Episode 20
“Am I Grieving Right?”: Honest Answers to Your Hardest Questions -20
Join host Sarah Peterson, LCSW, for an honest, heartfelt Q&A as she wraps up Season 2 of Enduring Grief. In this episode, Sarah responds to listener questions about the unpredictable journey through loss—touching on what changes to expect from grief counseling, why people grieve differently, and the complex emotions like guilt around finding joy after loss. Expect thoughtful reflections on “the relationship you have with your grief,” practical support for honoring your unique process, and reassurance that there’s no one “right way” to grieve.
Whether you’re struggling with isolation, wondering if it’s okay to laugh again, or searching for coping strategies, this episode offers grounded guidance and encouragement. If you’re seeking grief support resources and real talk about healing after loss, tune in and see how Sarah helps create connection, hope, and understanding for anyone navigating bereavement.
Sarah Peterson is a licensed clinical social worker with over 13 years of experience in medical social work, hospice care and in private practice. As the founder of Clear Mourning, a nonprofit organization dedicated to shifting the culture of grief through innovation, support, and awareness, Sarah brings a deep understanding of grief and loss to her work. Her personal experiences, including the tragic loss of her two-year-old daughter and father, have profoundly shaped her mission to provide compassionate support to others navigating grief.
Sarah holds a Master of Social Work from Portland State University and has extensive experience in both private practice and nonprofit leadership. She also serves as an adjunct instructor at Portland State, runs her own private practice, and provides supervision for licensure candidates.
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Transcript
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Sarah Peterson [:Welcome to Enduring Grief, Healing Practices and True Stories of Living After Loss, where we dive into real, honest conversations about the journey through grief and the support that makes it possible. I'm Sarah Peterson, an LCSW, and in this space I bring my experience as someone who has walked this path alongside my work with my nonprofit, Clear Mourning. Clear Mourning is dedicated to shifting the culture of grief through support, innovation, and awareness. In our first episode, I'll share my personal story and how I've come to this work, why it matters so deeply to me, and how it might resonate with you. Whether you're navigating your own loss or standing by someone who is, this space is for you. Join me as we uncover the stories, the struggles, and the hope that lead to healing. Let's walk through this journey together.
Sarah Peterson [:Welcome back, everybody, to Enduring Grief. I'm so excited to be here and I'm so excited to be wrapping up our season two with you and me and the questions that you guys have sent over. This last season has been incredible, and I can't thank all of you enough for the support you've shared and offered me and just for simply hitting play and listening. It's amazing. And in all honesty, this is probably the most favorite thing I've ever done in my entire career. I love doing this podcast so much. I hope it shows and I hope you're getting something from it. I hope that you're able to share this with people who are grieving or supporting as a tool, as a way to offer support, offer ideas, and be connected to the greater grieving community.
Sarah Peterson [:So, like I said, I wanted to spend this episode answering questions. Maybe you've listened to a lot of episodes, or even all of them, and you're still left wondering a few things. Now, I don't have all the answers, let's be clear about that. But I do have a lot of ideas. So when I answer the questions today, these are not yes or no black and white answers. They're my take on really regular, really normal questions. And, you know, I'm always looking at answering things like this through the lens of, one, my own personal experience and two, my education and experience in the workplace. So let's see, the first question is, when someone engages in grief counseling, what kind of change can they expect? Which is a really good question, because I don't know.
Sarah Peterson [:I know that I get a lot of people who come to me because somebody in their life told them they needed grief counseling. I know I get a lot of people who come to me because they're not sure. What the heck they're supposed to be doing to make this a little less painful. And I definitely get people who come to me because they've never experienced anything like this, and they just kind of want a little bit of a forecast. They want to know what's coming. So, you know, if you think about all three of those things and what that means for change out of grief counseling, it's complicated, right? So the kind of change I hope to see is change that maybe people have become less hopeless. Maybe they find ways to have hope for other things than complete relief from the pain. Because I think hoping for complete relief from the pain of grief is empty.
