Grief: The Unwanted Houseguest That Won't Stop Rearranging Your Furniture

Grief is weird. One minute you’re fine, answering emails and making a sandwich, and the next minute you’re ugly crying over a sock because it reminded you of someone you lost. It doesn’t knock, it doesn’t ask if now’s a good time—it just shows up, takes off its shoes, and settles in like it pays rent.

And everyone’s got opinions on how you should handle it. ‘Stay strong,’ they say. ‘They’re in a better place.’ ‘At least they lived a long life.’ Cool, thanks, Susan, but none of that changes the fact that it hurts like hell and my insides feel like a deflated bouncy castle.

Grief isn’t linear. It’s not a five-step checklist you can knock out before lunch. It’s more like emotional whiplash with a side of existential dread—and just when you think you’ve got a handle on it, it throws a surprise party in your nervous system.

So today, we’re talking about grief in all its messy, inconvenient glory. No silver linings, no spiritual bypassing, just real talk about what it means to lose someone—and still be here, trying to make sense of a world that looks different without them in it. Let's get into it.

You’ve probably heard of the stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—like they’re some neat little emotional to-do list you can check off on your way back to “normal.” Spoiler alert: grief doesn’t care about your checklist. These stages, originally outlined by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book On Death and Dying, were actually meant to describe the emotional rollercoaster faced by people who were dying, not necessarily the ones left behind. But somewhere along the way, they got co-opted into this one-size-fits-all roadmap for anyone going through a loss—whether it's a death, a breakup, a layoff, or the sheer existential whiplash of realizing your life just did a plot twist you didn’t ask for.

Here’s the thing though: grief is less like a straight road and more like trying to assemble IKEA furniture with the instructions in a language you don’t speak, while blindfolded, and also on fire. Some people cycle through all the stages. Some skip a few. Some loop back like it’s a haunted carousel. And some people get hit with all five before breakfast, then feel totally fine by dinner. There’s no gold star for doing grief “correctly,” and no timeline that makes it tidy. It’s personal, it’s messy, and it often shows up dressed as rage, numbness, anxiety, or an unexplainable need to deep clean your entire house at 2 a.m. Bottom line: however it hits you, you're not doing it wrong.

So now that we’ve established grief isn’t a linear rom-com montage where you cry in the rain once and then emerge healed with better bangs—let’s talk about the infamous five stages. You’ve probably heard of them. Maybe you even tried to diagnose yourself like, “Okay, I cried in the car, so that’s depression, right? Or is it anger with ambiance?” The Kübler-Ross model gives us a helpful framework—not a script—to understand the emotional chaos that comes with loss. Think of these stages less like a ladder you climb and more like a mood ring at the mercy of a toddler. You might hit some, skip others, or loop back around like a glitchy playlist on shuffle. So with that in mind, let’s deep dive into each stage like the messy little grief gremlins they are. First up: denial, aka “This is fine,” said while the room is clearly on fire.

Let’s kick things off with Denial, also known as the brain’s emergency “nope” button. This isn’t just denial like, “I can quit coffee anytime”—this is denial like, “Surely the universe has made a clerical error.” It’s your psyche throwing a giant emotional weighted blanket over your reality and whispering, “Shhh… no thoughts, just vibes and emotional buffering.” You might feel numb, spaced out, or like you’re floating just slightly outside of your body—watching everything unfold like a badly written episode of your own life. And honestly? That’s your brain doing its best to keep you from full-on system collapse.

Denial isn’t about being delusional or in denial in the dramatic movie sense—it’s a self-protective slowdown. It’s your mind saying, “We’re gonna process this horror show, but not all at once because we will combust.” It might show up as total detachment, like you’re going through the motions on autopilot—feeding the dog, answering emails, attending funerals, all while feeling like none of it is really happening. Or maybe you keep expecting your phone to buzz with a message from the person who’s gone. Maybe you find yourself setting the table for two. Maybe you hear a sound and swear it was their voice. That’s not you being broken. That’s grief’s opening act—one big, dissociative breath before the deep dive.

And the truth is, sometimes denial is what keeps you upright in the early days. When everything feels like too much—when breathing hurts and your heart is short-circuiting from shock—denial gives you a little cushion. It doesn’t mean you’re avoiding the truth forever. It just means your brain is buying you time to survive the truth. You’ll face it eventually—probably in waves, probably at the worst possible times—but for now? Denial is the gentle pause between “everything was fine” and “everything is different now.” It’s not weakness. It’s grace. Even if it looks like blank stares, weird laughter, or muttering “this can’t be real” on repeat like your life’s stuck in a glitch.

Then comes Anger—big, loud, sometimes illogical, and often wearing a disguise. It might look like sarcasm. It might look like road rage. It might look like muttering “are you kidding me” through gritted teeth while smiling at someone who just said, “They’re in a better place.” Anger shows up not because you're heartless, but because your heart is too full—with hurt, confusion, helplessness, and everything else grief dumped on your doorstep.

