Grief
The Work of Grief: Making it Through the First Few Months
Living inside a reality we didn’t choose, one moment at a time.
The Honest Truth About Living with Grief
In the early months after a loss, time stops making sense. Days feel long and heavy. Simple tasks take enormous effort. You may wake up each morning unsure how you’re supposed to keep going when everything you knew about your life has shifted.
Grief doesn’t just live in the heart— it settles into the body, the nervous system, the rhythm of daily life. And yet, the world around you often expects something different: that you’ll be coping, strong, or slowly returning to who you were before. Such an experience can feel incredibly loney.
When grief first arrives, it can feel unbearably lonely, even when others are around. Not because no one cares, but because the depth of your loss feels impossible to explain. This is the work of grief: learning how to live inside a reality you didn’t choose, one moment at a time.
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Grief Demands to be Witnessed.
True healing doesn’t happen by rushing through the pain or hiding it from the world. It happens when your loss is fully seen and acknowledged without judgement. If you are looking for a space where your pain can simply exist, we are here to bear witness to your story and hold that space with you.
Our counselling services are available to residents of British Columbia only.
So how do we make it through those initial months, when simply getting through the day is a challenge and we can’t imagine ever feeling joy again? Everyone grieves differently, but those in the healing profession agree that the following ways to move forward are helpful for many people:
1. Take the Time You Need
Western culture doesn’t do well with grief. The fact that bereavement leave from work averages a mere 3-5 days, depending on the nature of the relationship and the employer’s policy, demonstrates a severe lack of cultural awareness around the needs of the grieving individual. The fault doesn’t lie with the employer, or any one person really. We have turned ourselves into a nation of high-paced productivity, and somewhere along the way we forgot to factor in our emotions and needs.
Despite our culture’s insistence that we need to move on as soon as possible, everything we know about grief says it’s important to take your time. Trying to rush through it, deny it, or put on a strong front, only leads to stress and depression, which will eventually make itself known in the body. The feelings of grief are so hard, but they need to be felt before you can fully move on.
If you are unable to take time for yourself away from work and other life demands, try to fit grieving time in to your schedule. It may sound crazy to have to plan time to grieve, but knowing that you will dedicate a few minutes at some point in the day to be alone with your emotions can help you cope with a demanding work environment. Think of it like fitting in a workout—your emotions need the healing time just as much as your body needs the time to move. first step tur interactions with others.
2. Allow Yourself to Feel Your Emotions
Many of us weren’t raised to give consideration to our feelings. Thoughts, yes, but feelings are often dismissed as unhelpful, or even a sign of weakness. What has made us so afraid to feel? Certainly we are a society conditioned to see emotions as weakness, but the tragedy of that is a life cut off from joy and vulnerability. If we suppress one type of emotion we have difficulty feeling any type of emotion. The result is disconnection and numbness.
If you are someone who has difficulty accessing your emotions it can be helpful to see emotions simply as a form of energy that needs to pass through your body. If it gets stuck, it will express itself in some other form—as illness, stress, or depression.
So allow yourself to feel. Don’t avoid or shut down. This can be our first impulse, and may lead to avoidant behaviours such as overworking, drinking, comfort eating, overdosing on Netflix, or any other pastime you turn to when you don’t want to feel difficult emotions.
Have you ever heard it said that you must go “through” the mountain and not “around” it? There is so much truth in this metaphor. Suppressed or denied grief will always find its way back to you.
3. Accept Help
In the midst of deep sadness it can be hard to reach out. We don’t want to “depress” or burden other people, or appear helpless. But those who truly care for you will want you to lean on them. They may not know what to say, but this is your opportunity to deepen that relationship and tell them what you need. Often in the midst of grief it’s not words we need (which can often be misplaced or unhelpful) but rather someone to sit with us, hold us, and help us deal with day-to-day tasks that may feel unmanageable.
4. Know the Stages of Grief
In the depths of grief, it can feel like you’re losing your footing — emotionally, mentally, even physically. One moment you may feel numb, the next overwhelmed with sadness or anger. This can be frightening, especially if you don’t recognize what’s happening or worry that something is “wrong” with you.
You may have heard of the stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. These stages can be helpful not as a roadmap, but as a shared language for some of the emotional states people experience after loss.
What’s important to know is this: grief does not move in stages, and it does not move forward in a straight line. You may experience some of these states and not others. You may move in and out of the same one many times. You may feel several at once. And you may never arrive at a place that feels like “acceptance” in the way it’s often described — and that doesn’t mean you are doing grief wrong.
These experiences are descriptive, not prescriptive. They are not milestones to reach or boxes to check off. Over time, many people notice that the intensity of grief shifts, ebbs, and flows, but it does so in its own way, and on its own timeline.
There is no correct sequence. There is no finish line. There is only your experience — and it deserves compassion.
