I’ve had my current therapist for a touch over five years. I originally started seeing her before I knew I was divorcing. Or before it was confirmed.

I look forward to our sessions and always learn something about myself, learn something about how I am in the world, and how I’m not (yet).

Last session, she told me to do something I wasn’t doing. To give context, I have been grieving a particular loss over months and she has walked alongside me in that, but she has carefully lingered over my avoidance of the language of grief. I’ve used other language, other words, and other ways to talk about what’s been up.

Plus, I’ve been grieving a series of layered losses so me and my therapist have walked through each of them, gently examining me in relation to what was and what is, now, gone.

She told me to enlist my community earlier. She included herself in this. She said other things one of which was that I wasn’t alone and, in effect, that I was acting like I was.

The longer you wait to tell people you need them, the more you’re acting like you’re alone. If you’re the type to figure out loss and grief as if it were similar to other problems to solve, you’re subject to leaving your people out of your emotional life. And you need your people.

I hand this over to you because it’s mobile wisdom. Lots of us grieve lots of things. Lots of people in your life grieve lots of things. Today – the day I’m writing this – I mentioned to a friend a remembrance that the person in her home is “still grieving.” That loss has ongoing impact. Most do.

Give loss credit. Give it all the credit it deserves.

Enlist your people in the process.