There is a weight given to your relationship with your parents or siblings or grandparents or spouse that comes from the title alone. Society often values family relationships over friendships. But society in general? That is another story. You know that your friend is family, that you love them as deeply, maybe even more deeply than your brother or your mom. What is it about losing a friend that is particularly isolating? Why are there so few articles? Why aren’t more people talking about it?įirst, society doesn’t recognize what a big deal friendship is.
It may get different, it may get easier, but it is always with us. No surprise, when a friend dies, like when a family member dies, we don’t “get over it”. If you have a close friend you just know what I mean. it has no survival value rather it is one of those things which give value to survival”, but at the end of the day it is something that feels impossible to describe.įriendship is deep and powerful and amazing, but it is hard to really explain why. I can throw all this friendship data at you, I can share the CS Lewis quote I love, “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…. Yup, people with good friends live longer and are healthier! Spending time with friends actually reduces stress in women by increasing their oxytocin levels, friendship has been linked with lower rates of hypertension and heart disease and women with breast cancer who had close friendships were found to live longer than those who did not. We know from a review of 148 studies on friendship that there is a 50% increased likelihood of survival for participants with stronger social relationships. Thousands of years later, psychologists are helping us understand why friendship is so important. Plato reflected deeply and extensively on the nature of friendship and love. Ready?Īristotle described deep friendship saying, “What is a friend? A single soul in two bodies”. All types of loss have their unique challenges and this post is going to be about what makes dealing with the loss of a friend uniquely difficult. We have a zillion other posts on coping with grief in a zillion different ways. Rant over.Īnyway, all of this is just to say that this post is not going to be about all the general ways to deal with grief.
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And finding a post called “How to Get Over Losing a Best Friend That Passed Away”? Well, that just shouldn’t even be allowed because, really? How to get over it? Oh, okay. It’s just that, let’s be honest, in the midst of your despair and confusion related to a very specific grief experience, hearing the same old broad, vague advice, again and again, is just frustrating. I mean, it isn’t that those things aren’t true they are. The articles I found gave the same advice you might give anyone grieving: don’t avoid the pain, remember you aren’t alone, remember all your great memories. I don’t know why that continues to surprise me – it was the whole reason we started What’s Your Grief – but it does. Articles that are so broad and empty that you could title them “dealing with the loss of _”, fill that blank in with just about anything, and have it work. What struck me most was the simultaneous lack of information on the topic, coupled with an overabundance of vague, generalized crap grief advice. That turned up a few sites on losing a pet (your other best friend). This, of course, inspired me to do a Google search to see what’s out there. Yet off the top of my head, I couldn’t remember reading many articles specifically on coping when a best friend dies.
Of course she is right, we know she is certainly not the only person dealing with this. He’s grown, though, so we were able to hang out daily as best friends often do when they’re younger, before marriages, etc.ĭo you have any suggestions for me? I can’t be the only person dealing with this. I have a son but she was childless and loved my son like her own. She was never married and I’m divorced, so we didn’t have the distraction of families. We were like Oprah and Gayle best friends, you know? We vacationed together, etc. I have had a terrible time finding anything online about losing your best friend. She was my closest, dearest friend for 25+ years.
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