7 Ways To Offer (Or Ask For) Verbal Support

If someone’s going through it, there are a lot of ways to be there for them.

Years ago, I Googled “What to say when friend is grieving and it is really horrible and bad.” Google came up with a litany of articles, each one telling me what NOT to say: don’t tell them this happened for a reason; don’t tell them everything is OK; don’t tell them this might be fore the best; don’t tell them you can’t imagine how hard this is; but also don’t tell them that you CAN imagine it.

This all seemed obvious to my millennial self, and unhelpful. I didn’t want to know what not to do; I wanted to know what TO do. And I figured that this long list of stuff that isn’t supposed to make anyone feel better is part of why so many people report that they often feel abandoned in their grief; in lieu of saying the potentially wrong thing, the people in a grieving person’s life say nothing. Nothing!

Over the years (and through my own experiences of grieving), I learned that “I” statements are most useful to me, and truthful ones (Like: “I remember the person you lost. Here’s a specific memory. That was so important to me. I feel sad they’re gone.”). But that’s not what works for everyone, all of the time.