By Alphonso Gaita, LCSW

Grief belongs to all of us. It’s a thread that runs through every life, yet it’s often spoken of as if it were a journey with a fixed destination—something to finish, to put away. In truth, grief has no timetable. It drifts in and out, shifting in form and intensity, returning years later without warning. Sometimes it’s the brush of a certain fabric, a faint smell of tea, a song half‑heard in a crowded room—small sensory sparks that pull the past into the present with startling clarity.

This article blends lived experience with clinical perspective to explore grief in its many forms. It looks at how culture, personality, life stage, and the nature of our relationships shape the way we carry loss—whether through the death of someone we love, the end of a partnership, a move that uproots us, the loss of health, or the arrival of a diagnosis that changes the map of our lives. Such moments can unsettle who we believe ourselves to be, fray our sense of safety, and leave us navigating unfamiliar ground.

We examine the difference between grief that slowly finds its place within a life and grief that holds a person in place, making healing harder without understanding and support. Along the way, we question rigid timelines, affirm the wide range of ways mourning can appear, and emphasize the need for compassionate, trauma‑informed spaces where loss can be spoken of without judgment.

At its heart, this piece affirms that grief is not a problem to solve, nor a chapter to close. It is a relationship between love and loss—one that, with tenderness, resilience, and the steady presence of others, can be woven into a meaningful and continuing life.

A Fabric Swatch, a Memory, a Tear

Years after my grandmother died, grief still slips quietly into my day. It doesn’t announce itself; it just arrives. I can be walking through a store, mind elsewhere, when I pass the fabric aisle. A bolt of cotton catches my eye. The faint smell of cloth hangs in the air. My fingers find lace, and suddenly I’m gone, back in her kitchen. The sewing machine hums its steady tune. Scissors snip against the table in a soft, certain rhythm. In the corner, tea sends up gentle steam. For a heartbeat, it feels as if she might turn to me and speak.

In grief work, they call moments like these reactivations or anniversary reactions, times when a scent, a sound, or a familiar texture pulls a loved one’s memory into sharp focus (Dembling, 2023; Meekhof, 2024). The language feels impersonal or clinical, but the experience is anything but. These moments aren’t proof of being stuck; they’re proof of connection. They remind us that love doesn’t end with a life. It stays, woven into the places we return to in our minds, and in the small, unlooked‑for ways the present brushes against the threads of our past.

Grief as a Process, Not a Timeline

Public conversation and popular media often frame grief as a tidy sequence of stages, moving predictably toward an end point of “closure” or “moving on” (Kübler‑Ross, 1969). While this model is usually shared with the best intentions, it can create a quiet but heavy pressure for those in mourning to follow a path that rarely mirrors the lived reality of loss. Grief is not a one size fits all process, its a fluid cycle and as individual as the person grieving. Current research describes it as a shifting, open‑ended experience in which emotions rise and recede over time, with no single point of completion (Fisher, 2023; Grellman, 2025).

Instead of advancing neatly from one feeling to the next, many people find themselves moving in and out of sadness, yearning, longing, anger, and, at times, unexpected joy or gratitude—sometimes experiencing several of these in a single day. These emotions may grow quieter with the years, but they have a way of returning, even decades later, often sparked by something deeply personal: an anniversary, a photograph, the opening bars of a familiar song, a scent in the air, or an everyday place bound to a memory.

Clinically, such re‑emerging feelings are not evidence of being “stuck.” They reflect the ongoing relationship between the bereaved and the person—or the part of life—that has been lost. They remind us that grief is not an illness to cure, but a companion that changes its weight and shape over time, surfacing when life events, sensory moments, or deep reflection touch the thread of love that remains. Seen in this light, they are not setbacks at all, but openings—moments where both clients and clinicians can find meaning and weave the loss into the larger fabric of a continuing life.

The Breadth of Grief Experiences

We tend to think of grief first in the shadow of death, and it’s true, few experiences alter the course of a life so completely. But grief doesn’t limit itself to funerals or memorials. It can arrive in subtler disguises, sometimes without warning, and still shake the ground beneath us.

