Grief Doesn't Follow a Timeline, No Matter What Anyone Tells You.

Someone tells you it gets easier after the first year. Someone else says you should be "moving on" by now. A well-meaning friend asks if you're "doing better," like grief is a fever that's supposed to break on schedule.

None of that matches what grief actually feels like from the inside.

Grief doesn't move in a straight line, and it doesn't respect a calendar. It shows up in a grocery store aisle two years later, in a song on the radio, in the quiet moment before you fall asleep. If you're waiting to feel "done" so you can finally check grief off the list, you might be waiting for something that was never going to happen — because that's not really how grief works.

Grief Doesn't Always Look Like Crying

We tend to picture grief as visible sadness — tears, a funeral, a hard week. Sometimes it looks like that. But grief also shows up as:

• Irritability that seems to come from nowhere
• Feeling strangely numb, like you're watching your life from a distance
• Guilt over moments you feel "okay," followed by guilt over feeling bad again
• Exhaustion that doesn't match how much you're actually doing
• Anger — at the person who died, at the situation, at people who still have what you lost
• Relief, in situations where the loss followed a long illness or a difficult relationship — and then shame about that relief

None of these are "wrong" ways to grieve. They're all just what grief can actually look like, once you stop expecting it to match the movie version.

The "Five Stages" Aren't a Checklist

You've probably heard of the five stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. They're useful as a general map of what grief can include, but they were never meant to be a checklist you move through in order, one and done.

Grief is more like weather than a staircase. You might feel something like acceptance on a Tuesday and get knocked flat by anger on a Thursday, for no clear reason at all. That's not regression. That's not "doing it wrong." That's just what grief actually does.

Why "Getting Over It" Isn't the Goal

A lot of grief support — well-meaning as it usually is — implicitly aims at getting you back to how things were before. But loss doesn't really work that way. The goal of grief therapy isn't to erase what happened or rush you toward feeling "normal" again. It's to help you carry the loss differently over time — not lighter because it stopped mattering, but more sustainable because you're not carrying it entirely alone.

Many people find that grief never fully disappears, but its shape changes. Early on, it can feel like it's everywhere, all the time. Later, it becomes something you carry alongside a full life again — present, but no longer the only thing.

When Grief Might Benefit From Support

There's no minimum requirement of pain before grief support is "warranted." That said, some signs it might help to talk to someone:

• It's been a long time and the intensity hasn't shifted at all, in either direction
• You're avoiding anything that reminds you of the loss, to the point that it's shrinking your life
• Guilt, anger, or numbness feel stuck, rather than something that comes and goes
• You're using substances, overworking, or other patterns to avoid feeling it
• People around you have quietly stopped asking how you're doing, and you're carrying it more alone than you'd like

You don't need a "complicated" or unusual loss to benefit from support. Ordinary grief, given space and real attention, is still hard — and still worth support.

What Grief Therapy Actually Looks Like

Grief therapy isn't about rushing you to "closure" — a concept that, honestly, doesn't hold up well against how grief actually works for most people. Instead, it's a space to:

• Talk honestly about the loss, without needing to perform being okay
• Make sense of complicated feelings — anger, relief, guilt — without judgment
• Understand how grief is showing up in your body, your relationships, your daily functioning
• Find a way to carry the loss that doesn't require pretending it didn't happen

My approach is attachment-based, trauma-informed, and psychodynamic, which means we take grief seriously as its own experience — not just a problem to manage, but a real, human response to loss that deserves space and understanding.

You Don't Have to Be "Over It" to Talk About It

Whether your loss happened last month or several years ago, however messy or complicated the grief feels, it's a valid reason to reach out. For adults throughout Colorado, telehealth therapy means you can talk about this from wherever feels most comfortable — no need to hold it together long enough to drive somewhere first.

You don't have to carry this timeline someone else set for you. You get to grieve at your own pace, in your own way.

Schedule an Appointment if you'd like support with this.