Grief - in all it's forms

Editor’s note

This article is part of our Reflections series - a space for honest thoughts on connection, change, and how we show up in the world. These pieces aren’t here to tell you what to do. They’re here to offer a moments pause. A few minutes to notice what might be going on in life and knowing you're not alone.

Grief is one of those words we tend to reserve for the biggest losses. The ones everyone understands. But really, grief can come from losing anything we loved, relied on, imagined, or quietly thought would always be there.

We often talk about grief as if it has a particular shape, a simple process to follow. A death. A funeral. A sympathy card then a certain amount of time where people check in, ask how you are, and understand why you might not be quite yourself.

And, yes, of course, grief can be all of those things.

But. it can also be the end of a friendship you thought would last forever. The loss of a beloved pet who followed you from room to room and somehow made the house feel less empty. A relationship changing beyond recognition. A family dynamic shifting. A version of your life that no longer fits. A future you had quietly pictured, but never got to live.

Some losses are obvious from the outside. Others are much harder to explain.

Grief is not one size fits all.

When a loss does not come with the usual markers, it can feel strangely lonely. You might not know whether you are “allowed” to be as sad as you are. You might find yourself brushing it off before anyone else can. Saying things like, “I know it sounds silly,” or “other people have it worse,” or “I should probably be over it by now.”

But grief is not measured by how easy it is to explain to other people. It is measured by what something meant to you.

That is the part we do not talk about enough. Grief is not one size fits all. It does not behave neatly. It does not follow the same route for everyone. One person might want to talk about it all the time. Another might go very quiet. One person might keep busy. Another might cancel everything. One person might cry in public. Another might appear absolutely fine until they are alone in the car.

None of that means someone is doing it wrong, it just means they are grieving.

The stages of grief.

Most of us have heard of the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. They were introduced by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and have become part of the way we understand loss. They can be helpful, especially when they give language to feelings that otherwise feel impossible to pin down.

But grief is not a staircase. you do not move politely from one stage to the next, collecting emotional stamps along the way until you arrive, healed and wise, at acceptance.

You can feel accepting on Monday and furious on Tuesday. You can laugh at something ridiculous and then feel guilty for laughing. You can be doing perfectly well in Tesco and then be undone by a song, a smell, a particular brand of dog food, or someone asking a very normal question at exactly the wrong moment.

That is the strange thing about grief. It can sit quietly in the background, then suddenly tap you on the shoulder.

Some psychologists describe grief as something we move in and out of. There are moments where we are right inside the loss, feeling the full weight of it. And then there are moments where life carries on. The school run. Work. Food shopping. Birthday parties. Admin. Laundry. The normal things that feel both comforting and completely absurd.

That back and forth can be confusing, but it is also very human, because however big the loss, life does not pause neatly around it. Sadly, the bloody bins still need to go out, the children still need feeding, those emails still arrive and people still ask what you are doing at the weekend.

And THAT is sometimes, that is exactly why we need people.

Not necessarily people with advice, in fact, usually not that. We need the friend who sends a message that does not require a reply. The one who says, “I’m walking at ten, come if you fancy it.” The one who remembers three months later, when everyone else has stopped asking. The one who does not try to make it better, but does not disappear because it is uncomfortable either.

So often, we avoid talking about grief because we are afraid of saying the wrong thing. We worry we will upset someone, bring it up at the wrong time, make them cry, or make things awkward.

But grief is already awkward. It is already uncomfortable. And silence does not protect people from pain. Sometimes it just makes the room feel emptier.

There is no magic sentence. No perfect wording. No beautifully wrapped piece of wisdom that makes loss easier to carry. Sometimes the best thing we can say is simply, “I’m here.” Or, “I don’t know what to say, but I’m not going anywhere.” Or, “Do you want to get out for a bit?”

Because getting out matters too. Not in a forced, “fresh air will fix you” sort of way. Grief is not solved by brunch, a walk or a glass of wine. But sometimes being gently pulled back into the world helps. Sitting with other people. Laughing at something small. Having a reason to put on actual clothes. Remembering that you are still allowed to have moments of lightness, even while carrying something heavy.

That can be one of the crueller parts of grief, the guilt that comes with feeling anything other than sad. But joy is not a betrayal of loss. Laughter does not mean you have forgotten. Enjoying an evening does not mean you are fine. Getting on with things does not mean it did not matter.

It just means you are human, perfectly normal.

Bringing grief into daily conversation

Perhaps we need to make more room for grief in ordinary conversation. Not only in the immediate aftermath, when everyone knows what to say, but later. In the quieter weeks and months. In the less obvious losses. In the moments where someone seems fine, but might still be finding their way through.

We do not need to become experts in each other’s pain. We just need to become a little less afraid of it. To ask. To listen. To remember. To invite. To let people be quiet. To let them be messy. To let them change their mind. To understand that grief can look like tears, but it can also look like irritability, exhaustion, over-functioning, numbness, distraction, dark humour, or needing a night out and then leaving early.

It can be all of it.

Megan Devine, author of It’s OK That You’re Not OK, writes that some things cannot be fixed, only carried. That feels like one of the more honest things anyone can say about grief.

Because maybe the aim is not to “move on” in the way most people mean it, perhaps it is to keep living, while making space for what has been lost. To carry it differently, to let it change shape and allow it to become part of the story, without becoming the whole story.

Grief is love with nowhere obvious to go...

Grief - it's the message you can no longer send, the name you still want to call, the pet bowl you cannot quite move It's the friendship you still do not fully understand losing, the life you thought you were heading towards and it's the person you miss in a hundred tiny, ordinary ways.

And if we talked about it more honestly, perhaps fewer people would feel they were getting it wrong. Because there is no right way to grieve, there is only your way.

And please know, there are people who will walk beside you while you find your way. She Shares was not built to be there in only the good times, but to lift you in the darker days too.

A few books we’ve found useful, or had recommended to us, for anyone trying to understand grief a little better.

For anyone wanting to read more, a few thoughtful starting points include:

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, On Death and Dying

Megan Devine, It’s OK That You’re Not OK

Julia Samuel, Grief Works

Mary-Frances O’Connor, The Grieving Brain

Nora McInerny, No Happy Endings

J. William Worden, Grief Counselling and Grief Therapy

Has anything helped you process a loss? Please feel free to comment below and share your experience.