Is There Advice About Dealing With Grief?

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I think there's so many aphorisms that are the bedrock of how society deals with grief that are so dumb and bad. Just as a person who's been through it, I imagine that now people do come to you and they're like, hey, this horrible thing just happened. This is just what I wish I had done. But again, everybody's different and everybody's tragedy is at a different depth and width and length and everything. One is talk about it or find a way to express it somehow so that it's not something that you are keeping to yourself.

There’s one thing that connects all living beings – an experience so profound yet so common. Today’s guest, Michael Cruz Kayne says it best: “It's gonna happen to you, to the people you love – even to the people you hate. Whether we like it or not, we are going to die. For sure.” Yet despite its inevitability, it can be so hard for us to speak about death and loss. So how can we begin to open up about grief, and show up for others who are experiencing it? Michael is a writer, comedian, and the host of the podcast “A Good Cry”. Michael’s son Fisher died when he was just days old. In this episode, Michael talks about his experience and how talking about his emotions helped him heal, and shares times when humor was -- and wasn’t -- able to capture the ineffable seemingly-endless experience of loss. For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts