Living With Loss: How Grief Shapes Us (and What It Means to Heal)
Loss is one of the few guarantees in life. People we love will pass away. Relationships will end. Jobs, homes, routines, and dreams will shift or vanish. Sometimes the loss is expected, like the slow decline of an aging parent. Other times it slams into us without warning, leaving us stunned and breathless.
What’s consistent is this: grief doesn’t care about our timelines, our expectations, or the neat categories we try to put it in. It comes in waves, sometimes gentle, sometimes violent, always reshaping the shorelines of our lives.
Why Grief Feels So Overwhelming
Grief is not just sadness. It’s disorientation. It’s the sudden absence of something that once anchored you, whether that was a person, a role, or even a version of yourself.
Psychologists describe grief as a process of “relearning the world.” You wake up one day and the rules have changed. The person who always answered your late-night call isn’t there. The ritual of feeding your dog after work feels hollow because the house is quieter than it used to be. Even the air in familiar rooms can feel different.
Loss destabilizes us because it forces us into a new reality — one we didn’t choose, one we don’t fully understand yet.
The Myths That Make Grief Harder
As if grief weren’t heavy enough, our culture tends to pile on expectations and myths about what it “should” look like. Here are a few of the most common ones:
- “Time heals all wounds.”
Time can soften pain, but it doesn’t erase it. Some losses remain tender for the rest of your life. Healing isn’t forgetting — it’s learning how to live alongside the loss. - “Grief has stages, and you just move through them.”
The famous five stages (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) were never meant to be a strict roadmap. Real grief is messier. You can feel acceptance one day and crushing anger the next. That doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. - “You should be over it by now.”
There is no clock on grief. Anyone who tells you otherwise hasn’t had to carry what you’re carrying.
These myths don’t just miss the truth — they make people feel ashamed of their grief. Like they’re “failing” at something that’s already unbearable.
The Body Remembers
Grief isn’t only emotional; it’s physical. People in deep grief often describe feeling like their chest is caving in, or like they’re walking around in a fog. Appetite and sleep patterns shift. Even concentration can collapse.
Neuroscience shows us why: loss activates the brain’s threat and attachment systems. The body releases stress hormones as though the loved one’s absence is a literal danger to survival. Grief is not just a feeling; it’s an embodied experience.
What Healing Really Means
Healing in grief doesn’t mean “moving on.” It means moving forward with the loss integrated into your life. It’s not about returning to who you were before — because that version of you no longer exists. Healing is about becoming someone new, shaped by both the love and the loss.
This process often includes:
- Reconnecting with meaning. Asking: “How do I make sense of my life now?”
- Rebuilding identity. Who am I without this person, role, or dream?
- Relearning safety. How do I live without bracing for the next catastrophe?
- Allowing joy again. Letting yourself feel moments of peace or happiness without guilt.
None of this happens quickly. And that’s okay.
The Gifts We Don’t Ask For
It can feel almost offensive to suggest that grief gives us anything — and yet, many people describe ways their losses reshaped them in profound ways.
Grief can teach patience, compassion, and humility. It strips away illusions of control and clarifies what actually matters. People often say things like, “I don’t sweat the small stuff anymore,” or “I cherish my relationships more than I used to.”
None of that makes the loss worth it. But it does highlight how grief can be both devastation and transformation.
How to Support Yourself in Grief
While grief can’t be rushed or skipped, there are ways to make the path gentler:
- Let yourself feel it. Suppressing grief doesn’t make it disappear — it just forces it underground, where it seeps out in other ways.
- Build rituals. Light a candle, visit a meaningful place, or create a tradition in honor of what you lost. Rituals give grief a container.
- Stay connected. Isolation makes grief heavier. Even if words feel impossible, sitting in silence with someone can be healing.
- Be patient. Healing is not linear. Good days and hard days can sit side by side for a long time.
How to Support Someone Else in Grief
It’s tempting to try to fix someone’s grief with advice or pep talks. But often, the most powerful thing you can do is simply be there.
If you’re supporting a grieving friend, remember:
- Don’t try to minimize their pain. Saying “they’re in a better place” or “at least you had them this long” usually makes people feel worse.
- Show up in concrete ways. Bring food. Offer to walk the dog. Sit with them at the funeral. Practical help is invaluable.
- Keep showing up. Grief lasts longer than most people think. A year after a loss, most people stop checking in — but that’s often when grief is still raw.
Sometimes the best words you can offer are: “I don’t know what to say, but I’m here.”
Living With the Absence
Here’s the paradox of grief: the absence never fully goes away, but neither does the love. If anything, the love becomes sharper, more enduring, because it has been tested by loss.
This is why so many people describe carrying their loved one with them — not just in memory, but in the choices they make, the values they hold, and the way they live.
Grief reshapes you, yes. But it doesn’t erase the connection. In many ways, it deepens it.
Closing Thoughts
If you’re in grief right now, know this: you are not failing by feeling the way you do. Grief is not weakness, and it’s not something to “get over.” It’s proof that you loved deeply, and that love continues to echo through your life.
The path forward is not about leaving your loss behind. It’s about weaving it into who you’re becoming. And though it may not feel possible yet, there will be moments again — sometimes small, sometimes startling — where joy breaks through.
That, too, is part of healing.
Author: Bodie Coates, LMFT-S, LCADC-S, NCC
Sandstone Therapy 
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