Grief is a loaded word. When you’re dealing with the loss of something irreplaceable, you feel shattered as you’re left picking up the pieces. Grief is animate, it visits at random – you can’t schedule it. If you try to walk away from it, it simply waits for you. It clings to all the parts that hurt. Grief can seem like a stone bearing on your heart, heavy and crushing. However, it is this very grief that brings purpose and meaning in all that you may have lost. Grief may wear you down, shading all things grey, but it sets the stage for healing.

Love and Grief are forever intertwined. Grief’s the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and like love, grief is non-negotiable.  There’s an overwhelming vastness to grief, reducing us to tiny trembling clusters of cells, subsumed with its large presence. It occupies the core of our being, birthing all manners of madness – ghosts and spirits and dream visitations and everything else, as we in our anguish, will into existence. Truth is, if we love, we grieve. That’s the deal, the pact.

Grief is not just the mourning of a loved lost one, but also the ache of a broken heart that knows no bounds. It’s the emptiness that fills the spaces once occupied by love, laughter. The longing for that one more conversation, one more hug, one more moment together.

The journey of grief involves navigating the labyrinth of emotions – anger, sadness, denial, acceptance – each wave crashing on us with a force that threatens to pull us under. Yet amidst the storm, there’s a flicker of hope – knowing we have the opportunity for healing and growth, a chance to honour the memory of our lost ones, to remember and cherish all that makes them unforgettable, to show gratitude for the love and life they shared. Their entire life now exists only in your mind, and so you go over every memory like marathon re-runs of old movies or photo albums, all the time fearing that the prints may fade out unless you revisit them constantly, and so you hold fast to that lingering presence as these could disappear before you’re ready to say goodbye.

Rightly is it said, ‘Grief is a journey, grieving a process’.  Grief has neither a timeline nor an expiration date. Some grieve for days, others for years or all their lives. Some try finding a solution to grief, like it’s a problem that needs to be solved. We forget that ‘It’s ok not to be ok’. Grief needs time, the right people and the right support to carry you through this process.

We don’t talk about grief enough – it’s the saddest journey you will take. There’s no right or wrong way to do it. It’s simply the tax we pay on love. The only way around it, is through it, and it gets really messy. Grief takes time, long after the sympathies and condolences have ended. You carry on through your days, sometimes in tears and sometimes with smiles.

There will come a time when people feel you are now over that loss. Truth is you never really stop missing someone who has gone, you just learn to live with these huge gaping holes of their absence. You will even be made to feel that you’ve lost the privilege to say their name in everyday conversations because it’s sad or depressing. They don’t tell you that you will hold on to that pain and grief because it’s the only thing that makes you feel connected. Or that you won’t only grieve the loss of this person, but along with them, the loss of your old self and who you were before this loss.

Grief is not a sign of weakness, a disorder or disease. It takes courage to grieve, to honor the pain we carry. Grief will last a while, to think otherwise is to pretend. The measure of grief is the measure of your love. It is unconditional, timeless and awfully hard. But remember, ‘Where there is deep grief, there was great love!’ You’re going to have to face all your feelings so you can come out on the other side, and breathe freely again. That means going with the motions of the grief within. And that itself is one of the most courageous things you will ever do.