When I was five, my best friend passed away in her sleep. At that age, I didn’t fully understand what had happened, and no one explained it to me. All I knew was that someone I loved was suddenly gone and nobody wanted to talk about it. Even now, 10 years later, that grief still feels fresh, like it just happened. I was told that I was “too young to understand” and because of that, it stays with me, buried under years of silence. Sometimes, when I’m alone with my thoughts, it’ll just hit me like a punch in the stomach out of nowhere.
That’s the true danger of isolation and unspoken grief: It settles in deep, making healing feel almost impossible. I don’t need someone to fix it. Even at five, I understood that there was no perfect solution. I just needed someone to talk to, to help me understand, to tell me that I was allowed to grieve, too.
Strangely, I found connection and solace in a cartoon strip created over seventy years ago: Peanuts. In particular, I think of his expression when he lands flat on his back after Lucy pulls the football away: “Good Grief!”
Charlie may say “good grief,” but is any grief actually good?
Charlie’s simple anecdotes tend to have very melancholy undertones, but nonetheless leave readers charmed. He once said, “absence makes the heart grow fonder, but it sure makes the rest of you lonely.” In a single breath, cartoonist Charles Schulz, speaking through the character of Charlie Brown, is able to capture the reality of grief.
When loss makes the heart grow fonder, it brings back warm memories: the best parts, the joy, the tiny details you had missed in the moment. But at the exact same time, the rest of you aches. Everything feels hollow as your daily routines and your sense of normal is suddenly ripped away from you.
As much as we can hope for a utilitarian world where no such pain exists, the truth is that death and grief is all around us. In February 2025, a survey by Britta Grubin found that 86% of people 16 years old and older have experienced grief in some form. Further, the Los Angeles Outpatient Center identified that of the 1,084 participants in a 2019 WebMD survey, nearly 72% experienced grief within the past three years.
As for childhood grief, Judi’s House, an organization that advocates for grieving children and families, reported in 2023 that 1 in 12 kids will experience the death of a parent or sibling by the time they are 18. The very notion of life implies the presence of death. There is no doubt that it remains a force that does not stop for anyone, regardless of their age, wealth, or religion.
But rather than accept that as a fact, society has built a system where grief is feared and kept in until we eventually break. Whether it’s avoiding talking about a family member who passed or awkwardly changing the subject when someone brings up loss, we’re experts at blocking out the essential conversations surrounding grief until they’re nothing but the muffled sounds of an adult talking out of frame in Peanuts. Truthfully, we deserve better. To make a change, we must first examine why our lack of grief literacy manifests as it does, then identify how suppressing grief leaves us feeling worse than before, and finally pinpoint solutions that actually feel like good grief.
The fear behind the silence
If everyone understood the complexity of grief and recognized the root cause of our treating it like it’s taboo, we would be able to healthily cope with loss. But clearly, we don’t. So the question is why do we treat grief with such alarm? The answer begins in societal expectations.
Grief is slow and inconvenient, but the capitalist framework in which we live demands speed and frictionless social transactions: the exact opposite of the grieving process. Our society is constantly trying to create technology that focuses on maximizing speed and productivity. Even since the 19th century with the invention of the telephone, speed has been the center of innovation. Now, artificial intelligence has begun to replace the perceived slowness of human thinking.
Everything has to be fast: fast food, fast technology, fast communication. To put it crudely, there is no question that in our minds, speed automatically equals good. So, when grief makes its way into our lives, people are often expected to “get over it” on a timeline that’s convenient for everyone else.
Most of all, American culture pushes people to rush through their grief. This American mindset on grief has created a major hurdle in our ability to deal with loss. As Dr. Lawrence Samuel puts it, “The notion of one day disappearing is… viewed as profoundly ‘un-American.’” The American dream describes a future where there is limitless possibility and where anyone can find success with hard work. The very idea of death directly contradicts the key selling point of America, as it is uncontrollable, impacts the rich as well as the poor, and no amount of hard work can prevent it from happening. In the United States, three days is the standard length for workplace bereavement leave. To make it clear how little time this is, the United States CDC recommends people with the flu stay home from work at least 5 days after the onset of symptoms. It is accepted that people with a common, mild illness should take more time off of work than the standard amount of leave given after a loved one dies.
However, discomfort with grief comes not only from societal norms, but also the individual experience. It’s common to be extremely uncomfortable when talking about grief because we never know what to say. We’re afraid of saying the “wrong thing” and causing more harm. Lulu Sinclair, a psychotherapist who specializes in grief, notes that we fear making someone feel worse, so we avoid the topic entirely in hopes of making things less painful. Acknowledging the reality of death reminds people of their own mortality, and the idea of simply not existing anymore provokes fear. In a world where we must “stay strong” through the pain, the vulnerability of opening up and talking about the devastating feeling of loss is terrifying for every party involved.
