Six weeks after the love of my life died, a friend looked at me and said “Get over it.”

Six months after the love of my life died, a man, who was neither a friend nor a man of quality, looked at me and said, “Get over it.”

He assumed I wasn’t over it because of my lack of sexual activity since my dad’s death. Because clearly, a healthy girl moves on from such a loss and then engages in lots of free love.

Had I been a dog, I would have looked back at both of them, cocked my head to side and perked my ears, because I just didn’t get it.

Because grief, for some reason, is not an emotion we are allowed to feel to its fullest extent. Grief, along with its Debbie-Downer batch of siblings, such as anger, sadness, and everyone’s go-to favorite, depression, always tends to get the short end of the emotional stick.

They are the only emotions that are greeted with some sort cure of solution or fix-it suggestion. Their sunshine-y counterparts, however, are welcomed with open arms, because they have the Healthy Seal of Approval. As if they are more legit.

The Healthy Seal of Approval is the foundation of the “Get Over It” and “Move on” movements that are so en vogue. In their more P.C. form, they are referred to as “The Healing Process.” Don’t get me wrong, I love a good healing process, but I also believe that every emotion should be allowed to run its course- I believe that is the foundation of the healing process.

There is much talk right now about “Moving On.” Now that it’s been a rock solid ten days since the Virginia Tech Massacre, the “Get Over It” and “Move On” movements are doing their very best to stifle all the grief and the fear and the anger, because those are unhealthy emotions. We must find a way to move on.

Everyone stop. Stop all your moving on and just breathe. Find your grief and your fear and shake hands with them. What color are they? What shape are they; do they have a texture? Breathe and feel your grief. When it is ready to subside, when it has found a place to fit inside the puzzle of all your experiences, it will settle in and we will all be able to stand up straight again. Of course we will bend a bit, there will be a different canter to our gaits, because there is more to carry.

For all those kids have experienced, the least we can do is allow them to grieve in their own time. Including the kids themselves, and the faculty, and the families, and everyone else. You are allowed to feel every single last human emotion to its fullest extent. There is no time limit, and there is no judgment on the value of the Debbie Downer emotions. Every emotion is there for a reason. If we didn’t need it, it wouldn’t come to us.

You are allowed to grieve.