On Grief and the Long Hands of Time

We have inherited a strange idea about grief: that it is a process with an end. That there is a correct arc, a reasonable duration, a point at which one is meant to be 'through it.'

Grief does not agree.

The real shape of it

Grief is not linear. It is tidal. It comes in waves — sometimes far apart, sometimes stacked one on another — and each wave carries its own weather. A song. A smell. A Tuesday with no particular reason.

The goal is not to stop the waves. The goal is to grow large enough to hold them.

What grief is really asking

Grief is love with nowhere to go. It is not a malfunction; it is a measure of how much you cared. To grieve well is to honour that caring — not to perform recovery, but to make room.

Practical gentleness

• Let the waves come. Fighting them makes them larger.
• Do not measure your grief against anyone else's clock.
• Find one person who does not need you to be further along than you are.
• When you cannot feel anything, that is also grief. It is not failure.

In time

The waves do not stop. But they space out. And between them, life returns — softer, more honest, more awake to what matters. You do not move on from love. You carry it differently.