You might rage at the universe, at God, at the unfairness of the situation, at the medical team, at every person who ever said “let me know if you need anything” and then ghosted. You might be mad at your ex for still being alive when your loved one isn’t. You might want to throw hands at your cousin for turning the memorial into a weird brag about their kombucha side hustle. You might even be mad at the person who died. Yes, that’s allowed. Anger at them for leaving, for not fighting harder, for not saying goodbye, for dying when you still needed them. It feels taboo, but it’s so wildly normal it should come with a name tag and a welcome basket.

Anger is your brain’s messy, fire-breathing attempt to do something with all the pain. Because collapsing into despair feels powerless—but anger? Anger feels like movement. Like you're grabbing at the controls, even if the plane’s already gone down. It’s the nervous system’s jazz hands, trying to shake off the grief tornado swirling inside you. Is it always rational? Nope. Is it tidy? Definitely not. Will it occasionally be aimed at innocent bystanders like the barista who dared to mess up your latte? Unfortunately, yes. But that’s part of it too.

The thing is, anger is often just pain in a leather jacket. It might stomp in and scream and break a few metaphorical chairs, but beneath it is grief’s deep, unbearable ache. And it’s okay to let it out—as long as you’re not setting fire to your relationships or, you know, actual property. Scream in your car. Rant to a friend. Curse the sky. Just don’t shame yourself for being angry. It’s not a detour. It’s part of the road.

Cue the backroom deals of Bargaining—the part of grief where you turn into a grief-stricken little lawyer frantically negotiating with the universe like it’s open for business. This is the “let’s make a deal” phase, where logic leaves the building and desperation takes the wheel wearing a sparkly blazer. You start reaching for control in any form you can find. If I had just done this differently... If I had called sooner... If I pray harder... If I’m a better person starting right now... maybe this whole thing can just...un-happen. You start offering up moral trade-offs like a cosmic bartering system is in play—“Take my sleep, take my sanity, take my credit score—just give them back.”

And the thing is? Bargaining doesn’t care if you’re religious, spiritual, agnostic, or full-blown atheist. You’ll still find yourself tossing emotional coins into whatever wishing well feels available—God, the universe, karma, the ghost of Steve Jobs, anyone. You might start performing acts of goodness like you're collecting spiritual coupons in hopes of cashing them in for a miracle. It’s magical thinking meets existential panic, and it’s not rational—but grief rarely is.

What makes bargaining especially gut-wrenching is that it’s often wrapped in guilt. You comb over every detail, every decision, every moment you didn’t say something, and twist it into proof that maybe—just maybe—you could have stopped this. It’s mental gymnastics of the cruelest kind. You start building alternative timelines in your head where they’re still here, where you did everything “right,” and the worst part? Your brain believes those timelines are possible. Bargaining is your heart’s last-ditch effort to rewrite the story before it fully accepts the plot twist.

But here’s the truth: bargaining isn’t weakness. It’s grief trying to keep hope on life support. It’s you looking for any way to make the unbearable feel a little less final. And while it won’t work—and deep down, you know that—it’s also not something to feel ashamed of. It’s part of the process. It’s human. It’s tender. It’s the emotional equivalent of pressing “undo” over and over again on a screen that’s already gone dark.

Eventually, Depression rolls in—not dramatically, not with flair, but more like a slow, creeping fog that settles over everything. You wake up one day and the world feels muted, like someone turned down the volume and dimmed the lights. This isn’t just “feeling sad” the way people say it when they miss brunch or spill a coffee. This is sadness with gravity. It pulls at your limbs, your thoughts, your will to change out of pajamas. It’s like you’re dragging yourself through emotional wet cement, wondering how brushing your teeth became a Herculean task and why the idea of answering a text feels like climbing Everest.

For some people, this stage comes with tears. Big, heavy, can't-catch-your-breath kind of sobs. For others, it’s just... nothing. A flatline. Numbness so thick you forget what joy even felt like. You might stare at a wall for 45 minutes. You might ghost your group chat. You might feel a very intense need to cocoon yourself in blankets and reject the concept of pants altogether. And here’s the kicker: none of that makes you broken. This stage is not you giving up—it’s you finally being still enough to feel it.

Because up until this point, there’s usually been some sort of motion—shock, denial, bargaining, yelling into the void. But depression is when the reality fully lands. It’s when your brain and your heart finally stop trying to escape and instead just sit in the rubble, quietly sifting through what’s left. It can feel endless, like you’ll never climb out. But here’s the quiet truth no one tells you: this is often where the real healing begins. When you stop sprinting from the pain and start learning how to hold it without falling apart. It's raw. It’s brutal. It’s not pretty. But it’s real.

So if you find yourself there—curled up, checked out, or crying into day-old takeout—know this: you’re not alone, you’re not failing, and you’re not stuck forever. Depression isn’t a dead end. It’s a pause. A heavy one, yes—but one that might just mark the beginning of something deeper: your capacity to feel, to heal, and eventually, to rebuild.

And finally, we reach Acceptance—which, let’s be clear, is not the part where you rise from the ashes in slow motion with perfect hair and say, “Wow, I’m so glad I grew from this trauma!” Nope. This isn’t the healing montage set to uplifting music. Acceptance is far less glamorous and way more grounded. It’s that quiet, exhausted moment when you stop clenching your jaw, unclench your soul a little, and mutter, “Okay… this is my life now.” Not with joy. Not with peace. But with a kind of raw, resigned softness. It’s not giving up. It’s giving in—to the truth of what’s happened, and to the reality that you can’t go back.

