“How did you get through it?” I’d ask adoptive parents-to-be. This was a question that I, as a social worker, asked over and over and over again. Whatever or whomever parents do/use/lean on in hard times may be needed again when they had a child placed in their home. I would remind them of the tools that made them resilient, assess their strengths to adjust to a radical new phase of their lives.

And I thought I was helping, I did.

It wasn’t until years later that I realized how callous that question could sound to people who don’t want to be reminded of why they had to become resilient. It was not uncommon for families to come to adoption because of infertility or the loss of a child.

“How did you get through this loss?” I’d ask.

Some said faith or family or friends. Some said staying busy, passage of time, or that they weren’t sure. No matter what their response, I would nod and tell them how having these tools at their disposal would be good for them in the future.

And then I lost a child. And I asked myself the question. And I failed, for months or for years, to have a good answer.

Because there is no good answer. It’s a dumb question.

You get through grief slowly. It’s messy and variable and it takes a lifetime.
When my son died unexpectedly at the age of nineteen, I expected my life to go back to “normal” in two months. Someone approached me to volunteer on a political campaign and I suggested they call back in the New Year—only a few weeks after the fact. I am able to laugh about this absurd expectation for myself now, but at the time, I was genuinely shocked that months after he died, I was still struggling to get out of bed, that I found myself blanking out during conversations, that I quit brushing my teeth because these things simply weren’t important.

I did not know what grief was.

I was connected with a support group—The Compassionate Friends—which was the closet thing to a lifeline I could grab. People wanted to be helpful. I knew that, even when they said stupid things. Friends left gifts on the porch—toilet paper, a stalk of brussels sprouts, casseroles, so many bouquets. The intent was good. And still I hurt so much.

I cried in the car, in the store, in the shower. I yelled at cashiers and at my husband and at the world.
I made a friend who was dealing with the same pain.
I started knitting hats for charity.
I returned to the gym.
I drank much too much, until I didn’t need to be so numb.
I found antidepressants to be more effective.
And then one day I smiled at a song I heard instead of crying.
One day I made a plan for a future date.
One day I cared that I had stopped caring for myself and my husband and I was able, finally, to do something different.

So how did I get through it? I don’t know exactly how to answer it, as “it” isn’t something we, as people, get through. We get shocked and angry and sad and confused and hurt and numb and we get changed. Grief has made me a very different person than who I once was.

I don’t know how I would have asked it differently, but I wish I could have had more compassion at the time I was working with adoptive parents. Maybe there was a kinder way to help them recognize their strengths. I wish somehow humans knew better how to grieve and support grieving people, to talk about it openly, and to avoid some of the platitudes and dumb questions. I wish instead, that I could have held their hands and told them I was sorry that had to hurt, that the people they were now would be okay.

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