When we hear the word grief, most of us immediately think about the death of someone we love. Yet grief is something we may experience many times throughout our lives, often without recognising that what we are feeling is grief at all. We may grieve the loss of our health, the ending of a relationship, a change in our circumstances, or the loss of something that has been part of our everyday lives for many years. We may even grieve a future we had imagined for ourselves, one that is no longer possible in quite the way we had expected.
What interests me is not only the emotions we experience when something changes or disappears from our lives, but also what is happening within us. What have we actually lost? Why can the absence of someone or something sometimes feel as though a part of ourselves has disappeared too? And is it possible that, alongside the sadness, there may be something about ourselves that we have yet to recognise?
The many faces of grief
You may be familiar with the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. These can help us recognise some of the emotions that arise following a loss, although they are not a fixed sequence that everyone must follow. Our experience is rarely that orderly. We may feel acceptance one day and anger the next, or find ourselves laughing at a happy memory and then, moments later, feel overwhelmed by sadness. Sometimes an emotion we thought we had moved beyond returns unexpectedly, perhaps triggered by a familiar place, a piece of music or something someone says.
Grief can be extraordinarily painful. There may be a heaviness in the chest, a tightness in the throat, an emptiness in the stomach or an exhaustion that seems disproportionate to anything we have physically done. Sometimes the pain feels almost unbearable, and we would give anything to return to the familiarity of how life was before. We may find ourselves unable to concentrate, struggling with ordinary decisions or feeling disconnected from the world around us, particularly when everyone else seems to be carrying on as normal.
There can also be anger, guilt, regret or a sense of injustice. We may replay conversations, question decisions or find ourselves caught in thoughts about what might have been different. Sometimes there is nothing we can identify or explain; we simply feel the absence of what was once there. Understanding something intellectually does not necessarily make the experience any less painful, and I think it is important to acknowledge that before we begin exploring grief from another perspective.
We have become so accustomed to wanting to feel better, or believing that we should be coping differently, that we may add another layer of difficulty by resisting what we are feeling. Perhaps, rather than immediately trying to change our experience, we could begin by recognising what is happening within us. That doesn't mean we will always be able to stand back and observe our emotions calmly. Sometimes we are simply in the middle of them, and that is our experience in that moment. There is no timetable for grief, and no particular way we are supposed to experience it.
The attachments we may not recognise
Over the years, through my own experiences and my work with energy, I have become increasingly interested in the attachments we form to people, places, possessions and circumstances. We don't necessarily think of these as attachments, because they are simply part of how we live. Our relationships, routines, expectations and the many little things we do without thinking gradually become woven into our experience of life.
Think for a moment about someone who has been part of your life for many years. Your lives may have developed familiar patterns. You know when you are likely to see them, what you might talk about, how you feel in their company and perhaps even who you are when you are with them. From an energetic perspective, I see this as a familiarity that has developed through our repeated thoughts, feelings, attention and experiences. When the relationship changes or the person is no longer there, it is not simply their physical presence that is missing. All those familiar patterns are interrupted too.
Perhaps you still reach for the telephone to share something with them, only to remember that you cannot. Maybe you find yourself preparing to do something you always did together, or expecting to hear their voice when you walk through the door. For a moment, the old pattern is still there, even though the circumstances have changed. We sometimes describe this as having a hole in our lives, and I wonder whether that description reflects something quite profound about the attachments we have created.
I experienced something that brought this home to me following a car accident some years ago. Fortunately, neither driver was injured, although my car was badly damaged. I remember being remarkably calm at the scene, but over the following days, as the car sat outside my home waiting for the insurer's decision, I noticed a mixture of emotions. There was gratitude that we were both safe, sadness when I saw the damage and anger at the inconvenience of suddenly being without my car.
Eventually, the insurer decided to write it off. I stood watching as the recovery driver loaded it onto his lorry, and as he drove away, I experienced something quite unexpected. I felt a distinct pulling sensation from my chest, almost as though something was being taken away with the car. It was a physical sensation that surprised me, and one that has stayed with me.
