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Grief is an emotion, and yet, its pain can feel so deeply physical.
It feels like someone has sucked the air out of your lungs, leaving you gasping for breath. Like a sudden blow to your stomach that leaves you doubled over. Like being pushed down a flight of stairs, bruised and disoriented, struggling to find your footing again.
And sometimes, the hardest part is that the world continues to move while yours has come to a standstill.
I just finished watching Love of Your Life on Prime Video, and the movie left me deeply moved. Watching Maya struggle to find her footing after her husband's death was painful. It seemed as though she had lost not just her husband, but also her sense of self, her direction, and her connection with the life she once knew.
As I watched her drift from place to place, distance herself from the life she had known, and seek fleeting connections with strangers, I found myself wondering what was happening beneath the surface. What was she trying to escape? What was she struggling to face? And how does one continue living when the person who made life feel familiar is suddenly no longer there?
As the story unfolded, I began to look at Maya's choices with greater compassion. When she formed a new connection, gradually opened up, and allowed herself moments of ease, I realised that perhaps what looked like running away was her way of coping with a reality she wasn't yet ready to face.
And that made me pause.
How often do we misunderstand someone's grief simply because it doesn't look the way we expect it to?
We often imagine grief as tears, silence, withdrawal, or a gradual return to normalcy. But grief has no prescribed shape, and healing has no universal timetable.
Some people cry. Some feel numb. Some immerse themselves in work, while others struggle to get through the simplest tasks. Some seek company, while others retreat into solitude. Some hold on tightly to memories, while others find even the smallest reminder too painful to bear.
None of these responses tells us the whole story of what a person is experiencing.
What may appear to be avoidance could be an attempt to cope. What looks like strength may be a person struggling silently. And what seems like moving forward may simply be an effort to get through another day.
Perhaps we need to be a little less quick to interpret another person's grief and a little more willing to sit with what we do not understand.
The last twenty minutes of the movie brought me closer to the answers I was searching for—or perhaps, the answers Maya herself had been searching for.
When you love someone with your whole being, losing them can feel like losing a part of yourself. The future you imagined disappears. The little routines that once seemed ordinary become painful reminders of an absence. Even the person you were before the loss may feel unfamiliar.
It can feel as though a part of you has disappeared with the person you loved, while the world continues to expect you to carry on.
But how do you begin again when you are still trying to understand what has happened?
Perhaps the first step is not to move forward at all. Perhaps it is to acknowledge where you are.
To recognise the loss. To give your emotions a voice. To allow yourself to feel sadness, anger, confusion, or even moments of relief and happiness without questioning whether you are grieving enough—or grieving correctly.
There is no need to rush towards acceptance or put a deadline on healing. Sometimes, we need time to understand what we have lost, what that relationship meant to us, and how its absence has changed the story of our lives.
And, in our own time, we may begin to take small steps towards living again.
Not because we have forgotten the person we lost. Not because the love has diminished. And certainly not because the pain has disappeared.
But because healing does not mean leaving the person behind. It means gradually learning to carry their absence while making room for life to continue.
We may never return to the people we were before our loss. Perhaps we become someone different—someone who learns to live with an empty chair, an unfinished conversation, a familiar song that brings tears, and memories that can hurt as much as they comfort.
And perhaps, one day, we discover that it is possible to miss someone terribly and still laugh. To grieve deeply and still find meaning. To carry love and loss in the same heart.
As a Therapeutic Storytelling Practitioner and grief counsellor, I am reminded that every person carries a story of loss, and every story deserves to be heard with compassion, patience, and without judgement.
Sometimes, people don't need us to offer solutions or tell them how to move forward. They need us to sit beside them, listen to what their pain is saying, and create a safe space for the story they may not yet have the words to tell.
Because grief is not just about losing someone.
It is also about discovering who we are when the person we loved is no longer here.
Perhaps healing begins when we stop asking ourselves, “How do I go back to the life I had?” and gently begin asking, “How do I make room for life as it is now?”
Because moving forward does not mean moving on from the love. It means learning to live with the love, even in the presence of loss.
