GRIEF IS NOT SOMETHING YOU GET OVER — IT’S SOMETHING YOU LEARN TO CARRY

People often come to therapy worried that their grief is taking too long.
They say things like:

“I should be over this by now.”
“Everyone else has moved on.”
“Why does it still hit me out of nowhere?”

The truth is simple and gentle:
grief does not follow a timeline, and you are not behind.

Grief is not an illness to recover from.
It is a response to love and loss.
And love does not vanish on schedule.

Over time, the shape of grief changes.
At first it’s overwhelming, heavy, everywhere.
Later, it softens. It becomes part of your life instead of taking over your life.
Not because you forget, but because you slowly learn how to carry it.

This process is not linear.
Some days you feel steady. Other days, a memory, a song, or an anniversary pulls you right back underneath it. Nothing about that is wrong. It’s the mind and body adjusting to a world that has changed.

Therapy does not take grief away.
What it can offer is space.
Space to speak honestly, without worrying about burdening anyone.
Space to feel the guilt, anger, shock or numbness that often go unspoken.
Space to make sense of the moments when you are grieving and functioning at the same time.

You do not have to grieve perfectly.
You do not have to meet anyone’s expectations.
You do not have to rush.

You are not letting anyone down by still feeling the loss.
You are human, and you are adapting.

Grief is not something you get over. It is something you learn to live alongside, with compassion for yourself and the person you lost.

If this resonates, therapy can give you room to explore what grief looks like for you, without judgement and without pressure to be anywhere other than where you are.