There are no top trumps with grief.

There are no top trumps with grief.

We were taught this in our Cruse Bereavement Support training. I used to state it plainly when leading Cruse Understanding Your Bereavement Online sessions. I make sure to say it to the clients I support one-to-one.

But it’s a concept that lingers.

We’re so used to comparing ourselves, and measuring how well – or how poorly – we are doing with those around us, or (worse still) those we see on social media or on TV. When it comes to grief, we look around to see where our right to grieve comes in the hierarchy.

This serves no purpose whatsoever.

I supported someone whose child had taken their own life. They didn’t feel they had any right to complain, because the war in Gaza had just started, and mothers were losing children all the time there.

Let that sink in for a moment. They didn’t feel they had the right to grieve their own tragic loss, because of someone else’s.

It’s like we think there’s only so much grief and heartache to go around, and we mustn’t be greedy and claim more than our fair share. You lost your dad to cancer? You get twelve grief tokens. You lost your brother in a car crash? You get nineteen tokens. Unless your neighbour’s son dies tragically, in which case we’re going to need to ask for some of yours back, because they need them more.

I hope you can see how ludicrous this is. And yet we keep doing it. We measure the support and time frame offered to others when they are grieving by how serious we think the bereavement is. In their brilliant book Good Mourning, authors Sally Douglas and Imogen Carn call this Sad Olympics.

But no one is handing out any medals.

It’s very simple. Grief is grief. Pain is pain. Your experience is valid and deserves acknowledgement and support. The specifics are, for this purpose, irrelevant. You don’t have to earn your right to grieve. You don’t have to justify your grief.

You just have to inhabit it.