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Many people feel that they have to say the right words when they try to console somebody over their grief. They do not realize that consolation and consoling does not necessarily require the right words, nor are there right words.

When you think about it, what are these right words supposed to do? To put a smile on the person's face? They shouldn't smile at this time. To remove the source of their grief? It shouldn't be removed. In other words by trying to find the right words you are trying to do something which is not only impossible but which is unrealistic and unwarranted.

Perhaps therefore if this is kept in mind then you might eliminate such concepts such as "I know how you feel." You don't know how that person feels. You don't know what that person is going through. Even if you have gone through a similar issue you certainly don't know the way they feel.

This concept of the need to find the right words has caused some people to refrain from visiting others in their time of grief because they could not find the right thing to say. This is unfortunate because their presence may have been helpful and they would have joined a lot of other people, none of whom had the right words to say.

These websites do spend a great deal of time and there many pages in this series of websites by this offer about language and about the right way to say things in various languages. All of those websites and all of those pages have their place. A time of grief, however, is not the right place for worrying about the right thing to say. Everything has its own place and this is the exception.