There is a specific kind of violence in the phrase, 'You’ll get over it eventually.' It’s not meant to hurt you, but it lands like a door slamming shut on your pain.

I want you to picture a moment from your life where someone looked at you, eyes wide with well-meaning concern, and said, 'At least you still have your health,' or 'Everything happens for a reason,' or my personal favorite, 'It’s been three months; don’t you think it’s time to move on?' Take your time. Let that image sit there. That feeling in your chest? The one that tightens just before you force a smile and nod? That is the weight of being rushed through your own humanity. We live in a culture that treats grief like a problem to be solved, a project to be managed, a tab in your browser that needs closing so you can get back to browsing the rest of your life. But grief isn’t a cluttered inbox. It’s a landscape. And you are not supposed to walk across it in a sprint.

When I was volunteering on the crisis hotline years ago, I learned quickly that people do not heal in linear lines. They heal in spirals. You think you’re moving forward, then you smell a certain perfume or hear a song or see a broken window and suddenly you’re right back at the beginning. It’s disorienting. It’s exhausting. And when society hands you a calendar marked with arbitrary deadlines—three months for a breakup, six months for a death, a year for a loss—it feels like you’re failing a test you didn’t know you were taking. So you start performing recovery. You start acting like you’re okay because everyone else expects you to be okay. You swallow the lump in your throat and say, 'I’m fine,' when what you really mean is, 'I am still holding pieces of myself together, and I need more time.' That’s a lot to carry alone.

Let’s sit with that for a second. Why do we resist moving on? Not because we want to stay stuck. But because the pain, as heavy as it is, has become familiar. It has become part of the architecture of who you are right now. When someone tells you to move on faster, they are asking you to demolish that architecture without giving you blueprints for what comes next. It’s terrifying. Imagine if I told you to pack up your house tonight, leave everything behind, and move into a new home tomorrow. You’d panic. You’d feel unsafe. Grief is the same way. The person you lost, the job you lost, the version of yourself that existed before the trauma—that is your home. Asking you to leave it immediately is an act of emotional eviction. And no wonder you resist. No wonder you feel angry when they push you.

heading: The Violence of 'At Least'

We’ve all heard the comparative minimization. 'At least you aren’t sick.' 'At least you have a job.' 'At least you can have another child.' These phrases are designed to comfort the speaker, not the listener. They shift the focus away from your unique, valid sorrow and onto a hierarchy of suffering. It implies that your pain is only acceptable if it’s the worst kind of pain. If you’re crying over something 'small,' you’re weak. If you’re still sad after 'long enough,' you’re difficult. This logic is flawed. Your pain is not a competition. Your healing is not a race against other people’s timelines. When someone says 'at least,' they are trying to fix their discomfort with your sadness. They don’t know how to sit in the dark with you, so they try to turn on the light. But you don’t want the light yet. You want them to sit in the dark until you’re ready to stand up.

So, how do we handle this? How do we protect our peace when the world keeps checking its watch? First, you have to give yourself permission to be inefficient. To be messy. To be unproductive in your healing. You are allowed to take up space with your sadness. You are allowed to say, 'I am not ready for that conversation yet.' You are allowed to decline invitations that require high-energy social performance. This isn’t weakness. It’s self-preservation. Think about it like a physical injury. If you broke your leg, would your friend tell you to stop using crutches because 'everyone else walks fine'? No. They’d ask if you need help carrying groceries. Emotional wounds are no different. They bruise deeply. They ache when the weather changes. They need rest. Demanding speed is demanding that you pretend the break never happened. And we both know that’s impossible.

Second, practice gentle boundaries. You don’t owe anyone a performance of happiness. When someone says, 'You should be over this by now,' you can try saying, 'I’m healing in my own time, and I appreciate your support.' Or simply, 'That’s not helpful right now.' It feels scary to set these boundaries because we fear losing connection. We fear being seen as difficult. But true community respects your pace. Real friends will adjust to your rhythm. Fake friends will complain that you’re slowing them down. Pay attention to who stays when you stop performing. Pay attention to who leaves when you admit you’re still hurting. Those are the people who matter. Those are the people who hold space for you without trying to fix you. They let you breathe.

Finally, remember that moving on doesn’t mean moving out. It means integration. The goal isn’t to forget the pain or erase the loss. The goal is to make room for joy again alongside the grief. To let the two coexist. You can be sad and grateful in the same hour. You can miss them and laugh at a joke. You can grieve the past and build the future. This integration takes time. It takes patience. It takes you trusting yourself enough to know that you won’t drown in your feelings forever. You will learn to surf them. You will learn to carry them differently. And until then, you are allowed to just be. You are allowed to be unfinished. You are allowed to be a work in progress. That is not failure. That is life. And it is beautiful, even in the messiness. Especially in the messiness.

Take care of yourself today. Be gentle with your heart. You’re doing better than you think. I’m Eloise Clancy. I’ll see you next time.