Sarah Peterson [:I don't know if it ever happens, but I know that I can help people develop a relationship with their grief. Some of the change I also hope to see is that people can anticipate when they're going to have that sudden upwelling of grief. So they can either mitigate it, because now's not the time to completely break down, or understand how to tend to it in a way that's transformative, but also with the promise that it will to pass. Because the thing about these sudden upwellings of grief, you know, like the complete overwhelm, you've been knocked down. Oh, my gosh. And whether or not you saw it coming is irrelevant to how it ends, because it will subside. It just will. And is it going to subside to the point that, you know, you feel no pain? Absolutely not.
Sarah Peterson [:But you will catch your breath, which is really hard to believe when you're in the midst of it, when you're in the throes of it, it's really hard to believe that you will actually catch your breath. And so that, I guess. I don't know if that's change that we could anticipate on a care plan, but it is progress. It is something to hope for during the grief process. And like you guys have heard me say, I believe that grief becomes the relationship you're in with the person who's gone. And so, like any relationship, it's gonna require investigation and intention and even boundaries. And so working with people in grief counseling to understand that they can have boundaries with their grief, which, again, in the beginning, in the acute stages, heck, no. There's just no way you got nothing.
Sarah Peterson [:But as the relationship evolves, there is room to say, not now. I can't do this right now. I won't do this right now. Because these other parts of my life are demanding my attention, which is life. That's the Reality. And you always hear me say, our job is to live in this actual reality in the most meaningful way. And, you know, if we're looking at my reality, it includes children and family and friends and a very robust work schedule and a home and a dog and, you know, all sorts of things that are demanding my attention.
Sarah Peterson [:Where if I'm living my most meaningful life in this actual reality, the actual reality has to include those things too. Now, again, in the early stages, it's really hard to think in terms of all the other parts of you, but through grief counseling, one might start to re engage with those other parts of themselves. So I guess that would be a change too. Is that amidst an acute grief response? I think people are really siloed and isolated into their own grief experience, which is totally normal. But maybe through grief counseling and this sort of investigation that you do together around the other parts of a person, you might start to re engage with those other parts of you which are forever changed but not forever gone. Okay, that's my best answer for that one. This one says, I lost my dad suddenly, and my friend lost her mom after a long illness. We're grieving so differently.
Sarah Peterson [:Why is that? Well, I think if you listen to one of our most recent episodes, we talk about natural death versus sudden loss, and they do sort of inspire these very different physiological responses, neurological responses, and grief responses. Because if we're given the chance to say all the things we need to say, that's very different than having somebody ripped out of your life suddenly. I don't think either person is less sad than the other. One of you may be further into the reality. Yeah, right. Like maybe living in the reality of this situation a little more than. Than the one who's lost the parent so suddenly. Because if we're watching somebody fade in front of us, we are practicing what I just talked about, which was living in this reality in the most meaningful way.
Sarah Peterson [:If you watch somebody die, you are sort of forced. Most of us, I should say not everybody, but most of us are sort of forced into living in this actual reality in the most meaningful way, because we're not only caring for this person, we're watching them be cared for. We're saying goodbye. And that by virtue of that, we are living in this actual reality. And I think that because of that, I don't know, it's not really a benefit. Because of that difference, the grief can look really different. Next one is, is it okay to laugh when you're grieving? Sometimes I feel guilty when I do.
Sarah Peterson [:No doubt that's a tough one, because, yeah, most people do. And I remember many times thinking, what kind of mother am I that I'm laughing at this? I should never laugh again. But again, if we think about all the other parts of us that still exist, changed, but yet still exist, laughing with people we love or at something that's funny might be part of who you are. And you are still a human that can find things funny. And they are not to negate each other. So if I laugh really hard at something, please out there, don't think that I'm still not very sad that I've lost my daughter and my dad. I'm still really sad.
Sarah Peterson [:I also think that this thing is really funny. So getting to a place where you can have both be true, yes, I'm. I'm incredibly sad. But the evidence of that is not based on whether or not I find moments of joy or can laugh really hard. That's the work. And I guess if we go back to the first question around grief counseling, that would be a change I would help and hope people to make of noticing that you don't necessarily have to pick a lane and that evidence of missing them and evidence of the sadness is not driven by isolation and deprivation of joy. It's just there. And you don't have to prove it.
