Stronger Together: Why We Should Never Mourn Alone

I’ve seen it countless times. In families, work places, even among circles of friends—when death comes knocking, there’s always someone who believes they must be “the strong one.” Someone who takes it upon themselves to hold everything together, to make sure everyone else is okay while they themselves are quietly falling apart inside. Maybe it’s you. Maybe you’ve heard people say, “You’re so strong,” and maybe you’ve felt the pressure to live up to that.

Let me say this: You don’t have to. You don’t have to be “the strong one.” It’s okay to fall apart. It’s okay to feel every single piece of your grief, just like the folks you’re maintaining the strength for. Not only is it okay but it’s necessary—for your healing, for your soul, and for the well-being of everyone.

I’ve worked with many families who, following a death, fractured in ways that could have been prevented if only everyone felt safe enough to grieve together. It’s a strange paradox, but in trying to be strong for others, we often end up making islands of ourselves, pulling further and further away—sometimes full of resentment. We miss out on the comfort, the closeness, the healing that can happen when we share our grief. So here, right now, today, I want to speak to you, the “strong one.” Let’s take off that weight together.

The more we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, the more we can connect with others, and the easier it becomes to move through our grief.

I was thirteen when my classmate Pam died. The news came over the intercom like an announcement about the lunch menu or a reminder about fire drills. A flat, disembodied voice: “If anyone needs to talk, the guidance counselor is available. Otherwise classes will continue as scheduled.”

At first the room was silent, but then a ripple of whispers spread. The teacher cleared his throat, shifted awkwardly. Someone let out a sob. Someone else stifled a gasp. And me? I sat there, hands clasped in my lap, like I’d seen others in my family do when they lost friends.

I come from a family that prides itself on being “strong” in the face of death. Cry in private. Offer condolences, but don’t make a scene. Hold yourself together so others have something steady to lean on. I had seen it in action over and over again, at funerals and hospital bedsides. Grief, in my family, was something you carried with discipline, not something you spilled into the open.

So when I walked out onto the field at recess, I was prepared to be the strong one. I gathered the friends who knew Pam best and we stood around the goalpost. I volunteered alongside hospice nurses, so I mimicked what I saw them do so many times before, when families came to see their newly dead relative: Talk. Speak the ache out loud. And for five minutes, I held my own grief back, nodding, listening, keeping my voice steady.

But then the stories started tumbling out—the way Pam sang, the inside jokes with her best friend, the way she could never open a juice box without spilling it, the way she wrote her name in bubble letters on every notebook she owned—and suddenly I wasn’t holding it in anymore. The tears came fast and hot, and I didn’t stop them. None of us did. We wept, we clung to each other, we let ourselves fall apart together.

Looking back, it feels almost strange that I was doing that at thirteen—leading a grief circle on a middle school playground. But it didn’t feel strange then. It felt right. Because grief was not a thing to be swallowed whole. It was something to be held, to be seen, to be shared. In those moments, we weren’t islands. We were a shore, rising and falling with the same tide, learning for the first time that being strong didn’t mean standing alone.

First, let’s acknowledge where this idea of being “the strong one” comes from. So many of us have been raised to believe that emotions, especially intense ones like grief, should be kept in check inside the house. Maybe you’ve been told that crying is a sign of weakness. Maybe in your family, vulnerability was seen as a burden. Maybe you feel that everyone has their own issues and you don’t want to add to them. Or maybe, over time, you’ve developed this role because it feels like someone must keep things from completely falling apart when a loved one is dying, or when they’ve passed.

You are the one who arranges the funeral. You make sure the bills are paid, the meals are cooked, the kids are comforted, and everyone else’s grief is managed. And while you’re doing all this, you’re swallowing your own emotions, stuffing them down for later. But let’s be honest: Later rarely comes. And when it does, you’re wondering why no one is available when you need to let those emotions show or when your grief has hardened into something heavy and permanent, sitting in the pit of your stomach, forgotten but ever-present.

You do this because you believe that if you fall apart, everything else will crumble, too. You convince yourself that your family needs you to be their rock, their anchor in the storm. But here’s the truth: You’re not an anchor. You’re human. You have feelings that need to be felt, tears that need to be cried, and memories that need to be shared; and all these things should be done with people you love. Trying to hold all of that in, trying to be the one who never falters is not sustainable.

I remember a stretch of time when I suppressed my grief. I thought I was doing the right thing by bottling up my pain, by putting on a brave face, by being strong so that others could fall apart if they needed. But what I was actually doing was building a dam. And eventually watching that dam break.

Grief will always find its way out. Maybe it shows up as anger or resentment. Maybe it appears as depression, anxiety, or even physical illness. Grief is an energy, and energy, as we know, cannot be destroyed. It will demand to be felt in some form or another.

And here’s the thing—the longer you wait to address your grief, the more tangled it becomes. It doesn’t just go away because you ignore it. It festers. It settles into your bones. It becomes harder to talk about because the world has moved on, and you feel like you should, too. But you haven’t. The grief is still there, quietly shaping the way you experience life, slowly disconnecting you from the people who love you.

