HOW GRIEF ACTUALLY WORKS: YOU’RE NOT BACK AT SQUARE ONE

You thought you were doing better, and then one Tuesday morning, out of nowhere, it hit you again, the weight of it, the absence, the ache, and suddenly it felt like you were back at the very beginning, but you’re not back at square one. This is how grief actually works.

Although it can feel that way. And that feeling is one of the most confusing, isolating parts of grief that almost nobody talks about honestly. Grief is not a straight line. It never was. Understanding why can be the difference between surviving it and being consumed by it.

The Myth of the Stages

Where the idea came from

Most of us grew up hearing about the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross developed this model in 1969. It was never meant to be a roadmap for how grief should unfold.

She observed patterns which she noticed in terminally ill patients facing their own deaths. Somewhere along the way, it became a prescription.

The problem is that prescriptions for grief are dangerous. When you believe grief should move through predictable stages, you start measuring yourself against a standard that was never designed for you. And when you inevitably don’t match it, you conclude there is something wrong with you.

There isn’t.

And in 2019, David Kessler, the grief expert, added the sixth stage of grief, Finding Meaning, in his book of the same name. In this book, David offers a perspective on how grief can be transformed into meaning, which in turn leads to healing. Remember, grief is personal, and it must be experienced to be understood.

What grief actually looks like

Grief is better understood as waves than stages. Some waves are massive and knock you off your feet. Others are small and manageable. Some arrive when you expect them on anniversaries, milestones, and holidays. Others come from nowhere: a smell, a song, a stranger who laughs the way they did, etc.

Researchers now describe this as the oscillating nature of grief. You move between loss-orientation, facing the grief directly, and restoration-orientation, rebuilding your life and sense of self. Both are necessary. Both are healthy. Neither cancels the other out. Grief is not linear, and what to do when it comes back.

Why We Try to Rush It

The social pressure to ‘move on’

Society is deeply uncomfortable with grief. After a socially acceptable mourning period usually measured in weeks, sometimes in months, there is enormous pressure, often unspoken, to return to normal. To be okay. To stop being sad in ways that make other people uncomfortable.

This pressure can come from well-meaning friends and family. It can come from workplace culture. It can come from the internal belief that needing too long means you’re weak or broken. Whatever its source, the effect is the same: you learn to perform wellness before you’ve actually arrived there.

The cost of the performed healing

When you rush grief or are rushed through it, you don’t skip it. You defer it. Grief has a way of re-surfacing eventually, often in disguised forms: anxiety, numbness, overworking, disconnection, short tempers, or a vague sense that something is permanently missing. The body and mind will always find a way to process what was never allowed to be felt. Grief is not linear, and what to do when it comes back.

Allowing grief to be non-linear is not wallowing. It is not a weakness. It is the only honest, natural and sustainable way through.

What to Do When the Wave Comes Back

Name it without judgement

When grief resurfaces unexpectedly, the first instinct is often to fight it. To tell yourself you shouldn’t be feeling this, that you were doing so well. Instead, try naming it simply and without judgement: ‘A wave is here.’ That’s all. You don’t need to analyse it or assign meaning to its return. You just need to acknowledge it.

Let it move through

Grief that is resisted tends to persist. Grief that is allowed is felt fully, however painful, and tends to pass. This doesn’t mean you have to be consumed by it. It means creating small windows of time when you let yourself feel what you feel, without distraction or apology. Even fifteen minutes of genuine presence with the emotion can release what hours of suppression cannot.

Return to your anchors

After the wave, you need anchors, those things that ground you in the present and remind you that life continues. These might be people, places, routines, or practices. They don’t need to be dramatic. A morning walk, a cup of tea, a phone call with someone who loves you. Anchors don’t erase the grief. They hold you steady while it passes.

A Word on Time

People say time heals. It’s not quite right. What time does it give you more experience, more context, and more distance? Healing, the actual integration of loss into a life that still has meaning, is something you actively participate in. Time is the container. You are the work.

Whenever the grief returns, even in smaller waves, remember it’s not a setback.  This is not evidence that you are broken or stuck. This is grief doing what grief does.

And you show up for yourself through another wave; that is exactly what healing looks like. I cover all this in my 1:1 coaching programme, which I designed specifically for high-achieving women who’ve lost loved ones. You can explore other ways we can work together here.