Grief expert David Kessler argues you can grieve people you were never close to, or who hurt you. Grief often isn't about losing someone you had, but losing what might have been: the chance to repair a relationship, deepen it, or start one before they died. You don't need permission to feel it.
Here's something no one talks about. You can grieve someone you weren't that close to. You can grieve someone who hurt you. You can grieve someone you didn't know well. Because sometimes what you're grieving isn't just the person. It's the relationship you never got to have with them. Maybe the parent who was never really there, the sibling you drifted away from, the friend you lost touch with, the spouse who could be challenging, the child who was estranged. And when they die, the possibilities are gone. That's when it hits you. You're not just losing them. You're losing the chance to change it, the chance to fix it, to say what you needed to say, to maybe have the relationship you always thought you'd have time to build. People don't understand that that's grief. They say, oh, you two weren't that close. Or it was always challenging, like that's the only thing that earns you the right to feel pain. It's not. You don't need to have a perfect relationship to grieve. You just need to have cared. And if you cared, this is real. All of it. Every bit of it. Let yourself feel it. You don't need anyone's permission.
