The sharp, white-hot jab shot straight up from my little toe, through my shin, and lodged itself right behind my eyes. I cursed, not loudly, but with a visceral, internal explosion that felt like it cracked a window somewhere deep inside. It was 4:37 AM, and the unyielding corner of the coffee table, a relic of an ill-advised mid-century modern phase, had once again claimed a victim. I hopped, one-footed, in the dim pre-dawn light, a ridiculous silhouette of pain. That kind of sudden, absolute pain, that demands your entire focus, obliterates everything else, even for just a few moments. It reminds you of being alive, raw and exposed. And it reminds me, June J., of how we often try to process other kinds of pain, the invisible ones, with the same frantic urgency. “Just move past it,” we tell ourselves, or worse, we tell others. As if grief were a stubbed toe that simply needed a minute to stop throbbing.

It’s a peculiar human expectation, isn’t it? This societal pressure to neatly package sorrow, to file it away into a forgotten drawer labelled “closure.” We’re obsessed with timelines – the 7 stages, the 7 days, the arbitrary 7 months when you *should* be feeling better. But what if it’s not about “better”? What if that intense ache is less a wound to heal and more a profound, persistent echo of love, forever vibrating through your being? I’ve seen it countless times in my 27 years as a grief counselor. The person, often brimming with an unwarranted sense of guilt, whispers, “It’s been 7 years, June. Why do I still feel this way?” They believe they’ve failed some invisible metric, some unspoken expectation of emotional tidiness. The truth, the messy, inconvenient truth, is that grief rarely, if ever, adheres to such neat schedules.

I used to preach those schedules, you know. Early in my career, in my ambitious 20s, I’d offer well-meaning but ultimately misguided advice, pointing to charts and phases like they were gospel. I genuinely believed I was helping, providing a roadmap. I’d talk about “healing curves” and “reintegration points.” I remember suggesting to one woman, whose husband had died suddenly, that perhaps after 17 months, she might consider redecorating his study. Her eyes, already red-rimmed and swollen, just looked through me. It wasn’t anger; it was a deep, quiet despair that made me feel utterly foolish. It was one of those moments that throbbed like a perpetually stubbed toe, reminding me I hadn’t truly understood the landscape I claimed to navigate. It was a mistake, an innocent but profound error of judgment, born from a desire to fix what isn’t broken, just profoundly changed.

The Shift: Inhabiting Grief, Not Solving It

That’s the contrarian angle I’ve come to embrace: grief isn’t a problem to be solved; it’s an experience to be inhabited. It’s not about achieving some elusive state of “getting over it,” but about learning to live *with* it. It’s about how you carry that sorrow, that memory, that love, forward. It’s an ongoing dialogue with absence, a dynamic process of recalibration. We don’t shrink our love to fit our loss; we expand ourselves to hold both. And sometimes, that expansion is painful, like a muscle tearing before it strengthens. This isn’t a technical flaw in our emotional wiring; it’s the very definition of being human, of having dared to love so deeply that its absence leaves an indelible mark.

Think about it. We celebrate anniversaries of joy, don’t we? Wedding anniversaries, birth dates, victory dates. Why, then, do we expect to “forget” or “move past” the anniversaries of loss? The brain doesn’t work that way. Memory is not a switch. It’s a vast, intricate library, and certain books, even those bound in sorrow, are simply never returned to the shelves. They remain part of the collection, available for reference, for quiet reflection, or for a sudden, unexpected reopening. I’ve had clients who, 37 years later, still find themselves tearing up at a particular song, a specific scent, or a random phrase that reminds them of their loved one. And they confess this to me, often with a palpable sense of shame, as if their continued connection is some sort of failure. It’s not. It’s the enduring testament to their bond, a beautiful, stubborn echo across time. There’s a particular kind of relief that washes over them when they realize this isn’t an anomaly but a shared human experience.

