What Is Grief?

Grief is one of the most universal and deeply personal experiences we go through as humans.  No matter how much we try to prevent it, it touches every culture, age, and stage of life.  Yet, despite how common it is, grief often feels isolating, confusing, and difficult to explain.  It can feel crazy-making and crushing, leaving people asking the same question when it arrives, “what is happening to me?”, or even worse, “what is wrong with me?”

At its core, grief is the emotional, mental, physical, and sometimes spiritual response to loss.  While it is most often associated with the death of a loved one, grief can arise from any kind of loss.  The end of a relationship, the loss of health, a miscarriage, infertility, birth trauma, a major life transition, or even the loss of a future you once imagined for yourself can all trigger grief.  Grief is not limited to death.  It is the change you never asked for and never wanted, the maze we never asked or consented to enter, and its hold is directly tied to love, attachment, and meaning.  One of the most human truths about grief is that we grieve because we loved.  If someone or something mattered to us, losing it will hurt.  Grief is not a sign of weakness, failure, or inability to cope.  It is evidence of connection.

Grief is often described as sadness, but it is so much more complex than that.  It tends to show up in layers and contradictions.  Emotionally, grief can show up as deep sadness or emptiness, as anger, frustration, or resentment, as guilt or regret, as anxiety or fear, as numbness or emotional shutdown, and sometimes all those things together  interwoven with moments of relief or even joy, which can feel confusing or even shameful.  No matter what we are feeling though, we do need to take the time to notice it and name it – without judgement.  We need to spend some time not just pushing those emotions away but allowing them to be felt and seen.  We cannot heal what we do not feel.  Thankfully, no feeling is final.

Grief doesn’t just affect emotions either.  It can live in your body and mind too.  You might feel exhausted no matter how much you sleep.  You may struggle to focus, forget simple things, or feel foggy and disconnected.  Your chest might feel heavy, your throat tight, or your body tense for no clear (or what you deem to be acceptable) reason.  You may be experiencing aches, pains, or a weakened immune system.  All these body responses are very real and very common in grief.  In grief, we tend to exert so much more energy than we realize, and each of us only has so much of that energy to use in a day.  I like to use the analogy of a car battery on an extremely cold day.  If we forget to plug in our car, we might wake up to a completely depleted battery.  Not everyone experiences all of these responses, and they may not happen all at once.   We are all unique, and grief tends to come in waves.  Some days feel manageable, while others feel overwhelming, even long after the loss.

Many people are familiar with the idea that grief happens in stages.  While this can be helpful information for us to understand common reactions, it is often misunderstood as a linear process with a clear endpoint.  This could not be farther from the truth.  Grief rarely moves in a straight line, and we would be setting ourselves up for failure to think it will one day just be gone forever.  You may feel some acceptance one day and intense anger or sadness the next.  You might have a day that has you feeling like “you are doing better” or “it’s gone” and then be pulled back by a memory, anniversary, or unexpected trigger.  This does not mean you are failing at grief.  It means you are human.  Grief is not something you complete or finish – it is something you learn to carry and integrate into your life over time.

It Is also important to remember that grief does not follow a script, so everybody experiences grief differently.  Some people cry openly, others keep their emotions to themselves.  Some people want company, others prefer solitude.  Some people feel their grief deeply right away, where others don’t feel it until much later.  All of these responses are valid.  There is no right or wrong way to grieve, and too often grief is accompanied by the shame of “not doing it right”.  Grief is about more than just our relationship with someone or something, it factors in our personality, our culture, age and stage of life, where our nervous system is at in that particular moment, how we were raised, the supports we have, and how we have learnt to manage our stress and emotions.  Our grief is as unique as we are.  What matters most is allowing space for compassion, patience, and understanding both for ourselves and for each other. 

Grief is not something that can be fixed, and what helps during its process can look different for everyone and even change from day to day or even moment to moment.  Small grounding practices like rest, routine, movement, or time in nature, can offer moments of steadiness.  Creative outlets, reflection, or quiet can help people process what they are feeling.  Connection can also be healing, whether that means talking with trusted people, joining a support group or seeking professional support.  What I believe to be the most important though, is giving yourself permission to move at your own pace, to ask for the support you need, and to let go of the expectations about how healing “should” look.

One of the most gut-wrenching parts of grief can be the concept of moving on.  It can feel as though healing means leaving something or someone behind, or that finding moments of peace or enjoyment somehow diminishes the significance of what was lost.  Many people fear that moving forward signals forgetting, betrayal, or a lack of love or loyalty.  In reality though, moving on could never erase the impact of a loss or the meaning it holds.  It simply reflects our capacity to carry it differently over time.  Honoring grief and allowing growth can exist side by side, and moving forward can be an act of survival and care rather than abandonment.  We owe it to ourselves to both grieve fully and live fully.

Grief asks us to slow down, to listen more closely to ourselves, and to move through life with a tenderness we may not have known before.  It changes us.  Not because we are broken, but because love has left its imprint on our hearts. There is no finish line, no correct timeline, and no version of grief that needs to be justified.  Wherever you are at in this moment with it is exactly where you are meant to be.  With time, support and compassion, grief can become something that walks alongside you rather than something that overwhelms you.  Grief might change the shape of your life, but it also reveals the depth of your love, and your remarkable capacity to keep going on.