Grief doesn't arrive on a schedule. It comes in waves. One moment you're fine, and the next something small tips you sideways and you're back in it.
Maybe it's the loss of someone who died. Maybe it's the end of a relationship, a breakup, a chapter of your life closing. Whatever the shape of it, the feeling underneath is the same. Something that was close is now far away, and your whole system is trying to make sense of that absence.
You want to know how long this lasts. You want to know if you'll ever get through it.
I've been living my own grieving process this year, and it's given me a new level of appreciation and understanding of what this actually is. So let me share what I've found.
Grief Is Your Body Remembering a Connection That's No Longer Close
Here's how I've come to understand it. Your cells, your body, they remember the other person. They remember the configuration of that other human, the way they felt, the space they took up in your life. And now that group of cells, that physical person, isn't within proximity anymore. They're far away, in another space, or another time.
That's what a loss is. The people you love aren't there for you to experience anymore, so your body registers it as a loss and begins its process of letting go.
I was talking to a friend about this, and I used an analogy that might help. Do you know what a colander is? The one you cook with, full of holes. Imagine you take a light bulb, turn it on, and bring it inside the colander. What happens? Light beams shoot out through every hole.
Energetically, each one of those beams of light is one of us, and we're all coming from the same source. So on some level there is no separation. We all come from the same place and we all return to it. Even when we're physically apart, doing different things, in different places, some part of us just knows we're still connected.
But there's another level where it feels like separation. And that's the part that hurts.
Why It Feels Like Separation (And Why That's Not the Whole Truth)
The mind copes with this physical reality by seeing things as separate. Here is me, there is you. Here is this object, there is that one. We have to do some of that just to function day to day.
So when someone is gone, the mind runs its familiar story. We're not together anymore. We're not in the same place, at the same time, on the same plane. And that belief in total separation is a huge part of the ache.
Meanwhile, the body is doing its own work, releasing and letting go. And the heart is doing its own work too, healing from the relationship itself.
None of this is predictable. It doesn't move in a straight line. It comes in waves, and it takes the time it takes.
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The Fastest Way Is the Slow Way
I'll be honest with you. I haven't found a way to speed grief up.
In our modern society, whatever we try to speed up, we usually just numb out. And I wouldn't recommend that. Whatever you sweep under the carpet comes back to bite you. The thing you avoid doesn't disappear. It waits, and it returns for you to deal with later.
So the quickest way I've found is the slow way.
Sometimes the fastest way is the slow way.
Give yourself the time and the space to heal. To release. To let go. To actually feel the emotions instead of racing past them.
I still come back to the same simple truth: the way to heal is to feel. That's the formula. And I know that to feel grief is genuinely difficult. These are some of the hardest emotions to sit with. But know this: like any emotion, it isn't permanent. Emotions come and they go.
That's also why I've learned not to base my life or my big decisions on an emotion alone. Emotions live in the moment. Sometimes they stay a little longer, because the body is still holding on or the heart is still healing. But they shift. They move. They pass.
Let It Flow: The River and the Blockage
Think about a river. When it's flowing, it's alive and clear. But if you blockade it, the water gets stuck. It stops moving. It festers, things grow in it, and it only gets worse.
Grief works the same way. When you stay stagnant, when you keep yourself stuck, it can't heal.
But when you allow yourself to feel it, you give it room to move. And when you give it room to move, it moves. You remove the blocks and what needs to flow through you finally can.
That's all "feel" really is. It's giving the emotion the space it needs so it can do what it was always going to do, which is pass through you rather than lodge inside you.
In the hardest moments you'll ask, is this ever going to end? Am I ever going to get through this? The answer is yes. Because of the way you're made. There's something inside every single one of us, no matter who you are, where you're from, or what your background is. Your body has it. On a deeper level, you have it. Some part of you already knows how to heal.
So much of healing is simply getting out of your own way and letting it happen.
A Note on the Difference Between Grief and Depression
I want to be careful here, because there's an important distinction.
Grief and deep depression can feel similar, but they're not the same thing, and I'm not a medical professional, so please seek proper medical support if you need it.
Depression can feel like an abyss you're falling through with no bottom. If that's what you're dealing with, that's the time to put a floor underneath yourself and bounce back out. Get moving. Move your body. Deep breathing helps too, because it gives that energy somewhere to go.
And that same movement helps with grief as well. Breathing, moving your body, they create space for the energy to shift. So even on the slow road, there are small things that gently help it along.
Too often now we just want to speed everything up. But when we rush, we never really let the process complete. So it stays. We carry it. And we can't properly move forward while we're still holding it.
Grief asks something different of you. It asks for your patience, your presence, and your willingness to feel.
You're going to be okay. Give it room, and let it move.