It might be closing the door for the last time on a home where your children grew up, where the walls have quietly held a lifetime of stories. It might be walking out of a workplace for the last time, your desk already cleared, the steady rhythm of your days suddenly silenced. It might be the moment a doctor’s words rearrange the map of your future, or when a marriage or partnership, once a place of safety, unravels. It might arrive quietly, almost without you noticing at first, the gradual loss of strength or independence you once moved through life without a second thought. And when it does, it doesn’t just upend your daily routines . It reaches deeper, into the core of who you are, unsettling the very foundations of your identity.

They can undo your sense of identity, your feeling of safety, the very narrative you’ve been living. Leaving a house isn’t just about changing addresses, it’s leaving behind the smell of morning coffee in that kitchen, the light that slanted just so across the hallway, the echoes of voices you still love. And the end of a job or relationship isn’t only about lost duties or shared spaces; it can pull at the threads of belonging until you feel as though the fabric of your life has thinned.

In the language of counseling, we call these “living losses.” The phrase is neat and clinical, but the experience is anything but tidy. The grief they bring can tighten the chest, cloud the mind, and hollow out the future just as deeply as bereavement. It can leave a person unsteady, wondering who they are now, and where they will find the next firm place to stand.

Guilt in the Grief Process

Guilt and self‑blame have a way of slipping in like uninvited guests. They don’t knock, they just settle quietly in the corners of your mind, whispering the same questions over and over. If only I’d done more. How did I miss the signs? They loop when the house is still, when the world has gone on without you, when a memory cracks open the ache all over again. Sometimes they surface in the stillness of the night; other times they crash in unexpectedly when a memory catches you off guard.

From the clinical lens, these thoughts often grow from what psychologists call the “illusion of control”, the deeply human belief that, if only we had acted differently, the loss might never have happened. In moments of confussion, that illusion can offer a fragile sense of order. But it comes at a cost. It asks the mourner to carry blame for what was, in truth, beyond their power to change.

On a human level, guilt is rarely born of indifference. More often, it springs from love, proof of how much the person or relationship meant, and how deeply the absence is felt. In its own hard‑to‑carry way, guilt can be proof that the bond hasn’t gone anywhere, that it’s still beating quietly in the heart, even after everything else has changed.

But when it’s left unspoken and unresolved, it can tangle itself into the grieving process, weighing a person down with lingering sadness, loss of confidence, even a dimming of their own worth.

In the work I’ve done, and in the life I’ve lived, I’ve watched something shift when those thoughts are met with kindness instead of criticism. It’s a quiet kind of healing, the sort that starts to take root when someone feels seen, not judged.

Narrative therapy can invite someone to tell the story of their loss again, this time with the spotlight on the love they gave, the care they showed, the ways they tried. Cognitive‑behavioral tools can help untangle the distortions, replacing the harsh refrain of I should have prevented this with the steadier truth: I did the best I could with the knowledge and resources I had at the time.

This kind of reframing doesn’t take the ache away. But it can make just enough space for compassion to edge its way back in, soft, steady, almost shy at first. When you finally get brave enough to lift the guilt and really look underneath, you realize it was never the whole story. It was only something resting on the surface, covering what had been there the whole time, the love you gave without holding back, the care you offered in all those countless, silent moments, and a relationship that loss can brush against it but never break it.

The Individuality of Grief

Grief wears a different face on each of us, even when we’ve come from the same home or walked through the same loss. One person may need to speak of it often, telling stories, letting tears come, wrapping themselves in shared memories. Another may carry it quietly, lighting a candle when no one’s watching, pouring energy into work or caring for others, or finding release in art, prayer, or the comfort of routine.

These differences aren’t mistakes to be corrected; they’re shaped by who we are, where we come from, what the relationship meant, and what else life is asking of us in that moment.

Over the years, I’ve learned that forcing someone into a certain way of grieving, or holding them up against another’s process, can do more harm than good. It can pile on guilt or make a person feel they’re somehow grieving “wrong.” But when you meet someone where they are and say, Your way is your way, and it’s valid, you give them room to breathe, to feel, to heal in a way that fits the shape of their own heart.

