During Dying Matters Awareness Week, I hope more people feel able to talk about their experience of grief. Talk can help us process painful feelings. Sharing our feelings can be a great way to offer and receive the help and support we need.

Grief has figured quite often in my own life – and at all stages, as a teen, a young, middle-aged and older woman. Each time, I have felt the effects of the loss quite differently.  I don’t think there are hard and fast rules about any human response, but this is what I think I have learned about grief over the years:

It is a completely natural and universal response to loss – and that loss maybe a bereavement, though it could also be the loss of something significant in your life, a relationship through divorce or separation, a beloved pet, a job, or a future you had hoped for that will never materialise

There are no ‘right or wrong’ feelings during the grieving process: you may feel sadness, guilt, anger, anxiety, relief. I try to welcome all my feelings without judgement. They are helping me adapt to a new reality, the life I have now and the person I am becoming

There is no timescale on your grief and no set ‘stages of grief’. Each person’s response will be as individual as they are. And your experience of grief may be different each time you experience loss too

Some of us know we will never ‘get over’ our loss and frankly, we might not even want to.  For me, a wave of grief is a manifestation of love, something that connects me deeply though momentarily to someone who has indelibly shaped and touched my life

I may not want to ‘get over’ the loss, but the grieving process helps me to create a way of living life fully and joyfully and continuing to grow

It can be helpful to talk to someone – a trusted friend, a counsellor – to process your feelings. As Shakespeare says: “Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o’er-wrought heart and bids it break.”

*What has been your experience of grief? What has helped you?

For help and support with bereavement, check the link