Winnie the Pooh and Grief

“One day Winnie the Pooh went to visit his friend Rabbit. Rabbit, always the consummate host, offered Pooh some honey which Pooh gladly accepted. Pooh, true to form, ate rather too much honey and as he was leaving got stuck in Rabbit’s door. 

Pooh was stuck half in and half out. He couldn’t go back in and he couldn’t get out. He was stuck so tight he couldn’t even sigh.

(That’s what grief feels like for many people.)

While Pooh was stuck there he asked simply, ‘Is there someone who can sit with me and read a story, or offer a word of comfort to a bear wedged in great tightness?’

The important thing about this story to remember is what Pooh was asking for… and what he wasn’t asking for:

He didn’t ask anyone to pull him out of the hole or push him back into Rabbit’s house.

He didn’t ask for a theological discussion about how it was God’s will that he was in the hole, or that God wouldn’t have put him in the hole unless God knew he could handle it.

No, Pooh didn’t ask for any of that. He didn’t ask for any advice or solutions.

What he did ask, in essence is, ‘Will someone be there for me? Will someone be there for me while I struggle in my painful experience?’

I think what Pooh was asking for is what most grieving people are asking for. ‘Will someone be there for me?’ I think that if a grieving person has at least one person in their life who will be there for them while they are stuck in their great tightness, they can find their way out of their grief and their pain.”

— Lisa Motz-Storey, 2009
Quaker hospice chaplain