Christi's Reflection: What I've Learned About Grief and Healing
One of our Associate Marriage and Family Therapists, Christi Carrey, shares a personal reflection on grief and healing, drawing from both her own experience and her work with grieving clients.
Sometimes Grief Shows Up Later
Three years after her dad, Fred, passed away, Christi realized she had never truly allowed herself to grieve his passing.
He died just one month after she made the decision to return to school to become a therapist. In many ways, Christi says she moved forward by staying busy. She immersed herself in school, assignments, group projects, and deadlines, without realizing how much she was postponing her grief.
Christi began to recognize it during school breaks.
Immediately after every semester, she would find herself holding big emotions for a day or two. At first, she did not understand why. Then she realized, beneath the exhaustion, there was also a sense of relief: she had no paper to write and no group project deadline waiting for her. There was finally enough quiet for the grief to make itself known.
For Christi, grief needed to be expressed aloud. It needed room to speak.
Whether that meant calling a friend, talking with her own therapist, sharing tears with her family, or sitting alone in her car and screaming, it had to be unrestricted, imperfect, and without judgment.
Christi says she learned that grief does not always arrive in a way that feels predictable. She also learned that it did not have to be her enemy.
There Is No “Right” Way to Grieve
Christi says one misconception about grief is that there is a right way to grieve, and that there is a timeline for it.
There is not.
Grief can have any emotion, in any order, and often more than one emotion at a time. It can also show up much later, as it did for Christi.
There was an element of protection in that. Christi often wonders if she would have been able to handle her grief any sooner.
Maybe she was not meant to.
She was ready when she was ready.
The American Psychological Association notes that people respond to loss differently and that there is no “normal” amount of time someone should need to grieve. Grief does not necessarily unfold in predictable stages or in a particular order.
“I love to guide clients in releasing their expectations about how they ‘should’ grieve.”
Instead of telling clients how they should grieve, Christi invites them to become curious about their grief rather than avoid or judge it.
Grief Doesn't Always Include a Funeral
Christi also acknowledges that grief can involve more than the loss of a person.
We can grieve relationships, health, identity, opportunities, dreams, expectations, a marriage we thought we would have, a future we imagined, or a version of life that never came to be.
Christi reminds us that grief does not always include a funeral.
When we find ourselves saying things like:
“This wasn't the plan.”
“I did not know that was going to happen.”
“This wasn't supposed to be my life.”
We may be experiencing invisible grief.
That grief deserves compassion, too. There is pain associated with that grief as well.
Having no expectations surrounding grief gives us permission to have any and every emotion about a future that never happened, hopes we no longer hope for, and dreams that will never go beyond dreams.
What Does Healthy Grieving Look Like?
As a therapist, Christi wants to help create enough safety for clients to discover what they actually feel, rather than tell them how to do so.
Healthy grieving does not necessarily mean feeling better all the time.
Christi's goal could be not letting our grief leave us where it found us.
What does that mean?
It means gradually becoming more able to make room for the loss while continuing to participate in life.
Christi has noticed something beautiful in her work with grieving clients and in her own grief. When we begin putting words to our grief, when we tell stories, identify emotions, use metaphors, or say the names and talk about the person we have lost in this life, something often changes.
For a brief moment, there can be a lightness in us or a release in pressure.
As David Kessler, the author of Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief, writes, “Grief must be witnessed.”
Christi says witnessing others and having her own grief witnessed, truly, is what she needed years ago and continues to need.
What Avoiding Grief Can Look Like
Avoiding grief is not always obvious.
Like Christi's story, there can be a thin line between protecting ourselves and avoiding.
Being incredibly productive, taking care of everyone else's needs, never talking about the person who died, or believing that “crying is a sign of weakness” could all be signs of avoiding our grief.
It can also show up as:
Emotional numbness
Isolation
Difficulty connecting with others
Using substances
Other prolonged distractions that keep us at a distance from the pain
Christi emphasizes that avoidance and distractions themselves are not failure. Sometimes, it is how we survive when something feels too overwhelming to face.
We just need to notice.
Notice when we become stuck. Notice when we are continually moving away from what hurts. And recognize when seeking connection and professional support may be necessary.
Grief Doesn't Have to Be Your Enemy
Christi's experience reminds us that grief does not follow a schedule, and it does not always look the way we expect it to.
Sometimes it shows up immediately. Sometimes it takes years before we have the space or capacity to feel it. Sometimes we need to talk about it. Sometimes we need someone to simply witness it with us.
There is no “right” way to grieve.
What matters is creating enough space and safety to discover what you actually feel, while continuing to find ways to participate in life.
If you are struggling with grief or loss and feel stuck, you don't have to navigate it alone. Therapy can provide a supportive space to explore what you're experiencing, put words to what feels difficult to express, and begin finding a way to carry your loss.