Grief is the normal response of sorrow, heartache, and confusion that comes from losing someone or something important to you. 

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Grief is a journey one can only take alone. There is no rehearsal for it, no primer courses, it cannot be measured or timed. No one can do it with you, or for you. There is never an end, completion, finish line. There is not one prescribed way to do it, nor is there a tidy process. Grief is messy. Most importantly, grief is something that no one ever escapes. It surrounds us all the time, it is layered in our lives, permeates the atmosphere. It is ubiquitous. There are many types and degrees of grief; there are deep pockets of anguish, intense grief that follows the death of a significant person in our lives. The more important the relationship, the more intense the grieving. In greater and lesser degrees, grief is a continuous process that we navigate throughout our lives.

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Since grief is expected, unavoidable and pervasive, why is it such a taboo subject? Why is it totally ignored, shunned, and hidden? Can it be that grief—in our childish, self absorbed, desperately competitive culture—seems too much like losing and therefore must be refuted? In our death-denying American culture, is grief too much a reminder of death, and therefore like death itself, must it be denied at all costs? The grief that lies at the core of so many of our many problems and inabilities to grapple with daily life goes unexamined by even the people who are trained, in theory, to help us navigate through the accumulated traumas of life.