Finding Your People

Joining a grief group was my second great leap forward. Other than playing sports and going to a few AA meetings with Rob, I had never done much of anything in a group. I’ve always tended to be a lone wolf rather than traveling in a pack. But I was in so much pain and knew from many years of therapy that I desperately needed to do something to help myself. So I googled “grief support,” found Our House, and after an initial intake meeting…was put on a waiting list. 

Although you wouldn’t know it on the surface, grief is apparently very popular in L.A. 

I’ve told you about my first time walking into a grief group, which was about three months after that initial call to Our House. Now I’m going to tell you about yours. 

The first thing you notice is everyone’s eyes. It’s the same look you see in the mirror every day. It’s the vacant thousand-yard stare, the look of someone who is not there. And that’s the thing: you’re all sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in a circle and, at the same time, you’re all, to varying degrees, detached from reality. 

The two group leaders ask you to briefly introduce yourself with your name, the name of your child and how he, she or they died. Then, one by one, that’s what each member of the group does. You hear one horror story after another—overdoses, suicides, cancers, freak accidents, murders. It’s absolutely brutal and everyone is sobbing. You think why am I subjecting myself to this misery-loves-company ordeal, and how is this going to help me? It takes everything in you not to get up and bolt.

You’re then asked to tell your story in more detail, and after a few moments, you notice that everyone is nodding their heads in tacit acknowledgement, and you can feel that they know exactly what you’re talking about. Broken hearts, you think, recognize broken hearts. And that realization comes as such a relief, like you had been holding your breath all of this time and can finally let it all out.

Here you are with other parents who really understand what you’ve been going through, and sharing your trauma instantly connects you to them. (This phenomenon is known as “collective resonance” if you ever want to impress a roomful of therapists and mental health clinicians.) You’re no longer alone. You’re with your people.

There’s a surprising power in being part of a group. Revealing your innermost thoughts and feelings—no matter how crazy you might think they are—to imperfect strangers who truly understand because they’re pretty much feeling the same way, opens you up like nothing else. Once you realize that this is a safe place, perhaps the only place, where you can bare your darkest and most intimate thoughts, an unshakable trust is established. No one’s judging you here, with the possible exception of yourself. 

You look around the circle of sadness and see all kinds of people that you would ordinarily never be friends with in the real world, but, as you now know, you no longer live in the real world. You’re all trying your best to survive, to just get through one lousy day after another, and these people you’ve never met before are supporting you and hanging on to your every word. This moves you to tears again, and you think maybe you’ll come back for a second meeting. 

You decide to return (good call!), and every other week for the next two years you’re sharing memories of your child, or expressing your anger, guilt, frustration, sorrow, disbelief, longing—whatever it is you’re struggling with or stuck on. You’re also listening and processing, especially in the prolonged silences before and after each question, when your emotions tend to stew in their own juices. You still basically feel like crap, but now you have some fellow travelers along for the ride.

After a while, a truly profound thing begins to happen. You’re about nine or ten months into your group when you first notice a shift. There are now occasional jokes and laughter in your meetings, maybe for the first time. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still plenty of crying. When your child dies, a darkness descends that feels like you’re living in one of those Norwegian towns that doesn’t see the sun for months on end. But all of a sudden a ray of sunlight has entered the room. You think maybe it’s the arrival of hope. 

These total strangers, who have become your friends, are beginning to transform. It sort of sneaks up on you, but when you witness it in others, when you see a tiny spark in their eyes, when you see people coming back to life, well…it can take your breath away.

One of my favorite grief group memories took place before each of our meetings when I’d meet my friend Vic at a Chinese restaurant just a few blocks away from Our House. We were the only two single fathers in the group, and we shared stories about our lost sons while sharing copious amounts of food—including my beloved soup dumplings, in honor of Rob. Both of our boys were adopted and suffered from addiction issues. They were the same age when they died. Vic and I are basically two peas in a pod, which we never ordered because neither of us likes vegetables. 

When we were done, we’d split the check, hop in our cars and drive to our meeting. There was usually a bowl of candy sitting on the coffee table in our meeting room, and for dessert, we’d each take a Hershey’s Chocolate Kiss (or three), which always seemed to make talking about our boys a tiny bit sweeter.

Larry Carlat is the author of A Space in the Heart: A Survival Guide for Grieving Parents.