On the most human level, it’s about honoring the truth that love and loss live differently in every life. The brother who visits the grave each week and the sister who never goes may be carrying equal weight, just in ways that match who they are.

When friends, family, or professionals can hold that space without judgment, grief stops being something to hide or rush through. It finds its place in the day‑to‑day, becoming something the mourner can live with instead of something they must push away. In that acceptance, there’s room for resilience to grow, and for connection to return, slowly, quietly, like light finding its way back into a darkened room.

The Role of Support

Grief has a way of making the world feel smaller and quieter, like everyone else is moving at full speed while you’re standing still. It’s shaped by who or what you’ve lost, the story you shared, and the life you’re left holding, which means no two journeys look the same. But it’s not something we’re meant to carry entirely on our own. I’ve seen, and felt, how the presence of another human being can take the edge off the sharpest loneliness. Sometimes it’s just a few minutes of real listening, but it’s enough to make you feel like you’re still tethered to the world.

The support that matters most isn’t about fixing anything. It’s about showing up without an agenda. It’s the quiet nod that says, Yes, what you’re feeling is real. And it matters. It’s the friend who stays even when the conversation stalls. It’s the professional who can hold space for your sadness, your anger, the guilt you almost don’t want to name, and those fleeting, guilt-tinged moments of relief or joy.

In those spaces, the ones where you don’t have to edit yourself, grief starts to weave itself into your life in a way that feels survivable. Not because someone told you to “move on,” but because you’ve been given permission to let it live alongside you.

Skilled guidance can help you find the places where strength still lives, even when you feel hollow. It can soften the harsh self-talk and help you keep a connection to what you’ve lost, not by erasing the grief but by reshaping the way it sits in your life.

Clinical Invitation

Individuals living with grief, whether from the death of someone they love, the end of an important relationship, a profound shift in health, or another major life change, deserve support that is both meaningful and compassionate. Grief can’t be hurried. It belongs to each person in their own way and in their own time. Even so, skilled guidance and genuine human connection can provide a steady anchor when the structures and certainties of life feel altered or absent.

At Reflections Mental Health Services, we do not see grief as an illness to be treated away. We see it as a deeply personal human process that asks for respect, patience, and care. Our role is not to set deadlines for “closure” or to suggest that loss can be neatly resolved, but to walk alongside each person as they learn to live in a world that now has something missing in it, a feeling of absence. In that work, we help balance the pain of what is gone with the ongoing presence of memory, meaning, and continuing bonds.

This means offering a space free from judgment, where emotions, in all their forms, can be voiced without fear of dismissal, and where the mourner’s own wisdom about what they need, and when, is trusted. Clinically, we weave evidence‑based practices with a trauma‑informed sensitivity to each person’s unique story. On a human level, we honor grief as part of life itself, a testament to the endurance of love and to our capacity to carry loss forward, integrating it into a narrative that keeps evolving.

Our commitment is to remain a steady companion in that process, offering not only practical tools, but also presence, so that resilience can grow, meaning can deepen, and healing, in its own time, can take shape.

References

Applebury, G. (2025). Understanding guilt as a normal part of grieving. LoveToKnow.

Cleveland Clinic. (2025). What is grief? Types, symptoms & how to cope. https://my.clevelandclinic.org

Dembling, S. (2023). Learn to let go of guilt in grief. Psychology Today.

Druck, K. (2024). Healing your life after the loss of a loved one. Psychology Today.

Fisher, J. (2023). 5 stages of grief: Coping with the loss of a loved one. Harvard Health Publishing.

Grellman, R. (2025). The five dynamics of grief and change.

Kübler‑Ross, E. (1969). On death and dying. Scribner.

Meekhof, K. (2024). Why change can trigger feelings of grief. Psychology Today.

Moeller, S. (2017). Defining grief: Everyone responds differently. Grief Recovery Method.

Neimeyer, R., & Hone, L. (2024). When grief divides us. Coping With Loss.

Shenton, M. (2022). Untangling grief: Living beyond a great loss. Harvard Health Publishing.

Waichler, I. (2023). How to cope with guilt & grief. Choosing Therapy.