I’m Kate, a psychotherapist writing about mental health and self-discovery, for you to flourish in a life you love. When we cultivate compassion, resilience and understanding, we also create a more harmonious world. Upgrade here for personal growth tools, therapeutic journaling and exercises, and if you’d like to support my work. Thanks for being here!
Hi friends,
It’s grief awareness week in the UK this week, and this time of year, with all the festivities and pressure, is when grief can feel the most profound.
Grief is one of life’s most challenging experiences, and it’s likely to come to us all. Yet it’s often misunderstood or avoided.
Whether it’s the loss of a loved one, a relationship, or even a part of ourselves, grief can feel overwhelming and isolating. Understanding the many forms grief can take, and how it impacts our lives, is the first step toward healing.
If you’ve ever struggled to make sense of your own grief, or to support someone else through theirs, read on. You’re not alone, and there is hope in understanding it, and rebuilding a bright future.
The Dangers of Unresolved Grief
Here in the UK, many of us are still bad at addressing grief, preferring to sweep it under the carpet, or striving for the impossible stiff upper lip (suitable for only those with limited emotional capacity). It works until it doesn’t. Because of this attitude, I hid while I was grieving, to protect others from it. It’s not healthy.
If we don’t address and give space to our grief, it can silently take root within us, creating a deep emotional wound that refuses to heal. Unprocessed grief lingers, as sadness, anger, and numbness creep into every corner of our lives. It weighs on our hearts, clouds our minds, and disconnects us from the people and experiences that once brought us joy. Over time, it can harden into resentment or despair, leaving us feeling stuck, unable to move forward, and haunted by a loss that remains unresolved.
We may develop issues reintegrating, feel shame, develop depression, anxiety, substance misuse, even physical illness. When we don’t give ourselves the space to grieve, we deny ourselves the chance to heal, and the pain grows heavier.
The goal of these posts and therapeutic journaling prompts is to explore and normalise our wide-ranging experiences of grief. The music of our life doesn’t always have to play in a minor key.
Here, we can explore griefs challenges, the impact of your loss on you, and use our understanding to help rebuild your life with a sense of meaning.
Life After Loss
I planned to share a photo of a book about grief I bought twenty years ago here, as it illustrates my own complicated grief journey. Naturally I have mislaid it, but it is a book about grief, covered in glittery stickers. I read Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s book On Grief And Grieving in the months after my third baby Holly died in my arms. I had bought it four years earlier when my first baby Rosie was stillborn, but I hadn’t before been able to find the courage to open it.
The book cover is decorated in little glittery stickers of cupcakes, kittens and rainbows that my daughter, a toddler at the time, stuck all over it with her tiny, grubby fingers, as I stole a moment to read. She is now at university sticking post it notes in her psychology text books with cleaner hands.
While I wanted to stop the world and get off, my only living daughter, bright with life and curiosity, claimed her birthright of my love and attention. I wanted life to stand still. She would not and could not let me.
Her cute chubby cheeks would press against mine, leaving smears of wetness, while I smiled through badly hidden tears. My heart stretched across the whole universe, the cavernous, dark emptiness battled with that deep love. My fractured heart still pumped life through me, while my living cherub brought me tiny cups of invisible air-tea.
I never looked down at my empty body, hardly at all, for three more years.
Elizabeth Kübler-Ross wrote her sticker-covered book ‘On Grief and Grieving’ while she was dying of terminal cancer. She had already supported thousands of people facing their own deaths, and the death of others, both in her work and in her earlier book, ‘On Death and Dying.’
After strengthening my psyche in my first three year counselling training, and the compulsory therapy throughout, I was now, at least, able to open the book.
We all experience grief differently, for different reasons and during different parts of our lives. At some point, we must acknowledge that all our loved ones will die. You and I too. Everyone. This may sound morbid but I remind you so you can claim your life. Embracing this fact can bring us a greater sense of purpose.
Grief: Who; What; How; When
Grief Can Feel Isolating
Our grief is never the same as another’s, and we must respect these differences. Siblings have different relationships to their parents from each other (siblings in the same family never have the same childhood). Friends have different relationships with each other. One partner may grieve differently to a lost child than the other.
It’s often hard when people say ‘How are you?’ After loss. You have to collude with the absurdity of the question. How can we answer such a question, with intense, crushing pain knotted though our brains? I advise telling the truth.
I enjoyed reading this post by Melissa about what to say to someone who is grieving here in her post Tactical Kindness.
Disenfranchised Grief
When our grief is not validated by others, like when I lost my first baby in late pregnancy, or through childlessness (see Jody Day and Afterglow by Katie Dunn) - there’s a double whammy while we cope without support or recognition.
One family member called me selfish during an intense wave of grief sometime later, when I was at rock bottom and unable to cope. Talking to my then therapist about my grief for my baby she said to me:
‘Can’t you just do something else?’
Really?
There are those emotionally attached to a public figure they never met who died, or had an affair with the deceased so were unwelcome at the funeral, or feel intense grief for an ex partner or a beloved pet.
Sandra Pawula writes about the death of her cat in her post Finding the Beauty in Loss Wild Arisings by Sandra Pawula , and Emma Lightfoot researched the meaning of grief to pet owners.
Complicated Grief
We may experience ‘prolonged grief’ and struggle to move forward long after the loss. Intense longing, disbelief, and inability to engage in daily life persist beyond what is expected, interfering with normal functioning.
