05/12/2025
A cartoon has been making the rounds online, published by The New Yorker. It depicts a person sitting across from a therapist, with the caption: “You’ve entered the final stage of grief, milking it.” Let me be clear: this is not clever. It is not insightful. It is not funny. It is cruel. Grief is not a punchline. It is not a performance. It is not a weakness to be mocked or measured by someone else’s comfort level. Grief is a sacred, life-altering experience. Raw, unrelenting, and often invisible to those who haven’t endured its weight. And yet, here we are, watching a major publication perpetuate a narrative that shames those who grieve too “long,” too “loudly,” or too “openly.” I’ve had conversations with people, clients, colleagues, friends, who are weeping over this cartoon. People who have lost spouses, children, parents, siblings. People who are navigating a world that has fundamentally changed for them, only to be told, by implication, by art, by institutions, that they are “milking it.” This cartoon doesn’t just miss the mark. It reinforces a dangerous and callous misconception: that grief has an expiration date. That it’s somehow indulgent to still be in pain after a certain time. That is not only ignorant, it is harmful. Grief shaming is real. And it pushes people further into silence, into isolation, and into shame about something that is already unimaginably heavy. We must do better. Our society needs a radical shift in how we hold space for pain, how we support those who mourn. To The New Yorker and everyone who thought this was “just a joke,” please understand: we are not oversensitive. We are not humorless. We are human beings who believe that mocking grief is an act of profound indifference to suffering. This isn’t about censorship. It’s about compassion. And if you can’t tell the difference, it’s time to pause and reflect. Grief is not “milking it.” Grief is love. Grief is human. And grief deserves reverence, not ridicule.
