Grief isn’t something to overcome. It isn’t a process to master or a task to complete. It’s a landscape we learn to live within — one that changes shape every time we touch it.
I’ve walked beside people in their mourning, sat quietly with the raw, wordless ache of loss. I’ve seen grief arrive for the death of a partner, a pet, a dream, a community, a version of self — and in each case, the hole left behind was just as deep, just as real. Grief doesn’t measure itself by the size of the event. It measures itself by the depth of the bond; it measures itself by the hole left behind.
The Trouble with the Stages of Grief
Most of us were taught about grief through Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s “five stages” model — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. But here’s what few people know: that framework was never meant to describe the bereaved. Kübler-Ross developed it while studying people who were dying themselves, not those mourning a loss. Later in life, she clarified that these “stages” were descriptions of experience, not prescriptions for healing, and that they do not unfold in any fixed order.
Somewhere along the way, the Western world — hungry for linearity, comforted by steps and timelines — borrowed her work and turned it into a self-help ladder. We still hear people saying they’re “in the anger stage” or “trying to get to acceptance,” as if grief were a staircase rather than a sea.
Even in professional grief spaces, this misunderstanding persists.
At a workshop I attended with death doula Julie Keon, a room full of therapists and facilitators realized we had all been taught the same distorted version. Julie’s words landed with the kind of quiet that feels like truth: grief isn’t something we heal from; it’s something we learn to carry.
That sentence stayed with me.
Grief is not an emotion to process. It is not linear, or tidy.
It’s the cost of loving in a temporary world.
It’s the ongoing, shifting relationship we hold with who (or what) is gone.
The connection doesn’t disappear — it changes form.
When I sit with people in mourning, I see that grief asks not for logic, but for tending. It asks for patience, for gentleness, for permission to keep existing even when it’s messy, cyclical, and inconvenient.
Healing, if it happens, is not completion. It’s integration — finding ways to let love and loss coexist in the same body.
The Whale Who Would Not Let Go
Scientists and witnesses watched as her pod swam beside her, adjusting their routes and pace to stay near. When she tired, another whale took turns carrying the calf. No one told them what to do. They simply knew — instinctively — that the mother needed to hold on a while longer.
Years later, when Tahlequah birthed another calf and it too was lost, the pod did it again. They accompanied her, patient and unwavering.
That story moves me every time I tell it. It reminds me that grief is not a sign of dysfunction — it’s a continuation of love. Animals know this. They don’t rush one another back to normal. They carry what cannot be fixed, together.
Demeter’s Winter
Myth tells a similar truth through Demeter and Persephone. When Persephone was taken into the underworld, Demeter’s grief turned the world to winter. Nothing grew; the earth went still.
The myth is ancient acknowledgment — the seasons of our lives include famine, fallow ground, and frozen time. Grief is the season where we stop producing and instead endure. And just like winter, it’s not a mistake in the system. It is the system.
When Tragedy and Grief Intertwine
Sometimes, grief arrives gently — the soft sorrow of change or the slow goodbye of age. But sometimes, it rides in on tragedy.
A sudden accident. A senseless loss. Violence, betrayal, or collapse.
Tragedy wounds the nervous system as well as the heart.
It floods the body with terror and disbelief. In those moments, grief and trauma coexist, but they are not the same.
Trauma is the rupture — the body’s memory of danger.
Grief is the ache that follows — the soul’s memory of love.
Healing asks us to tend both, though not in order. Some days, we may be grounding ourselves from panic; other days, surrendering to tears. They weave through each other like breath — inhale, exhale. The only requirement is to move at the pace of your capacity, and to know that neither of these forces make you broken.
The Lost Language of Mourning
There was a time when grief was visible.
Mourners wore black for a year so the world would know: be gentle with me; I am carrying something heavy.
Today, grief is expected to be discreet. We return to work after three bereavement days, answer “I’m fine” when we are anything but, and apologize for our tears. Western culture — shaped by colonialism and capitalism — fears anything that slows production, anything that reminds us of our animal impermanence.
But grief is an ancient, communal act. It’s supposed to slow us down. In many cultures, mourning was (and still is) a collective ritual: wailing, drumming, feasts of remembrance. It was never meant to be done in isolation.
We need each other to survive loss. We always have.
A Gentle Practice: Feeling the Edges
If you’re reading this in the middle of loss, please take a moment.
Let yourself breathe.
Notice where the ache lives in your body — maybe the throat, the chest, the gut. Don’t dive all the way in; just feel the edges. Ask yourself, how much can I hold right now?
If the answer is not much, that’s okay.
Follow the breath instead. Feel the air move in and out. Let it find you.
Then, imagine isolating one small fragment of the grief — a memory, a flash of love, a single image — and hold that piece in your mind. Wrap it in warmth, like you would cradle a friend who’s hurting.
You don’t have to fix it. Just stay with it for a few breaths.
When it’s time to return to the world, bring your attention to a neutral place: your toes, the tip of your nose, your hands. Wiggle them gently. Ground in the ordinary.
You can always come back later and tend another piece.
Grief isn’t something you finish. It’s something you revisit, one breath, one fragment at a time.
In the End
Grief is not pathology. It’s a form of love that’s lost its landing place.
It reshapes us — not because we learn to “let go,” but because we learn to hold on differently.
If you’re in it, I hope you remember: you are not behind, not broken, not failing.
You are being human, in full colour.
Take your time.
If this spoke to something in you, there are a few paths you can follow from here:
Work with Me
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The Wolfskin Project
A growing library of free resources for self-exploration, myth, and everyday magic.
Each door leads somewhere different. It is my hope that all of them lead back to you.
<3 Rachel
What are your thoughts?