Sharing Our Grief Stories Helps Us and Others to Heal
"What Science Knows About Grief" Podcast and Article written by Amanda Petrusich published in the New Yorker on June 22, 2026. It's a brilliantly insightful and personal narrative on grief/loss. Anyone grieving, grief-adjacent, or seeking to understand the endless, suffocating loop of grief, this is for you.
My grief work and journey to erase the pain of Donna's death began within an hour of her death. I called a dear friend to tell him of her passing. He said, "I don't know a lot about grief. What I do know is that to deny it or hide from it will only make it worse".
To that end, I read and wrote extensively. I participated in grief communities. I shared. I experienced my loss in multitudes. Even after all these years, I still wrap my arms around Donna. There's hardly a paragraph. A line. A phrase in this piece that I've not experienced or thought about. The difference is how brilliantly articulate Petrusich is. How her turn of a phrase or her words laid before me new understandings and reinforced how my grief work was valid. She added to the quilt of memories I carry "to accept the unthinkable".
Reflections
The first and truest thing I learned about grief was, we all grieve differently; there is no right or wrong way to grieve. It's personal for each of us. At the same time, those of us who suffer a loss share common experiences. Our Venn of grief events are similar in many ways. How our grief journey/story, when shared, can bring comfort and understanding to others and us.
Immediately Follow Death
Petrusich lost her husband to sudden death at the age of 43. Donna died three and a half years following a diagnosis of Stage IV cancer at the age of 59. During the years following Donna's death, I learned about anticipatory grief. Anticipatory grief was not part of Petrusich’s loss.
Her telling of the immediate time following his death is not unlike mine. She felt weightless. Unable to connect with the ground. Once she left the ED, she began calling family and friends. Which she noted that she must have sounded crazy.
My experience was similar and not. Donna was admitted to hospice 21 days prior to her death. I was home at the time. The palliative care nurse called to say it was time I should come quickly. I missed her passing by a few minutes. Or that's what they told me. I sat with her, broken by what I saw and knew was inevitable. Anticipatory grief was actualized in that moment. Two fellows came in to pronounce death. I remember they were kind, but I tried to comfort them. I guess I did that to deny Donna had died.
I remember leaving hospice, sitting in a nearby park, making phone calls. Two friends who lived close by came to the park and kept me company. Most of this is fog-encased. Some of it is clear. The setting Sun. The fact our wedding and reception were a few blocks away. I headed home, knowing she will never be there. I called a friend from Canada and cried, which I'd not done. Why him?
Petrusich addresses an all-too-real post-death reality, "subsumed by more pragmatic concerns". I was as well. She relates the day-to-day and grief-specific needs. She notes "good" grieving felt like a luxury. Even the banal tasks take on an impossible patina of coping.
I jumped into planning a post-funeral event. I did the funeral planning a week prior to her death. I threw myself into closing her accounts, credit cards, gym membership, etc. I picked the outfit she’d wear for her cremation. After all of that was over. Thank you cards were mailed. I continued to task myself into comfort unsuccessfully. Taking her clothes to Housing Works, my tears broke through. Tasks were temporary. Grief was forever.
The Time After
Petrusich relates the year after his death. Quoting C.S. Lewis in his essay "A Grief Observed”: 'And grief still feels like fear.' (This was a critical read for me early on.)
She relates very clearly how talking about death and grief with another not in the grief matrix creates an 'unpleasant stasis'. I experienced that as well. I was beginning to feel like a one-trick pony to others. Over and over sharing my grief journey. It wasn't long before I related my grief journey in writing, posting, and supporting those grieving. I stopped sharing with those I knew when we talked. It was only fair to them. And me.
The Process
A cartoon in the New Yorker captures Petrusich’s state of mind and heart. I laughed.
Also, there is her memory of Steven Colbert speaking with Anderson Cooper, where Colbert addressed the isolation of grief decades later: "Why is nobody asking me about this? My brothers died forty-five years ago, and sometimes I'll go, 'How come nobody is asking me about Paul?’"
That is so universal. How in grief we want to be asked about our loss. About our memories of those we lost demands to be shared. We want to share to keep them alive for us and others. A simple idea that is missing. Perhaps that is why I write and post about Donna. No one asks.
Petrusich shares her discovery of The Center for Prolonged Grief at Columbia University. The Center offers support, therapy, training, and more. It is one of the most successful organizations helping those struggling with prolonged grief to find comfort and healing. They have a very clear and precise definition of Prolonged Grief.
I'm not sure I suffered prolonged grief. Though my years of writing, sharing, posting, and more might have hinted at it for me. Petrusich’s writing about the center and the work it does is so valuable.
Petrusich finds and engages in E.M.D.R. (Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). It combines elements of talk therapy, exposure therapy, and bilateral stimulation of the right and left hemispheres of the brain. It uses guided eye movements. Her discussion and engagement with the technique is a great read. Filled with much information and her success with it.
In The End
This is all about the science of grief told in a compelling and powerful narrative that we can all access and learn from. She ends the piece with a clear message about our grief. How we can walk with it and not be broken by it.
"To feel better, I had to find a way to value and nurture my grief. To understand it as some invisible but essential system inside me."
True that.