Grief comes in a lot of different shapes and sizes: the loss of a relationship, a life stage, a job, a loved-one. Loss is a part of the human experience. And it feels heavy. Grief often creeps into our other burdens and makes them heavier, too.
You do not need to get rid of grief, get stuck in it, or leave it behind. Healing comes from finding a new way forward—moving through your grief, letting it change you, and allowing it to become a part of your ongoing story. Grief becomes the new relationship you have with our loss.
What Grief Is
Grief is the loss of something or someone meaningful to you. Grief is also much more than what or who you lost. It also includes the things you experience because of the loss and the ways that the loss changes you.
You may experience conflicting feelings with loss. You do not want to feel grief—and yet, you might feel afraid of forgetting the person or thing that is gone. Healing does not mean eliminating grief. When we speak of healing, we want the intensity and frequency of your grief symptoms to decrease, but we do not expect it to go away entirely.
Grief leaves a permanent mark to cauterize where love existed. But that scar doesn’t have to prevent you from healing. It can serve you well, both as a reminder of who and what made you who you are, and as fuel to live a meaningful life.
You can heal the wound and still retain the scar. There is a way forward, where you can honor the past and still find strength and joy for the present moment.
Where Healing Happens
The goal of grief is integration. Grief is a good thing. It is your body and brain’s way of adjusting to something meaningful being stripped from our lives. Believe it or not, grief wants to help you adapt to life after loss. In therapy, grief work comes alongside the natural movement of grief to help us find peace with our loss and a place for it within the present. Although grief looks different for everyone, and healing does not follow a linear process, there are a few qualities to this healing process.
Honoring the Loss.
It is important to create a space for mourning. Grief can be isolating. It is not meant to be carried alone. While there are many spaces for this, therapy is one. A therapist can offer a safe presence and place for you to mourn. This may be as simple as acknowledging the grief, and can also include finding ways to honor the person or thing that you lost.
Exploring the Grief.
Since the way forward is through, it is important to expand our capacity to hold the fullness of our grief. This begins with exploring the many corners of your grief. It is important to notice the ways that your grief affects you, your body, and your life—and hold it. Holding it acknowledges the value of the thing or person you lost, something that our grief craves. This may sound daunting, and it is essential to do this from a place of safety and stability, so that you can tolerate the exploration. A therapist can help guide you through this process; they can provide you with tools for holding the weight of grief, as well as walk with you, encourage safe exploration, and help hold what you find.
Rediscovering Yourself.
Grief changes you. Adapting to the loss means letting yourself be changed by it. It is important to notice, allow, and make space for these changes. These things help you live authentically in the person you have become after your loss.
When Therapy Might Help
Avoiding, suppressing, and ruminating are common responses to grief. However, these responses prevent us from engaging in the process of healing. Therapy can support the grief process when you feel stuck in one of these places. If you find that what you are doing is not working, therapy might be a valuable next step in helping you move through your grief to a place of healing.