I’ve sat with people who’ve held their grief for years, decades even. When they finally let it out, the pain is so deep and raw that it’s like they’re grieving all over again. The uncried tears, the unsaid goodbyes, the moments of anger or sadness that were never given space—they all come rushing to the surface. While that release can be healing, the damage that comes from waiting so long can’t be ignored.

Holding in your grief doesn’t make you stronger. It doesn’t protect your family. It only deepens the pain and creates a disconnect between you and the people who are also hurting. When you pretend you’re okay, you may be telling others that they should be, too. And that’s a dangerous message to send because grief needs to be shared, not suppressed.

There is immense power in vulnerability. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but the more we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, the more we can connect with others, and the easier it becomes to move through our grief. When someone you love dies, the natural response is to feel. It’s to cry, to scream, to mourn, to sit in silence, to be angry—it’s all of it. And each of those emotions is necessary.

Grief is not neat. It’s messy, it’s chaotic, and it comes in waves of all sizes. Some days, you’ll feel like you can handle it; other days, it will kick you to your knees. But the only way I’ve found to truly heal is to let myself feel everything as it comes. To honor my grief instead of running from it. To give my permission to be sad, to be angry, to be confused.

And here’s the thing—when you allow yourself to feel your grief, you give permission to others to do the same. You become a model for what healthy grieving looks like. You show your family that it’s okay to not be okay. That it’s okay to fall apart for a little while. That it’s okay to feel the full weight of the loss. In doing that, you create space for real healing to happen. Now let’s talk about the importance of grieving in community. One of the biggest misconceptions we have about grief is that it’s something we have to go through alone. Grief is deeply personal, but it shouldn’t be private. It’s something that can, and should, be shared. When we grieve together, we find comfort in the fact that we’re not alone in our pain. We connect through shared memories, through shared sorrow, through the shared experience of loss.

There’s something deeply powerful about being in a room with people who loved the person you’re grieving. When everyone is crying, when everyone is remembering, when everyone is hurting, there’s a sense of togetherness that makes the grief a little more bearable. It’s in these moments of collective grief that we find solace. It’s here that we find the strength to keep going.

Your grief deserves the same attention and care that you give to everyone else. It’s through this openness, this vulnerability, that true healing begins.

I’ve seen families transform through the act of grieving together. I know this will heal some of the broken relationships in my own family, I’ve watched as walls of silence and stoicism crumble, replaced by open, honest conversations about what the loss means to each person. In those conversations, in those shared tears, families begin to heal. They begin to understand that grief isn’t something to be ashamed of. It’s not something to hide or suppress. It’s something that brings us together, that reminds us of the love we shared with the person we’ve lost.

Grieving in community means giving yourself the gift of support. You allow others to hold you when you can’t hold yourself. In doing so, you create space for everyone to grieve in their own way, without judgment, without pressure to “move on.”

So if you’ve found yourself “being strong for the others,” I’m asking you to let it go. Let go of the idea that you must hold everything together. Let go of the belief that they need you to be their rock. Because the truth is, they need you to be human. They need you to feel, to grieve, to cry, to share your memories and your pain. They need you to show them that it’s okay to fall apart sometimes, and that in falling apart, we actually come back together in ways that are more honest and more connected.

My advice to you, from the perspective of someone who has walked this road with many, is simple: You are allowed to grieve, and you don’t have to carry the weight of everyone else’s emotions on your shoulders. In fact, the best way to support your family during a loss is to be honest about your own emotions.

I remember Marla. She’d been the “strong one” in her family when her father died and when her little brother was murdered. “It’s just who I am,” she said. When her mother was dying, Marla stepped into her usual role, organizing everything, making sure her siblings were okay, and keeping herself busy so she didn’t have to feel the full weight of what was happening. But as her mother reached the end of her life, Marla became more and more overwhelmed. Her body was tired, her mind was exhausted, and her heart was breaking, but she felt trapped in this role no one asked her to assume.

During one of our conversations, I asked her, “Who’s holding you?” She stared at me for a moment before the tears came flowing. No one had ever asked her that before. She realized in that moment that she had spent her entire life holding everyone else together, but she had never allowed anyone to hold her.

Over the next few days, Marla slowly began to let go of her role. She cried in front of her siblings for the first time. She let herself express her fears and her sadness to whoever would listen. And something incredible happened. Her siblings stepped in to support her. They shared stories about their mother, laughed together, and cried together. For the first time in a long time, Marla wasn’t carrying the weight alone.

After her mother passed, Marla told me that letting herself grieve openly with her family was one of the best things she’d ever done.

If you take one piece of advice from me, let it be this: Don’t deny yourself the experience of grieving. You don’t have to hold it all in. Your grief deserves the same attention and care that you give to everyone else. It’s through this openness, this vulnerability, that true healing begins.

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Excerpt from Never Can Say Goodbye: The Life of a Death Doula and the Art of a Peaceful End by Darnell Lamont Walker. Reprinted with permission from HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Copyright © 2026.