Sarah Peterson [:Dun, dun, dun, dun. You don't have to prove it. So laugh if something's really funny. I think it's really good for your heart. I think it's really good for your spirit. I think it's really good for the people who love you to see you laugh. And I always talk about guilt as being reserved for only one of two things. One, you've broken the law, you're guilty.
Sarah Peterson [:Or two, you hurt somebody on purpose, you knew it was going to hurt them and you did it anyway. I mean, I feel like that's kind of guilty, too. So unless there's one of those things occurring, maybe find a new word instead of guilty, like uncomfortable or surprised or unsure. Because the other part is that it's easier for our system if we're telling ourselves the truth. So if we say I'm guilty, I don't know. By this question, I can tell you don't think you need to feel guilty. Like, you know, there's something like, I don't think I should feel guilty, but I do.
Sarah Peterson [:Oh, gosh. So what about if the word was uncomfortable, right? Like, I'm laughing and it's really uncomfortable. I think our system Just knows how to translate that in a different way than if we're telling ourselves something like, I feel guilty. I know I shouldn't. I know I shouldn't. It's okay to laugh. I've got to be able. Now suddenly we're in this internal conflict around what guilt is and whether or not we should or should not be feeling it.
Sarah Peterson [:So find the word. Find the word that is true. Uncomfortable, surprised, maybe it feels good. I don't know. And have that little pocket statement for yourself around. Whether or not I find joy during moments of the day is not a measurement of how sad I am. Like, you've got to train your brain to believe that, because it's really a slippery slope into thinking, if I'm actually sad, then that means I give up. That's the proof.
Sarah Peterson [:That's the proof that I'm sad, is that I'm giving up. I mean, people tell themselves that story all the time. So don't. Don't tell yourself that story, because that's not proof. The proof that you're sad is that you miss them and you're sad, and you don't need any other kind of evidence. Why do we compare grief? Is there really such a thing as a worse loss? I mean, yeah, my loss is the worst, actually. Cause it's mine. And there's many people and authors and scholars who have cited that quote because it's so true.
Sarah Peterson [:And your loss is the worst because it's yours. And so if we just assume that mine's the worst for me and yours is the worst for you, we don't actually have to compare how bad they are to each other. I think that there's connection and community when we align. A deep understanding driven by empathy and compassion. I know that some parents who lost a child prefer to see me in counseling because there is an unspoken understanding. There's an empathy, a level of empathy there that can't be found with a adult who hasn't lost a child. Now, that being said, people come to me who lost their sibling. I've now lost a sibling.
Sarah Peterson [:I don't know. But there is still a common language of grief that we can share. So if we're willing to set down the comparison and simply drive through the connection of heartache and being human together and. And like Marla always says, it's not your suffering, it's not my suffering, it's our suffering. If we can be together in that in a way that cultivates connection and love, it's not terrible. Now, the trick is to stop it. From slipping into comparison. Because time and time again, I'll hear people say to each other or even to me, like, oh, well, it doesn't.
Sarah Peterson [:You know, my loss doesn't matter because it's not as bad as yours. And it's like, what? Of course it matters. And even as a judgy griever, I can say, of course it matters. And, you know, if you listen to the episode on. I think it is on competitive grief, where Dean talks a lot about the bush that the deer ate in his front yard. I mean, it's really a metaphor for saying, like, we don't get to say whose loss is worse or which feels worse to somebody. And knowing that, like, for me, I know that. I believe if somebody lost their pet, let's say they are devastated, and I would be devastated.
Sarah Peterson [:And it's a devastation for sure. There's grief there. Now, that devastation feels different to me, as you can imagine, than losing my child or my dad. I probably would understand that that would be activating for me and not to compare or compete in the grief, but probably not seek that deep, true empathy connection with somebody whose grief experience is very different than mine. But that's just me. There are a lot of people who can overcome that, and maybe someday I will. To find connection. Despite what type of loss, I'm kind of picky.
