Making Space for Grief

Alexandra Hunt writes:

We have an expectation that sadness should soften quickly and privately. But grief doesn’t operate like that. It’s inconvenient. It’s repetitive. It’s sharp and can cut deep. It shows up long after everyone expects you to be fine. I think we all know that at some level, which is why we avoid it. Not just other people’s grief, but our own....Grief can be what life promised and didn’t deliver. The way we’re taught to carry grief teaches us to shrink. To be careful. To not burden people. To refuse to admit we need to be held. To say things like we’re fine on our own. So when I tried to build something around grief—a space where it could exist openly and where the ask to receive care was upfront—it fell apart in a predictable way. Not because it wasn’t needed. But because we don’t know how to hold it. Because we don’t know how to hold each other. Grief isn’t an interruption to life. Grief is life. It’s what happens when something mattered. When someone mattered. When a version of your life existed and then didn’t. You don’t get to opt out of that. The only choice is whether you have somewhere to put it. And right now, most of us don’t. So it leaks out in other ways. In distance. In disconnection. In relationships that can’t quite hold. In reactivity. In anger. Not because we’re broken. But because we’re carrying something with nowhere to go.