Lisa Keefauver has built her career around a simple but radical idea: Grief is not a problem to be fixed, but an experience to be understood, witnessed, and supported. In a wide-ranging conversation about her book Grief is a Sneaky Bitch, she explains how personal loss, professional training, and years of work with grievers led her to challenge the cultural myths that make grief even harder than it already is.
Keefauver’s message is clear: grief is universal, but the way we talk about it is deeply flawed. Her work invites people to stop judging themselves, stop expecting others to “get over it,” and start building more compassionate ways to live with loss.
A personal path to grief work
Keefauver did not set out to become a grief activist. Her path was shaped by devastating personal losses, including the death of her husband when she was 40 and her daughter was seven, followed by the death of a close friend a few years later. Those experiences came while she was already working as a clinical social worker, which gave her a front-row seat to how badly society handles grief.
One of the most striking details she shares is being required to return to work just two weeks after her husband died. That experience helped crystallize her belief that our systems, including workplaces and even helping professions, are not built to support grieving people. Instead of treating grief as a natural part of life, they often pressure people to suppress it and move on quickly.
Why the book is structured differently
Keefauver says she wrote the book with the griever in mind, not a traditional linear reader. Rather than relying on a standard table of contents, she created a “topic index” so readers could enter the book wherever they needed help most, whether they were fresh in loss or revisiting grief years later.
That choice reflects her larger philosophy: grief does not unfold in neat stages, and people do not heal on a schedule. She describes the book as a companion guide, designed so readers can open it, find a few pages of insight or a practical tool, and return later when they need something different.
The myths that make grief harder
A major theme of the conversation is the idea that grief is made more difficult by the stories our culture tells about it. Keefauver argues that many people are taught to believe grief should be private, brief, and manageable, when in reality it can affect us cognitively, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
She also pushes back on the idea that grief moves through predictable “stages,” calling that a myth. Early grief, she says, often includes something many people don’t expect: “grief brain,” a real impairment in cognitive functioning that can leave people feeling confused, foggy, or overwhelmed. Her point is that much of what people think is a personal failure is actually a normal response to loss.
What to say when others get it wrong
One of the most practical parts of the interview comes when Keefauver discusses the painful things people say to mourners. She names the familiar platitudes—“everything happens for a reason,” “they’re in a better place,” or “you’re young, you’ll find Love again”—as examples of comments that often wound more than they comfort.
Her advice is refreshingly direct. When someone says something hurtful, grievers have three options: educate them, tell them off, or ignore them. Which response makes sense depends on the relationship, the person’s openness, and the griever’s energy at that moment. For close friends who mean well, Education may help; for persistent offenders, stronger boundaries may be needed.
The hidden losses beneath loss
Keefauver also expands the conversation beyond death. She emphasizes that many people experience “secondary losses” or ambiguous losses that are just as real, even if they are not always recognized as grief. These can include financial instability, identity shifts, changes in living situations, or the loss of a dream for the future.
She points out that these losses show up in many life transitions: infertility, chronic illness, Caregiving, Retirement, moving out of a home, or watching a loved one decline cognitively. Her larger argument is that if we allow grief to mean only death, we miss most of the losses that shape adult life.
A better way to support grief
Keefauver’s work is grounded in the belief that grief should be met with compassion, not productivity pressure. She argues that many of the harmful messages people absorb—such as “get over it” or “you should be doing better by now”—become internalized and turn into self-criticism. That inner voice, she says, is often the most damaging one of all.
