26. Grief Affirmations

Even if you’re grieving, we want to assure you that it’s going to be okay! To prove that point, we invited comedian and writer Jason Roeder (author of Griefstrike!) to share some of his favorite affirmations for a grieving brain. 

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

NORA: I’m Nora McInerny, and it’s going to be okay.

I once told a friend who is a comedy writer, “I love comedy. It’s so funny.” I said that out loud to him and he is still my friend because i was right, comedy is funny! And it’s, for me, even funnier when things are sad. Today’s okay thing is an excerpt from a parody grief book I read recently that made me laugh so hard I thought I’d be placed on the no-fly list…but was also so sincere that I highlighted huge portions of it. 

Here’s the author, Jason Roeder…on the power of affirmations.

JASON: Affirmations may seem pointless and ridiculous. For one thing, why would you listen to someone such as yourself? You’ve had a frosted-tip mullet, earnestly told friends to take their baby to a chiropractor, and willingly paid hundreds more in rent for a view the realtor openly called an “active vermin battleground.” 

And, for another, if affirmations aren’t quite full-on woo-woo, they can certainly be mistaken for it at a distance if they’re wearing similar pants. But when you think about it, there is a logic to them. 

Even when we’re not grieving, many of us constantly send ourselves discouraging messages, little brutal telegrams from our subconscious that we can’t hear but that we internalize over and over every day, like a telegram:

INTELLIGENCE AND PHYSICAL APPEAL MINIMAL WITH LITTLE PROMISE FOR IMPROVEMENT – STOP – ADDITIONAL LITTLE FLAWS ENUMERATED SOON IN FUTURE COMMUNICATIONS – STOP – POOR SOCIAL SKILLS AND DISCOLORATION OF TEETH TO BE EMPHASIZED – STOP

And when you are grieving, those subliminal bulletins can just rain down on your even more often than they usually do and with even more ferocity.

NEVER HAPPY AGAIN NEVER HAPPY AGAIN NEVER HAPPY AGAIN NEVER HAPPY AGAIN STOP

Affirmations, then, are just little bits of deliberate counterprogramming designed to provide you with at least an alternative to bottomless misery. You can write them down or speak them aloud, in private or during work meetings when Bryan from marketing is taking his sweet time showing up. 

Or you can just think them with a ferocious intensity that makes your forehead boil and your eyebrows evaporate right off. However you deliver them to yourself, it’s important to select the right ones, because the last thing you need are affirmations that actually work against you.

“My grief will conquer me by Thursday, latest.”

“I am a mushroom, and grief is an unrelenting truffle hog that will root me out of the earth.” 

While you’ll have to put a little time into crafting affirmations that address how you’re specifically suffering, consider using the following as jumping off points that you can modify as you need:

“I may not be stronger than my grief, but I will definitely bore it to death.”

“My grief will not be my prison, or, if anything, it will be one of those rehabilitations focused prisons they have in Norway which are more like dormitories and which teach you how to groom horses.”

“There is enough strength in me to fill a half-gallon orange-juice container.”