On grief that doesn't fit a timeline

Grief, in the cultural imagination, is supposed to look like a downhill ski run. Steep at the top, then gentler, then flat, then back to normal life. Some grief actually does look like that.

But a lot of grief — maybe most of it — looks like weather. It comes back. It changes shape. It surprises you at six months and then again at two years. It misses anniversaries and shows up at random Tuesday lunches.

What I tell clients

If you're somewhere between three months and twenty years out from a loss and you still feel it: you are not stuck. You are not broken. You are not failing at grief. You are doing the thing humans do when we lose someone or something important.

The thing that helps isn't moving on. It's letting the loss become part of how you move. The shape of it stays. The capacity to live around it, with it, despite it — that grows.