This may arise from being very dependant on the deceased, like a spouse or parent, a sudden or traumatic loss, having no social support, or the presence of previous mental health issues.
Maybe we have a history of trauma, like prior abuse or neglect, so a complicated relationship with the deceased, or ambivalence, or other unresolved conflicts. We may feel delighted that a horrible person passed away, and unable to express this as they were squeaky clean in public, and treated us differently to everyone else. We might shout ‘good riddance’ in the kitchen when no-one is listening.
Perhaps we lost someone to suicide. Should we have done something differently?
If our loved one died after an accident we were involved in, we may also feel survivor guilt.
If the death was traumatic for them or us, or despicable, like murder, manslaughter, or medical negligence, our shattered minds may find it even harder to piece any sense together in the aftermath.
Delayed Grief
Sometimes grief only appears years or decades later. Maybe because other things were in the foreground, we were traumatised, we were so busy with work or family issues, bringing up small children, or anything that prevented us being ready to feel those powerful emotions.
My own grief waves still come, twenty years on, though only a few times a year now, not a few times a day.
The Absence of Grief
I’ve had therapy clients feel nothing when a close relative died, and that’s fine. Perhaps it will come one day, and perhaps it won’t. It really is fine. If you aren’t strongly attached to someone, or if dying for them is ‘right’ like a very elderly person who lived a beautiful life. Honour and accept your feelings as they are, not how you or others think they should be.
Grief without Death
Grief is about loss, not death. We may experience grief when a relationship ends, when we lose a friend, a job, our home, or through periods of change. We can lose someone we love to a partner we dislike, through relocation, to alcohol or drug abuse, to mental illness, Alzheimer’s or dementia, or an extreme ideology. Some may grieve when a close relative or friend transitions to a different gender identity. Even though we may accept them as they are wholeheartedly, we may still feel loss.
Visit Alexis Damen for her letter to Alzheimer’s and Edie Morgan who writes on the same topic.
Kate Stirling wrote about the grief she experienced after her divorce, something I experienced too.
There is the grief for your troubled country bombed to ruins, or profound shifts in culture or politics, as many of us experience across the world now.
And what if you were never loved as you should have been, or you hadn’t had the childhood you deserved? We must mourn this loss, so we can rebuild, and re-write our story.
Grief For Our Lost Future
Life is full of sliding doors. I wrote about how my life changed over time, after loosing my babies shortly after marriage in an early post here (it is personal, so for paid subscribers). When loss is life changing, there are added layers of grief, and a seismic adjustment to a new life.
Anticipatory Grief
When we know someone will die, we may experience the bereavement in advance of the death we know is coming, bringing grief forward. Anne writes about her husbands degenerative brain disease in her The Future Widow publication.
Secondary Losses
These are the ripple effects of a primary loss, such as the repercussions after the death of a spouse or child, or a parent when young.
In the aftermath of my baby girls deaths, I divorced, lost my home, financial security, and many friends, I lost my identity as a family woman. I’m okay now, friends!
My daughter lost the childhood she might have had, with profound implications, because of our grief. Her childhood was unrecognisable to anything I had hoped for, or expected. She is doing well, is a lovely person with many friends and ambitions of her own, inevitably studying psychology at Uni!
Cumulative Grief
Experiencing multiple losses in a short period of time can overwhelm our ability to process grief, leading to a cumulative grief that complicates our ability to heal. I had a client who experienced multiple suicides in her family. For me, losing another baby daughter just as I was getting back on my feet, compounded the emotions from my previous loss: it was like I had now lost both legs and couldn’t walk.
Masked Grief
This type of grief is hidden, where we are unaware we are grieving. The grief may manifest in other ways, such as through physical pain (e.g. back pain), or medical symptoms, detachment from feelings, or emotional outbursts that seem disconnected from the loss. We may choose too much solitude, or to hide our feelings.
If you watch Colin from Accounts, a heartwarming Aussie comedy now on the BBC, theirs is a great episode about masked grief in Series Two.
Pop over to visit these writers who have written about loss and grief:
Ruth Cooper-Dickson, Lower Your Expectations by Diane Shipley, Claire Venus, Emma Simpson, Beverley Ward, Michelle Forman, E.R.J. McKay, Henry Hyde, Spaceman One, and Paula Di Marco. Pop over to explore. Lindsay Johnstone, Kathryn Vercillo, and Victoria, Horace & friends and Ruhie Vaidya write about the death of their fathers, while Una writes about an Irish wake on her publication. Gemma writes and records an podcast about rebuilding her life or yours after losing her husband to cancer aged 30. Bronwen Leigh also wrote about losing her young partner whilst pregnant 20 years ago.
Community helps us feel less alone.
Our goal is not to push our grief away, or be at all prescriptive, but to be able to rebuild our lives with meaning, whilst honouring our loss and emotions.
So it’s over to you. Do you relate to any of this? What resonates? Do you have a story or link to share with your writing for others to discover, or a loved one’s name or a memory? Is there something I’ve missed?
With love and gratitude
Kate
PS if you found this post useful or important, please do press the heart and share it, so I can reach more people - and bring more compassion to the world.
Further Reading
On Grief and Grieving - Elizabeth Kübler-Ross
Tasks of Mourning - William Worden (for Therapists)
Grief Works - Julia Samuel’s
Bittersweet - Susan Cain
Kokoro - Beth Kempton
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