Reflecting on that experience, I became aware of how comfortable I had been driving that car, how familiar it felt and how, during the accident, it had protected me. Perhaps there was sadness, gratitude, attachment and a sense of security all woven together. I cannot say exactly what created that sensation, but it made me curious about the connections we form with things that become part of our everyday lives, and how we experience their loss.
After all, it was only a car, and I knew how fortunate I had been. Yet knowing that didn't prevent me from experiencing genuine sadness when it was taken away. We can understand intellectually that something is replaceable, or that change is inevitable, and still experience a sense of loss. Equally, we can be grateful for what remains while grieving what has gone. These feelings don't cancel one another out.
And this is not limited to possessions. Imagine someone whose health changes significantly. Alongside the physical challenges, they may grieve their independence, their ability to do things spontaneously, their work or the plans they had made for the future. Someone leaving a long career may discover that what they miss most is not the work itself, but the sense of purpose or identity that came with it. When we begin to look at grief in this way, we may discover that there are several different losses contained within what initially appeared to be just one.
When the past meets the present
Have you ever found yourself reacting to something and wondered why your response felt so much stronger than the situation seemed to warrant? Sometimes a present experience touches something from our past. Perhaps we experienced a loss years ago and, for whatever reason, we weren't able to fully acknowledge what we were feeling at the time. We may have needed to carry on, look after other people or simply manage the practicalities of everyday life. We did what seemed necessary, and gradually life developed a new rhythm.
Then something happens, perhaps an apparently small event, and emotions we haven't felt for years come to the surface. From an energetic perspective, I find it helpful to consider whether an old attachment or emotional pattern is being brought into our awareness again. Not because we have failed to deal with it, but because there may be something within that experience we are now able to recognise.
I don't think we always need to analyse every feeling or search for an explanation. Sometimes the most valuable thing we can do is notice what is happening and allow ourselves to feel it, without immediately deciding what it means. There may also be times when the feelings are too intense to explore on our own, and having someone alongside us who can listen and offer support can make an enormous difference.
Moving forward without leaving everything behind
One of the things that can make grief particularly difficult is the belief that moving forward somehow means leaving someone or something behind. We may feel guilty when we laugh again, enjoy an experience or begin to imagine a different future. It can almost feel as though our sadness is evidence of how much we loved, and that allowing the sadness to soften would somehow diminish that love.
But is that really true? Perhaps what changes over time is not the love, or the significance of what we have experienced, but our relationship with its absence. The memories remain, what we learned through the relationship remains, and the experiences that helped shape who we are remain part of our story. We don't have to forget what was in order to discover what is possible now, nor do we have to pretend that the loss no longer matters.
I wonder whether we sometimes make the experience more difficult by believing that we need to let go, as though there is something we must actively do to bring grief to an end. What if we didn't need to force anything? What if, as we become more aware of what we are holding on to and why, our relationship with it begins to change naturally?
This doesn't mean we need to find a positive lesson in every loss. Some experiences are deeply painful, and I would never want to suggest that someone should feel grateful for their suffering. But I do wonder whether, when we are ready, there may be value in becoming curious about what we are experiencing rather than concentrating entirely on how to make the feelings disappear.
We might ask ourselves what we are missing most, what the person, relationship or circumstance represented in our lives, or whether there is something we believed we could only experience through what we have lost. Perhaps there are aspects of our identity that have become so closely connected to another person or a particular way of living that we have forgotten who we are beyond those familiar roles.
We may not have immediate answers, and perhaps we don't need them. Sometimes simply recognising that we are grieving is enough for now. Sometimes we need to talk, cry, be quiet, spend time with others or have some space to ourselves. There is no single approach that will be right for everyone, or even for the same person on different days.
What matters, I think, is allowing our experience to be what it is, without adding the expectation that we should be somewhere other than where we are. Grief is not necessarily something we complete and put away. It may become part of how we understand ourselves, our relationships and the changing nature of life.
And perhaps, as we learn to live with what is no longer there, we begin to discover that while something important has changed, not everything that mattered has been lost.