When someone is grieving, there can be an enormous amount of pressure to feel better.
People may ask whether you’re getting over it. You might be encouraged to keep busy, stay positive or start looking towards the future.
Sometimes those comments are well meant. But they can leave a grieving person feeling as though grief is a problem they are supposed to solve.
At Evolve Talking Therapies, I don’t believe grief needs fixing.
Grief is a natural response to losing someone or something that mattered to you.
But saying grief doesn’t need fixing doesn’t mean saying there is nothing we can do.
There is a difference between fixing grief and tending to grief.
What Does It Mean to Tend to Grief?
To tend to something is to give it attention and care.
When we apply that idea to grief, we’re not trying to remove it or force it to change. We’re paying attention to what is happening and what might be needed.
Perhaps one way of understanding this is to think about tending a garden.
A gardener doesn’t plant something and then stand over it saying:
“Come on. You should have grown by now.”
They understand that growth takes time.
They know that some plants need more care than others. There will be periods when very little seems to be happening. The weather will affect what grows and when.
They water. They nourish. They protect. They sometimes prune. And sometimes they simply wait.
Most importantly, they don’t blame the plant for growing at its own pace.
Grief deserves that same patience.
We can tend to grief by giving it attention, making space for it and responding to what we need — without demanding that it hurry up and become something different.
There may be days when you feel you are beginning to find your feet again. There may be days when grief suddenly feels raw and close.
Neither means you are doing grief well or badly.
Tending grief isn’t about making it grow faster or disappear sooner. It is about giving yourself the conditions you need to live alongside what has happened.
A gardener understands something we sometimes forget when we are grieving:
Some things cannot be hurried. They can only be tended.
What Can Tending Grief Look Like?
Tending grief could mean noticing:
- what you are feeling rather than immediately pushing it away
- what situations or dates are particularly difficult
- when you need company and when you need some space
- how grief is affecting your sleep, concentration or energy
- when memories feel comforting and when they feel painful
- whether you need to talk about the person who died
- when you need support rather than trying to manage everything alone
Some days tending grief might mean talking.
Another day it might mean going for a walk, looking through photographs, writing something down, resting or simply acknowledging:
“Today is difficult.”
There doesn’t have to be a lesson or achievement attached to it.
Why Do We Try to Fix Grief?
Grief can be uncomfortable to witness.
When somebody we care about is hurting, our natural instinct can be to make things better.
So we offer solutions.
Have you thought about joining a group?
You need to get out more.
They wouldn’t want you to be sad.
At least they had a good life.
Usually these words come from kindness.
But they can also unintentionally tell the grieving person that their grief is becoming inconvenient or that they should be further along by now.
Sometimes what a grieving person needs isn’t an answer.
They need someone who can sit alongside them and listen without trying to change what they are feeling.
Isn’t Tending to Grief Just Dwelling on It?
This is something people understandably worry about.
If I allow myself to think about my grief, will I make it worse?
Will I become stuck?
But there is an important difference between being consumed by grief and allowing grief some space.
You don’t have to choose between grieving all the time and pretending everything is fine.
There can be movement between the two.
You might have an hour when you desperately miss someone and later find yourself laughing at something on television.
You might spend time remembering them and then go to work, meet a friend or do the shopping.
One does not cancel out the other.
You can carry grief and still participate in life.
Grief Changes
Grief rarely stays exactly the same.
There may be periods when it feels overwhelming and others when it sits much more quietly in the background.
Then a birthday, smell, photograph, piece of music or completely ordinary Tuesday afternoon can bring it close again.
That doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve gone backwards.
It means something has touched the connection you still have with what or whom you have lost.
The aim isn’t necessarily to reach a point where nothing affects you anymore.
Instead, tending grief can help you understand what is happening when those moments arrive and respond to yourself with a little more care.
The End of Summer Can Stir Grief
The final weeks of August often bring change.
Holidays end. Children or grandchildren prepare to return to school or university. Evenings begin to shorten and familiar routines start again.
For somebody grieving, seasonal change can bring an unexpected awareness of time passing.
Another summer without them.
Perhaps memories of holidays you once shared.
Or simply the realisation that the world has continued changing when part of your own world changed forever.
If grief feels a little closer at this time of year, you don’t necessarily need to push it away.
You can notice it.
What is my grief asking of me today?
Perhaps the answer is rest.
Perhaps it’s connection.
Perhaps it’s remembering.
Perhaps it’s talking.
And sometimes there isn’t an answer at all.
You Don’t Have to Find Your Way Through Grief Alone
There is no timetable for grief and there is no correct way to do it.
You don’t need somebody to tell you which stage you are in or when you should be ready to move forward.
Sometimes what helps is simply having somewhere your grief is allowed to exist.
A conversation where you don’t have to protect other people from how you really feel.
A place where you can say their name.
Where you can talk about what you miss, what you’re angry about, what has changed and even the things you feel you shouldn’t be thinking.
No fixing. No rushing. No expectation that you should be somewhere other than where you are.
Just space to tend to what matters.
Because grief doesn’t need fixing.
It needs attending to.
Warmly,
Sue