Does grief ever go away?

Christena
Jun 6, 2022
5 min read

Updated: Jun 11, 2022

I’m hesitant to answer this because I know it won’t be what you want to hear; quite simply “no”, grief never goes away, but we move through it and forward, but never completely away. But there is a choice to be made when it comes to experiencing grief and it’s just that: you must experience it.

What is grief?

Grief is a process where we experience the loss of what or who we held dear. Grief is not the disappointment of losing something we never had, rather the unsettling of life as we know it; the removal of something or someone who made our lives better and who allowed us those brief moments of peace, contentment, groundedness, consistency, and love.

What do we grieve?

When we think about grief, we often go big, thinking of the death of a loved-one, the loss of a job, or the end of a significant relationship. But we can grieve many different things and you shouldn’t discount the experience of mourning those small but important aspects of life.

For example:

The death of a favourite celebrity;
The end of a wonderful novel;
A co-worker leaving and starting a job somewhere else;
Your favourite television series ending;
Selling a car that served you well for many years;
A heartwarming holiday or vacation coming to an end;
The end of the weekend!

Yes, I said it, the end of the weekend! I remember as a little girl, feeling intensely sad when Sunday afternoon turned into evening, as I knew my days off were coming to a close.

The biggest and more devastating losses usually involve:

Illness: either that of a loved-one or ourselves. Our lives change significantly when faced with an illness and there are many avenues of grief that we will process during this time.
Death of a loved-one: this is a big one. The grief from death can hold further complexities, depending on how the death occurred. Accidental, violent, and sudden deaths often create a depth of trauma that can deepen our grief response.
Loss of a significant relationship: in the past, we’d called this divorce, however, we understand now that meaningful relationships exist outside of marriage and that the grief from a break-up—romantic partnership or friendship—can be overpowering.

Just writing this is making me relive some of those feelings I’ve had in my past during deep grieving processes. That said...

What does grief feel like?

Expressed grief feels like a nervous stomach, dizzying confusion, exhaustion and sleeplessness, heavy eyes, burning tears, and it can be similar to the breathlessness felt during a panic attack. Grief can feel like the room is closing in all around us, and those in the depths of its expression will feel the despair of life never being the same again.

I know that sounds heavy and all-consuming, but stick with me, because there is a purpose to grief and a potential.

What does expressed grief look like?

Grief looks different on everybody, but when it is expressed, it is often shown through tears, sobbing, disbelief, shock, anger, rage, panic, and confusion. Some people have said they feel like they’re little kids again, lost, afraid, and looking for their mothers. Expressed grief is the declaration of powerful feelings related to immense loss. Often, expressed grief will see you connecting with loved-ones and sharing in your losses together.

Expressed grief presents initially as anxiety and panic but encompasses the first critical steps toward healing.

What does unexpressed grief look like?

On the other hand, unexpressed grief presents as depression: blank expression (flat affect), the inability to cry, refusal to discuss the loss, isolating yourself from other people, not sleeping or sleeping too much, using substances like alcohol and drugs to cope, burying oneself in television, video games, gambling, sex, or any other coping mechanism that can prevent you from feeling that pain.

Unexpressed grief looks and lives like depression but can be a part of your unique healing journey—it just might make you stuck a little bit longer than perhaps you want to be, as healing does require that you feel your pain. That said, there’s no judgement here; no one likes to feel pain.

Our lifelong journey with grief

In the late 1960s, psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross coined the Five Stage of Grief, listing them—in no particular order—as denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. She went on to say:

The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again, but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same, nor would you want to.”

In this life, we lose constantly and have been balancing our feelings of grief and loss since the moment we were born. Just think of it—the moment you came into this world, you lost the safety of your mother’s womb which, in most instances, is a place of consistent warmth and care. Indeed, we come into this world grieving the loss of that comfort. In time though, grief becomes a very conscious reality and we slowly but surely learn ways to process the experience of feeling sorrow and loss, until we can feel light, laughter, and joy, once again.

And there we exist in a balance.

In his book, “The Smell of Rain on Dust”, author Martin Prechtel describes grief as praise: praise for what we’ve lost and reverence for what we’ve loved, explaining that we could not mourn something that did not hold great meaning within our lives. He goes on to say:

Praise is Grief’s voice and neither ever disappears because they are the sound of all parts of the world and universe, each living according to its own nature, each entire in itself, each a willing participle in the great prayer of praise singing the world back to life.

The spiritual value of grief

Embrace your grief, for there your soul will grow.

-Carl Jung

I’m sometimes reluctant to bring up the spiritual value of grief because it can appear insensitive to someone who is in the depths of experiencing overwhelming loss. Certainly, when someone is in pain, the last thing they need to hear is that “heaven got another angel”!

That said, I am confident there is a spiritual purpose to grief. We don’t deserve loss, but we do learn and grow from it. Grief is our greatest teacher.

How?

Compassion: grief connects us immediately to others who have gone through the same experience; for all those times we may not have understand what a person was dealing with, we suddenly have compassion. That compassion, stays. That compassion can awaken a kinder and gentler person in you.

Gratitude: grief also teaches us gratitude and imprints upon us an ability to recognize the beauty in each moment; each relationship; each laugh; each sunset; each hug; each achievement. Grief reminds us to make that phone call; to forgive yourself and others; to laugh more; to breathe more.

Purpose: grief can also take us to a place of mindfulness and spiritual exploration, as we attempt to understand the meaning of our lives and connect to the energy that remains after something ends or someone is gone. There is truth in that energy—there is a connection to something greater than what we see in front of us and hold within our physical being.

How do we heal?

There is no way around but through. A journey as unique as grief requires expression and often support. Whether its books about grief or spirituality; journaling, talking with friends, connecting with nature, holding time to cry, or working with a therapist, there are many avenues available.