Grief is not something you get over – it's something you learn to carry.

One of the most common questions people ask is:

"Shouldn't I be over this by now?"

Sometimes it has been six months.

Sometimes six years.

Sometimes longer.

A song comes on.

An anniversary arrives.

You see a photograph.

Hear a familiar phrase.

And suddenly the grief feels as present as it ever did.

When this happens, many people assume something is wrong.

That they are stuck.

That they have failed to move on.

That everyone else has somehow worked out how to do grief properly.

The truth is usually much simpler.

Grief does not follow a timetable.

It does not arrive neatly.

And it rarely leaves in the way we expect it to.

Part of the difficulty is that many of us imagine grief as something we recover from.

A bit like an illness.

Something difficult that eventually ends.

But grief is different.

Grief is what happens when someone or something important becomes part of your story.

The relationship may have ended.

The love often doesn't.

Over time, grief changes shape.

At first it can feel overwhelming.

Everything reminds you of the loss.

Everything feels heavy.

Later, life begins to grow around it.

You laugh again.

Work again.

Make plans again.

You start carrying the loss differently.

Not because you have forgotten.

Because you are adapting.

This is why grief can sometimes catch people by surprise years later.

A wedding.

A birthday.

The birth of a child.

Retirement.

A football match.

A song you haven't heard for twenty years.

Life moves forward, but grief has a way of reminding us of the people and moments that travelled with us.

That isn't a setback.

It's part of being human.

Therapy does not take grief away.

What it can offer is somewhere to put it down for a while.

A place to talk honestly.

A place where you do not have to protect other people from how you feel.

A place where guilt, anger, sadness, relief, confusion and love are all welcome.

Because grief is rarely just about loss.

It is often about the relationship, the memories, the regrets, the hopes and the future we imagined.

If your grief still shows up from time to time, it does not mean you are failing.

It means the loss mattered.

You do not have to grieve perfectly.

You do not have to meet anyone else's timetable.

You do not have to be anywhere other than where you are.

Grief is not something you get over.

It is something you learn to live alongside.

And that takes the time it takes.