Observations About Grief

Grief has no universal path.

Everyone experiences grief differently and for different lengths of time.

Grief does not discriminate based on the type of loss.

When we grieve a loved one, there is no formula for grief that factors in a person’s age or our experience with them.

Grief is not diminished just because the person was old. It is not necessarily intensified just because a person was “young.”

Who is to say whether someone died before their time? That’s a judgment we make based on age or experience. A person’s time is up when they have fulfilled their soul’s purpose for being here. We don’t get to know what that purpose was.

The fact that the loved one lived a good life doesn’t necessarily minimize our grief. The fact that they may have had a hard life doesn’t necessarily intensify our grief.

Our grief is rooted in the fact that they are no longer here.

Grief isn’t restricted to the days or weeks following the loss. It comes and goes like a wave, sometimes more forceful and other times more subdued.

Grief can feel all-consuming or be a subtle background to the daily routines of life.

However it arises, we cannot escape it.

It lives in the body, it colors our vision, it warps our thoughts and perspective.

Unattended grief hijacks the systems that keep our bodies and minds functioning.

Grief must be felt, processed, and transmuted.

It need not be all-consuming.

We can befriend grief and use it to come to know ourselves more deeply.

The depths to which we allow ourselves to feel grief are the depths to which we allow ourselves to feel joy.

It’s not one or the other. They come with and through each other.

And the depths to which we can hold space for our own grief are the depths to which we can hold space for others in their grief.