A short YouTube talk by Betsy Guerra offering practical, empathy-focused advice on supporting people who have lost a loved one. Guerra shares personal anecdotes (her daughter’s accident and responses from friends) to illustrate that the most important support is simply showing up, asking how someone is, and being willing to tolerate discomfort when discussing grief.
Chapters
People ask me all the time, how do I support someone that has lost a loved one? And that is what I want to talk to you about today. I love to talk. I always know what to say. But when it came to somebody losing someone, I was at a loss for words. And I feel that a lot of people share that in common. Having gone through loss, pain, and grief myself, I have learned what we like to hear from you or how we want you to support us. And that's what I want to share with you. Let me just share a couple of stories. The day after my daughter's accident, my house was crowded with people that loved us. But it was overwhelming. So we hid in the closet. And at some point, I came outside to the kitchen. And when I was walking back to the bedroom, I saw a friend of mine standing against the wall under the thermostat of the ac, just standing there. Everybody else was talking to each other. They were looking at me, wondering, like, how is she doing? What happened? But this girl, she was just standing against the wall alone, not talking to anyone. That has stayed recorded in my core, in my soul, in my mind, in my heart forever. I felt in that moment that she was there for me, just waiting for me to need her. So sometimes it's not about what you can say or do. It's simply about just being there. And you can be there physically. You can be there with a hug. You can be there with a card, a letter, an email, a text. There's so many ways of just being there, showing up. So that's the first thing I want to tell you. Show up. I have another friend that was there the day of the accident. And I have an image of her holding her son tight to her chest, witnessing from afar everything that was going on. Me getting my daughter out of the pool, the ambulance, the paramedics. She's just terrorized, holding her son, looking at us. And I remember at some point, while I was praying with unwavering faith for God to save my daughter, looking at her and having that image of her and the terror that she expressed in her face. That girl never called me. She never reached out. She never sent me a text. And years later, she came to me so that I can support her clinically with her marriage. And I asked her, like, what happened? Why did you disappear on me? And she said that she was so uncomfortable and in so much pain herself that she didn't know what to do. She just pushed back on pain. She pushed back on me. And I remember thinking that many times people say that they don't ask questions because they don't want you to be inconvenienced or feel bad, or they don't want to bring pain to your day as if we forgot about what we lost. But the truth is that they're not worried about making you uncomfortable. They're worried about becoming uncomfortable because you will most likely start crying or sharing something that's painful and they may not know what to do with that. And they may be super uncomfortable and feel inadequate. Inadequate in not having the words to tell you to make you feel better. So many times. And please reflect on this many times when you don't reach out to someone or you don't say how are you? How's your heart doing? How are you hanging in there these days when you don't say that, to not bring it up to the other person, to not make them uncomfortable, it's not about the person that lost the loved one. It's about you. It's about you not wanting to be uncomfortable. So be uncomfortable and ask the question. The other day I was in a fair and I saw a friend, like the mom of one of my kids friends. She was there with her kids having a good time and I stopped and I asked, hey, how are you? Good, good, thank you. How are you? She was going through a divorce and I had learned about this a couple months ago and I wanted to make sure that I was asking her how she was doing with regards to her divorce, which nobody wants to ask. And she said thank you. She hugged me and said thank you as if I would have noticed her, as if I would have felt her heart breaking. So ask the questions and be there and risk being uncomfortable. It will make all the difference in the world for the person that you love who lost a loved one. If this was helpful, please like and subscribe and share with somebody that may benefit from hearing these words. And for more tools or resources you can Visit my website betterwithbetsy.com Sam.
