In "How To Help Friends in Mourning," Megan O'Rourke reviews the results of an earlier Slate survey on grief, pinpointing what bereaved people themselves said about their needs.
The most surprising aspect of the results is how basic the expressed needs were, and yet how profoundly unmet many of these needs went. Asked what would have helped them with their grief, the survey-takers talked again and again about acknowledgement of their grief. They wanted recognition of their loss and its uniqueness; they wanted help with practical matters; they wanted active emotional support. What they didn't want was to be offered false comfort in the form of empty platitudes.
The survey results emphasized the following:
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