It’s OK That You’re Not OK — Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn’t Understand

The note by psychologist Zeynep Selvili in the Turkish edition captures the book's spirit well: in old Turkic cultures mourners wore black or blue and some shaved their heads; in the West a black armband was worn. Today no visible sign of grief remains, it has become hard to talk about, and people have grown isolated. In his foreword Mark Nepo recalls Virgil's words to Dante before the wall of fire in the Divine Comedy: «There is no other way. This is the fire that burns but does not consume.»

Devine's introduction shows the book's power. A psychotherapist of nearly ten years' standing, working with trauma, abuse and grief, she watched her partner Matt — strong, healthy, three months shy of forty — drown on an ordinary summer day in 2009. «After Matt died, I wanted to call every one of my clients and apologise for my ignorance.» It is the book's most affecting confession: professional knowledge is helpless before real loss. She later gathered others who had suffered similar losses — young widows, parents who had lost children — and saw their shared experience: being judged, shamed and «corrected» while grieving.

The book's main thesis is stated plainly: our culture treats grief as an illness, a messy feeling to be got rid of quickly; even clinicians are trained to see it as a disorder rather than a natural response to great loss. These outdated ideas add «unnecessary suffering» on top of natural pain. Devine says she learned the book's key distinction — between fixing pain and tending to it — precisely through her own grief.

Chapter one opens with a single line: «This is as bad as you think.» Devine lists the clichés — «everything happens for a reason», «at least you had them for a while», «this will make you stronger», «you can have another child» — and shows how they push the bereaved towards feeling that nobody in the world understands. «Some things cannot be fixed. They can only be carried.» She clearly separates everyday losses — a bad day at work, a missed opportunity — from world-rearranging ones: accidents, illness, suicide, violent crime, a baby who dies days before birth.

Weaknesses: some ideas, especially the critique of platitudes, are repeated throughout. The text is written against American culture and its cult of «positive thinking»; in many other societies mourning rituals remain more alive. But the core message is universal, and someone who has suffered a great loss may finally feel understood in these pages.

• A blend of the author's personal loss and her experience as a psychotherapist
• Direct, warm second-person address
• Writing exercises and practical suggestions in each chapter