Three Little Words That Do More Harm Than Good

by: Amy Fox

The other day my best friend asked me, “But, how are you really?”

The question landed like a ton of bricks and for a brief moment time stood still as the question knocked the wind right out of me. 

The question, “How are you?” is as commonplace as “Hello” these days. It’s the question we frequently find ourselves asking and answering as we go about our day to day. The problem with these three little words is that while they are rooted in good intentions, they only lead to meaningless conversation. Countless studies and social analyses show that when people ask, “How are you?” they often use it as a polite social ritual rather than a genuine question of inquiry around someone’s well-being. Most of the time, when people ask you how you are, they don’t want the real, raw answer. They want the neat and tidy answer. The contained one. The one that doesn’t make the room uncomfortable.

As part of this exchange, it’s customary to respond back with I’m fine, it’s good, I’m okay….even when we’re not. Grief turns us into secret keepers. Mask wearers. Experts at “I’m okay.” We swallow our honesty to save face and because quite honestly, it feels too damn hard and heavy to hand our grief to someone else.

Since last December, when my world as I knew it ended, I’ve been asked, “How are you?” countless times. And mostly, I answer with the polite niceties. I say I’m fine and I pretend to be fine even when I’m barely making it through the day. I say everything is good, when I desperately want to disappear. I say I’m okay because the truth feels too heavy to tell you that most days I’m the furthest thing from okay.

And so when my best friend asked me, “But, how are you really?” I didn’t know how to appropriately answer. That one little word of difference, as it turns out, made all the difference.

“But, how are you really?”

Well, I’m grieving and surviving at the same time and it doesn’t get easier.

“But, how are you really?”

I feel like I’m living two timelines: the life I have currently and the one I lost.

“But, how are you really?”

I feel paranoid when moments of joy slip in. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“But, how are you really?”

Utterly exhausted from pretending to be okay when my marriage has fallen apart and I lost the job that gave my life purpose and meaning.

“But, how are you really?”

Somedays breathing, like legit staying alive and breathing, feels like the biggest thing I accomplish.

“But, how are you really?”

Angry. So damn angry. For the injustice. For the retaliation. For the gaslighting. For the manipulation. For the abuse.

The word really allowed me to excavate my heart, to name and say the things that had been buried for far too long. The word really was an invitation to get curious, to softening around the intense waves of emotions that seemed to come out of nowhere.

Grief touches each of us in deeply personal, often overwhelming ways. It can leave us feeling raw, unanchored, and uncertain of how to move forward. And part of the reason it’s so debilitating is none of us are taught how to grieve— or really feel our emotions for that matter.

We think if we don’t allow ourselves to feel the sadness, the sadness will go away. But, it doesn’t. It lodges somewhere latent in our body and we carry it everywhere we go.

We think if we ignore the anger, eventually it will disappear, but instead it ferments into resentment in the dark corners of our mind and heart.

We think if we avoid the uncomfortable things, we’ll avoid discomfort and initially we do…but the numbing and hiding also blocks out the joy and happiness. 

Emotions aren’t just part of life, they are what make life living. Emotions are fundamental to the human experience because they add meaning, color and purpose to life, transforming mere existence into a rich and fulfilling journey. 

The reality is, we aren’t born labeling emotions, allowing ourselves to feel certain ones and pushing others aside. As small children we feel our emotions and let them move through us. We get sad? We cry. We’re angry? We have a temper tantrum. It doesn’t matter who is around or who is watching, if we’re feeling it, we feeelll it.

Somewhere between the ages of 5 and 12, we’re unofficially taught that some emotions aren’t appropriate to have or feel. Releasing anger is scary. Feeling sad and crying is a symbol of weakness. And so we bury the taboo feelings deep down and live a shell of life.

As a young girl, I quickly learned to mask my emotions and I wore “I’m fine” as a symbol of protection. You see, at the tender age of 6 I tried to kill myself. I had placed 1st runner up in a local beauty pageant and my brother, whose first time it was in this pageant, placed 1st in the boys division. It was the first real time I felt not-enough and the hollow feeling of not enoughness made me want to disappear. I didn’t want to feel the way I felt. I wanted the hollow, empty feeling of not-enoughness to go away. Grabbing a butter knife and taking it to my neck seemed like the appropriate thing to do at the time in my 6-year-old mind. My parents did what they thought was best— they sent me to a shrink. I can look back now and understand that they were doing they best they could with what they knew, but at the time, it only made me feel more not-enough. And so I lied to the shrink. I said I was fine. I said I didn’t mean to hurt myself. I said I would never do it again. I buried my anger and sadness way the fuck down.

When my baby sister died in third grade, I felt nothing. I stared into the distance and when my third grade teacher said, “How are you?” I replied the only way I knew how: I’m fine. When I lost my brother at 20, I cracked jokes to lighten the mood. When my grandmother was on borrowed time at 99 and my beloved mentor, teacher and friend, Patricia Moreno, was dying of cancer, I avoided saying goodbye. I rationalized if I didn’t acknowledge it, it would simply go away. That I could somehow avoid feeling pain by avoiding confronting the pain of loss. Instead, I live with that buried grief every day.

One of the hardest things about being human is experiencing the wrenching pain of loss. Whether you're a child or an adult, when someone you love or something meaningful to you can no longer be part of your life, the pain is excruciating. For some people, it may feel like this: You wake-up, and for a moment, everything is calm. Then, in a rush, it all comes flooding back; you remember what you’ve lost. Your throat closes, your stomach heaves. Yesterday, you didn't think you had any tears left to cry, but now they're streaming down your cheeks like a raging waterfall. Your chest is tight and it feels hard to breathe. You don’t know how you will face the day ahead, and you feel alone in your pain. You spend every waking day wondering, When will this end? When can life go back to how it was?

“The wound is the place where the light enters you.” — Rumi

Grief isn’t something that “goes away”. Rather, it’s something you learn to expand around. In so many ways, grief is a nurturing caretaker that helps mend a broken heart. It opens the wound and creates space for sadness and the longing to finally breathe. And the space is where the healing happens. Your grief doesn’t get smaller. You just become bigger. 

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If you’re navigating the heartbreak of loss— whether recent or long ago— and you’re ready to feel, process and move forward with grace, I invite you to join me and Hildie Dunn, Senior Life Coach at the Handel Group, Grief Doula and intenSati leader, for a Grief Yoga Workshop on Sunday, November 9th from 2:00 PM - 4:00PM. 

This workshop will be part movement-based and part workshop, allowing us to move energy in the body so that we can have embodied awareness as we move through our loss with purpose and intention. 

We carry so much of our emotions— and especially our withheld grief— in our joints, our tendons, our muscles— our very cells. Movement allows us to somatically process our feelings so we can release the pain and struggle and access hope and healing. Beyond the physical aspect of moving energy, we work to understand our grief and give it meaning so that we can transform it into a source of strength and direction.

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