You still miss them. You still cry. You still ache, especially on the weird days that hit out of nowhere. But you’re not fighting the truth anymore. You stop trying to rewrite the ending. You stop mentally time-traveling through all the “what-ifs” and “if-onlys.” Instead, you begin—slowly, awkwardly, and sometimes begrudgingly—to rebuild around the absence. Maybe you laugh without guilt for the first time. Maybe you make plans again. Maybe you start to imagine a future that doesn’t include them—and that realization feels both impossible and inevitable.

Acceptance doesn’t mean the grief is gone. It’s not the finish line. It’s not closure in the way people like to pretend closure exists. It’s more like grief finally takes its place as part of your life instead of all of it. It moves from center stage to something more peripheral—a quiet presence you carry, not a spotlight you live under. You may even start to feel like yourself again—just… a different version. A softer, more weathered one. Someone who knows what deep loss feels like and is still somehow choosing to keep going.

And that’s what acceptance really is. Not “moving on” (can we collectively retire that phrase, please?), but moving with. With the love, with the pain, with the memories, with the loss. Carrying it, not being crushed by it. Living alongside your grief, not in the shadow of it. It’s subtle. It’s brave. And it’s no small thing.

Let’s get one thing straight: grief is not a neat little process you can Marie Kondo your way through. It is not linear, despite what the five-stage graphic on your therapist’s office wall might imply. You don’t hit “Acceptance” and get a certificate of emotional completion. Grief is more like a chaotic roommate—it might leave for a while, then come back at 3am wearing your clothes and eating cereal straight from the box. You might loop through anger three times before even touching depression, or find yourself bargaining out of nowhere a year later because something triggered a memory you weren’t ready for. And that’s not a malfunction—it’s just being human.

Grief is also not a one-size-fits-all sweater. Everyone wears it differently. Some people sob into their pillow for weeks. Others crack jokes at funerals. Some throw themselves into work, and others can’t get out of bed. None of that makes your grief more or less valid—it just makes it yours. And while we’re at it, let’s talk about complicated grief—that’s when grief stops being a background soundtrack and becomes the whole damn show, making it hard to function, eat, sleep, or engage with life. It can feel like being stuck in an emotional Groundhog Day, and if that’s you, please know it’s okay to ask for help. Therapy, meds, support groups—there are options, and none of them mean you're broken.

And of course, let’s not forget that grief doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Culture, upbringing, faith, personality, the kind of loss, even your Enneagram type if you’re into that—these all shape how you process it. Some cultures grieve loudly, with rituals and collective mourning. Others keep it buttoned-up and private. Some people need closure; others don’t believe in it. There’s no “correct” way to do this, just the way that makes the most sense to your heart, your brain, and whatever’s left of your nervous system. So if you’re grieving—and even if it looks weird or feels endless—you’re not doing it wrong. You’re just doing it your way.

So yeah, the stages of grief can be helpful—kind of like emotional road signs—but they’re not a GPS. You don’t follow them step by step until you arrive at “Acceptance” with your hair blown out and personal growth unlocked. Grieving is messy, unpredictable, and wildly individual. Some people sprint through it, some crawl, and some take weird side quests involving crying in Target or stress-baking 47 muffins at 2 a.m. And the last thing anyone needs is pressure to “move on” like it’s some kind of task on a productivity app.

Which brings us to something that absolutely needs to be said: healing from grief is not linear. Despite what every neatly packaged movie montage or unsolicited Instagram quote might suggest, grief does not operate on a smooth timeline. It’s a rollercoaster with no seatbelt, no map, and someone occasionally throwing emotional banana peels on the track. You might feel “fine” one day and then totally leveled by a song, a smell, or a random Tuesday. That doesn’t mean you’re broken—it just means you’re human. Let’s talk about what that actually looks like.

Let’s start with the emotional beach metaphor everyone loves to hate: grief comes in waves. But we’re not talking picturesque little splashes here—we’re talking rogue tsunami waves that hit out of nowhere while you’re just trying to buy cereal at Target. One day you’re functioning like a semi-stable adult, maybe even laughing again, and then bam—a song, a scent, a stupid Facebook memory sucker-punches you right back into the heartbreak. And here’s the kicker: that doesn’t mean you’re back at square one. It just means the tide came back in. You're still healing—even if it feels like you're emotionally drowning in aisle five.

And just in case you thought you could predict grief like it’s some kind of emotional weather forecast: you can’t. The stages of grief? They’re not a tidy checklist; they’re more like a chaotic bingo card where you can land on “anger” three times in one week, skip “bargaining” entirely, and then loop back to “denial” just when you thought you’d graduated to “acceptance.” You might feel fine for months, then suddenly be irrationally pissed off at a traffic cone because your grief brain decided today was the day to reprocess everything. That doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. That means you’re doing it exactly like a human.

Now let’s talk about healing, which is kind of like watching paint dry—except the wall keeps changing colors, defying physics, and occasionally bursting into flames for no apparent reason. Everyone loves to talk about the big grief moments—the dramatic ones. The crying-in-the-shower breakdowns. The full-body sobs on the kitchen floor. The nights you binge-watch old home videos with a bottle of wine and then deliver an emotional TED Talk to your cat. Those moments are loud, visible, and get all the cinematic glory.

