief spoken is not grief multiplied.
It is grief witnessed.