Grief follows its own schedule. One day, you might answer emails, make dinner and think you’re doing OK. Next, a familiar song in the grocery store or an empty chair at the table can stop you in your tracks. Let’s review some simple ways to manage grief.
Grief is a shapeshifter. Some days it may feel quiet, while other days it may turn into a loud and nagging voice in your mind.
Introduction
The loss of a loved one can make daily life seem unfamiliar. Simple, automatic tasks may now take more effort. Even easy choices can feel heavier than they used to.
There’s no “right” way to manage grief, and there’s no set timeline you need to meet. You can use these small ways to care for yourself while you move through grief and learn how to carry love and loss at the same time.
1. Allow yourself to grieve
One of the hardest parts of grieving is that people often expect themselves to do it “correctly.” Many Westerners tend to live outside a tradition or system that guides them in processing grief, leaving them without a clear sense of the best way forward.
However, even if you live within a cultural system, grieving may change your worldview. Many people believe in a ritualistic honoring of the departed, which allows them to remember and mourn, structuring their journey.
How you go about managing grief is deeply personal. Even from within your culture, you can shape the experience to suit your needs as you move through the steps of acceptance and letting go. This requires you to allow yourself to feel your emotions as you grieve.
2. Build a support system
Many of us default to isolation during deeply difficult times. In grieving, we have to push back on our programming.
Loss can isolate you, even when surrounded by people who care about you. During this process, you may avoid advice, company or even everyday kindness. You should stay connected in small ways, because these moments will mean more than you realize.
Social support plays an important role in how people adapt after loss and may help reduce the intensity of grief experiences over time. Being supported may help you overcome some of the worst symptoms of your painful journey.
Friends, family and support groups or counselors can help you process what you feel and express this in healthier ways than shutting down. Reach out in small ways if you’re unsure:
- Text one trusted friend weekly
- Say yes to a short coffee
- Join a support group
- Share stories about the person you lost
- Let people help with practical tasks
3. Establish daily routines
Give your nervous system small signals that you’re safe and cared for. When life seems altered, routines can create neurological safety signals that give you a little steadiness.
Little things like opening the curtains each morning or eating breakfast at the same time can help you steer through the storm. Your schedule can be imperfect, as long as you get time to take walks, water your plants or make tea before bed.
Sometimes success during mourning looks like taking a longer shower or answering a message before turning in. Small repeated actions can become anchors.
4. Become more mindful
Rumination happens when your memories get bigger than you, and the past overshadows the future. Being more mindful means you still grieve, but you focus on the present moment when you feel overwhelmed.
Mindfulness can help alleviate symptoms like depression and distress in your day-to-day life, even though the long-term pain of loss may linger.
You can try the five-breath reset — sit quietly and take five slow breaths, paying attention to the air moving in and out of your body. Alternatively, try naming five things you see, four you can touch, three that you hear and two you can smell. Finish with one thing you can taste.
Even a quiet walk during which you pay attention to everything around you, rather than your own thoughts, can help you rise above sorrow for a moment. While these methods won’t cure grief, they can make difficult moments feel less overwhelming.
5. Prioritize your self-care
As we do our best to let our loved one go, we can’t do the same to ourselves.
When you focus on loss, you neglect yourself. In some cultures, it’s expected that the bereaved may lie in bed for days on end until they are released from the ritual of loss. But most often, you may have let go of yourself in subtle ways, such as not eating a balanced diet, becoming dehydrated and needing a change of clothes.
Your sleep may change as your body processes difficult emotions, and being exhausted makes it so much easier to become overwhelmed. As your appetite changes, it can become challenging to concentrate or to hold a conversation.
Realistic self-care can look like easy meals, drinking enough water and gently moving your body during the day. A guilt-free afternoon nap can do wonders for your resilience.
6. Partner with professionals
Sometimes bereavement becomes so intense or persistent that daily life feels impossible to return to. There’s no prize for handling it alone, and you should reach out to professionals if your mourning shows no sign of easing or has lasted more than a year, which could mean you’re experiencing complicated grief.
For some people, loss remains deeply painful and may begin to affect their relationships, work, health and the ability to function. This prolonged heartache may require professional help and medical interventions. It’s about more than popping a pill to feel better. Instead, it’s about honoring your body and helping it rest and heal from the exhaustion of an extended time of mourning.
Therapists may help you work through your experience by encouraging conversation, sharing and processing. They may use techniques that help you face your changed identity as you move to who you are without a loved one. In time, you’ll build coping tools and create space for memories and meaning to coexist in your mind.
Moving forward Is about remembering
Grief is a shapeshifter. Some days it may feel quiet, while other days it may turn into a loud and nagging voice in your mind. You can take as much time as you need to move toward acceptance of who you are now that you no longer have the departed in your life.
Managing grief often means learning to live alongside it while slowly making room for moments to rest, connection and meaning again.
Tough, but necessary, subject matter, I’m glad to have had the opportunity to address it — and share. Please check out the topics and content on my web home, Revivalist. As always, thank you…Cora.
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Cora Gold is a wellness and self care writer and the editor of women’s lifestyle magazine, Revivalist.