Believe in a Friend's strength
In Ordinary Grace: An Examination of the Roots of Compassion, Altruism, and Empathy, and the Ordinary Individuals Who Help Others in Extraordinary Ways, Kathleen A. Brehony points out that the word grief comes from the Latin gravis, meaning “to bear.” Gravis is also the root word for gravity, which aptly describes the heaviness or depth of the wrenching pain left by a loss.

Being “brokenhearted” creates opportunities. Ancient alchemists gave us a metaphor to describe this potential for transformation. In changing a base metal, lead, into a splendid one, gold, they understood that the first step had to be the nigredo, or “black phase” in which everything is melted down, broken into its element parts, before anything could be recreated.

Grief tears a Friend apart. Effective support does not remove their burden of grief. It provides the human contact that gradually enables them to find the strength to carry on.