Grief doesn’t follow a template. It’s doesn’t travel a straight line. Sometimes it feels like you’re starting all over.

When Elizabeth Kubler-Ross wrote about the “Five Stages of Grief,” it led many of us to believe that grief could be simplified. That grief follows a linear order. We progress through different feelings, one step at a time, like climbing a mountain or stair case. We expect if we keep taking steps forward, we arrive at the top with healed and “back to normal.”

But nothing about grief is simple. Grief is a wholly unique experience. It’s different for every single one of us, as unique as our fingerprints, and it’s messy complicated thing.

One day, you are out with your friends, having dinner with your spouse, playing fetch with your dog, and you feel good. You laugh. You feel true connection. You go to bed thankful and grateful at how far you’ve come, and you sleep great! You had hours of the day when you were content and maybe even happy. But the next morning, the next week, the next month, you spot your mom’s favorite candy bar in the check out lane at the grocery and can barely make it back to your car without bursting into sobs.

What are you doing wrong?

Absolutely nothing. That’s grief. You’re grieving – still (and always.)

Your Grief Journey Is A Complicated Road Trip – Not A Straight Path

You know how every summer every state and county and city undertakes its infrastructure projects seemingly all at the same time? Here in Louisville a nine-mile stretch of Interstate 65 is shut down – missing – for two months to be rebuilt.

Grief is like that. It’s inconvenient and exasperating. Our grief journey consists of frustrating back-tracking for detours, huge potholes that we think will damage us and leave us stranded on the side of the road. U-turns and traffic jams. All generally happening while we are busy and trying to just get on with things and move from Point A to Point B. Ugh.

But sometimes a detour will take you to a beautiful scenic overlook you’ve not noticed before. You may find a cute shop or restaurant you look forward to visiting in the near future. You’ll feel like you may be taking a bit longer than you wanted, but it’s not all unpleasant and at least you are moving forward.

But sometimes you encounter a real traffic jam. You just stay stuck. You may even have to turn around and abandon your trip that day. You feel like you’re moving backward.

You aren’t.

Your grief journey isn’t measured by some arbitrary mile-markers like a countdown or days crossed off a calendar. It never really reaches a destination. It’s measured by how you juggle and carry the load of love and loss intertwined together as you travel through your day to day life.

Grief Is Like The Weather – Just Wait. It Will Change

Grief isn’t just sadness or anger or despair. Grief isn’t just a single sensation or feeling – it’s an all-encompassing experience. Like weather, it’s happening all around you while you live your life.

Sometimes it’s sunny and cool. Sometimes it’s cloudy and gray. Sometimes it’s oppressively hot. Sometimes it rains for days. Sometimes you are snowed in for days.

You can be having a great day, celebrating, relaxed and content, and then a song, a random smell, a day on the calendar, and grief sweeps in like a pop-up thunderstorm ruining your summer cookout. Or the thunderstorm or tornado warning that sends you inside to your safe space.

The overwhelming feelings may have postponed or delayed your momentum for a bit, but it hasn’t undone any of the progress you have made. Those good weather days did happen and will happen again.

The storm passes; the powerful storms of grief will, too.

Stop Judging Your Grief Journey

Sadness. Anger. Relief. Guilt. Gratitude. Confusion. Loneliness. Joy. Peace. Anxiety. Anytime. Sometime. All the time.

It’s all grief. It’s like a big tangled mess you have to carry everywhere and are constantly trying to unravel. It’s all normal.

It is very hard to untangle a knot of emotions and experiences. You. Are. Not. Doing. It. Wrong.

You don’t have to be “over it” by now. (You will never be “over it,” by the way.)

Everyone else is not doing better than you.

It is okay to cry, again, still.

There is no finish line. You never “complete” your grief journey. There are no medals or awards.

You are still doing it. You are still working. You. Are. Not. Broken.

What Healing Really Looks Like

Some people may reach some level of acceptance. Perhaps you never will.

Some people may find some powerful inner reserve of strength and purpose that allows them to create “meaning” after a loss. You don’t have to.

Healing in grief has nothing to do with “moving on.” It does not mean you have to forget it ever happened or anything about what you lost.

Healing in grief is when you notice that you smile more often, especially when remembering. You laugh without flinching or feeling guilty. You tell stories without apologizing or crying. Maybe you do find some new purpose. Maybe you find a unique way to honor your loss.

Healing is slowly building the strength to carry the weight of your loss through your winding path in all types of terrain and weather. You’ll navigate the roadblocks more easily using short cuts you’ve learned, and you won’t have to stop as often to check your map or rest.

Give Yourself Permission And Compassion

If today is heavy, that’s okay.

If today you cried, that’s okay, too.

If you are angry because someone told you it’s time you moved on, that’s becaue they’re wrong. Not you.

You are not broken.

You are not failing.

You do not owe anyone anything on this journey.

Your grief is yours.

Your journey is yours.

Your healing is yours.

All of it deserves compassion.

Grieving means navigating one of life’s most difficult, complex and painful experiences, one day, one minute, one second at a time. There is no roadmap. There isn’t even a destination. But there is compassion and grace for the journey. And you do not have to take it alone.

We’re reading another book about grief and loss this month in the Death Doula’s Bookcase Reading Club. You can join the group here: https://helpyouniversity.com/communities/groups/dd-bookcase-reading-club/home