What is grief?

Submitted by Erin Chambers, Life Coach/End of Life Doula

What is grief? It depends on who you ask. Some push it away while others bathe in tears. Some need to surround themselves with friends and family while others need to be alone. Grief is emotional: expressing it with sadness or anger, sitting with it in shock or numbness, yelling, crying or silence. Grief can be all of these things. There are many types of grief and we all acknowledge and express it in whatever way is right for us. There is no comparison in grief. There is no ‘right way to do grief.’ My grief is not worse than your grief. Your friend’s grief lasting longer than your sister’s grief doesn’t mean one grief is stronger than the other. Sometimes, we don’t even recognize we are grieving. A loss is a loss, whether it be our person, our pet, our job, our house, our relationship and most especially ourselves. I think we forget this last one most of all.

When sitting with grief, please remember these three things:

1) Be gentle with yourself and expect less. You are a different person than you were before the event. Maybe