Sarah Peterson [:Like, when I design support groups, I want them to be designated for the people who've experienced a similar loss, because I do think each type of loss drives its own language. Now, that being said, it kind of negates what I was talking about just a few minutes ago, which is, you know, that we. We share this common language. It's not our. It's not your suffering or my suffering. It's our suffering. And that's always true. I'm just saying, like, when we're going deep, when we're going in, when we're really showing up raw, just know, am I somebody who can hold the space for all the types? Am I somebody who really feels more connected if I'm with people who've experienced a similar loss, there's no right answer.
Sarah Peterson [:But I think it's valuable to consider. And in all of that, continually setting down the idea that there's a competition, that there's one that's worse than the other, or that yours doesn't matter as much because it wasn't as terrible, or that yours matters more because it was the worst, yours is the worst because it's yours and theirs is the worst because it's theirs. And if we can just operate from that platform to drive connection and empathy. I think that's as good as it gets for any of us, really. Okay, this is a good one. Why does grief feel so isolating even when people are trying to support me? Because only you can do it. You know, only you can do it, and people can support you, and it can be something that you can't picture life without. And you can still feel really isolated because you're the only one who can actually do it.
Sarah Peterson [:And so that, in and of itself is a solo job. There's a book written by Pixie Lighthorse called Prayers for Honoring Grief. We sell it on our website, clearmourning.org and in there, she talks about Prayers for a Broken Heart. I wish I had the book in front of me right now because I would read some of it to you. But in essence, she says this one's an inside job. Like to repair, to tend to, to care for your broken heart is an inside job, which we need all the support in the world so that we have energy to do the inside job type work. So, yeah, it can feel really isolating because you're the only one doing it. And that's just the way it is, unfortunately.
Sarah Peterson [:But like I said, to have the support that helps fill you enough to have the strength and energy to do the inside job type work is everything. And it can soften the edges of the isolation. It can soften the edges of the solo job to know that you aren't technically alone. People care for you and love you and want to make your inside journey a little easier in whatever way they can. So let them and know that this one's an inside job. This is another good one. It's been years since my loss, but I still have hard days. Does grief ever actually end? I mean, I think if you've been listening to this podcast, you've picked up on the fact that.
Sarah Peterson [:No, it doesn't, but it changes. It really changes over time. It does. And I think that's till the end of time. People are going to have hard days. And maybe that's, you know, Mother's Day or Father's Day or Christmas or their birthday or the day in the anniversary of their death or. Or the anniversary of their marriage. You know, there's these marked days, which we talk about in a different episode, and sometimes you just miss them, or you see a picture, you hear a song, or you smell a smell, and you just go, dang it, they're not here.
Sarah Peterson [:And, I mean, I'll still hear my dad was a musician, and there's times in which I'll hear a song on the radio or think of a song in my head, and eight years later, have the instinct to pick up the phone and talk to him about it. I mean, it takes me a half a second to remember, no, he doesn't have a phone up there. And in that moment, then it's like, I guess maybe, I don't know if it always turns into a hard day, but it's a hard time because there's this immediate, damn it, he's not here. I don't have my dad. That sucks. I miss him. And I didn't plan on having that. And I didn't wake up going, oh, today's a grieving day, and it's not even a mark day.
Sarah Peterson [:So, you know, these things catch us off guard. And I think that we all, as grievers, all as supporters, have to be prepared that despite years, decades of time, there's just going to be those moments where you miss your person. And that's what happens, is you feel the grief when you're missing your person. How do I know if I'm grieving the right way? Everything I feel seems wrong or too much. Well, does it feel wrong because it's uncomfortable? Does it feel wrong because it's unsafe? Does it feel wrong because people are telling you it's wrong? Does it feel wrong? Why does it feel wrong? I'd love to know that. Why does it feel wrong? I mean, a lot of times it feels wrong because the universe has evolved into something you didn't want. So that's wrong. And here's how I thought my life was going to be.
