Let Me Have My Grief, Without Your Religion

…Please.

Photo by Natalia Trofimova on Unsplash

Warning: grief, religious mania, my own personal religious opinions, which are not intended to offend

‘I’m so sorry for your loss. I’ll pray for you.’

Can you… not?

I lost my mother in February and… I know that people mean well, I do.
But… the religious stuff makes me uncomfortable.

When you’re grieving, it’s unavoidable — it’s everywhere.

When it’s not people face-to-face, it’s a social media post, or a TV show, or a YouTube video... It’s everywhere.

I think what bothers me the most is the assumption that I follow the beliefs of whoever’s talking — it’s the arrogance that I must automatically want some sort of Christian message attached to my grief.

That might be fine for you — might be helpful for you.

But I don’t want it. I really don’t.

That’s not to say I don’t appreciate the well-meaning-ness of it all — especially from people who I consider friends, either IRL or online.

It’s much weirder, much more intrusive, coming from strangers or people who don’t interact with me that much.