It’s OK That You’re Not OK
The author of this book is capital-A Angry
I am 7 chapters in to this and have stopped listening. The audio performance is nothing to write home about but is otherwise fine, especially considering it is performed by the author. Her emphasis and performance in some places threw me off, but nothing that was a deal breaker. The content of the book, on the other hand, is a struggle for me. For background, I lost my mother to suicide at 11, more than 15 years ago now, and got this book in an attempt to understand more about grief and grieving in a way that may help me pay it forward. So I am coming at this review with the lived experience of real personal tragedy and with 15 years of internal soul searching and external psychological therapy and independent research.
While the message “It’s okay to not be okay” is a good one and I’m very sure there are people who need to hear that message, the author of this book is capital-A Angry. And it comes through very loudly in both the text and the voice performance. I know a lot about being angry during grief. This author is very angry, and was still very angry when she wrote this. I disagree with many of her assertions about grief, even while I agree with many about society and even some about psychology. But the author’s intense anger colors her viewpoint on many things and I actually find it distracting from the content of the book. For a little while I’ll be listening fine and then BAM some statement that is clearly influenced by the author’s personal anger. It’s maybe 50% good content and 50% a woman who is still angry and grieving and is doing so at you. In places I feel like she is actually trying to unload her personal feelings onto me. The book’s not long so I was trying to finish it anyway, but I gave up at the end of chapter 7 after another bit of this emotional whiplash.
People who tell others to just ‘get over it’ or ‘you shouldn’t still be sad’ are insensitive a**holes. They can also be extremely hurtful to the recently bereaved. It is terrible that the author and others she’s spoken to have had this sort of thing said to them. But I think the fundamental misconception this author has is that her experience is with only grief. In fact she asserts that the DSM is wrong to label ‘complicated grief’ a disorder because (paraphrasing) she has nothing wrong with her and feeling the way she feels is perfectly normal and therapists are just out to label you and not to help you. ???!!!
In my layman opinion, the author is not just grieving but also traumatized by the experience of her husband’s death. People can absolutely be traumatized by witnessing death, and her husband’s death was clearly traumatic. “[…] traumatized people become stuck, stopped in their growth because they can’t integrate new experiences into their lives.” -The Body Keeps the Score p.53, Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D. This quote basically sums up my impression of the author. PTSD, survivor’s guilt, self-directed anger, and more are all possibly being experienced by someone in the author’s situation, in addition to the grief of the loss. To me, this is basic information. And a lot of that is NOT going to get better on its own. I don’t know how I’m supposed to take self-help advice from someone who plainly won’t help themselves.
It’s okay to not be okay. You may not be okay for a long time, even. Don’t hold yourself to some arbitrary recovery schedule and certainly don’t let others hold you to that. Grief is hard. Loss hurts in a way that is indescribable. Trauma can take a lifetime. But you should still not let your grief, loss, or trauma define you or direct your life. Your life is yours. Yes, this loss is now a part of it, and yes, this loss will influenced you and change how you see and approach things. But you can’t let it have the wheel of your life. That’s not healthy. If that is what you are experiencing, and you are having trouble taking back the wheel, please seek help.