But most of grief? Most of healing? It’s quiet. It’s painfully mundane. It’s in the random silences—the way you automatically reach for your phone to text them and then stop halfway. The way your chest tightens on their birthday even though you swore this year you’d be fine. It’s in the thousand tiny decisions you make every day to keep going, even when your heart feels like it’s been duct-taped back together by someone with poor motor skills. It’s not always obvious. You might look “fine” from the outside. People stop checking in. The casseroles stop coming. And suddenly you're expected to be okay because you’re vertical and answering emails again.

But what they don’t see is the emotional maintenance happening behind the scenes. The grief check-ins. The pep talks in the mirror. The guilt over laughing. The flashbacks you navigate mid-conversation. Healing isn’t a straight line—it’s a full-ass maze with trick walls and the occasional emotional sinkhole. It’s exhausting. It’s frustrating. It’s the emotional equivalent of a long-haul flight: cramped, disorienting, no Wi-Fi, and turbulence forever. And just when you start to relax and think, “Hey, maybe I’ve got this,” the grief hits the seatbelt sign and spills hot coffee on your soul.

But here’s the thing: even when it’s messy and nonlinear and not at all Instagrammable, healing is happening. Every day you show up, feel something, survive it, and do it all over again? That’s healing. Not always visible. Not always dramatic. But real. And worth honoring.

And let’s be very clear about something: you don’t “move on” from grief. That phrase can take several seats and reflect on its poor life choices. It’s the emotional equivalent of someone saying “just get over it” while you’re still standing in the smoking ruins of what used to be your life. What actually happens is that you move forward—which is way less sparkly but a hell of a lot more honest. Moving forward means you learn how to carry the grief instead of letting it flatten you every time it shows up uninvited. It means figuring out how to live with a heart that’s been cracked open and patched up with whatever you had lying around—hope, therapy, coffee, spite. Over time, the grief doesn’t shrink, but you grow around it. You start to smile at the memories instead of crumbling under them. You remember without unraveling. And that doesn’t mean you’ve forgotten them, or that the loss doesn’t matter anymore—it just means you’ve built a life big enough to hold both love and absence at the same time.

But even then—even when you’ve got your emotional sea legs and you’re cruising along at “mostly functional with bursts of joy”—grief can still sneak back in like a melodramatic ex with impeccable timing. It waits in the wings, crouched in the shadows of life’s biggest milestones, and just when you’re trying to celebrate something beautiful—boom. There it is. Their absence. Loud. Heavy. Unexpectedly sharp. You’re holding your newborn and suddenly aching for the parent who won’t get to meet them. You walk down the aisle or across a graduation stage, and the pride is tangled with grief because someone important isn’t there to see it. These moments don’t mean you’re back at square one. They’re not regressions. They’re reminders. That love doesn’t vanish. That loss doesn’t follow a calendar. That healing is not about erasing grief—it’s about learning to live with the echoes.

These flare-ups aren’t failures. They’re part of the terrain. They’re grief saying, “Hey. I’m still here. You loved deeply, remember?” And if that means you need a cry in the car, a deep breath in a bathroom stall, or an emotional timeout in the middle of your own party—so be it. You’re not broken. You’re grieving. Still. Again. Always. And that’s okay.

And let’s not forget: grief is not a group project—thank God. There’s no sign-up sheet, no assigned roles, and absolutely no prize for doing it the most visibly. People grieve wildly differently, and anyone who tells you there’s a “right” way to do it is either selling something or has never lost anything more emotionally significant than a sock. Some people process out loud—full-on emotional TED Talks with charts, bullet points, and a full breakdown of every feeling they’ve had since the moment it all changed. Others go full internal monk mode, staring blankly at the wall for 45 minutes while contemplating the meaning of time and eating dry cereal straight out of the box. Both are valid. Both are grief.

There is no one correct aesthetic for grieving. It doesn’t need to be tidy, poetic, or dramatic. Sometimes it’s messy and loud. Sometimes it’s eerily quiet. Sometimes it looks like binge-watching eight seasons of a show you don’t even like just to avoid thinking for a while. And trying to police how someone should grieve—whether it’s expecting tears, demanding composure, or side-eyeing someone for laughing too soon—is a fast-track ticket to being That Guy at the funeral. Don’t be That Guy. That Guy gets side-eyed by the whole front row and whispered about over potato salad at the wake.

Just because someone looks fine doesn’t mean they’re not absolutely falling apart in private. Some people have resting “functioning adult” face and are silently carrying the weight of a thousand emotions behind it. Meanwhile, someone else might be falling apart publicly and still managing to pay bills, show up for others, and remember to feed their plants. Just because someone is expressive doesn’t mean they’re fragile. And just because someone is quiet doesn’t mean they’re detached. Grief doesn’t follow personality types. It morphs. It shape-shifts. It does whatever the hell it wants with whoever it lands on.

