Do We Ever Stop Grieving?

Apr 12

There’s a question that sits quietly underneath so many therapy sessions, whether it is spoken out loud or held just beneath the surface: Do we ever stop grieving? Years ago, I said something that has stayed with me across every stage of my career: all therapy is grief. At the time, I understood that statement in a clinical sense. I saw how loss showed up in presenting problems: breakups, anxiety, depression, family conflict. But now, I understand it in a much more lived and embodied way.

Because when you sit in the therapy room long enough, on either side, you begin to recognize that people are not just seeking coping skills or insight. They are trying to make sense of something that has been lost. Sometimes that loss is tangible: the end of a relationship, the death of a loved one, a major life transition. But often, the grief is quieter and harder to name. It is the loss of a version of self. The loss of safety. The loss of a future someone thought they were building. The loss of a childhood that should have been softer, safer, or more stable.

Even those of us who sit in the therapist’s chair are not separate from this reality. We are here, too, because we have experienced loss and are continuously finding our way through it. Therapy, at its core, is not just about change—it is about acknowledging what was, what is no longer, and what must be grieved in order to move forward.

If you have not checked them out already, here are some related Undoing Toxic blogs on grief:

Wear Yuh Tings (click to read)

The Best Seat (click to read)

Rewriting the Memory (click to read)

Grief and the Holidays- Cope Ahead (click to read)

We Learn How to Grieve by Doing

In my nearly ten years in social work, much of it rooted in couples and family work, I have come to understand that grief is not something we learn from textbooks. It is something we learn by living through it. By experiencing it in real time, often without preparation, and figuring out how to hold it as we go.

I learned grief early, as both a young enough and old enough child attending my first funeral. In my Jamaican family, grief was never something hidden or minimized. It was expressed. It was communal. It was layered with culture, ritual, and meaning. There was animals being killed, food being prepared, rum being poured, mannish water simmering, stories being shared. There was laughter that interrupted tears and tears that interrupted laughter. No one was pretending that grief had to look one way.

What I absorbed in those spaces, even before I had the language for it, was that grief is not just about sorrow, it is also about connection. It is about remembering, honoring, and continuing bonds in a different form.

As I grew older, there were more funerals, more losses, more moments where I had to sit with absence and try to make sense of it. And over time, those personal experiences became part of how I show up clinically. I have sat with families as they prepared to tell a child about death for the very first time, holding space for their fear of saying the wrong thing. And I return to what I know to be true: children do not need perfection, they need honesty. I encourage parents and caregivers to be direct, to avoid euphemisms or unclear language that confuse more than they comfort, to answer questions openly, and to allow space for emotions to unfold over time. If faith is part of the family’s framework, I encourage them to lean into it as a source of meaning and grounding. Because grief is not a one-time conversation; it evolves, and so must our language around it.

Understanding Grief: Beyond the Stages

Many of us, clinicians and non-clinicians, were introduced to grief through the framework “Five Stages of Grief” by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross:

Denial- A protective response that helps buffer the initial shock of loss. It can look like numbness, disbelief, or difficulty accepting that the loss is real.
Anger- The emotional release that often follows denial. It may be directed at people, circumstances, oneself, or even a higher power, and reflects the pain and injustice of the loss.
Bargaining- An attempt to regain control or make sense of the loss through “what if” or “if only” thinking. It often involves replaying scenarios or wishing for a different outcome.
Depression- A period of deep sadness as the reality of the loss sets in. This can include withdrawal, low energy, and a profound sense of emptiness or longing.
Acceptance- Not the absence of pain, but the ability to acknowledge the loss as real and begin to adjust to life while carrying it. It involves integrating the loss rather than “getting over” it.
These stages have provided a helpful starting point, offering language to experiences that can feel overwhelming and disorienting. However, one of the most common misunderstandings is the belief that grief follows a linear path; that we move cleanly from one stage to the next and eventually “arrive” at acceptance. That has not been my experience personally, nor is it what I see in the therapy room.

Grief is not linear. It is layered, cyclical, and deeply personal. You can feel moments of acceptance and still find yourself pulled back into anger or sadness without warning. You can hold gratitude and heartbreak at the same time. The stages are not a checklist: they are emotional landscapes we move through, sometimes revisiting them in different ways over time.

Other frameworks, such as the work of William Worden, resonate more closely with what I see in practice. Worden describes grief as a set of ongoing tasks: accepting the reality of the loss, processing the pain, adjusting to a world without what was lost, and finding a way to maintain a connection while continuing to live. This approach allows for movement and flexibility. It acknowledges that grief is not something we finish; it is something we integrate. Integration takes time. It takes intention. It takes a willingness to return to the pain, not to stay stuck in it, but to understand it.

