How I started talking about my grief

Topics mentioned: grief and loss, supporting a friend with their mental health

Author: Ryan

About: It can be really hard to know how to start talking about feelings of grief and loss. Ryan shares how he processed his grief when he lost his best friend.

I barely remember the first few months after my best friend passed away. I was weighed down by this cloud of absolute nothing. For me, that was one of the things I never knew about grief. It can be so many emotions - or it can be nothing at all. It can be empty. That's also okay.

Grief isn't a cut-and-dry 'thing' you can put in a box. Often, it's messy. That's how it was for me. There's no single way grief is, and there's no right and wrong about it, either.

There were two main ways that I processed my grief. One was through art. A lot of my artwork from within the first year after I lost my friend was full of his favourite flower. It was a way of connecting to him. I wrote him a letter once, too. I'd definitely recommend that as a good release of emotions.

The second core way I chose to deal with my feelings around my loss was through talking to my therapist. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) was one of the things that kept me together. It taught me how to manage how I felt while at the same time accepting that how I was feeling (and still am feeling) was okay. It was also a place I could keep my friend's memory alive.

One thing I wish I could tell my past self was to talk to somebody about it earlier. Because my friend didn't go to my school, my parents didn't "have to" know. So I didn't tell them for over a year. My close friends knew, but I never talked about him.

In my opinion, it's very important to find somebody you trust to talk to about what you're going through. I shut myself away instead of asking for help and it made things even harder for me. It might feel impossible but opening up for the first time is the hardest part - it becomes easier after that.

Actually, one of the first people I found myself relying on was one of my teachers. I wrote about my friend as someone who had impacted my life in a class assignment and that started the conversation. Having a teacher know was hugely helpful as, for example, it meant that on the anniversary of my friend's death I was allowed to leave my classes any time I needed to.

My suggestion for how to start a conversation around grief and loss is that there's no wrong way to do it. If you don't feel comfortable saying it out loud then a letter, email, text message, social media DM…all of these are perfectly okay ways of talking to someone too. It's a hard thing to bring up, but most people will understand that. Most conversations I had relied on the written word.

If you’re able to send an email it can give you the space to work out what you want to say and how to say it. If you choose to tell a teacher, it's important to know that they may make the decision to tell more senior members of staff. This is so they can make sure the school can support you; it doesn't mean you've done something wrong. From my experience, it helped me a lot.

I'd like to end by saying: it will get easier. It might seem like that will never happen right now, but it will. It's okay if it takes a while. There is support out there when you're ready to seek it.