It’s OK That You’re Not OK.

 I found this book during a time when the world felt like it had been bleached of all color. I was dealing with a loss that felt less like a "sad event" and more like a physical amputation. People kept coming at me with clichés—"everything happens for a reason," "they're in a better place," "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger"—and every time they spoke, I felt like I was being shoved further into a dark hole. I was browsing the "Grief" section of a bookstore, feeling insulted by titles that promised "five easy steps to healing," when I saw those five simple words: It’s OK That You’re Not OK.

I didn't even read the back. I just carried it to the counter like a life raft.

I expected a gentle, soft-spoken book that would hold my hand and tell me that if I just did enough "grief work," I’d be back to my old self by Christmas. I thought Megan Devine would give me a roadmap to "closure"—that mythical place where you stop hurting and start "moving on." I expected a professional therapist to tell me how to "fix" my sadness.

What I got was a revolution. Megan Devine doesn't try to fix you because she starts with the premise that grief is not a problem to be solved; it’s an experience to be carried. Reading this book felt like finally being allowed to breathe. She is a therapist who watched her own partner drown, so she writes with a fierce, protective anger against a culture that tries to "pathologize" love's shadow. She validated the fact that I wasn't "depressed" in a clinical sense—I was just someone whose world had ended. She gave me permission to be "not okay" for as long as I needed to be. It was the first time I felt like my grief was respected rather than managed.

10 Lessons and Insights

1. Grief is Not a Disorder: We live in a "grief-illiterate" culture that treats deep sadness like a disease that needs a cure. Grief is actually a sane, healthy response to a loss of love.

2. The Myth of "Stages": The famous "Five Stages of Grief" were never meant for the bereaved; they were for people facing their own deaths. Grief isn't a ladder you climb; it’s a forest you learn to live in.

3. Acknowledgement Over Advice: When someone is in pain, they don't need a "solution." They need someone to bear witness to their pain without trying to change it.

4. The "Platitude" Trap: "Everything happens for a reason" is one of the most hurtful things you can say. Some things are just terrible, and there is no "reason" that makes the hole in your life acceptable.

5. You Don't "Move On": You don't leave the loss behind. Instead, you slowly build a life around the loss. The grief stays the same size, but you eventually become a bigger person who can carry it.

6. Self-Care is Survival: In early grief, "self-care" isn't a spa day. It’s remembering to drink water, staring at a wall for an hour, or just allowing yourself to not answer the phone.

7. The "Grief Brain": Grief physically changes the brain. It causes memory loss, inability to focus, and extreme fatigue. It’s not "weakness"; it’s your biology rewiring itself after a trauma.

8. Pain Demands to Be Felt: You cannot "bypass" the pain. If you try to jump over it, it will just wait for you later. The only way to live with it is to go through it.

9. Your Grief, Your Rules: There is no "right" way to grieve. Whether you want to scream, stay silent, work 80 hours a week, or stay in bed—your response is your own, and no one has the right to judge your timeline.

10. Love and Grief are One: Grief is simply the form that love takes when its object is gone. To try to "get over" grief is to try to "get over" love.

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