The Grief We Don’t Talk About

Some of the deepest grief I encounter in my work has nothing to do with death. It is the grief of losing people who are still alive. The grief of relationships that have ended, shifted, or become unrecognizable. The grief of emotional absence, even when physical presence remains.

This is what Pauline Boss describes as ambiguous loss—a form of grief that lacks closure or clear resolution. It shows up in divorce, estrangement, family separation, migration, and abandonment. These losses are often minimized or overlooked because there is no formal ritual to mark them. No collective acknowledgment. No defined space to mourn. But the impact is real, and often long-lasting.

This kind of grief has a way of embedding itself into our relational patterns. It shapes how we attach, how we trust, how we protect ourselves. It can show up as hyper-independence, emotional withdrawal, fear of abandonment, or difficulty sustaining intimacy. When I work with individuals and couples around “undoing toxic” patterns, we are often uncovering these layers of unprocessed grief. Not just what happened, but what was never fully felt, named, or understood. When grief is left unprocessed, it does not disappear. It finds other ways to surface.

Finding a Place to Grieve

One of the hardest truths about grief is this: we cannot outrun it.

I learned that in a very real way. I took a three-week vacation, intentionally stepping away from everything familiar after powering through most of the summer grieving and working. I thought, finally, maybe distance and a 6 hour time difference from home would create space, maybe even relief. And while the change in environment helped in some ways, what I found was that grief does not stay behind when you leave, it travels with you.

So instead of trying to escape it, I made space for it.

I wrote. I walked. I ate when I could. Grief shot my appetite, if you know, you know. I spent time in nature. I connected with my faith in a deeper, more intentional way. I cried: sometimes quietly, sometimes not. There were moments of what I can only describe as ugly crying through prayers, where there were more tears than words. I searched scripture hoping for something to meet me where I was. Hoping for what we often call an “on-time word.” And sometimes it came. Not always in the way I expected, but in the way I needed.

Grief requires a place to go. If we don’t create that space intentionally, it will find its way out in other ways: through our bodies, our relationships, our emotional responses.

So if you are struggling, I encourage you to find a place to go with your grief. That might look like therapy. It might look like a grief support group. It might look like trusted community, journaling, prayer, or time in nature. But don’t keep it contained inside of you. Start talking. Start feeling. Start allowing yourself to be met in it.

Therapists, Pastors, and the Pressure to Have the Right Words

There is often an unspoken expectation that people in helping roles, therapists, pastors, leaders, will have something meaningful to say in every situation. That we will know the right words, the right response, the right way to make sense of something that feels senseless.

But grief has taught me something different. Sometimes, the most important thing we can offer is not words—it is presence.

Presence without rushing.
Presence without fixing.
Presence without trying to make meaning too quickly.

Because the truth is, there are no perfect words for loss. And in the absence of knowing what to say, people often try to fill the space. They ask for details that are not theirs to hold. They look for explanations, sometimes even trying to place blame as a way to create order out of something that feels chaotic. Or they offer statements that, while well-intentioned, can feel minimizing or invalidating.

And this is where we gently return to something simple but powerful: presence speaks loudest.

Sitting with someone. Listening. Allowing silence. Acknowledging pain without trying to rush it away. That is the work.

Moving With Grief, Not Over It

One of the most persistent narratives we have internalized is that grief is something we are supposed to “get over” and in a specific amount of time, depending on the loss. Others expect that with enough time, enough strength, or enough distraction, it will eventually go away.

But that has not been my experience or the experience of others that I know, personally or professionally.

We do not get over grief. We learn how to move with it.

Grief is not something to fix or resolve: it is something to carry, to tend to, and to make space for within our lives. Over time, the weight of it may shift. It may become less consuming, less sharp. But it does not disappear. And it does not need to. Grief is also one of the most universal human experiences. It does not discriminate. No matter your background, your role, your level of functioning; at some point, you will encounter loss. The question is not whether you will grieve, but how you will relate to your grief when it arrives.

The Healers Go Through the Pain

There is a saying that I return to often: “The healers go through the pain and bring back the medicine.” For much of my career, I understood this as part of my professional identity. That my experiences informed my empathy, my insight, and my ability to sit with others in difficult moments.

But in 2024, after the untimely death of my brother, that understanding deepened in a way that no training could have prepared me for. Grief became something I was not guiding; it was something I was living inside of.

I remember a client asking me directly if I was okay. And I chose honesty. Not in a way that shifted the focus away from the client, but in a way that acknowledged that therapists are human, too. That grief does not always stay neatly outside the room.

For a long time, I believed my responsibility was to compartmentalize. Now I understand that my responsibility is to be accountable to my grief: to tend to it, to process it, and to ensure that it deepens my presence rather than diminishes it.