When do you get over grief?

I find it so much harder now to write about it, mostly because I don’t want to sound like I’m in the depths of grief. I’m not. This all happened quite a while ago. But I also still feel an internal prodding to share how I navigated it all; in the hope that those who are very much in the eye of their personal storm may find some hope or comfort in what I have to say.

Timelines

I’ve never been a fan of anyone who talks about the timeliness of grief. I don’t subscribe to any belief that doesn’t recognise that the journey of grief is as particular and individual as the loss you have experienced. People say after the first year it gets easier. My experience was quite the opposite. There is an endless supply of information available on how to make it ‘better’ and yet my experience tells me that nothing makes it better until you feel a little better.

The five stages of grief are indeed real, but I have another twenty-seven of my own that I could add to that list. Each of us lives out our grief at our own pace and in our own way.

Notwithstanding that, I have always found it helpful to look to others who have gone through what I was going through. I think it made me feel less helpless and much more hopeful that I might not always feel this much pain. It made me understand the anger and resentment that had totally overtaken my life; and while I did understand that this was very much my personal path to follow, it helped that I could look to others who were in front of me.

Most of what we see and hear about grief is focused on the early stages when the loss is at its most raw. Maybe it’s because that’s considered to be the more ‘interesting’ phase, but what I want to focus on here is that part where the healing process feels like it’s just beginning.

Grief changes you

When loss enters your life, you don’t know how to cope. How can you? There’s no denying that it changes you forever, and while that might appear a little obvious, it isn’t until you realise that spending so much time working at getting back to the person you were before you knew loss is futile.

The truth is that losing someone you love is undoubtedly one of the most painful and transformative experiences you will undergo in your life. And when you are hurting at such a profound level, every fibre of your being tells you to go in the opposite direction. You find distractions, you occupy your life with nonsense; you might look for answers in your addictions, be it drink, drugs, work, or shopping. You will do everything you can to avoid facing it, in the eternal hope, that when you come back up for air it will feel better.

Only to find, when you do, that it feels the same and possibly even a little worse. You soon discover that you can’t ever get back to who you were before you knew loss -she’s gone and there’s no sugarcoating that fact.

Acceptance moves in

That’s the thing about grief – it gets worse before it gets better. Then it gets worse again. You don’t ever get to a point where you think ‘it’s okay that my partner/ mother/ father died’ but you do reach a stage where ‘they died, but I’m going to be okay’. Without being fully aware of it, you have revisited your own reality; one that feels very different and unfamiliar but you begin to recognise and accept that. That acceptance soon presides over all of your feelings. Of course, it doesn’t mean that you will ever think of what happened as a good thing but it is something that is now part of your life and of your personal story.

You find yourself slowly adapting and adjusting. You can still return to that feeling of pain and despair in a heartbeat, but you realise that you don’t want to stay there for as long as you once did. Changes begin occurring naturally until you realise that you have not gotten over it, but you are coming through it. The number of good days increase little by little and importantly you let them.

So, if you’re in the eye of the storm or the early days of grief just hang in there. Don’t feel pressured to move on and don’t measure your progress against anybody else’s. If you really listen to just how you are feeling and allow yourself be fully guided by that, in time, you’ll find your own way back and the pain, while forever present, won’t always feel quite so intense which is what moving through grief at your own pace should feel like.

Niamh Ennis is Ireland’s leading Change & Transformation Coach and Author of Get Unstuck who through her private practice, writings, programmes, workshops and podcast has inspired and helped thousands of people to make significant changes in their lives. She is an accredited Personal, Leadership & Executive Coach and the Lead Coach in the IMAGE Business Club. Niamh is currently accepting applications for her ‘3 Month Bespoke 121 Coaching Programme called  Strategy Meets Soul, starting January 2024. Follow her on Instagram @1niamhennis.