Growing Around Grief: How to Grow Through Grief Instead of “Getting Over It”

Society treats grief like an inconvenience.

From the moment loss enters our lives, we’re met with the pressure to "move on," "find closure," and "let go." People offer well-meaning but hurtful advice like "They wouldn’t want you to be sad," or "You have to be strong and keep going." Workplaces grant a handful of bereavement days, as if our grief can be neatly packaged into a long weekend. Friends and family check in at first, then grow impatient and drift away when our sadness continues past their expectations of how long we’re “allowed to grieve.”

It’s no wonder that many grieving people feel lost, isolated, and broken!

What if there was another way to approach moving forward after a loss?

Instead of forcing yourself to "get over" grief, what if you allowed yourself to grow with it?

This is what it means to be what I call a “grief grower”—someone who doesn’t see grief as a problem to solve or a wound to heal, but as a lifelong companion. A grief grower doesn’t leave grief behind; they carry it forward with them every single day, making space for both the pain of loss and the emotions and tasks of the day-to-day. They don’t see grief as a divergence from normal life. They know that grief is a part of a normal life! To them, grief is not a burden or a bug in their programming. It’s a part of them, worth noticing, honoring, and folding into every facet of their lives.

If you’ve ever felt like the world expects you to hurry up and forget your grief, but your heart refuses to let go—maybe you’re a grief grower.

Below are three traits that define what it means to be a grief grower.

A Grief Grower Believes That Growth Is Happening, Even When Progress Feels Slow or Nonexistent

Society treats grief as a period of stuckness, a sort of retreat from “normal life,” and the pressure to “move on” and “get back to normal” is immense, especially in a capitalist world that prioritizes constant visible progress at all times.

But grief growers know that grief is not stuckness or stagnancy. Grief is not “doing nothing.”

A grief grower is someone who is willing to believe—however hesitantly—that growth is still happening, even in the midst of grief. That growth might be invisible. It might be slow. It might feel impossible on some days. And yet, deep down, grief growers trust that they are moving forward, even if they don’t yet understand how, where, or why. They have a sort of faith in the presence of grief’s suffering and despair that one day, they’ll look back and recognize all the ways they were shifting and adapting to life after loss—that they were in fact growing through the worst seasons of their grief.

In my online course + community, Life After Loss Academy, we often talk about tracking progress not as constant improvement, as society dictates, but as shifting needs, focuses, and priorities over time. For instance, perhaps in one seasons of your grief you’re figuring out how to sleep through the night, where in another season, you’re doing the work of renegotiating friendships at home and at work. Grief growers know that the growth might be weird—but the growth is most definitely happening.

A Grief Grower Sees Grief as a Long-Term Relationship Instead of a Short-Term Problem

Most people are taught that grief has an expiration date. But grief growers reject this idea. Because there’s no such thing as popping out of bed one morning and declaring, “Alright! Now I’m done with grief!”

Grief growers understand that grief is here for the long-haul—not as an enemy or a dictator ruling over everything, but as a lifelong companion, a roommate of sorts that has a noticeable influence on how they live. Treating grief like a long-term relationship doesn’t mean feeling sad forever, but rather, acknowledging that the presence of grief will ebbs and flows over time.

Students in Life After Loss Academy have told me that once their energy shifted from fighting grief to accommodating it, they suddenly had so much more energy to work with. The fatigue and exhaustion of pushing grief down and away became collaborative, cooperative, and and united! It takes much more energy to resist grief than it does to sit with it, ask it questions, and create intentional practices where it’s welcome to show up.

Grief growers make room for their grief instead of trying to banish it. They coexist with it, honor it, and weave it into the life they’re already living. They know that grief is going to appear in their present and in their future—so why not dedicate space and energy to it?

A Grief Grower Understands That the Work of Grieving Is Never Finished (And That’s Okay!)

Grief isn’t something to fix. It’s not a disease that can be cured with a pill or a math problem with a final and certain solution. It’s a lifelong process that changes and grows with us.

Many people believe that over time, grief shrinks—that it gets smaller until it eventually disappears. But grief growers know that isn’t true. Instead, they understand that grief stays the same size, and we are the ones who expand around it.

This idea is perfectly visualized in Lois Tonkin’s 1996 model of "growing around grief." She originally developed this concept after speaking with a grieving mother who described her own experience like this:

“At first, grief was everything. It filled all the space in my life. But over time, my life started to grow around it. My world got bigger, even though the grief was still there."

Tonkin visualized this as a series of expanding circles:

• In the beginning, grief is overwhelming—it consumes nearly every part of life.

• Over time, life begins to grow around grief, making space for new experiences, relationships, and even joy.

• Grief itself doesn’t shrink or disappear—it remains a part of us, but it no longer takes up all the space in our lives.

Lois Tonkin’s model of growing around grief | Source: What’s Your Grief

This is what it means to grow around, through, and with grief!

Some days, grief will feel just as intense as it did in the beginning. Other days, it will feel lighter, softened by not only time and distance but the time you’ve spent tending to and taking care of it. There will be milestone dates that bring deep sorrow and heartache, just like there will also be moments of happiness and delight that remind you of life’s goodness.

And through it all, grief growers recognize that this is normal. Not only that, but this is how it’s supposed to be.

You don’t have to force grief away or "move on" and leave your loss in the past. Instead, you can notice all the ways you’re expanding around it—allowing grief to be part of the full, rich story of your life.

Are You a Grief Grower?

If you believe that you are making progress, even in the depths of loss…
If you understand that grief is with you for the long-haul…
If you know that it’s possible to build a beautiful life around loss…

Then you are already a grief grower!

You don’t have to force yourself to "let go," no matter what society, the media, or your friends and family tell you. You don’t have to meet anyone else’s expectations for how you grieve. You get to carry grief with you in a way that makes space for your loss and everything else that makes up the grand ever-evolving garden of your life.

And if you’re looking for deeper conversations and guidance, I invite you to listen to Grief Grower, my new podcast where I host weekly conversations about what it means to grow through—rather than “get over”—grief. Together, we’ll explore grief, death, growth, healing, and the ways we continue to honor and include the losses we’ve faced

Tune in to the latest episode of Grief Grower here. (It’s free!)