Sarah Peterson [:Here's how it really is. Well, that's wrong. I'm supposed to be this kind of a thing with this kind of a situation and these people in my life, and I don't have that. Okay, that's wrong. So if that's what's happening again, we're back to, like, how do I live in this actual reality in the most meaningful way? How do I take into consideration the truth of my environment, the truth of my circle, my life, and then work with it versus, you know, kind of staying in this perpetual resistance? And I'd say the resistance is really normal in the beginning, like, maybe two. I hate to put time frames on things, but I think for a year or two, if you're living in resistance, I think that happens to people. And if you listen to the episode with Elizabeth Johnson, we talk about what it means to let go of the resistance. And I mean, I'm not gonna use the word accept in terms of like, it's okay what's occurred, but actually say, I believe what has happened.
Sarah Peterson [:I believe that this death has occurred. Where a lot of times, especially in the beginning, we're just like, I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. So when we do make the shift from resistance to non resistance, it's like I've stopped not believing it and I've started to believe it, which is its own set of pangs of pain, angst, sadness, it's another layer of the grief. Because to really say, okay, here we go, I believe it. Which if we're going back to an earlier question too, you know, natural death versus sudden loss. I think that the natural death people can believe it because they've watched it unfold.
Sarah Peterson [:They've seen the suffering, they've seen the pain, they've seen the angst related to the terminal diagnosis or, you know, the trajectory of this person's death. So maybe they are not starting from a place of resistance in the same sort of way. Somebody with sudden death might. Somebody who's experienced sudden death might be. So if it feels wrong because you're unsafe, then it is wrong. And get. Call, get support immediately. Don't be unsafe.
Sarah Peterson [:Call 911, call hotline, call a friend, take care of yourself, stay safe. And if it feels wrong because it's just so wildly uncomfortable, then you're probably doing it exactly right, unfortunately, sorry to say, because this is wildly uncomfortable and it's mysterious and it's scary, and we aren't trained as people to know what to do with this. We're just not until it's happening. So I just want to continue to be here for you guys. I want to continue to support what you're doing out there as grievers and supporters. I hope that you'll follow us on social media. I hope that you'll continue to send me questions, because I love answering your questions. I hope that you'll join us at our workshops.
Sarah Peterson [:Visit our website, clearmourning.org and I hope you'll tune in for season three. This is a shorter episode because I just wanted to answer the questions that I'd been getting, and there's quite a few based on the same theme. So if you didn't have your exact question read, I hope that I touched on your theme, which is almost. Well, it's very common to hear questions like, am I doing it right? Yeah, you're probably doing it Right. Is it taking too long? Should I be better by now? No, it's not taking too long. And where can you find some levity? Right. If you listen to the episode with Elizabeth Johnson, we talk about, like I just said, that transition from I don't believe it to, I do believe it.
Sarah Peterson [:There can be lightness there. There can be freedom there. So is it taking too long? No, it's just going to take forever, so don't worry about that. But is it this hard for maybe longer than it needs to be. You get to decide when you want to start finding the softening of the edges, which in and of itself is really vulnerable and scary. And I know that. But that is within you. And even if you just hear me today, even if you just hear that that is the available to you,
Sarah Peterson [:That would just be the greatest, because when you're in this state of disbelief, it's really hard to understand that that is available to you. And I want you to know it is. Well, that's a wrap on season two of Enduring Grief. Thank you for listening, for showing up with your heart, and for making space for the real stories and quiet truths we've shared this season. Whether you've been with us from the beginning or just found your way here, I'm so glad you're a part of this. A huge thank you to all of our incredible guests. Your honesty, your wisdom, and your willingness to speak from the raw places made this season what it was, and I'm so deeply grateful. And thank you, too, to Wine With Your Gyn, another wonderful podcast for generously providing the recording gear that helped bring these conversations to life.
Sarah Peterson [:If this season moved you, helped you, or reminded you that you're not alone, please consider sharing the podcast with somebody who might need it to. You can also follow us wherever you listen and stay connected with for updates on season three and all the beautiful things we're building next. Until then, be gentle with your heart and remember, you're free to grieve.