So if you’re grieving? Do it your way. Loud, quiet, sobbing, numb, journaling, rage-cleaning your entire kitchen at 3 a.m.—whatever works. And if someone else is grieving differently from you? Let them. Offer support, not a performance review. This isn’t a contest. It’s not a syllabus. It’s just the deeply personal, deeply human reality of missing someone—or something—you loved. Let it be messy. Let it be yours.

Lastly—grief changes you. And not in some cute, makeover-montage kind of way. It doesn’t just leave a dent; it kicks down the door and starts rearranging your emotional furniture without asking. Suddenly, the things that used to fit—your priorities, your friendships, your entire worldview—don’t sit quite right anymore. Who you were before the loss isn’t who you are after. And while that might sound sad or dramatic, it’s not a tragedy. It’s a transformation. A hard-won, often messy, sometimes beautiful evolution into a version of yourself that knows what it means to love deeply and lose deeply—and still keep showing up.

Some days, yeah, you might feel like a damn phoenix, rising from the ashes in full majestic glow-up mode. But other days? You feel like a half-melted candle—lopsided, dripping everywhere, barely holding your own wick together. That’s grief. It doesn’t come with a consistent vibe. It’s not always noble or inspiring. But it does burn something new into you. Maybe it’s strength. Maybe it’s clarity. Maybe it’s a deeper sense of empathy. Or maybe it’s just a really sharp bullshit detector when someone tries to slap a “everything happens for a reason” sticker on your pain. Either way, grief changes your internal wiring—and that’s not something to fear. It’s something to respect.

You’re not going back to who you were. That version of you didn’t know what you know now. Didn’t feel what you’ve now felt. And while that loss is real and worth mourning, the person you’re becoming deserves just as much compassion. You’re someone who carries what you’ve lost—but still laughs. Still creates. Still loves. Still chooses life, even on the days when it feels impossibly heavy. You don’t have to be “okay” to be growing. You don’t have to be “healed” to be living. You just have to keep going, one messy, magnificent, unshakably human step at a time.

So yeah—healing from grief? It’s not a straight line, it’s more like trying to navigate a corn maze in the dark while wearing emotional roller skates. Some days feel almost normal. Other days? You’re crying in the car over a cereal commercial. And that’s not failure—it’s just grief doing its thing. When we drop the idea that we’re supposed to “get over it” like it’s a bad haircut, we actually make space to feel it. On our own timeline. In our own messy, brilliant, heartbreaking way.

Which brings us to one of the most relatable metaphors out there: grief comes in waves. And no, not the gentle, aesthetic kind you see in meditation apps. We’re talking rogue, suck-you-under, drag-you-through-the-sand type waves. Because grief doesn’t clock out after a few months. It lurks. It lulls. And just when you think you’ve found your footing again—splash. You're back under, crying in a parking lot because your loved one’s favorite song came on shuffle. Let’s dive into why this metaphor hits so hard—and how it actually helps us understand the emotional whiplash of grieving.

You know the basics: grief comes in waves, and not the chill, tropical kind with a mai tai in hand. We're talking about emotional tidal waves that can knock you flat while you're mid-toast at brunch. One minute you're fine—maybe even laughing—and the next, you're sobbing because someone said your loved one’s name or you caught a whiff of their cologne. The thing is, these waves have no respect for your schedule. They don’t care if you're at work, in the grocery store, or about to take a selfie. They crash in hard, and it can feel just as raw as day one. Over time, yes, those waves can get smaller and less frequent—but early on? They’re full-on ocean chaos with no lifeguard in sight.

And here’s the kicker: these waves are cyclical. Just when you think you're on dry land, grief will circle back like it’s got unfinished business. You could go a whole month thinking you’ve “turned a corner,” only to be taken out by a Tuesday afternoon spiral because you walked past a place you used to go together. This isn’t regression—it’s just the tide doing what tides do. There’s no punch card for how many times you’re allowed to revisit your sadness. There’s no trophy for "fastest recovery." It’s all just part of the loop. And the sooner we stop expecting grief to follow a polite upward trajectory, the sooner we can stop gaslighting ourselves when we don’t feel okay.

Now let’s talk about triggers—those sneaky little emotional landmines disguised as totally ordinary moments. You know, the ones that show up out of nowhere and detonate your day without so much as a courtesy warning. One minute, you're fine. You’re walking through Target, minding your own business, maybe vibing to a podcast, and then—boom—you see a mug they would’ve loved. Or a song comes on that once played during a random Tuesday car ride that now lives rent-free in your chest. And suddenly, you’re crying into a $7 throw pillow in the home decor aisle while a teenager restocks throw blankets three feet away and pretends not to see you.

These moments are savage. They’re messy. And they’re also deeply, profoundly human. Grief doesn’t show up only on command. It’s not waiting for a holiday, an anniversary, or a nicely lit candle ceremony. Nope. Grief is chaotic neutral. It just waltzes in whenever it damn well pleases—while you're running errands, folding laundry, or waiting in line for a coffee. Sometimes it jumps out from the big, obvious stuff. But more often? It’s the tiniest details that completely wreck you. The smell of their shampoo. The way someone says a phrase they used to say. The Facebook memory that hits like an emotional sucker punch.

