Looking forward, I want to bring in the work of Mary-Frances O’Connor, author of The Grieving Brain: The surprising science of how we learn from love and loss which Dr. Huberman also references in his podcast. 

O’Connor describes the early stages of grief as an ‘out of control kindergarten, where emotions and thoughts go into overdrive and this is why grief is also physically exhausting.  Essentially, grief is a long and difficult journey, and the lessons come in fits and starts.  When we experience loss, the map our brain works from – of both our inner and outer worlds – is profoundly altered.  For a while, neurons fire out of control, trying to make sense of a changed reality and this takes time.

We do not get over grief – it grows around us.  It is a defining experience that changes our core for the rest of our lives.

I now know that grief isn’t something you get over.  It isn’t something that you move beyond and leave behind.  You can’t rush it, dismiss it, or force yourself to move on from it because our brains and bodies just don’t work like that. Grief is a journey of becoming someone new, someone whose life was touched by another so special that testimony to their life lives on inside our hearts forever.  I know that now, and going through the process invites that love and grief to stay with us forever.

There is a quote by Jamie Anderson that really resonates -  “Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go”.

There is an article called Growing Around Grief: another way of Looking at Grief and Recovery, by Dr. Louis Tonkin, written in 1996, where she tells the story of a mother whose child had died years before and the mother makes a sketch to express how she expected her grief to unfold and how it actually did.

In essence, she did not describe her grief as shrinking over time, instead, it remained the same but her life around it grew larger, her grief was always there and she spent time within it when needed, but she was able to experience life also and this is where the concept ‘Growth Around Grief’ was born.

This is further described in the powerful TED Talk by Nora McInerny (2018), in which she talks about how we can never truly move on from grief, only move forward with the grief as a fundamental part of us. Although her experiences are through the lens of losing a child, Dad, and husband, it is relevant for any type of grief, so do check it out, if it is relevant for you at this time.