Some folks will need to pound the pavement and will run, jog or walk to process their grief without ever sharing their inner reality or pain with others. Some folks will need to tell their story over and over in order to reconcile it into their lives. Some will rely on those closest to them, some may need the help of a support group full of “strangers”. Still others will go into exile and share their story only with the trees.

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And is true here when one takes the time to understand the difference between grief and mourning. And yes, there is an important distinction to be made between these two words we so often hear used interchangeably. Anyone who has allowed themselves to love and has lost a loved one will be met with grief as a result. Grief is what happens internally; the pain, the loneliness, the searching, the lump that finds it’s way to your throat when you hear a song that makes you want to cry even as you fight back the tears. Mourning, by comparison, is the external response. It is letting yourself cry instead of fighting it off, writing a letter to the person you miss, or talking to a trusted someone about how you are feeling.  And it is by mourning, externalizing the pain, the thoughts, the confusion, everything that exists inside you, and making it external. It is owning your feelings and your experience.

It would be wonderful if I could tell you that after X amount of time, you will return to feeling whole and happy and everything will be fine. The truth is there is no timeline for grief. And time alone often doesn’t heal this particular wound. Although the passage of time does allow for the softening of the pain, this is only possible if people are metabolizing their grief along the way, giving it its proper attention and not denying its existence. And while it will take time to heal, and while you may be forever changed by your grief, you absolutely can reconcile your losses and learn to live fully and love deeply again.

You can no longer live without the knowledge of what it is like to lose someone, much as you might wish you could. You have come to grief and this experience is life-changing. 

Your relationships may change as well. People may not know how to relate to you now, or you may not feel you belong in certain arenas. Very unfortunately, some people will let you down. By the grace of goodness, others who you never expected to, will support you and become a place of great comfort. 

It’s so, so hard. A broken heart is so painful and endlessly lonely. This is a pain you may not have been able to even comprehend before coming to grief. You are not crazy, this is an experience that has the ability to reorient your entire being and make strange your once familiar and safe environment.

Especially in early grief, when it can hurt to be alive, it is exactly as hard as you understand it to be. Drawing breath can be a task, any and all music may grate your ears while it rips open your heart, food takes on the taste and consistency of saw dust; the world is suddenly wholly foreign and unsafe as it continues to turn when it really and truly shouldn’t.

You don’t need to do or be better, you don’t need to need to be stronger. You need only to be. The hardest thing, that which takes the most strength, is allowing your grief in, paying attention to it, leaning into the pain. It sounds counter-intuitive; surely if I don’t look at this it can’t hurt me anymore? In fact, no. By making an ally of your grief - not a friend, but neither an enemy - you will be making space for healing and stitching back the pieces of your broken heart over time.

We as a society don’t prepare ourselves for death, loss or the experience of grieving. This is a somewhat recent development, as in generations before ours we had mechanisms for recognizing and honouring grief.

Now, we live in a culture that is made uncomfortable with strong emotional reactions or the expression of what is viewed as “negative” emotions.
 

At a time when you it feels that you have no capacity, a cruel reality is that you will need to be the one to recognize your broken heart as legitimate and in need of care, and try to quiet the voices that tell you otherwise. It is important to find your safe people inside your grief, those who will let you tell the story yet again, who will hold you hand as you do, and who will understand that there is no fix for this, nor are you in need of fixing.

It feels hopeless, especially if your loss is very recent or sudden, unexpected. You may not even be able to believe this yet, or perhaps don't like to hear it.

And yet there is an innate, built-in mechanism for survival that will carry you through this dark time. Your pain and your grief will eventually come to coexist with and within a new life. You can reconcile your loss into your life and learn to live and love fully again, not by forgetting or "moving on" but by holding space for your grief and your love.