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About Grief

About Grief

Grief the natural response (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual) to loss and/or change. This can include loss of a job, loss of a relationship, a move interstate, receiving a medical diagnosis, a bereavement or witnessing/experiencing a traumatic event. Everybody will experience grief and trauma in their lifetime, and more than once. The more significant the loss for an individual, the more intense the grief and trauma is likely to be.

We are not born knowing how to grieve. We learn from our families, our culture and our communities. We tend to live in a grief-avoidant society.  If our society or culture teaches us that grief is abnormal, a problem, or a source of shame we can become disconnected from what is essentially “the deepest dive into what it means to be human.” Grief can leave us feeling alone and isolated.

“Sorrow is an inseparable dimension of our human experience. We suffer after a loss because we are human. And in our suffering, we are transformed.“

Alan D. Wolfelt, Understanding Your Grief: Ten Essential Touchstones for Finding Hope and Healing Your Heart

How Long Does Grief Last?

The time is different for everyone. There is no set time frame or stages to tick off to get to a ‘finish line’ in grief. Grief takes as long as it takes! The journey is gradual. Just as we take time to establish a relationship with someone, learning to live with our loss takes time. “Time does not heal – what heals is what we do with the time.”

“Grief is not a problem to be solved, it's a human experience to be lived & shared. It's not the price we pay for love, it’s an expression of the deepest love.”

What Is Natural in Grief?

Early models for caring for the grieving, were based on medical models of care.  Practitioners were taught that grief, like other psychological troubles, could be considered an illness and that with treatment it could be “cured”. We now understand that grief is the natural response to loss, and it should not be taken away.​​

Everyone’s grief experience is unique and personal. There is no right or wrong way to grieve and we like to use the word ‘natural’ rather than ‘normal’, when speaking about grief. Grief can be unpredictable, and we may experience emotions we have not experienced before. Reactions to grief can range from being overwhelmed to discomfort or feelings of relief.

Natural grief experiences may be many and varied. They can occur for several months or even years after a loss. As frightening and intense as the pain and loss can feel, most of us are more resilient than we think.

We may be shocked, even wounded, by the loss. We may feel deeply saddened, hurt and we may feel adrift or lost for some time, but we do manage to find our way back to functioning and enjoying life.

Grief is tolerable because it comes and goes. We move back and forth emotionally. We focus on the pain of the loss, its implications, its meanings, and then our minds swing back toward the immediate world, other people, and what is going on in the present. We are given respite from the pain by staying connected to other people who help us gradually adapt to the loss. Most of us get through loss and grief on our own resources.

Accompanying Someone
Who is Grieving

We grieve in community and a person’s need to find caring, compassionate and empathetic listeners and companions in their mourning is vital in their movement and growth in grief. But it is not just needed in the early days of bereavement or loss – it can be a need that goes on for months, even years. It does not run to a timetable. “Time to get on with it” has no place.

Our culture does not always view the ongoing need for care, empathy, and compassion as something healthy or necessary and can instead ask that people repress their grief, rather than express it. We need to grasp the need for people to go on mourning long after a death and to encourage it in ways that allow a person’s grief. When we understand that grief is the ‘wildest form of love’ we can accompany people in ways that are helpful to them.

When we accompany someone in grief, we are not a counsellor; not a judge; not a person with the answers; not a therapist; not the focus; and not in a hurry.

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