And here’s the part that no one tells you: the smaller the trigger, the more feral the grief wave sometimes feels. Why? Because you weren’t braced for it. You weren’t mentally in “grief mode.” You weren’t preparing to be vulnerable. You were just trying to buy groceries or scroll through your phone like a person who wasn’t about to emotionally unravel in public. But then, there it is. Grief in full regalia. And it feels like it came out of nowhere because, well… it did.

But that doesn’t mean you’re overreacting. It’s not weakness. It’s not being too sensitive. It’s remembering. It’s your brain and your heart lighting up over something they’ve attached meaning to. It’s a tiny moment that reminds you of someone who mattered. Someone you’re still carrying in all these invisible, unspoken ways. And yeah, it sucks. It hurts. But it also means you haven’t forgotten. That love is still there, stubborn and sacred, popping up in the middle of your errands to remind you it existed.

So if you find yourself crying in a parking lot over a song or clutching a random candle like it’s a holy relic, take a breath. That’s grief doing its weird, unruly, love-drenched thing. And it’s okay to let the moment crash over you. You don’t need to be composed. You don’t need to justify it. You're not broken. You're just remembering—and that, in all its painful glory, is part of how we hold on to the people and moments we never wanted to lose.

Then there’s the depth of the wave—because not all grief hits with the same intensity. Some days, it’s ankle-deep. Manageable. A low ache humming in the background while you do adult things like send emails and remember to buy toilet paper. You feel the loss, but it’s muted—like background music in a melancholy indie film. Other days? It’s a full-blown emotional tsunami. It sucker punches you in the soul, knocks the wind out of your coping mechanisms, and leaves you wondering if you even remember how to human. It flattens your mood, your energy, your vocabulary. You can’t explain what’s wrong—you just are. And trying to "snap out of it" feels about as effective as telling the ocean to stop being wet.

Grief has layers, and it’s annoyingly inconsistent. It doesn’t care how long it’s been, how well you’ve been doing, or whether you have a deadline tomorrow. It doesn’t come with logic or warning. There’s no emotional weather app that pings you with a “Grief Storm Incoming” alert so you can cancel plans and brace yourself. It just… hits. Sometimes it’s familiar. Other times, it’s sneaky and sharp and drags up something you thought you’d already dealt with. And when that wave pulls you under, sometimes the best thing you can do is let it. Not resist it. Not shame yourself. Just sink for a minute, knowing it will pass, and that you’ll eventually make it back to shore, even if you come up coughing and salty.

But here’s the quiet miracle: over time, something shifts. Not all at once, and not in a way that feels like growth in real-time, but it happens. Slowly, subtly, the healing starts to take root. The grief doesn’t vanish (spoiler alert: it never does), but you start building a sturdier boat. One that doesn’t capsize every time the tide turns. You start to recognize the early warning signs—maybe it’s a tightness in your chest, or a sudden brain fog, or that strange hollow feeling that usually means a wave is about to crest. You learn when to brace yourself, when to pull back, when to reach out, when to rest.

And eventually—quietly—you realize you’re not getting hit as hard or as often. You’re not immune, but you are stronger. Not because you powered through, but because you softened where you used to shatter. That’s resilience—not the sparkly, motivational poster kind, but the slow, unsexy kind that sneaks in through the back door in sweatpants, holding snacks and whispering, “You’ve survived worse.” It’s the part of you that knows how to cry and still keep going. That can fall apart and rebuild. That doesn’t panic when the wave shows up again, because now you know: you’ve been here before. And you’ll make it through again.

And here’s the wildest, most unexpectedly beautiful part: you grow through it. Not in the cliché, motivational-poster way where you start quoting “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” while flexing your emotional biceps. No. That’s not what this is. This is more like, “Holy shit. I’ve lived through something brutal. I’ve been shattered into 40 unrecognizable emotional pieces… and somehow, I’m still here.” This kind of growth isn’t sparkly or inspirational. It’s quiet. It’s forged in the trenches. It’s the kind of growth that doesn’t make headlines, but makes you a softer, deeper, stronger human.

Because every wave you’ve survived—every griefy gut punch you didn’t think you could handle—has taught you something. About your capacity. About your love. About your resilience that doesn’t look like a battle cry, but like getting out of bed anyway. Like answering a text when you’d rather disappear. Like laughing when it feels weird. Like remembering that even though you’re changed, you’re still worthy of joy. Eventually, you notice the shift. One day, a wave hits—and you don’t completely fall apart. You wobble. You cry. But you don’t shatter. You’re still standing—even if your mascara isn’t and you’re holding it together with caffeine and unhinged voice memos. That counts. That’s growth.

But here’s the catch—none of this transformation happens if you try to white-knuckle your way through grief like it’s a test you can pass with enough mental toughness. You can’t out-stoic your grief. You’ve got to feel it. You’ve got to let the waves come. Trying to resist grief is like trying to hold your breath until the storm passes. Spoiler: you don’t come out stronger—you come out emotionally constipated and eventually explode over something small, like someone chewing too loud or running out of clean socks.

