Room to Grieve by Brandon McLean

Hi, everyone — my name is Brandon, and I’m a clinician here in the community. I want to take just a couple minutes to tell you about something I’ve been working on, because I think it might matter to some of you, or to someone you love. 

It’s called Room to Grieve. 

Here’s the thing about grief that nobody really tells you: it doesn’t follow a schedule. We’ve all heard of the five stages — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance — like grief is a checklist you work through and then you’re done. But that’s not how it actually works. Grief doesn’t move in a straight line. Some days it’s quiet. Some days it shows up out of nowhere, in the cereal aisle, in a song, in a smell. 

And here’s something worth sitting with: in one national survey, 780 out of 1,084 people — that’s roughly 7 out of every 10 people asked — said they’d experienced significant grief from a life event in just the past three years. That’s not a small group of people having a hard time. That’s most of the room. So if you’re carrying a loss right now, you are not the exception here — you are the rule. Grief just doesn’t always look like grief from the outside. 

But here’s the part that worries me most: for a lot of people, that unpredictability comes with a second layer of pain — the feeling that they’re doing it wrong. That they should be further along by now. That they’re too much, or not enough, or somehow broken for still feeling this. 

I started Room to Grieve because I don’t think that’s true, and I don’t think anyone should have to carry that judgment on top of the loss itself. 

This is a group for anyone carrying a loss — and I mean that broadly. The death of someone close to you. The loss of a relationship, a role, a version of your life you thought you’d have. Grief doesn’t always come with a casket and a funeral program. Sometimes it comes quietly, and sometimes the people around us don’t even recognize it as grief at all. 

So here’s what we’re really about. Room to Grieve exists to offer what grief rarely gets: time. We’re a space without urgency — no stages to complete, no milestones to hit, no point at which your grief should be finished. Here, you are not behind. You are not too much. You are not broken. We gather because loss is disorienting enough without facing it alone, and we believe that healing isn’t a destination — it’s a way of moving through the world, together, at your own pace. 

You’ll be in a room with other people who get it — not because they’ve had the exact same loss, but because they know what it’s like to carry something heavy and feel like the rest of the world has moved on without you. 

If that sounds like something you need, or something someone you love needs, I’d love to talk with you. There’s information at the table, and I’m happy to answer any questions — no pressure, no obligation, just a conversation if you want one. 

Grief isn’t something you get over. It’s something you learn to carry. And you don’t have to carry it alone. 

No timeline. No fixing. Just room.