You’re not grieving the wrong way. It’s just hard to tell when every source of entertainment, news, and even education on the topic of grief has a different point of insight, actionable items, or advice for you in your losses. So today, I’m going to invite you to consider three of my favorite themes of entertainment while grieving that might help you develop some more emotional regulation of your own – humor, nostalgia, and horror.
As we move toward our own values and alignment in grief work, we get to choose which types of grief support are meaningful for us, and to that end, which ones are not. As a long time griever, I’ve spent years frustrated by the representation of grief work in media. You’re with me in this – most portrayals of grief in entertainment have painted the five stages of grief as linear, guaranteed, and finite – not to mention as the permanent and penultimate experience of grief.
When we view and accept the five stages of grief as fact, we limit our emotional understanding and opportunity to carve our own path. We think we’re off base, and misjudge our grief journey as slow, wrong, bad, or even harmful.
To date, I know my own grief experience has been cyclical, unpredictable, and unending. The complete opposite of how we learn about loss in movies and shows.
But I also know that watching movies is a huge part of the grieving process. Falling into a couch with low pressure to perform, simply to get lost in a story is necessary at times. So with that in mind, I thought I’d share a few of the types of movies and shows outside of the Hallmark Channel* to be helpful while grieving. And honestly, if the Hallmark or Lifetime Channels bring you comfort, go for it. They’re just not always the most grief literate sources, so let your discernment support you through it. But as we talk, think of your own favorite shows and movies. How have they supported you through loss?
Let’s talk laughter first. Have you ever laughed at something tragic? The lyrics from Barenaked Ladies come to mind here, every time – “I’m the kind of guy that laughs at a funeral…can’t understand what I mean? Well, you soon will.”
Grief isn’t just about sadness; it’s about access to the full range of our human emotions. We want to avoid grief because it invites into the richer, deeper emotional states that aren’t as easy to walk off. But grief is a brilliant partner for growth, if we can tolerate the complexity and intensity of it all. Which is why my first offering of grief entertainment is a little bit dark.
It was Christmas 1997. I had just finished helping my mom and grandmother wrap a shower curtain around a small meat grinder with a shoe inside, full of fake snow and a Special Edition box set of Fargo as a gift for my grandfather, who loved the messy, cringeworthy crime-gone-wrong instant classic.
I was raised in a world of Death Becomes Her and as a young adult, became so grateful for tongue-in-cheek movies of melancholy dysfunction and satire.
Permission to laugh during seasons of grief is necessary for the release of tension. It doesn’t have to be dark humor – anyone in my life knows Brooklyn Nine-Nine grounded me through the intensity of giving birth, losing my mom, miscarriages, job loss, and Covid (among other things). And shows like Scrubs or even the Marvel series Deadpool use humor to explore grief in a way that validates the responses we have – the human need to understand without putting a period at the end of the sentence. It is reasonable that despite grief’s ongoing nature in our lives, we would pause to laugh through the tears.
In fact, the rewatchability of emotionally intelligent shows like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Parks & Recreation, and others create a sense of safety for us. Not only do they allow us to revisit characters we appreciate, respect, or love to hate, they keep our downtime predictable. When I said Brooklyn Nine-Nine got me through all those big losses, I wasn’t kidding. By its tenth and final season, I had rewatched it nearly 10 times through myself, if not more.
Nostalgic shows aren’t about avoiding the new. When we rewatch our favorites, we are honoring our own need for a mental “rest stop” along the grief journey. We need the sense of comfort, community, and hope from revisiting what we know and trust will not surprise us. Even when a character in our favorite shows leaves or dies, or turns into a villain – we’ve seen it before, and we can trust the way we will feel.
Occasionally, these familiar shows allow us to open up even more into the depth and intelligence offered in these shows. When I was aggressively grieving the losses of political and social safety through Covid, the writers of Brooklyn Nine-Nine handled difficult topics with grace and insight. They allowed the discomfort of real life to show up in their stories and every single audience member was richer for it. We can’t just avoid the reality around us, even when we’re grieving, but we can show one another how to move through it with grace instead of shame.
Speaking of shame, if anyone has ever cringed at your declaration of love for horror movies, this next part is validation for you, too.
Horror movies and suspenseful stories – especially procedural shows featuring first responders – allow us to process our difficult emotions and relate in some way to what we’re seeing on screen. If we can get beyond the tropes and occasional sensationalism to suspend our disbelief, we can experience the catharsis of fear without any real threat to our lives.
Your nervous system cannot distinguish between what is real or what is imagined. The “stick or snake” conundrum is a classic metaphor for how the nervous system processes potential threats. Imagine walking in the woods and spotting something long and coiled on the ground. Your brain instinctively triggers a fear response, assuming it’s a snake to ensure survival—only to realize moments later it’s just a harmless stick.
This rapid, protective reaction highlights how the nervous system prioritizes safety over accuracy, often activating the fight, flight, or freeze response before fully assessing the situation. While this quick judgment can be lifesaving, it also explains why we sometimes overreact to perceived dangers, leaving our bodies and minds in a heightened state of stress or dysregulation.
So when we watch scary movies or police dramas or epic, apocalyptic stories, we are allowing our nervous system to titrate toward the scary things without reliving what we ourselves are carrying. These stories let us engage our nervous system to release and express suppressed emotions such as fear of future losses.
We deserve to honor all emotional outlets, whether it is through humor, nostalgia and familiarity, or even horror. Engaging with our emotions through these creative methods allows us to get away from the expectation of a few, predictable stages of grief and toward a more authentic and dare I say, restorative, approach to our healing.
Reflect on the shows and movies you turn to in your losses. When you’re grieving, what resonates with you? Do you lean toward one of these categories? Or do you reach for something new and shiny and distracting? No matter what you’re watching, make space to reflect on your own toolkit for coping and consider what each tool brings to your process. Remember, coping is for short-term survival. Long term, we want to develop restorative and regulating strategies that allow us to face our fears, emotions, sensations, and thoughts with self-compassion and curiosity. Becoming more aware of our grief stories and the stories we turn toward for emotional regulation allows us to validate our experiences and help us better hold space for ourselves through the work.
Thank you for listening to episode 176 of Restorative Grief. Your grief doesn’t need to look like mine. Whether your laughing, screaming, crying, or some combination thereof, it’s all part of healing. I’m grateful for the shows and movies that have helped me move the needle toward regulation through loss, and I’m curious which shows and movies you would recommend as well! So let me know – connect with me on Instagram, Patreon, or inside the Restorative Grief project and share your comfort rewatches, too.
If this is your first time listening to the podcast, thank you for being present with yourself and with us through your journey toward healing. It’s an honor to walk alongside you, in whatever form we can. If you’re interested in becoming a Patron of the podcast for bonus content or just to support the work, check out the show notes for details. Be sure to subscribe to the show and don’t forget to leave a shiny, five star review as well. Thank you to the Patrons of the show – your ongoing support means the world to me and makes this podcast continue to be possible.
And as always, before we go, one last thing.
Please remember, the only solution for grief is to do the work of grieving. Thank you for listening. I’ll see you next week.