The consequences we don’t see
By suppressing the real emotions of grief and preventing ourselves from fully coming to terms with our grief, we set ourselves up for failure. Nobody is free from grief or death. The pain of loss has to go somewhere, and instead of being processed, it is pushed down all too often. Avoidance behavior is a universal, common response to grief. Putting on a facade and pretending to be OK doesn’t magically resolve grief. In many cases, it exacerbates the effects, becoming detrimental to our health and communities.
Eventually, unresolved grief evolves into something more than just an idea. The National Institute of Health shows that unresolved grief is cruel to our bodies, often morphing into PTSD, depression, and substance abuse. It creates substantial mental health disorders that foster more emotional suppression. A vicious cycle is built where worsened mental health leads to additional avoidance of grief until it becomes too much to bear.
Furthermore, unprocessed grief can lead to social withdrawal and extreme loneliness. When others are uncomfortable talking about grief and don’t know how to respond, it almost seems like a better option for those grieving to keep it to themselves. People grieving may also feel that others “don’t get it,” or may downplay their pain, which can make them avoid sharing what they’re going through.
We try to fit our grief into a neat box, but all it really does is keep us trapped inside that box. We created and accepted the concept of the five stages of grief: a clean and simple framework to shape the process of loss with. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Society treats the stages like a checklist for how grief should be experienced. So when someone doesn’t match the model, they’re treated like they’re doing grief “wrong.” This reinforces feelings of shame, suppression, and isolation.
Refusing to share grief also hurts us as a community. After a large-scale tragedy, we experience what’s called collective grief. But when the world is grieving and that pain has nowhere to go, that mourning is leveraged as a weapon against the most vulnerable.
A 2025 study argues that grief isn’t just a feeling of loss, it’s a powerful tool for “consolidating identity, demarcating moral boundaries, and justifying violence.” FBI data shows that Islamophobic attacks multiplied 17 fold in the year following 9/11, with South Asians, many of whom weren’t even Muslim, heavily surveilled under the excuse of “national security.” Any previous feelings of prejudice were justified when the majority came together. The same happened in 2020.
During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, anti-Asian hate crimes rose 145% in major U.S. cities, according to a study by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino. People of any ethnicities were targeted and assumed to be Chinese for “causing the virus.” By stating a “reason” for targeting certain groups, people were able to justify discrimination. When people are grieving, they look for someone to blame, someone to get mad at. Whether they know it or not, this extensive hate serves as a distraction from the grief that they feel.
The art of good grief
If kids can realize that there’s no “one-size-fits-all” solution for dealing with grief, maybe it’s time for everyone else to start taking notes. With this in mind, it’s worth returning to the five stages of grief. The problem with it is that not only are they just a theory, they were never truly meant for us. Psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross created it to describe how the dying come to terms with their death, not how the living grieve. And even then, the stages weren’t meant to be followed like steps. To truly heal, we must stop treating grief like something with a finish line.
Part of why I love the Peanuts is because it didn’t sugarcoat anything. From Charlie’s pretty clear clinical depression to Snoopy’s anti-war sentiments as he fought the Red Baron from the top of his doghouse, they weren’t afraid to go there. We can look at a few of our favorite Peanuts characters to help us treat grief in all its complexity.
One of the first steps toward navigating grief is accepting that there is no single correct way to experience it. In the wise words of Sally Brown, “just hang around until you get used to it.” Reject the idea that you need to grieve by anyone else’s standards. You may reach a point of peace, then circle back to denial, then anger, and back to peace again. Understanding that this is normal allows people to remove the pressure of adhering to other people’s beliefs. Eventually, you’ll get used to it because you experienced it in the best way for you.
Recognizing that no one is supposed to endure grief alone is just as important. Charlie Brown’s question, “Who reassures the reassurer?” reminds us that it’s impossible to handle everything by yourself. External support is essential to healing. This can mean utilizing resources such as free support apps like 7 Cups that connect people with trained listeners anonymously and at any time. Sometimes the people closest to us don’t know how to help or are grieving as well. Having an outlet means you don’t have to carry the burden alone.
Finally, it’s crucial to realize that grief is multifaceted. Snoopy had multiple identities: Joe Cool, World War I Pilot, World Famous Author, and many more. In the exact same way, grief does too. But rather than occupation, grief carries many emotions simultaneously. As grief expert Nora McInerny explains in her TEDTalk, “We Don’t ‘Move on’ From Grief. We Move Forward With it,” we are capable of feeling sadness and joy, grief and love, all at the same time.
Grief doesn’t have a finish line and there isn’t a perfect roadmap for how to navigate it. But what Peanuts teaches us is clear: it’s all about presence. Charlie Brown never kicks the football, Snoopy never flies the doghouse, and Lucy never really stops being mean. But in the end, they all keep showing up — for each other and for themselves. That’s all that grief needs, too. Just people who are willing to be there, over and over. Their presence means the world when things get hard or messy. Even if Lucy won’t ever leave the football for Charlie Brown to kick, you know that she’ll be there, no matter what.
A visitor kneels in Prague’s St. Vitus Cathedral. (Katelyn Chang)
