What I'm Learning About Grief: Sometimes Life is Just Messy

When I first started this self-taught journey (learning about grief and art therapy) I really thought it would be simple: Read a few books, Do some art exercises, Connect with other people’s stories. Then share what I’ve learned in a clear, thoughtful way. 

I mean, I’ve been in school and I used to teach. I know how to structure learning. So I thought I could approach this the same way.

I’m realizing now… it’s actually not that straightforward.

This isn’t a linear process. I can’t check off boxes like, “Yep, I’ve learned that and onto the next.” It just doesn’t work that way.

Even just hearing people’s stories this week was a lot. It brought up thoughts I’d never had before. And forced me to reflect on experiences I haven’t even lived through, but somehow still felt deeply.

I had to slow down. I had to stop pushing for productivity and actually let myself process what was coming up. I had to allow my nervous system to settle.

And that’s when I started realizing… this isn’t just about learning something new. This is about practicing how to honor my own grief, so I can learn how to hold space for others in theirs.

That clicked something into place for me.

Last week, I had this thought:
Maybe the reason so many people struggle to support others through grief is because they haven’t worked through their own.

When you’re still carrying unprocessed grief, someone else’s pain can feel like too much. It triggers you. Your body goes into protection mode. And instead of sitting with someone, you try to fix it or move past it quickly.

I think that’s partly why our culture has created such a shallow, time-limited version of grief. “You get three days off.” “Time heals everything.” “Everything happens for a reason.”

They’re not actually comforting. They’re just ways to avoid sitting with something hard.

And because of that, we’ve lost the ability to really pause and feel, to sit with ourselves and to sit with others. I think that’s costing us more than we realize.

So this week, I’m learning that just like grief is unpredictable, layered, and often messy… my study of it is going to be the same.

And maybe that’s okay.

Of course I still want this to be helpful. Of course I want to share what I’m learning in a way that makes sense.

But this isn’t going to be a neat little project with tidy bullet points and perfect takeaways. It’s just not that kind of journey. I’m letting go of the pressure to wrap everything up with a bow. I’m letting it be what it is: messy, slow and real. 

And maybe if you’re reading this, you need that reminder for your own journey:

Sometimes life is messier than we anticipate. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong or that we’re doing something wrong. It might just mean we need to slow down and offer ourselves the grace to move forward. 

If you're looking for a way to explore your own relationship with grief, here’s one of the exercises I found surprisingly helpful this week:

Create a grief timeline.

Start by thinking about your first experience with loss (death, change, a major ending, anything that impacted your life).

Then draw a line for each significant loss you’ve experienced since. The length of each line can represent how deeply it impacted you. You can label them or not—do what feels right.

It’s a simple practice, but it opened up a lot for me.

Sometimes, visualizing what we’ve carried helps us see it with more clarity and compassion.