UNPOPULAR OPINION: "I'm sick of being told what NOT to say".

Can you hear that? It’s the sound of me walking on eggshells.

What I’m about to say might not go down so well with a few people. Or a lot of people but I’m going to say it anyway.

Here’s the thing: I don’t want to read anymore of those lists telling me what not to say to people.

I’m done.

Every time I go online there’s a headline.

What not to say to single mothers.

What not to say to newlyweds.

What not to say to parents of twins.

What not to say to parents with one child.

What not to say to someone who’s just had a miscarriage.

What not to say stay at home mothers.

And on and on and on and ON it goes.

Enough. Enough with the lists telling me the three million things I cannot say.

Pretty soon nobody is going to say anything to anybody out of fear of offending them. Is that what we want?

When this woman speaks about love and loss, we listen.

Don’t get me wrong. I know there has been value in these lists. I know, believe me I KNOW that people can say thoughtless things. And I know that by writing these lists it gives a person who is facing a difficult or unusual situation the chance to draw a line in the sand and create a few boundaries.  It also provides a helpful resource to family and friends around that person to understand why it’s not okay to say to someone with cancer,  “Just think positive” or to a mother whose baby has been stillborn, “It was natural selection” (yes, somebody did actually say that to me).

But my fear is that too many of us are lying in wait ready to be offended at even the most minor of slip-ups.

My view is that most people mean well. They do. Sure there are a few arsehats around the place but overall the majority of people are trying to do the right thing. And when faced with a difficult situation sometimes we say dumb things. We’ve all done it.  I know I have.

“I felt the loss for my sister”

And sometimes in life you have to suck it up. People can be jerks. Or clueless. We are also happen to be a society that is rather appalling at educating people on how to handle sensitive situations.  In the face of illness or death many, many people struggle and feel overwhelmed with knowing how to handle it.

I suppose what I’m saying is that sometimes we have to cut people a bit of slack.

And you know what else?  A number of people said clumsy, painful things to me after my daughter died but I got over it. I got over it because I knew their hearts were in the right place and they thought – in their own way – they were offering me some comfort.

What has been harder to forgive are those close friends and family members who stayed away and never said anything. Never got in touch. Never acknowledged the enormous loss I experienced because it was so hard.

I would much rather someone wrote a card or sent an email and reached out even if they got it a little wrong.

Is your job as the person with cancer/single parent/person with a disability/mother of a stillborn child to make other people more at ease? No. But most of us have enough on our plates already without choosing to stew over someone’s ill thought out choice of words.

Duchess Kate in tears after speaking to a mother in mourning.

It’s worth mentioning too that these lists, which have spread like a virus across the Internet, are often completely and utterly subjective. Not every mother of twins will be “pissed off” if you ask if the twins are identical.  Not every person dealing with cancer is going to be furious when you walk in the room and say, “How are you?”

And rather than continually telling people what not to say, how about we all focus on what is helpful?

Tell me what I CAN say or do to someone who has just lost their mum or someone who has a terminal illness.

I’ll kick things off.  Here are some things to do when someone you know is grieving (a child, a parent, a friend, a spouse, a pet):

Send a Christmas ornament with the person or pet’s name or simply the date the person or pet died if you know it.

Send a package of beautiful handkerchiefs with a card that says, “My heart is broken for you.”

Leave a meal on the doorstep in a container you are happy to never see again.

Use the deceased person’s name in conversation when talking or writing to your friend.

If the friend has been away from work (or book club or gym or wherever) say, “We miss you at XXXX.”

But most of all just operate from a place of kindness. You may get it a little wrong. But we’re human after all. Eggshells be damned.