Excerpt from Dr. Jessica Zucker’s New Book NORMALIZE IT: Upending the Silence, Stigma, and Shame That Shape Women’s Lives

This is a short excerpt from Dr. Zucker’s new book NORMALIZE IT: Upending the Silence, Stigma, and Shame That Shape Women’s Lives (run with permission)

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Mila

Cultural responses to grief that create a sense of isolation and pressure for the griever are, more often than not, coming from a “good” place. Grief is painful and uncomfortable, and when someone you love is going through it, it’s natural that your impulse might be to help them move on as quickly as possible, to get them to a “better place” on the “other side” of the pain.

I met Mila nearly a year after her dad died from a long battle with a hereditary form of cancer. She had been particularly close with him; he was the person she’d traveled much of the world with, turned to about crushes in her teens, and called for career advice in her early twenties. During his illness, Mila decided to become his caregiver, moving back to her childhood home and putting her own plans on hold while she nursed him through his rapidly declining health.

After he passed away, Mila braced herself. She was pummeled with wave after wave of grief: the first time she picked up the phone to call him, forgetting momentarily that there would be no one on the other end of the line; the first time she realized he would never meet her future partner; the first holiday she spent without him.

Eight months after her dad passed away, Mila had worked up the courage to do genetic testing to see if she was at risk for the same cancer. The results had nearly dragged her under the surface: she tested positive for the gene. Now she was not only grieving the loss of her beloved father, but also grieving the potential loss of her own future.

Mila was simultaneously consumed with the multilayered grief and perplexed by the responses from her loved ones. Over and over again, she encountered weak assurances offered with the best intentions by friends and family who just wanted to take away her pain, whisk her off to an island of silver linings, see her beautiful smile pasted on her face once again.

“I’m so tired of hearing things like, ‘At least your dad is in a better place, at least he’s not suffering anymore.’ And I swear if another person tells me, ‘Well, at least you found out you have this gene early—you can screen and do all the things in advance to avoid it turning into cancer,’ I am going to lose it,” Mila said, throwing up her hands, the stack of bangle bracelets on her left arm jingling fiercely. “Everyone wants me to look on the bright side, but I don’t want to. Is there even a bright side? I am devastated and scared. And now I am drained because I feel like

I have to constantly pretend that this is not my reality and that everything is going to be fine. Everything isn’t fine and I don’t know if it will be in the future.”

The temptation to try to avoid grief is an understandable one. Why would we want to feel uncomfortable, sad, hopeless, anxious—if we could just not? Why wouldn’t we live in the silver linings if we could? (But, really, are there any?!) The problem is that we can’t avoid pain. Refusing to acknowledge the uncomfortable feelings of grief and loss doesn’t make them go away; it simply makes them worse and leaves those wrestling with these dark experiences feeling more alone. 

Most people understand that you can’t avoid talking about grief entirely. According to a Harris Poll, 89 percent of adults in the United States agreed that everyone should learn to talk about grief. However, even when people understand the importance of normalizing conversations about grief, it’s hard to find the right words; 70 percent said they have a hard time knowing what do or say when someone is grieving. Furthermore, social support—even with good intent—has the ability to be inadequate, unsupportive, or even downright harmful. One study asked participants to rate the level of social support they received after the loss of a loved one—38 percent rated this support as “poor” or “very poor.”

When we’re navigating the rocky terrain of grief, marked by emotional canyons and landscapes that are lush and melancholy one moment and harsh and bitter the next, we often try to steady ourselves with an overemphasis on optimism. We urge each other to “look on the bright side,” say “It could have been worse,” and respond to expressions of grief with statements that begin with a dismissive “at least.” Though some may try to respond this way to offer solace and support, it is often done in a way that attempts to push mourners to move “faster” through the grieving process by using positivity.

Psychologists define toxic positivity as the belief that positive thoughts and positive emotions should prevail at all times, especially when things are difficult, and as a rejection of stress and trauma. In rejecting these experiences, toxic positivity promises to shed the feelings that go along with them if we help those who are grieving to focus on silver linings, platitudes, and the promise that a positive mindset will erase uncomfortable feelings. The trouble is, the difficult emotions are still there, even if we pretend they don’t exist. By ignoring those feelings in the people who are experiencing them, we make them feel invisible. But it’s not just about what’s happening in the griever. By responding to someone in pain with toxic positivity, we’re also ignoring the panoply of feelings that grief and trauma may stir within us.

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Jessica Zucker is a Los Angeles-based psychologist specializing in reproductive health and the author of the award-winning book I HAD A MISCARRIAGE: A Memoir, a Movement. Jessica is the creator of the viral #IHadaMiscarriage campaign. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, Vogue, and Harvard Business Review, among others. She’s been featured on NPR, The Today Show, and Good Morning America and earned advanced degrees from New York University and Harvard University. Her second book, NORMALIZE IT: Upending the Silence, Stigma, and Shame That Shape Women’s Lives, is out now and available everywhere books are sold.