How does one start an article such as this? Even after experiencing loss, I am not any more sure or qualified to talk about what I plan on talking about.

There is this quote by Raymond Carver. It goes, "It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love." I think this applies to loss as well. Whether your loss is your loved one(s), your home, your pet, your identity, your memory, your sense of security, no one will completely and 100 percent honestly know what you feel and have felt. Two people can lose the same things, yet experience that loss in a billion different ways.

My losses vary—yours do, too—so keep in mind that I do not know everything I am talking about when I talk about loss. I do not know your loss like the back of my hand. But I want you to know that you are not alone.

If you have experienced loss, here is what you may have felt:

You can probably remember the day or the moments leading up The Moment. Your day was normal, maybe even blissful, and you figured you would eat your dinner, shower and go to bed like you did every other night before. If you close your eyes, I bet you can still smell the homey scent of your living room, the dewy smell of freshly cut grass, or poignant aroma of gasoline slipping through your car windows. Maybe you can feel the chill of snow or the steam of an awful, Midwest summer. And I bet you can hear the last words or the sentence that disrupted the balancing act you had maintained your whole life. Suddenly, a few seconds can shake your foundation and send you crumbling to earth.

For me, I do not remember much after the initial shock. The few months after The Moment are a blur and I use the memories of those closest to me to piece back the puzzle that was my raw, grieving life.

I do remember that there was a lot of talk: about what happened, why, how. There was a lot of "I'm sorry," "Let me know if I can do anything for you," "So young," "Did you hear about..." and a lot of other nonsense that people did not mean or did not have the right to talk about.

Occasionally I heard an "I know how you feel" or "I understand."

Oh, really? You understand? She was your best friend, too? You slept night after night in the hospital? You have lost a child? You can't afford your house anymore? You can't get dressed or go to the bathroom without assistance? You ignored that last text? Your parents are separated? He hit you, too? You saw what few did? No matter the questions that ran through my mind or yours, it is certain that no one could provide a satisfactory answer. The truth was—and is—no one understands.

I myself have been guilty of asking questions that were better left unasked; I am not perfect, and I am not mad at those who asked and said these things. (I know that they are usually backed with good intentions)

Honestly, we should be ashamed to talk about other people's grief like we know what we are talking about. We do not know the financial, emotional, physical struggle they experienced after Their Moment, or to what extent these struggles affected them. We only know ours.

This is not to say that we cannot be of comfort and service to those grieving. After my losses, a lot of the time it was the stories of those who had experienced similar losses as me that kept me afloat. It is important, at least in my opinion, that we take our senseless pain and use it to help others cope.

To those of you navigating your grief right now, be prepared to find little satisfaction in other's words. Remember that they care and they want to help—they just don't know how.

To those of you walking with a grieving loved one, know that sometimes it is perfectly wonderful to just sit and listen, to hold, to silently love that person beside you. There is nothing you can say that can change the past. It is in the act of showing patience and comfort rather than speaking comfort—a language I have yet to find—that can provide the means to heal.

Raymond Carver has another quote: "There isn't enough of anything as long as we live. But at intervals a sweetness appears and given a chance, prevails."

We will never have enough time and there will never be enough words in the dictionary to make "it" better. But there is a sweetness, like summer honeysuckle, when we just silently hold the hearts of the downtrodden and allow our hearts to be held in return when we need it most.