Stages: Grief Support: How to Find People Who Actually Get It

After my sister Meredith died, I had incredible people around me. Friends who followed me out to the end of a dark driveway without a word and just put their hands on my back so I’d know they were there. I’ll never forget that.

And it still wasn’t the thing I needed most.

What I needed was to hear from someone who had lost a sister. Not someone who loved me and felt bad for me - someone who had stood exactly where I was standing and made it to the other side. Someone who could tell me the grief wouldn’t always be this heavy. My friends couldn’t give me that, because they hadn’t lived it. That’s not their fault. It’s just the truth.

That’s the whole reason online grief support groups exist, and it’s why I ended up building one that makes it easier to match with others who have experienced the same type of loss. Unlike other platforms where your identity is never fully hidden, Stages keeps you completely anonymous - so you can open up without fear of judgment from anyone.

What actually helps: someone who’s been where you are

There’s a specific kind of relief that only comes from talking to someone who’s grieved the same kind of loss. You don’t have to explain the weird parts. You don’t have to translate. They already know about the 2am waves and the scrolling through old photos, because they did it too.

Stages gives you that. People who get it, without you having to perform being okay.

Why online (and anonymous) can be easier

Here’s something nobody says out loud: it can be easier to be honest with a stranger than with the people who love you.

I couldn’t let my pride get in the way with my friends. I couldn’t let them see how bad it actually was. But typing to someone I didn’t know, through my phone, anonymously, that I could do. Have you ever tried to have a real conversation while you’re crying? It’s ugly. Nobody likes it. But typing? Typing I could do. I could find the words I couldn’t say out loud without falling apart.

That’s the quiet advantage of an online grief support group. It meets you where you actually are. On your couch at midnight, phone in hand - instead of asking you to pull yourself together and drive somewhere at 7pm on a Tuesday.

How to find a group that fits

A few things worth looking for:

• People with your kind of loss. Losing a sibling, a partner, a parent, a child, a friend - each one is its own thing. Being around others who lost the same relationship helps.
• Room to go at your pace. The best spaces don’t push you to share before you’re ready. You can read for a week before you say a word.
• Honesty about what it is. Peer support is people helping people.
• A way to be anonymous if you want it. For a lot of us, that’s the thing that makes honesty possible.

Where Stages fits

Stages is an anonymous, online space to talk with people who’ve lived their own loss - at whatever pace you need. It’s peer support, not therapy or a crisis line. If you’re in crisis, please contact your local emergency or crisis services; you deserve real, immediate help.

But if what you’re looking for is the thing I was looking for - someone who’s been there, who can tell you it’s possible to get through this - someone on the other side is waiting to tell you exactly that.

Zack Smith, Founder Stages