Young Adulthood – a time meant for fun, adventure, more autonomy and finding your way. It’s a chance to figure out what you want to do, who you want to be and laying down foundations for your future. Unless, that is, you find yourself having joined a club you never even knew existed – “the grief gang” as Amber Jeffrey aptly coined it!
While your 20s and 30s can be fun, adventurous and a time for trying new things relatively risk-free, it can also be a tumultuous time with all the pressures and expectations we feel. So, when we throw grief into the mix, it can make this time even harder to handle, and decisions can get way more complicated.
When I lost a parent in my early 20s, I was suddenly thrown into a world that felt chaotic and senseless; not to mention feeling disconnected from my friends who meant well but just didn’t understand what I was in. How could they, when I didn’t even understand it myself!
For this reason, I hunted down every bit of reading material I could find. I desperately wanted something, anything to tell me exactly what I needed to do, to make this whole grief thing disappear, so I could get back to being my old self. Little did I know, that just wasn’t going to happen.
The five stages of grief told me, I just had to go through four specific stages (denial, anger, bargaining and depression) before I’d finally reach that elusive “acceptance” and be able to move on. At the time, this made total sense because I sure felt angry! The “growing around grief” model said my life would somehow wrap itself around this giant ball of grief and I’d notice it less. Excellent, I thought – I don’t even need to do much, I can just wait it out! The tasks of mourning suggested that if I completed these four tasks, my grief would vanish. Sounds perfect, let me grab a pen and a notebook!
But honestly, those linear models of grief didn’t help me at all. Instead, they kept me stuck in my grief because when they didn’t work, I felt ashamed about my grief and myself. I thought I must be doing the whole grief thing wrong. Instead, I ended up with a whole load of grief, stuffed in a jar – like the scene from Inside Out 2! Because hiding my grief and pretending everything was ok, seemed like the only societally-acceptable way forward.
Five long years later, my grief was spilling out in ways I didn’t expect. I started having panic attacks on my way to work. To “switch off”, I’d dive into two or three-hour long gym sessions in the evenings. I went through one physical injury after another, followed by various illnesses – two of which became chronic and lifelong. I cut calories to make myself literally and metaphorically smaller. On the outside, I looked like a successful, thriving, professional young adult. But underneath it all, I was burnt out, stressed depressed, anxious and lost; and my grief was shouting for my attention – it needed time and space to be felt, heard and witnessed.
Therapy was a game changer for me. My therapist introduced me to the idea of grief coming in waves and as someone who loves being by the sea, this really resonated with me. She explained that when the waves crash in, I’d feel wrapped up in my grief and loss. But when they pulled back, I’d have the chance to jump back into everyday life, and over time, the breaks between those waves would get longer. The closest model to have existed that is similar to this is Stroebe and Schut’s dual process model but this was the first explanation of grief that really hit home for me, and all of a sudden, the shame didn’t seem quite as overpowering.
As time went on, and with the support of my therapist, I started to notice a pattern and figured out when in the year I could expect a wave of grief; the anniversary being the most obvious one for me, and this helped me better plan and prepare for it. This allowed me to engage in the “restoration-oriented” tasks (referred to by Stroebe and Schut) in the gaps and the “loss-oriented” work during the waves.
But what I wasn’t prepared for were those moments when grief hit me out of nowhere. In the little, quieter things where I got totally blindsided or when previously celebrated events started to feel bittersweet. These didn’t feel like waves, and over time, I started to call them “grief riptides” because they’re just as powerful as waves, but they sneak up on you and pull you in fast and without any warning. Over time, I’ve learnt that like riptides, when I give in to my grief and let it pull me under, I can sink to the bottom, and use my conserved energy in a place where it’s easier to swim out from.
During my journey of figuring out how to cope with my grief, I dropped the word “acceptance” from my grief vocabulary. That little word used to make me feel ashamed, helpless and stuck in my grief, because how could I ever accept the unacceptable? It brings to mind the idea that grief has a finish line – but I don’t believe it does. Instead, grief is something I’ve integrated into my life.
I’ve realised there is no set blueprint or quick ten-step plan to follow. It’s not just a matter of sitting down with my notebook and checking off a list of tasks. You can’t just sit around and wait for it to pass. Grieving has to be intentional. It’s tough work, it takes time, and it requires a lot of self-compassion, grace, permission and patience. But when we really put in the effort and show up for ourselves and our grief, we can move from surviving to thriving. We can learn to swim while navigating the waves and riptides. We can learn to love living again.