5. Remove Expectations
In my work with grieving clients, one of the most common phrases I hear is “I should…”. My usual response is, “Why should you?” So many of our thoughts and behaviours are dictated by what we think we should do, either because it is the cultural expectation, or an expectation that we learned from our parents in childhood. When I hear a “should” it tells me that something is in opposition. So a person feels or wants one thing, but believes they “should” do another. Living according to shoulds can lead to anxiety and increased suffering. Of course, there are exceptions when a “should” is really our consciousness trying to talk to us, for example, “I should really stop and help that person who stalled their car.”
So if any of these “should” statements sound familiar, STOP. It isn’t helpful and will only exacerbate your suffering.
“I should be over it by now.”
“I should have been there.”
“I shouldn’t have behaved in XX way”
“I shouldn’t feel angry” (or any other emotion)
“I shouldn’t bother other people with my grief.”
Do you tell yourself any other should statements? Make your own list…Surround yourself
6. Give Yourself Permission to Talk About Your Loved One
Since losing my husband, I have realized firsthand that few people are comfortable talking about the dead. These awkward interactions can feel exhausting and lonely, so we end up either avoiding social contact altogether or managing other people’s comfort levels by pretending we’re fine.
Grief is a heavy load to carry—too heavy to carry alone. If you aren’t talking about your loved one because you don’t want to, that’s your choice, but don’t avoid doing for other people. It won’t help you or them.
7. It Takes as Long as it Takes
In the midst of grief people often ask, how long will it take before I feel okay again? The answer is it takes as long as it takes. I have read the book Tears To Triumph by Marianne Williamson several times and one thing I always remember her saying is, “If you have a thousand tears to cry then you must cry a thousand tears, and no fewer. And if you have ten thousand tears to cry then you must cry ten thousand tears and no fewer. It takes as long as it takes—grief can’t be rushed.“
8. Grief Will Always Find it’s Way to the Surface
Imagine trying to hold a dozen helium balloons underwater. It takes constant, exhausting pressure to keep them submerged, your muscles aching from the strain of fighting against their natural drive to rise to the surface. That is exactly what suppressing grief feels like. You pour all your daily energy into shoving those heavy emotions down, pretending they aren’t there, but the water always shifts. The moment your focus slips or you get tired, a balloon slips out from under your grip and shoots to the surface—popping out as a sudden burst of anger, unexpected tears during a grocery run, or physical exhaustion. The grief doesn’t disappear just because it’s hidden; it just waits for you to run out of strength to hold it down.
The journey of grief begins when we allow ourselves to be with the experience. We don’t run, bypass, avoid, or pretend. We take the courageous step to be inside our emotions, our bodies, and our memories with compassion and awareness.
9. It Will Get Better
In the beginning, grief is all consuming. It’s impossible to believe that this gaping hole in your life could ever be filled with anything beautiful again. If you’re staring into that hole wondering what the hell just happened, trust in those who have gone before you that there will be beauty and joy in your life again.
It’s not that the hole in our hearts disappears, but rather, we learn to build a life around the hole and we get better at not falling into it as often. The hole in our hearts remains, AND we build a life around it.
10. Hold Your Heart Gently
Living with grief is one of the most painful challenges we can go through. Not only does it impact our mind and emotions, it also takes a huge toll on our body, relationships, and work life. It breaks us open and on the other side we are forever changed. Such a massive change requires courage, self-love and a gentle holding of your heart.
Now is not the time to push forward, demand high productivity from your tired nervous system, or force yourself to fit back into an old mold that no longer exists. Instead, it is a time to pause, strip away the cultural expectations of how fast you should be healing, and simply allow your pain to be witnessed, held, and felt on your own timeline.
If, as a culture, we don’t bear witness to grief, the burden of loss is placed entirely upon the bereaved, while the rest of us avert our eyes and wait for those in mourning to stop being sad, to let go, to move on, to cheer up. And if they don’t — if they have loved too deeply, if they do wake each morning thinking, I cannot continue to live — well, then we pathologize their pain; we call their suffering a disease. We do not help them: we tell them that they need to get help., not a sprint. Be kind to yourself along the way.
Cheryl Strayed
If you are in the thick of it right now and finding it hard to see a way through, please know that your pain makes absolute sense. You are carrying a massive weight, and trying to navigate this kind of devastation in secret only makes the days heavier. Grief is not a disease to be cured or a problem to be fixed; it is a profound expression of love that deserves to be witnessed, respected, and gently held. If you feel ready to let someone sit with you in the quiet of this loss, we are here. Reach out to us when you’re ready, and let’s honour your timeline together.
Find Support for Emotional Sensitivity at Safe Haven
Counselling in Surrey, BC
At Safe Haven Counselling, we offer in-person therapy in South Surrey and White Rock, BC, and virtual sessions across all of British Columbia. If you’re ready to understand your emotional sensitivity and build a more grounded, compassionate relationship with yourself, we’re here to help.
You don’t have to navigate your emotions alone. Reach out today — your healing starts here.