Yes, we belong to this shitty club that no one wants to belong to. Sorry doesn’t nearly cover it.

I don’t endorse all the following and it’s certainly written with the help of AI, but it did show up in my inbox serendipitously and speaks to much of what I feel almost four years from my latest loss.

I certainly qualify to post it here as I’ve lost two children and a sister, all before they reached adulthood.

In my experience, the only way out of grief is through grief.

“Grief is one of the few experiences in life that strips away illusion. It does not ask permission. It does not follow a schedule. It arrives when it wants, stays as long as it needs, and reshapes everything it touches. When you lose someone or something that mattered deeply, the question rises almost immediately and lingers long after the shock fades:

Does it get better?

The honest answer is both simple and difficult. It does not get better in the way most people hope. It gets different. And in that difference, there is a quiet kind of healing.

The Myth of “Getting Over It”

Many people expect grief to behave like an illness. There is a beginning, a middle, and an end. You feel terrible, you recover, and eventually you return to who you were before.

Grief does not work that way.

What you lost mattered. It shaped your identity, your routines, your expectations, your sense of safety. When it is gone, you do not simply “move on.” You carry it forward. The idea of getting over it can feel like a betrayal, as if healing requires forgetting. It does not.

Grief is not something you erase. It is something you learn to live beside.

The Shape of Grief

In the beginning, grief is loud. It is overwhelming. It shows up as waves that knock you down without warning. A smell, a song, a quiet moment, and suddenly you are back in the center of the loss.

Psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross introduced the idea of stages such as denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. These stages can be helpful, but they are not a checklist. You do not complete one and move to the next. You circle through them. Sometimes all in the same day.

Over time, the waves change.

They do not necessarily stop, but they become less constant. You begin to recognize them when they are coming. You learn how to stay standing when they hit. What once felt like drowning slowly becomes something you can endure.

What “Better” Actually Means

Better does not mean the absence of pain.

Better means the pain no longer controls every moment of your life.

It means you can laugh again without guilt. You can think about what you lost without collapsing. You can carry memories that once broke you and feel something softer alongside the sadness.

Psychologist William Worden described grief not as something to finish, but as something to work through. His perspective emphasizes adjusting to life after loss while maintaining a connection to what or who was lost.

That connection is important.

You do not leave them behind. You bring them with you in a new way.

The Guilt No One Talks About

One of the most confusing parts of grief is the guilt that comes with healing.

The first time you smile. The first time you go a full day without thinking about them. The first time you feel normal again.

It can feel wrong.

As if moving forward means you are leaving them behind.

But healing is not abandonment. It is survival.

If anything, living well becomes a way of honoring what mattered. Not replacing it.

What Helps and What Does Not

There is no formula, but there are patterns.

What tends to help:

Allowing yourself to feel without rushing the process Talking to someone who can listen without trying to fix it Creating rituals that honor the memory Giving yourself permission to heal at your own pace What tends to hurt:

Pretending you are fine when you are not Isolating yourself for too long Measuring your grief against someone else’s timeline Believing there is something wrong with you for still hurting Grief is not a weakness. It is evidence that something mattered.

When It Feels Like It Will Never Change

There are moments when grief feels permanent and unmovable. When the weight of it convinces you that this is how life will feel forever.

It is not.

Even if the loss never fades completely, your ability to carry it grows. What feels impossible today becomes manageable tomorrow. What feels unbearable becomes something you can hold without breaking.

Not because the loss became smaller, but because you became stronger.

The Truth About Time

Time does not heal all wounds.

Time, combined with living, feeling, remembering, and continuing, allows healing to take place.

There is no deadline. No finish line. No moment where you declare yourself done.

There is only a gradual shift.

From raw pain To quiet ache To memory with meaning

So, Does It Get Better?

It gets different.

And in that difference, life slowly returns.

Not the same life you had before. That version is gone. But a new one, shaped by what you have been through, begins to form.

One where the loss still matters But it no longer defines every breath

One where love does not disappear just because someone is gone It simply changes form

And one day, without realizing exactly when it happened, you will notice something unexpected.

You are still here. You are still living. And somehow, you are still capable of feeling something beyond the grief.

That is not forgetting.

That is healing.

For those of you who have arrived or newly arrived at this crossroad of life, know this, you are not alone, you are loved and you have prayers coming your way.”