No One Gets to Tell You How to Do Grief

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Thirteen years ago, my mom died.

What I did on March 7 before that year, I couldn’t tell you. That date lived like any other day on the calendar until it didn’t. Now it carries weight. Now it has a pulse. Now it asks something of me every year.

And this year, somehow, it felt harder.

That is one of the things grief does that makes no sense. We expect time to make it neater, softer, more explainable. But loss is not linear, and grief is not tidy. It is a knot.

I often talk with clients about the grief knot—that tangled, living thing that tightens and loosens and turns in ways you never see coming. It pulls on memory, regret, longing, anger, gratitude, exhaustion, love. It brings up the ache of what happened, and also the ache of what will never happen.

So one of the biggest things I ask clients not to do—and one of the biggest things I ask of myself—is this:

Do not judge what comes up.

Do not judge the tears.

Do not judge the anger.

Do not judge the numbness.

Do not judge the strange quiet.

Do not judge the laughter that shows up next to sadness.

Do not judge the fact that this year hurts more than last year.

Those emotions are not wrong. They are not dramatic. They are not “too much.” They are accurately representing the knot.

What I have learned is that on this day, I have to give myself room to mourn.

Because with every passing year, there is more and more of my life that my mom does not know. There is more of my story she will never hear. More of the woman I’ve become that she will never see. And when the person you wanted to witness your life is no longer here to witness it, that reality can cut deeper with time, not less.

The immense, horrific loss at the beginning—the absence, the hole of a human in everything—does shift. You do become accustomed to certain realities. You get used to their face not being there. Their voice is not there. Their calls are not there.

But for some of us, that does not become anything close to acceptance.

And that is okay.

I tell clients this often: nobody gets to tell you how to do death. Nobody gets to tell you how to deal with the loss of someone you love.

I remember one of the last times I spoke to a very dear friend, about six months after my mom died. I had gone to put flowers on my mom’s grave. I remember staring at my phone after hearing the response:

“You out there again?”

And at that moment, I did not even feel the need to explain. Nor did I ever.

My dad died when I was 16. This loss was different. This was the loss of the last parent who knew me from the beginning. The last parent who knew the earliest versions of me. No one else had to fully understand that. But they did need to respect it.

That is one of the hardest and clearest lessons grief teaches: not everyone will understand your loss, but you still get to care for it. You still get to care for yourself.

Sometimes that means a pajama day.

Sometimes that means staying home.

Sometimes that means watching movies and keeping the world small.

Sometimes that means not answering texts.

Sometimes that means letting yourself cry without trying to turn it into a lesson.

Overstimulation can numb you, and sometimes numbing is what gets you through the hour. But often it also keeps you from tending to what needs tending. It keeps you from mourning in the way your heart is asking to mourn.

And mourning matters.

Because when we let ourselves feel what is true, we are often better able to return to life—not as people who have “moved on,” but as people who can carry love and loss in the same body. People who can ache and still remember the good. People who can miss them terribly and still smile at a memory.

It is okay to let your heart ache.

The reality is that they are gone.

And loving someone does not end just because their life did.

One of my favorite quotes, often attributed to Rumi, says: “Life is a balance of holding on and letting go.” 

That feels especially true in grief.

We let go of what was.

We hold on to what mattered.

We let go of their physical presence.

We hold on to the imprint.

We let go of who we were before the loss.

We hold on to love.

It is a balance. Not a clean one. Not a fair one. But a real one.

So if today is your hard day, here is what I want you to know:

No one gets to tell you how to lose someone.

As long as you are not harming yourself or anyone else, you get to have your emotions. You get to have them longer than a week. You get to go back to work and still be sad. You get to laugh one minute and cry the next. You get to miss them years later. You get to protect your peace from people who want your grief to be more convenient.

Your job is not to perform healing for other people.

Your job is to take care of you.

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Much Respect,

Melinda

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