Understanding grief

You may have heard about linear “stages” of grief. Most grief researchers now understand grief less like a staircase and more like weather — waves of feeling that rise, crash and pass, sometimes hours apart, sometimes years.

You may be laughing one minute and undone the next. That isn’t a setback. For many, that’s grief working through you.

For many people, grief is a whole-body experience. You might notice things like:

• Bone-deep tiredness, even after sleep
• A tight chest, or a feeling of weight on the heart
• Brain fog, forgetfulness, losing words
• Changes in appetite — too much or none
• Headaches, jaw tension, stomach upsets
• A racing heart for no obvious reason

• Forgetting why you walked into a room
• Hearing their voice, or thinking you saw them in a crowd
• Replaying their last days on a loop
• Sudden anger at small things
• Numbness, like watching your life through glass

These are not signs you’re losing yourself. They can be signs you’re grieving someone who mattered.

Grief doesn’t end in six months, or a year, or “when you get back to yourself.” For most people, you don’t go back. You go forward, gently, into a life that has been changed.

Many people describe grief as something that doesn’t get smaller — but that, slowly, you grow around. The love stays. The shape of life around it changes.

If you didn’t love them, you wouldn’t grieve. Whatever this feels like right now, it can be the proof of how much they mattered.