Grief Is Everywhere Right Now. Are We Ready for It?
Grief is becoming more visible in culture and public policy. But awareness alone doesn’t build the skills societies need when loss shows up.
Recently, I wrote about why I’m creating a peer-led grief conversation and what it’s actually for.
This week, I want to zoom out, because that work isn’t happening in a vacuum.
Grief is becoming more visible, more discussed, and more tolerated in public life. That’s progress. But visibility alone doesn’t equal support, and conversation doesn’t automatically translate into capacity.
This piece looks at what’s progressed, why it matters, and what still needs to change if grief is going to be held well instead of pushed back onto the people experiencing it.
Key term used in this piece
Grief Literacy: the multidimensional capacity to access, process, and use knowledge about the experience of loss (Breen et al., 2020)
A strange thing happened this past year: grief became visible in mainstream media.
From top-ranked global podcasts like Steven Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO and YouTube productions like Anderson Cooper’s All There Is, we’re now seeing interviews, research, and personal stories that help normalize and demystify grief.
That’s progress.
And like all progress, it comes with some bumps. When something becomes mainstream, it also becomes marketable, consumable, and sanitized. Sometimes people tune out or become wary of being marketed to.
But so much good comes from talking about grief out loud. The gains from this public conversation about grief are real, and they have the potential to shift culture for the better.
So what does that progress actually look like?
First, the wins, in no particular order.
Mainstream culture keeps making room for grief
This matters because the biggest obstacle grieving people face often isn’t their feelings. It’s the social environment around those feelings: the avoidance, the awkwardness, the pressure to “be okay,” and the fear of making others uncomfortable.
When grief is treated as worthy of sustained attention, it changes the rules. It lowers the social cost of speaking plainly about loss. It signals that grief isn’t a personal failure or a private mess to clean up alone.¹
And when grief stops being exiled, the next generation grows up without needing to unlearn silence.
Grief literacy is moving from idea to infrastructure
Grief literacy isn’t about being emotionally soft or simply “good with feelings.” It’s about whether a society has the skills, language, and norms to function humanely when people are grieving in large numbers.
Over the last year, grief literacy began to show up in places that matter: national action plans, public-health language, and system-level conversations about preparedness.² ³
That shift is critical. It reframes grief from an individual burden to a shared responsibility, something communities and institutions can anticipate rather than improvise around.
What we normalize now becomes the baseline others inherit.
Another win: communities got better scripts, not just better intentions
Most people want to help grieving friends, coworkers, and family members. Very few know what to do. We all know what it’s like to be at a loss for words when someone is grieving.
The expansion of public campaigns, toolkits, and community-based grief resources matters because grief literacy doesn’t spread through slogans. It spreads through usable language and clear scripts.⁴ ⁵
What to say.
What not to say.
How to show up after week three.
How to stay present without trying to fix.
Scripts reduce harm. They turn care into something effective and repeatable, not empty or performative.
And another win: systems are planning for grief instead of reacting to it
Here’s an uncomfortable truth: when support isn’t built into systems, it becomes optional.
And when it’s optional, grieving people receive inconsistent, subjective, and reactive treatment that affects performance, morale, and relationships. This I know from experience.
I recall being at a large networking event years ago while in a business development role for an accounting firm. During a speed round of meeting people, we were prompted to talk about a transformational moment of leadership in our lives.
I referenced an inspiring demonstration of leadership by a surgeon at my child’s hospital bedside. While I didn’t disclose a loss, the conversation ended abruptly when my assigned partner said, “Yeah, let’s not go there.”
Instantly, I felt the hard line many workplaces draw between professional and personal life.
Where it seems, sometimes, we forget that knowledge and experience exist in both.
Yet over the last year, there have been visible steps toward frameworks, training, and even data collection around grief and bereavement.⁶ ⁷ It’s unglamorous work, but it’s the kind that actually reduces long-term damage.
Systems teach people what to expect when grief occurs around them, and expectation is a powerful inheritance.
What about those bumps? Let’s talk about those too.
The risk: mainstream grief can slide into performative grief
Now the part we can’t ignore.
When grief becomes mainstream, it becomes content.
Content often comes with an invisible contract:
You can talk about grief… as long as it resolves.
You can share pain… as long as it inspires.
You can struggle… as long as you’re “healing.”
But grief is not a redemption arc. It doesn’t follow narrative structure or tidy timelines.
The point of grief literacy isn’t to make grief palatable. It’s to make society more competent in its presence.
Anything less simply shifts the burden back onto the grieving person, but with better branding.
We eventually find ways to live with grief and to become the people we are because of it.
Grief literacy helps the people around us understand how to support that process.
The next step: from awareness to competence
If the last year proved anything, it’s this: conversation alone isn’t the goal.
A grief-literate society isn’t one that talks more about pain.
It’s one that breaks less when pain shows up.
In practice, that means:
Respecting long timelines
Normalizing support beyond the first two weeks
Building workplace and school protocols, not platitudes
Including non-death losses without explanation
Treating grief as a community reality, not an individual flaw
This isn’t about making grief easier. It’s about making society less brittle for everyone who comes next.
The door is open wider than it was even a year ago.
Now the question is what we build behind it.
-KilbyOG
FOOTNOTES
Anderson Cooper’s All There Is podcast and related mainstream media coverage demonstrate sustained public engagement with grief narratives beyond niche wellness spaces.
Canadian Grief Alliance. Grief Literacy and Grief Support in Canada: Next Steps Action Plan (2025).
Health Canada public-facing palliative care materials explicitly referencing “increasing grief literacy” (2024–2025).
Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association. National Grief and Bereavement Day campaign resources (2025).
Community-based compassionate community grief literacy initiatives (Canada, Ireland).
Provincial palliative and bereavement framework progress reports (Ontario, British Columbia, 2025).
Hospice and palliative care training initiatives including grief and bereavement measurement tools (Canada).
(Full citations listed in Appendix below.)
APPENDIX: FULL CITATIONS
Mainstream grief media
Cooper, A. (Host). All There Is with Anderson Cooper. Apple Podcasts, YouTube.
Bartlett, S. (Host). Diary of a CEO. Spotify, YouTube.
VanHoose, B. (2025). Anderson Cooper Has Over 30,000 DMs from Fans… People.
Jordan, J. (2025). Anderson Cooper Emotionally Discusses… People.
Grief literacy & public health
Canadian Grief Alliance. (2025). Grief Literacy and Grief Support in Canada: Next Steps Action Plan.
Health Canada. (2025). Palliative Care: Awareness Tools; Departmental Results Report 2024–2025.
Policy Options (IRPP). (2025). Canada needs a public-health model of grief support.
Community & systems
Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association. National Grief and Bereavement Day.
Hospice Palliative Care Ontario. 2025 Program Syllabus.
Pallium Canada / PCCC. Member Initiatives (2025).
All Ireland Institute of Hospice and Palliative Care. Compassionate Communities Position Paper.