Grief affects everyone at one time or another in their lives; it could be the loss of a loved one, a pet, the break-up of a relationship, or the loss of a home etc. Yet, people shy away from talking about it. They bury it deep and tell anyone who asks that they are fine when, in fact, they are mentally and physically struggling. 

Grief has been a big part of my life lately; for months, I’ve been grieving one thing after another. I feel like just as I’m starting to accept what is going on, I get knocked back down again.

First off, what is grief?  Grief is expressed in the face of loss, especially losses that helped form your identity. It can be triggered by any event that involves an Identity-altering type of loss; this can include living through – Natural disasters, a divorce, the death of a loved one, and right down to losing a job. 

Everybody’s grief can look completely different from someone else’s. But there are common grieving signs to look out for. These include:

Strong feelings of sadness or sorrow

Inability to focus

Lack of trust

Feelings of loss of purpose or intention in life

Consuming thoughts of that which you lost

Denial of your loss

Personally! I think I have experienced most, if not all, of these signs. As I sit here typing this piece now, my heart aches, not only for the loss of a family member. I recently said my final goodbyes, too. But, also, for the loss of a long-term relationship, which I never saw coming, was this naïve of me? Was I blind to the signs because I loved him too much? Or was I just blind to the reality of the fact that we had drifted apart. 

As I dealt with grief from these two very different kinds of losses, one who I still see regularly, the other I would never see again. I was about to be dealt with a third blow! I was now going to lose my home; notice was given, and I had two months to find somewhere else. 

I burst into tears over the shock, this time more than grieving. Did someone up above really hate me so much that they would now take my home away from me, too? A great feeling of sadness came over me as I stood in the kitchen, everything was crashing down, and I didn’t know how to deal with it. 

When my relationship ended, it took all my energy to get out of bed; my head became full of thoughts, trying to figure out what the hell had happened to us. Nothing made sense, and all I wanted to do was cry! Yet, for some reason, I couldn’t cry either. I knew the best thing at the time was to escape my surroundings and visit family and friends, so I did. I took myself out of the situation and, I suppose, put myself into a denial of loss situation, as I came back like nothing was happening and got on with life. I pushed all that grief into a box and told it I wasn’t going to deal with that now and focused on my business again, did my book readings, and got myself noticed.

This was working for a month or so, and then I heard about my family member; I was consumed with thoughts for this person, reminiscing about holidays when I was younger, etc, and started to lose focus on my business. Then I got the third blow: I received notice on my home, and everything else just drifted into the background as finding somewhere to live now became a priority! As for my grief, I pushed that back into its box again as I didn’t have time to grieve right now, or at least that’s what I told myself. 

My grief had other ideas, though; it wasn’t going to stay pushed down in the box I had placed it into. After two weeks of packing up a home and decluttering, it finally pushed itself to the surface, and I broke down into a blubbering mess as I burst into tears. My emotions finally being released in uncontrollable crying as I sat at my computer desk just having finished a coffee and chat morning on Zoom. 

I can’t tell you what set off the crying; it could have been anything. I don’t know why my grief managed to escape that morning; what I can tell you is that I cried for a solid hour before I had to control myself again for another meeting, which I just managed to get through if I’m honest! For the minute it finished I was off again, as uncontrollable emotions surfaced, and tears fell down my face. The whole of that day, I was a mess, having to control myself as I went out on dog walks and then walked back into the house and started crying again. Months’ worth of grief that had been boxed off was finally being released. The problem was I wasn’t ready for it to be released, and the thing with grief is that it doesn’t matter if we are ready; we must deal with it regardless. 

Once the floodgates had been opened that day, my emotions and grief have stayed near the top; I’ve found myself crying more regularly as I deal with the situations head-on instead of pushing them down into a box to deal with later. This course of action clearly didn’t help! But, at the time, it felt the best course to take with everything that was going on. Now, I just take each day as it comes and let those tears run when they need to. 

Of course, there is so much more to grief than what I have given you here. There are also the mental implications as well as the physical effects, but I don’t have all the answers for that. All I can say is I hope what I have provided gives you a little help and insight into what grief is. But please remember that the grieving process looks different for everyone. So remember to be patient, kind, and gentle to yourself during this trying time. 

This was written by our contributing writer, Leah Palmer.