“Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.” ~ Vicki Harrison

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You know what we need the most when it comes to grief?

A manual. One that tells you how to grieve, the dos and don’ts, and explains exactly how grief works so you are prepared, because one of the most difficult and excruciatingly painful experiences that a living being has to go through is grief. That huge sense of loss, an aching vacuum that you experience when you lose someone, whether to death or life circumstances, or when you really wanted something, put your heart and soul into it, and it didn’t come to you or was taken away, or even grief for the life that you never got to live and the one you won’t be able to.

Grief is the deadweight that you have to carry along with you till God knows when—the weight of your broken dreams, shattered heart, unmet needs, unfulfilled love, and the deep ache of love that now has nowhere to go.

So yeah, it would be nice if grief came with a manual, wouldn’t it? Or, perhaps not, because no amount of knowledge or prior preparation can safeguard you from the nuclear bomb that is grief. And I don’t say that because I’m a therapist or coach, I say that because I too am a human being who’s lost a lot, grieved a lot—sometimes really well and sometimes without having the slightest clue of what I was really doing. So I know how devastating grief and the whole experience of grieving can be.

Sometimes its agonizing, frustrating, painful, and at other times, it’s just quiet. It changes shape and form. Sometimes it will show up as sadness or anger. It will break you and leave you sobbing on the floor or at times leave you numb.

And the more I hold space for it every day, I see different facets of it. While there is no manual that tells you how to grieve, here are some things that I want to share with you, gentle reminders that can walk alongside as you navigate this space.

Seven things no one tells you about grief:

1. Yes, grief will come and go in waves and no two waves will be alike. Sometimes it will be a tiny one and at other times it will be a gigantic one that will drown you in it completely.

2. No matter how much you process things logically, some part of your experience will always remain far from logic. You will have moments when you will understand and then there will be those moments when the same things will feel utterly confusing.

3. You will feel angry, lost, confused, sad, happy, betrayed all at once, and you will have to allow yourself to feel all of it. There’s no escaping it.

4. Tears are your best friend. They become your voice when you don’t have words, when you can’t understand or express what’s really going on and all you need to do is let things out.

5. No matter how much you want to run away, your grief is actually asking you to stay, sit, listen, and release. That’s all you can do to honor the love and longing that you have within for yourself, your life, and most importantly for the one you’ve lost. Yet, there will be times when you actually run away, and you know what? It’s okay…grief is tricky, unpleasant, and hurtful.

6. You will not know what you want. Sometimes you’ll want comfort, at other times empathy, a logical conversation, something to do, or even to wallow in nothingness, and that’s okay. Remember, there is no manual. Everyone grieves differently.

7. Perhaps the most fundamental thing that happens when you are hit by grief is a shift—a radical change in who you were before grief and who you are slowly turning into. It changes your identity. It first breaks you and then forces you to put yourself back together, differently. When you lose someone or something, you don’t lose just that person or relationship; you lose parts of yourself that you had invested and poured into them. No matter how much you try, there will always be something hollow within you. A void that will never be filled. A pain that will always demand to be felt.

Grief is not a moment. It’s a life-changing experience that will bring up so much. It will demand change, and there’s nothing you can do about it except allow yourself to flow with the tide and let it take you to where you’re supposed to go next. Whether you like it or not, your grief will also be your biggest guide, your compass.

People say it will take time, or that it gets better with time, and how you need to just get busy and move on, but no one can go into the depths of your experience and feel what you’re going through. They don’t understand that the only thing you don’t want to do is move on. You want to hold on, stay, and somehow turn back time.

There is no moving on…perhaps it’s just flowing with the tide. No matter how much you want or how hard you try, you can’t escape grief and everything that it brings with it. You can only learn to sit with it.

“The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.” ~ Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler

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