Fifteen years of sitting with people in the worst weeks of their lives. Not one of them manifested it. On what happens to someone who has been told otherwise.

Alt text: Woman in a mustard sweater with her eyes closed and her arms wrapped around herself, lit from the side in a dark room

You have heard it in the worst moments of your life. Here is why it lands the way it does, and four things you can say instead when you don't know what to say.

Alt text:

Two people in dark coats walking side by side down an open road that climbs toward distant mountains