One of my favorite TED Talks on grief is Nora McInerny’s “We Don’t ‘Move On’ from Grief. We Move Forward with It.” I’ve recommended it to everyone I know because McInerny does a brilliant job of articulating the idea that grieving people don’t ever “get over” their grief.

I recently watched it again—for maybe my sixth or seventh time—and found a gem near the end that I can’t stop turning over in my mind. She says, “We don’t look at the people around us experiencing life’s joys and wonders and tell them to move on.” She mentions as an example that when a baby is born, we send a congratulations card, and then five years later when the parents invite us to a 5^th birthday party for the child, we don’t say, “Another birthday party? Get over it.” Instead, we expect that people will continue acknowledging that child who was born and who changed the lives of their parents.

Perhaps this resonated with me because I’m coming up on three years since my husband died and I’m not at all done talking about my grief for him or remembering the life we had together. No one has directly said to me that I should stop talking about him or my grief, but I have had a few people make indirect comments about it to me lately.

“I work with someone whose wife died over two years ago and he still talks about her all the time. Don’t you think that’s weird?” a friend asked me recently. No, I said, I think that’s totally normal, and as I was about to remind my friend that I still talk about my husband all the time I realized, oh—my friend is talking about me. We had been discussing remodeling projects and mentioning all the improvements my husband had made to my house seemed totally relevant to me, but I had noticed that my friend’s expression had changed when I started talking about my husband.

Someone else messaged me in response to a post about my dead husband on Facebook. “I hope you’ll move on soon,” this friend said. I think she meant it in a concerned way.

Someone else asked me if it was normal for people as far out from the loss as I am to still be attending grief support groups. Again, I assume this person was asking out of concern.

In light of these comments and expressions of concern, I think of McInerney’s point that we don’t think it’s concerning when a parent keeps talking about their child, year after year, but we do want people to stop talking about their losses. I suppose we expect parents to talk about their living children year after year, but not their dead ones. We think it’s normal to talk about accomplishments and things we deem worthy of celebrating but we think death and other losses should generally be kept quiet.

If my husband were alive, I doubt my friend would have questioned my mentioning him in relation to my home remodels. Would anyone ask me to “move on” from posting to Facebook about my husband if he were alive? I suspect participating in a cooking club for three years wouldn’t prompt any concern about what’s normal the way attending grief support groups apparently does.

On a practical note, I don’t let these indirect comments get to me. I figure if someone doesn’t want to hear about my dead husband, they can stop reading what I post on my blog or Facebook and they can stop spending time with me. They can make choices. Frankly, I don’t really want to be around someone who doesn’t want to know about the grieving part of me. I don’t take it personally—I just know they are not someone who needs to be in my inner circle.

I also see these kinds of comments as further evidence that we need to learn how to talk about grief. This means building up our tolerance for listening to others share their dark thoughts and experiences, holding space for that stuff rather than trying to wrap it up quickly with a piece of advice or a pithy quote.

Over time, people who are less tolerant of me continuing to talk about my dead husband have faded out of my life, either because they don’t enjoy spending time with me anymore or because I have intentionally spent less time with them. Similarly, I find myself spending more time with people who don’t seem bothered by me talking about my dead husband, either because I have a better time with them or they appreciate my death-talk.

Some people lament that their circle of friends gets smaller after a death, but I see it as part of a natural sorting process. I don’t want people around me who are only going to show up for the happy stuff. And by seeking out grief support groups and blogging about grief, I’ve actually expanded my circle of friends in beautiful and surprising ways.