Grief Is Not “Just Love With No Place to Go.” Here’s What It Really Is.
"Grief is just love with no place to go."
It’s a quote that floats around on aesthetic posts on Instagram and in the pages of grief journals and workbooks. It’s often shared in moments of deep heartache. At first glance, it’s a comforting thought—grief as a testament to love, proof that our bonds with our loved ones endure even after death.
But is grief really just love with no place to go?
For some, this phrase resonates deeply. It helps them hold onto the love they still feel for the person they lost, and brings a sort of depth and logic to the pain that they’re feeling. But for many others, this idea doesn’t quite fit. Because grief isn’t just love; it’s so much more than that.
Grief involves connection, attachment, loss of identity, shattered dreams, unmet expectations, and sometimes even relief. And when you’re grieving someone who wasn’t a source of love—like an abuser, an estranged family member, or even someone you never personally knew—the “grief = love” equation can feel incomplete, or worse, invalidating.
As Valentine’s Day looms large on the horizon, let’s talk about what grief really is and why reducing it to love alone doesn’t tell the whole story.
Who First Said, “Grief Is Just Love with No Place to Go”?
Like many popular grief quotes, the origin of this phrase is unclear. Most people attribute it to Jamie Anderson, but it’s unclear whether this Jamie Anderson is the writer and producer of Doctor Who or the Canadian author Jamie Anderson.
Here’s the quote in its full context:
“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.”
As an author and self-proclaimed word nerd, it’s frustrating as hell to not know exactly where a quote came from. (If you are or know the Jamie Anderson who wrote this quote, please contact me so I can update this blog!) For now, I guess it’s one of those timeless sentiments that has been reworded and reshared so often that its true origins have been lost.
Regardless of which Jamie Anderson first said it, the phrase has taken on a life of its own. It’s printed on sympathy cards, shared in funeral home resource packets, and spoken aloud in grief support groups as a way to offer comfort. And while it may be meaningful for some, it’s not the full picture of what grief really is.
Grief Is More Than Love; It’s Everything Surrounding the Loss
Grief is often talked about in terms of love, but love is just one aspect of grief. When we lose someone, we don’t just lose them—we lose everything attached them.
This can include:
The roles they played in our lives (parent, child, friend, partner, listener, family historian, class clown)
The way they made us feel (safe, seen, challenged, inspired)
The future we imagined with them (holidays, milestones, everyday routines)
The identity we built around them (who we were as their spouse, sibling, child, friend, caregiver, or coworker)
Grief is the brain and body’s response to these losses, and while love may be a part of it, so are emotions like longing, anger, regret, confusion, nostalgia, and sometimes even relief.
One of my Instagram Reels, where I respond to someone who commented “Grief is love with nowhere to go.” | Source: Instagram @shelbyforsythia
But What About Grief for People We Didn’t Love?
The “grief = love” phrase rings hollow when it comes to mourning people who didn’t—or couldn’t—show us love in life.
When it comes to this quote, some of my students ask:
What about the grief that comes after an abusive parent dies?
Am I allowed to grieve a toxic ex if we didn’t really “love” each other?
I never got to meet my biological parents; can I still grieve them?
In these cases, grief isn’t rooted in love—it’s rooted in longing, unmet needs, or the loss of what could have been. Some people grieve the relationship they wished they had, the apology they never received, the ways in which they were wounded, or the hope that things would one day be different.
In situations like these, saying grief is “just love” can feel dismissive or even harmful. Because for many grievers, grief is layered with complexity. And that complexity deserves space.
Why This Doesn’t Mean “Grief Is Love” Is Wrong
None of this is to say that the phrase “grief is just love with no place to go” is inherently wrong or bad. It’s a sentiment that has comforted what I imagine are millions of grievers—maybe more—and if it brings you peace (and you don’t push it onto others who are grieving), hold onto it. Let it be true for you.
(I also want to be crystal clear that I hold no ill will towards Marisa Renee Lee’s book Grief Is Love. It’s a powerful, beautifully-written book that has helped countless people feel validated in their grief and honor their loved ones.)
But what I do know for sure from more than eight years of working with grievers, both 1:1 and in group settings, is that grief is bigger than any single word—even a word as big and as encompassing as LOVE. Grief is extremely personal. It’s layered and multi-faceted. And sometimes, it doesn’t fit neatly into the framing of just love.
So If Grief Isn’t Just Love, What Is It?
I’m known for saying, “Loss is the thing that happened. Grief is everything that comes after.”
Grief is love, yes. But it’s also exhaustion, overwhelm, longing, disorientation, numbness, guilt, rage, loneliness, and [insert your own words of choice here].
In grieving someone, you’re not just grieving the fact that they’re no longer here; you’re grieving all the ways they impacted your life—the good, the bad, and the in-between. You may be mourning hopes and dreams or processing shoulda-coulda-woulda’s. You might also be grieving the fact that loss forced you to change in some way.
On top of that, grief is also integration, meaning-making, rebuilding, and finding ways to be creative moving forward. You’re figuring out how to hold both the reality of what happened and the reality that you must keep going. You might be building rituals that help you remember your person, seeking therapy or coaching for extra support, or learning tools that help you make each day feel more survivable. You may be in a place to start considering how you might feel hopeful or happy again. Or you might just be doing your best to live in this present moment—because goodness knows that’s enough when you’re grieving!
Grief is all of these things. And when we acknowledge its full complexity, we make space for every griever—not just the ones whose grief fits neatly into the category of love.
So if “grief is just love with no place to go” doesn’t quite sit right with you, know this: Your grief is valid, no matter what shape it takes, whether that includes love or not. And you are most definitely not alone.
My thoughts on “Grief is just love, looking for a place to go.”| Source: Threads @shelbyforsythia
There Is a Place for Your Grief to Go!
Looking for tools, community, and space to define your grief in your own words? Join me and dozens of other grievers inside Life After Loss Academy, where we talk about grief in all of its messy, beautiful, complex forms.
Whether you’re grieving the death of a loved one or—as someone once said to me—“a less than loved one,” your grief is welcome inside the program. The curriculum is also designed for non-death losses including divorce and breakup, life-changing diagnosis, estrangement, natural disaster, and “invisible losses” like creativity, identity, safety, and faith.
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