We've all heard the well-meaning advice that's given when someone's grieving… "You'll get through this." "Time heals." "Stay strong." But what if grief was never meant to be gotten over? What if the whole point was to go through it. Not around it, or to get past it, but right down into the depths of it? What if grief isn't something to get over, it's something to go through?
Grief is the most misunderstood emotion we experience. We treat it like an inconvenience, something to manage quietly or push through quickly. As a society we admire people who "bounce back" and worry about those who don't. We've turned grief into something with a timeline, stages, and an expected endpoint. But grief doesn't work that way. And when we try to skip it, avoid it, or rush it, something vital gets left unfinished.
When something life-changing happens like a loss, a betrayal, an illness, or a sudden ending your whole world can suddenly stop. It's like you can't think straight. You can't eat or breathe the same way. Nothing feels normal anymore. Living this was isn't dysfunction. It's our unique earth self-design. Grief purposely pulls you out of autopilot. It strips away the noise and the distractions so you can finally hear yourself. It creates space. Space that's uncomfortable and messy. It's necessary space. Where truth can be felt instead of explained away.
And your body knows this. That's why grief shows up physically as the tightness in your chest. The exhaustion when you try and get up to start your day. And the way your nervous system stays on high alert. These are signs that something needs to be understood, not just survived. Because when we avoid grief, the body escalates. Our pain becomes louder. Illnesses create forced pauses. And injuries stop us in our tracks. But these aren't punishments. They're invitations to finally feel what we've been carrying.
Imagine grief like falling into a well. It's dark, cold, and terrifying. Naturally, you look up. You wait for someone to throw down a rope. People gather around the top, offering advice like, "You'll be fine." "It could be worse." "Just stay busy." So you try to climb out and be fine, or stay busy. You focus on getting back to normal, back to who you were before.
But what if that was never the point? What if the well exists to separate you from everyone else? What's if it's meant to give you the space to feel, think, and be quiet inside, to finally hear your own truth? What if you were never meant to climb out, but instead to go through?
At the bottom of the grief well, beneath all the unshed tears and unspoken truth, is a tunnel. Your own personal pathway to understanding. It's where things finally start to make sense. Not make sense in a logical way, but in a soul-deep way. But the thing is, you can't find that door without allowing yourself to grieve.
Grief isn't just about sadness. It's about making sense of what happened. When an experience doesn't make sense, that's to say, when we can't see why it happened or how it fits into our story… then our nervous system stays open and alert. It can't relax into the confusion we're feeling. And this is why trauma isn't the experience itself. Trauma is what happens when we survive something we don't understand.
At these times in our life our bodies don't respond to explanations or positive thinking. Our bodies do however respond to understanding. Understanding is the moment when something inside you finally settles because the truth has been felt. And that's when grief completes its work.
Not because the pain disappears, but because you've moved from "this shouldn't have happened" to "this changed me" to "this is who I am now." And in that shift, your nervous system can finally exhale.
Grief isn't here to break you. It comes to return you to yourself. There's no right or wrong way to grieve either. There's ways that feel true and where you understand, or ways that leave you feeling like things are unfinished. And when grief is allowed to do its full work, it doesn't destroy you. It reorganises you and your world. So, if you're in a grief well right now, I'd like you to know that you're not stuck. You're very likely where you need to be.
*If you're ready to understand why and feel like you're ready to go through instead of around and want to feel supported, please get in touch. If you're ready to unpack what you've been carrying and finally make sense of your story, Unpack Your Life offers a safe, soul-affirming space to do exactly that.
