To suggest it’s been a good year for grief is to say that it’s also been a bad year for loss. And we’re only half way through. Loss marks the lives of those who remain every year. Lately, however, people in the public eye have lost.

We have watched Vice President Joe Biden bury his eldest child, Beau, 42 years after losing his wife and baby daughter. When we saw the image of President Obama hugging the Vice President at the service, we saw a father giving comfort to another in his time of bereavement.

We have watched Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg surface from her first month of grieving the sudden death of her husband, Dave Goldberg, with a note so open and eloquent and accessible, I’m starting to think those who aren’t actively grieving might “get it.” The week it was published, I was asked more than once “How are you today?” rather than “How are you?” In her piece, Sandberg sets apart the former as a much more manageable inquiry when we’re grieving.

“I realize the person knows that the best I can do right now is to get through each day,” she writes.

Being asked how I am doing today—three years out from the loss of my son—I take as a win.

These losses were sudden. They left behind spouses, young children, and parents. They were “good” men, as seems to be the case for too many who die young. We lose important people every year, whether they were important to us or to an entire country. The difference is that we are seeing something of the grief their loss inspires. We are running our fingers along it as best we can thanks to public expression like Sandberg’s and public mourning like Vice President Biden’s.

Then, a young man walked into a church in Charleston, South Carolina, and suddenly took the lives of nine women and men, people who weren’t in the public eye until their tragic deaths. This was no cancer. This was no accident. This was hate and terror and racism and access to a deadly weapon. With the rest of the country, I watched as the families spoke out and grieved and even forgave the man who took their mothers and sons and aunts from them. And the country started arguing about what kind of crime this was and a vile confederate flag flew above it all, and I couldn’t see the good anymore.

The news cycle has moved on—to inarguably good news: marriage equality (#LoveWins), continued access to healthcare, and a uniting win for USA at the Women’s World Cup (also have to give a shout-out to my adopted home of Chile on their victory at the Copa América 2015). It feels good to feel good again.

Vice President Biden watched the USA Women’s Soccer Team take to the field in Vancouver, his grandchildren by his side. He cheered. I remember how wrong celebration felt for a long time after Lorenzo died, and I have to imagine how hard he had to work to put his heart into it, even though he knows better than anyone what it takes to move forward.

All I can hope for him and his family, for Sheryl Sandberg and her family, for the families of the victims in Charleston, and for anyone we know who is grieving, is that we continue to ask not how they are, but how are they today, for days and days and days to come.