The only way out is through. And “through” is messy. It’s ugly crying in the shower. It’s journaling things you don’t want to admit. It’s rage-cleaning your kitchen at midnight or scream-singing sad girl ballads in your car with embarrassing levels of conviction. It’s letting yourself feel without judgment. Without apology. Without rushing to slap a silver lining on top of it all. And the more you let the grief move through you, the less it controls you. It doesn’t get smaller—but it gets less sharp. Less suffocating. It stops being a wrecking ball that smashes through your day and becomes something more manageable.

Eventually, grief stops screaming and starts sitting quietly in the corner. It never fully leaves the room—because it’s connected to the love that never left either. But it becomes less of a storm and more of a companion. A reminder. That you loved. That you lost. That you survived. And somehow, despite it all—you’re still here. Still healing. Still becoming.

And that’s not weakness. That’s your strength. That’s your story. And it’s still unfolding.

So yeah, grief comes in waves—and sometimes those waves feel like they’re trying to body-slam you into emotional rock bottom. But here’s the good news: even when it feels like you're drowning, the waves do pass. And each time they do, you get a little sturdier, a little more familiar with the current. That doesn’t mean the ocean dries up. It just means you start learning how to float. Healing doesn’t mean never getting hit again—it means knowing that when the wave crashes, it won’t sweep you out to sea.

But if you’re more of a visual learner—or just tired of aquatic metaphors—let’s talk about another way to understand grief: the jar analogy. It's simple, it's weirdly comforting, and it perfectly illustrates how grief changes over time. Spoiler alert: the grief doesn’t shrink. But something else does grow. Let’s break it down.

So let’s talk about jars—yes, jars. Not the cute kind with fairy lights and Pinterest vibes. The kind that lives in your emotional junk drawer next to expired dreams and unresolved feelings. The grief jar analogy might sound silly at first, but it’s actually one of the most grounding ways to understand what the hell is happening when you’re grieving and your brain feels like it’s been unplugged and tossed into a blender.

So picture this: your grief is a marble. Not some dainty little bead you can lose under the couch—no, we’re talking a big, heavy, emotionally inconvenient marble. Solid. Unchanging. Forever shaped like the loss you didn’t ask for. And in the beginning? That marble is crammed into this tiny-ass jar—barely bigger than a shot glass. The marble takes up everything. There’s no space for thoughts. No space for joy. No room for basic executive functioning like remembering to eat or answering texts or brushing your damn teeth. You’re full. Full of grief. Choking on it, really.

Everything else in your life—work, relationships, feeding the cat—gets squeezed out or barely wedged in around the grief. You’re not thriving. You’re surviving. You’re staring at walls, crying over expired yogurt, rage-walking through a world that somehow had the audacity to keep spinning without the person or life you’ve lost. You catch yourself resenting strangers for laughing. You resent yourself for not crying enough. And through it all, that marble just sits there, radiating loss and refusing to budge.

It owns you. You can’t think around it. You can’t plan past it. You can’t feel much else. And while the people around you might assume the grief will shrink over time, that’s not what happens. Spoiler alert: the marble doesn’t change. Not in size. Not in shape. Not in significance. What does change—eventually—is the jar. But in those early days, when everything is raw and claustrophobic and too damn much, that marble is your whole world. And pretending otherwise? Is not just unhelpful—it’s cruel.

That’s why this analogy matters. Because it validates the truth so many people feel but rarely say out loud: that early grief isn’t just hard, it’s consuming. And it doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means you’re grieving. In a world that expects you to “get back to normal” after three sympathy cards and a casserole, this jar-and-marble truth is the loudest permission slip to just feel it. To sit in the crowded jar and know: this part is real. And it won’t last forever—but while it’s here, you’re allowed to honor how big that marble really is.

But here’s where it gets interesting—the part that messes with people’s expectations in the best possible way: the marble—the grief—doesn’t shrink. It doesn’t dissolve. It doesn’t fade into the background like a bad memory or the face of your middle school gym teacher. It stays the same size. That loss, that ache, that gut-punch of reality? It remains what it was. But the thing that does change—the real magic of this analogy—is the jar. That tiny, suffocating emotional container you started with? It begins to stretch.

Not all at once. Not neatly. Not on a schedule you can pencil into your planner. This isn’t linear healing—it’s more like emotional puberty. Weird, unpredictable, and occasionally involves crying at commercials for no reason. The jar grows slowly. Sometimes it grows because you intentionally tend to your grief—through therapy, journaling, crying in your car at red lights, or just letting yourself not be okay. Other times, it grows despite you—through awkward conversations, deep sighs in grocery store aisles, late-night breakdowns on your bathroom floor, and those painfully uncomfortable moments where someone says “Everything happens for a reason” and you have to resist the urge to scream into the void. It’s uneven. It’s frustrating. But it’s real.

And little by little, the marble doesn’t take up all the space anymore. It’s still there—solid and heavy and permanent—but now there’s room. Room to breathe. Room to feel something else. You might suddenly realize you went an entire afternoon without thinking about the loss—and that realization might hit you with a weird cocktail of guilt and relief. Or maybe you find yourself laughing at a joke and, for a second, forgetting that you’re grieving. You start making plans. You start daydreaming again. You start to live—not because the grief is gone, but because the jar has grown enough to hold more than just the pain.

