We all need these skills

Talking about grief isn’t something that’s just for grieving people. These are skills that we need to be human. These are skills that we need in order to show up for all the pain of the world. There is pain everywhere. If you start recognizing how often you hear pain, you know that you need these skills.

We have this really dark and negative idea about, not just grief, but the skills that we need inside grief for ourselves and for others and that’s a weird way to think about it.

It puts grief into this box that we only take out if we have to. If we only talk about these skills when we have to, we're gonna feel really weird when we pull them out to use them.

And I go back to this idea of the fire drill of love, which I really love that imagery.

Why do we practice fire drills?

We practice fire drills so that in the event of an emergency, the skills we need are not new.

In the event of an emergency, we’re already familiar with the territory, we already know where our exits are, we already know to reach for our friends, we already know what to do in that situation, even if we’ve never been there.

They feel scary because we’re not used to them because they bring apart emotions.

But these conversations are the ones that we need to have.

We have to get better at talking about grief and talking about the reality of love.