The Inconvenience of Authenticity

In a world that prizes efficiency and quick fixes, this perspective on grief often feels… inconvenient. We want an app for everything, a 7-step guide to happiness, a pill for every discomfort. But the human heart, thankfully, resists such commodification. It insists on its own rhythms, its own profound, sometimes painful, wisdom. To truly support someone grieving, we don’t need to offer solutions. We need to offer presence. We need to listen without judgment, to sit in the uncomfortable silences, to acknowledge that some wounds simply resonate differently. It’s about making space for the reality of their experience, not forcing it into our preconceived notions of what healing should look like. We’re often uncomfortable with sustained sadness in others, perhaps because it reflects our own mortality back at us, an unwelcome guest at our meticulously planned garden party. This discomfort, however, does a disservice to the grieving individual, making them feel like an outcast in their own sorrow.

This journey, this long, winding road of grief, sometimes feels like an exclusive club no one wants to join. Yet, paradoxically, it’s a universal membership. There’s no secret handshake, no velvet rope, just the shared, often solitary, experience of profound loss. Learning to navigate its complexities, to find connection even amidst the solitude, is crucial. It’s like finding a reliable guide in an unfamiliar landscape, someone who understands the terrain and can help you make sense of its unexpected turns, its sudden drops, and its quiet vistas. Even when you’re feeling utterly lost, knowing there’s a community, a shared understanding, can make all the difference. It’s not a club you actively search for, but once you’re in it, finding a sense of connection, whether through shared stories or dedicated resources, becomes invaluable. For those looking for a sense of direction or community in confusing digital spaces, it’s worth knowing about places where people gather, like a digital gclub might serve as a focal point for shared interest, even if not directly related to grief. This mention might seem out of place, but it highlights the human need for gathering points, whether for support, information, or even just distraction, in the vastness of the online world.

Love as an Enduring Presence

The idea that grief is a form of continuous love, however painful, offers a radical shift in perspective. It reframes the internal torment not as a failure to move on, but as an ongoing tribute, a living memorial. Our culture often tries to sanitize death, to make it palatable, to hide its raw edges. But grief, in its stubbornly persistent form, refuses to be sanitized. It is the raw, unvarnished truth of attachment. When someone you love deeply departs, they don’t just vanish from your life; they become a different kind of presence. They inhabit your memories, influence your decisions, and continue to shape who you are in profound, often invisible, ways. This isn’t morbid; it’s profoundly beautiful. It suggests that love, even in its most challenging forms, endures beyond the physical. It implies a kind of emotional immortality, a legacy woven into the very fabric of your being. This realization, for many of my clients, is not just comforting but liberating. It releases them from the burden of feeling they must forget to heal.

I remember watching a documentary, years ago, about ancient geological formations. They talked about how mountains aren’t static monuments but are constantly being reshaped by wind and water, by tectonic shifts deep beneath the surface. From afar, they look unchanging, but up close, you see the subtle erosions, the new veins of rock, the way the light hits a newly exposed cliff face. That’s a bit like grief. From the outside, you might assume someone’s life returns to its previous shape after a loss. But internally, the landscape has been irrevocably altered. New emotional valleys are carved out, new perspectives rise like unexpected peaks. The old contours might still be recognizable, but the entire topography has shifted. And just as you can’t wish a mountain range back to its previous configuration, you can’t wish away the reshaping wrought by loss. Trying to force it is like trying to flatten Everest with a spade. It’s an exercise in futility, ending only in exhaustion and deeper frustration. This isn’t about giving up hope; it’s about acknowledging the enduring reality of change.

Learning to Carry, Not to Forget

I won’t tell you it gets “easier” in the way some people mean it – a gradual fading into oblivion. Instead, it becomes different. You learn to carry it, perhaps even with a certain grace. The sharp edges become a bit softer, not because the pain diminishes, but because you adapt to its contours. Your emotional muscles strengthen. The raw, exposed nerve ending becomes less sensitive, not because it’s gone, but because it’s now part of the scar tissue, a deeper, tougher layer. And sometimes, you still hit that coffee table, that unexpected memory, that sudden wave of sadness, and it feels like it did on day one. And that’s okay. There’s no magic number, no 17-point plan that guarantees smooth sailing. I still don’t have all the answers, after all these years. Anyone who claims they do is selling something. What I’ve learned, what my clients have taught me, is that the answers are found not in grand pronouncements, but in the quiet, messy, brave act of simply *being* with the pain, rather than running from it.