Olivia Iyer

About

My belief about this work is simple: the useful thing is not advice, it is having one hour a week where you do not have to manage anybody else's reaction to what you say. Almost everything else follows from that. People who are grieving spend a surprising amount of energy protecting the people around them. They edit the hard parts out, reassure their relatives, and answer the how-are-you question the way it is meant to be answered. That is exhausting, and it is why so much goes unsaid for so long. Here you can say the ungenerous version, the bored version, the one that does not reflect well on anybody. None of it will be corrected or tidied up on your behalf. My practice grew slowly, one person telling another, which means I have never had to make this sound neater than it is. Come and say the part you have been leaving out.