Comment on grief: “The sentence ‘I understand you’ is deleted for me”
Today’s comment from the district newspaper editor Anna Wintersteller deals with the topic of grief. “I understand you” she doesn’t say anymore.
SALZBURG. This week my worldview was shattered. All my life I thought I was a particularly “understanding” person. If someone around me feels bad, I feel bad. If a friend sobs into the phone because of lovesickness, I sob just as loudly. But that’s not all: instead of just listening, there are well-meant hints when the other person is feeling bad
“Maybe a walk will help”, “Here, a handkerchief”, “I’ll be back” are sentences that regularly come out of my mouth. Suggested solutions give hope, I always thought. What I learned this week in conversation with grief counselor Mai Ulrich: I can’t “understand” other people’s grief. I would have to have lived through the same situation for that to happen. And mourners will find solutions themselves when the time is right. I can trust that. Grief is hard to endure, saying nothing instead of “I understand you” is a challenge. A challenge I want to face from now on.
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