“I can’t imagine what you’re going through,” she said, yet another acquaintance who had heard the news about my son. “I’m so sorry.”

“Here we go again,” I thought. “Right in the produce aisle.”

I didn’t know whether to smile or cry. Reaching for something to lean on, I found only a hard-knobbed ginger root. Not very comforting, but nothing would be. I knew better by now.

I hadn’t been able to put a finger on why this kind of interaction — common in the months since my husband and I learned of our son’s dire diagnosis — stabbed so deep. Yes, it’s always hard for people to know what to say when they find out your barely 3-year-old child has a disease that will slowly and painfully take his life. But something about the phrase “I can’t imagine” hit particularly hard.

I could see this fellow school mother feeling sad and uncomfortable, not wanting to presume she knew what I was going through. No one wants to imply that they know how it feels to be nine months pregnant with your third baby and be told that your second child has Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a fatal disease that, like A.L.S., ravages the body until there is no muscle left.

My M.O. in this scenario was to go into reassurance mode: “I’m OK. We’re hanging in there. Life is what it is.” Anything to end the person’s distress and our encounter so I could get back to checking items off my grocery list.

But this time was different. As though I was watching a cinematic performance of our exchange from theater seats, I suddenly was able to see with clarity why I felt so bad. I barely heard what she said next because I was lost in my own epiphany.

“Those aren’t just empty words,” I thought. “She truly can’t imagine my life. Meaning that my life is so horrible and otherworldly that it can’t live within her imagination.”

That fateful Monday months earlier when my husband received the news of our son’s diagnosis, he called me at work with three simple words: “Come home, now.”

We sat on our porch bench for hours, holding each other, crying and even occasionally laughing at the absurdity of the moment. Truthfully, despite our son’s delayed milestones and our nagging concerns, this diagnosis hadn’t been in our imagination either. But here we were, facing the reality that our lives would never be the same.

I struggled through my grief and anger, all the while trying to usher in the joy of a soon-to-arrive third child. How could I be joyful again, knowing I would watch our second child suffer and our dreams for the family we had imagined disintegrate?

So, I did what all humans are biologically primed to do: I avoided the pain at all costs. Diving into work, newborn clothes shopping, house projects — anything I could find to keep my mind from being too silent to let the truest thoughts enter. I did what humans do best: distract and escape.

But probably to no one’s surprise but my own, it didn’t work. I found myself withdrawing more, not wanting to connect with friends and mechanically going through the motions of parenting. And frustratingly, people who meant well, like this acquaintance in the grocery store, made the pain even worse. Every time, I would walk away feeling hollow and excluded.

I assumed it was because of the exhaustion of feigning politeness, accepting their well wishes while somehow trying to make them feel better. Until that day I had the revelation that hit me even harder than the pain inside: If she can’t even imagine my pain, how was I supposed to accept it was real?

That wasn’t the only well-intentioned condolence that fell flat. Others included the backhanded compliment (“God only gives these challenges to the spiritually strong”), toxic positivity (“At least your other two children are healthy”) and worst of all: complete avoidance.

I had good friends and even family members who flat out ignored me. But my angry comments unfolded only in my head; I was too scared to offend anyone. Even with people who said, “I can’t imagine,” I wanted to lash out. I’d think, “Well, it must be nice not to have to.”

But now I could not fathom how I had missed the nuance of why that phrase left me feeling so rattled. To exist beyond someone’s imagination is to feel profoundly isolated. If you can’t be imagined or seen, if you’re in some spiritual elite of nightmarish tragedies, where does that leave you? On your own.

Around the same time, a mentor encouraged me to “practice gratitude,” which frankly felt offensive. But I finally accepted her challenge; nothing else was working anyway. To make a practice of my gratitude, she asked me to go to my son’s bed every night after he went to sleep and say, “Thank you.” For this life. For him.

At first, I faked it. I could feel my body tensing under the invitation to accept that this diagnosis and the future it laid out were in fact real. Yes, even I did not want to imagine it. Until slowly but surely I felt my body softening with more easily flowing tears and resisting the exercise less. Something about saying “Thank you” made me turn back toward my life instead of away.

And now here I was again, getting a similar message. That avoiding pain was not an answer to surviving grief, or at least not a solution that was working for me.

People were saying my life was unimaginable, perhaps unsurvivable. But maybe surviving this kind of sadness was about imagining this life, too, as one worth living. It wasn’t easy to view our circumstances this way, and not fast. But with this mentor’s help, I started the slow, steady path back toward my pain and grief.

For one, I practiced more gratitude for my own life. By seeing all the indestructible goodness that sits right next to the very hard. Even now, years later, as my son is in the latter stages of this brutal disease, I transfer him to his bed and see the way he lovingly looks at me as a gift. Nothing gets easier, but I have more ease with which to hold the hard.

And I have changed the way I respond to others in pain, choosing to invite them in rather than turn them away. Instead of saying, “I can’t imagine,” I might extend a simple, “That sounds so hard.” Or offer the human truth: “I don’t know what to say, but I’m here with you.”

I even have had the energy to confront some of the close people in my life who had entirely skirted my son’s diagnosis or just stopped calling altogether. They all had the same version of the excuse, “I just didn’t know what to say.”

How about a simple “I love you,” I said.

Over time, it became clearer to me that my sense of belonging and connection were directly related to managing my grief and even to reclaiming my joy. Soon I began to respond to that scenario with the acquaintance in the market differently. Rather than simply reassuring well-wishers, I tried to connect to them. Instead of smiling back, I encouraged them to use their imagination as a bridge to me and my life.

“I really wish you would try to imagine my pain,” I now say. “Not because our pain is the same but because imagining it will connect you to me and maybe even more deeply to your own pain.”

This usually leads to a stunned look followed by an awkward silence, long enough that each time it happens I must steel myself before trying it again. But in the end, it tends to start a conversation in which we can get somewhere better than retreating to our separate islands of pity and pain. And for that, I am grateful.

I think my new response is more loving and generous than the polite ones I used to give. It opens up rather than closes off, encouraging us to see each other, to imagine a life unlike your own. As a plus, I walk away feeling more connected to them, not less, and even more connected to my own pain.

I feel like I belong here not because my pain is just like someone else’s. Not because it’s a blessing. Not because I’m able to “practice gratitude.” I belong — everyone does — because we all have pain, and connecting to each other’s pain is what makes us more human. And even, dare I say, more joyful.

Tanmeet Sethi, an integrative physician in Seattle, is the author of “Joy Is My Justice.”

Modern Love can be reached at modernlove@nytimes.com.

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