This is the best advice I’ve ever read about grief.
It comes from Anne Lamott’s book, Traveling Mercies:
All those years I fell for the great palace lie that grief should be gotten over as quickly as possible and as privately. But what I’ve discovered since is that the lifelong fear of grief keeps us in a barren, isolated place and that only grieving can heal grief; the passage of time will lessen the acuteness, but time alone, without the direct experience of grief, will not heal it.
Like many birthmothers, I gave birth to my baby in secret. Secret losses can only be grieved privately, without support, and that’s more like denial than grieving. More like the desert than the necessary sea.