Dear Editor,

We often speak about grief as if it belongs only to death, as if it only shows up when we bury a loved one or say goodbye to a friend for the last time. But grief is far more complex than that and far more common than we are willing to admit.

The truth is everyone grieves. Some grieve people, others grieve versions of themselves they will never be again. There are people walking around today grieving the life they once had before an accident, before an illness, before everything changed. There are people grieving their independence, their identity, their sense of normality. And there are others grieving the person they used to be, or the person they thought they would become.

Yet society does not always make space for this kind of grief. We have created narrow definitions of what grief should look like and how long it should last. We attach timelines to pain and expectations to healing. We tell people “Time heals all wounds,” and in the same breath we tell them to move on, to get back to normal, to keep going.

But how do you move on when your world has stopped? How do you get going when everything you knew, everything you were has shifted? Grief does not operate on a schedule, it does not follow rules, it does not ask for permission, it lingers. It shows up in quiet moments, in memories, in the spaces where something or someone used to be. It reshapes how we see ourselves and how we move through the world.

And perhaps the most uncomfortable truth is this: Grief is not something we simply get over; it is something we learn to carry.

Grief becomes a lifelong companion, not because we are weak, but because we have loved deeply, fully, and honestly. As long as we love, grief will always exist in some form.

Maybe the problem is not that people are grieving “too long”, but that we have not learnt how to sit with grief — our own or anyone else’s. Maybe instead of rushing people to heal, we should allow them to feel, because grief, in all its forms, is not a flaw in the human experience, it is proof that something, or someone, truly mattered.

Chenae Lord

chenae.lord@yahoo.com