That’s what healing really is—not grief disappearing, but capacity expanding. It’s not about “getting over it.” It’s about learning to carry the weight without it crushing you. It’s your nervous system slowly relearning how to hold both sorrow and joy in the same breath. And when you start to feel those little glimmers of space—when you notice the grief is no longer choking every moment of your day—that’s not betrayal. That’s not forgetting. That’s the jar doing its thing. That’s growth. That’s resilience. That’s life starting to stretch around your loss, not in spite of it—but because you are still here, and still capable of more.

And yeah, let’s not pretend the marble just quietly stays in its lane once the jar gets bigger. That thing still knows how to throw a tantrum. It’ll knock around in there like it’s trying to remind you who’s boss, especially when a grief trigger sneaks up on you. Birthdays, anniversaries, holidays—they're the obvious suspects. But then there are the sneak attacks: a stranger’s laugh that sounds like theirs. A whiff of their shampoo in a crowd. A song you didn’t even know was connected to them until it completely wrecks your Tuesday. Wham. Just like that, it feels like the jar shrinks again. Tightens. Collapses inward. And suddenly, that marble? It's bouncing off the sides like it's reclaiming its territory—loud, heavy, uninvited.

In those moments, it’s easy to panic. Easy to feel like you’ve “gone backward,” like all that healing and progress and capacity you worked so hard for has vanished into thin air. But it hasn’t. The jar doesn’t stay small forever. That constriction? It’s temporary. It’s the emotional equivalent of a muscle spasm—painful, involuntary, but not permanent. The jar stretches back out, because that’s what it’s learned to do. That’s what you’ve learned to do. You exhale. You cry. You rage-text your best friend. You cancel your plans and crawl under a blanket. And then, slowly, you find your footing again. You make space again.

The marble is still there—same size, same shape—but it doesn’t own you anymore. It doesn't get to take up all the room for long. You’ve expanded. You’ve grown. And no matter how many times it rattles the walls of your emotional container, it can’t collapse the whole thing like it used to. That’s the thing about grief—it may revisit, it may flare, it may demand attention—but over time, you get better at surviving the impact. The marble can still hit hard, but it no longer flattens you. You know now that the wave will pass, the jar will expand, and you’ll find your breath again. You always do.

The beauty of this analogy is that it throws the idea of “getting over it” straight into the emotional garbage bin where it belongs. You don’t get over grief. You grow around it. The pain doesn’t vanish, but you expand. You adapt. You build a bigger life that can hold both joy and heartbreak without spontaneously combusting. And yeah, it’s clunky. It’s non-linear. Some days your jar might feel like it shrank two sizes out of nowhere, and that’s okay. Healing isn’t a Pinterest board. It’s messy and uncomfortable and deeply, weirdly beautiful.

So the next time someone asks if you’re “doing better,” maybe just picture your jar. And instead of pretending the marble’s gone, know that your jar is growing. Your life is expanding. And that big, stubborn grief marble? It may still be there—but it’s not running the whole damn show anymore.

So before I close out this episode, I want to share something I wrote a while back- maybe it'll resonate with you.

Grief is a funny thing.

Sometimes it’s a tiny ball in your gut- just something that is, but not something that you’re truly conscious of.

Sometimes it hits you like a tidal wave- relentless and crushing; you feel as though you can’t catch your breath, and like you’re being swallowed whole.

And still other times, it hits you quietly- a little reminder (a song/sound, a smell, the way the light hits), and it’s a needle sharp prick that leaves an ache.

Sometimes you laugh, sometimes you cry, sometimes you cry until you laugh, because what else can you really do? You know you can’t let the sadness consume you. So you slowly take your life back, the same way you eat an elephant- one bite at a time, until the grief is no longer a gnawing pit inside your stomach, and you can start to breath again.

One bite at a time.

And there you have it—grief, in all its wave-crashing, jar-clanking, heart-squeezing glory. If nothing else, I hope today reminded you that whatever your grief looks like—loud, quiet, messy, numb, rage-filled, or weirdly fine—you’re not doing it wrong. There’s no gold medal for getting through it faster, and there’s no shame in still carrying your grief years later. That marble might always be there, but your jar will grow. You will laugh again. You will feel joy without guilt. And you’re allowed to miss them and keep living—those two things can exist in the same breath.

If this episode hit home (or made you cry in a weirdly cathartic way), do me a favor and hit that subscribe button, leave a review, or share this episode with someone who might need it. It helps the podcast grow, and more importantly—it helps normalize talking about the stuff we’re told to keep quiet.

And if you’re craving a little more support, behind-the-scenes content, or just want to feel less alone in the chaos, join us in the O’Neil Counseling app for all the extras. Think bonus materials, journal prompts, and the occasional meme that perfectly captures the emotional whiplash of being human.

Thanks for being here, thanks for staying tender, and thanks for letting me wrap up your grief in something a little irreverent but real. I’ll see you next week when we talk about something a little softer—but no less important: practicing gratitude. And before you roll your eyes, no—it’s not about toxic positivity or forcing yourself to be happy. We’re going to unpack the real-deal version of gratitude that can actually coexist with grief, anxiety, and all your complicated human feelings.

Until then, be kind to your brain, hydrate your body, and remember: healing isn’t linear, but you’re still moving forward.