I'm a therapist, and I Still Don't Understand Grief

As a therapist, I've always marketed toward people struggling with a variety of things, but grief was never one of them.

Why?

Because while I had experienced grief in different forms — losing pets I loved, losing versions of myself, losing family through distance and life changes, even losing relationships with people who once felt like family — I had never experienced the kind of loss that makes your world stop.

I understood grief through stories. Through movies. Through watching people I loved hurt. Being a natural empath, I feel people's emotions deeply, and I thought that gave me some understanding of grief.

But now I know it only gave me a glimpse.

And honestly, I don't think anything prepares you for grief until it shows up and sits down at your table uninvited.

Then in 2025, grief found me in two completely different ways.

In March, just two days after my 34th birthday, two days after my niece was born, and only a week after my brother turned twenty-nine years old, my brother was murdered.

Shortly after I got home from my belated birthday lunch, I heard one of my sisters crying as she came up my front steps. Then she wailed the words that changed everything: 'They killed my brother.'

This was my first real introduction to grief.

I remember feeling guilty because my grief didn't look like my sisters' grief. Not because I didn't love my brother, but because my memories with him were limited. I cried alone, quietly between sessions, at his viewing, at his burial. I felt sadness. I felt loss but didn't think I deserved to feel as deeply as those who had known him his whole life.

But I also noticed acceptance came quicker than I thought it should.

And that guilt stayed with me.

There's a moment during the viewing that I'll probably never forget. I sat in the pews watching my brother's partner — the mother of his child — cry in absolute anguish. Not sadness. Anguish. The kind of pain that fills a room.

And I remember noticing the thought that she was being dramatic.

Even typing that feels shitty.

But almost immediately after that thought, I imagined what it would feel like if the person in that casket were my person. The person I planned to spend my life with. The father of my children. The person I call home.

And I realized I wouldn't be able to compose myself either, as I imagined screaming, crying, and needing to be pulled away because I know I would never want to leave his side.

Then something strange happened during the viewing. As each family member walked up to place a rose on my brother's casket, I found myself imagining each loss individually.

The sister who lost the brother she grew up with.

The mother who lost her son.

The child who lost her father.

The partner who lost her person.

The aunt who lost her nephew.

And every single version of grief hurt differently.

That was the first time I realized grief isn't universal.

The pain changes depending on the relationship, the attachment, the memories, and the role someone held in your life.

And even then, I knew imagining it still wasn't close to the reality of carrying it.

I talked about all of this with my tia.

I shared everything with her. Songs. Thoughts about death. My brother. Life. We talked about our wishes if we ever died. I promised her I would honor hers.

Then seven months later, she died.

And this grief was completely different.

My tia was woven into my childhood. She wasn't just family, she was part of my everyday life, my memories, my comfort. She was like a second mother to me.

One moment we're sitting in her living room gossiping and singing at the top of our lungs, and the next I was sitting beside her hospital bed, singing alone and holding her hand while she died.

Then she was gone.

I remember lying in the bed beside her after everyone left because I didn't want to let her go.

Honestly, I still don't.

As I'm writing this, it's been seven months and seven days, and I still wake up in the middle of the night crying. I hug her pillow. I write to her in my journal. Some days, I still can't believe I can't pick up the phone and call her or get a text from her bitching that I don't text enough.

I'll never hear her call me "Bee" again.

And that realization still hits me like a punch to the chest.

What's strange is that after my brother passed, people struggling with grief started finding me.

Not because I suddenly became a grief specialist.

Not because I marketed for grief.

But somehow people read my bio and thought:

"Yeah. That's the person I want helping me through this."

And honestly?

You know what grief has taught me as a therapist?

ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING.

At least not in the way people expect.

I've learned grief makes no sense.

I've learned it doesn't follow rules.

I've learned that time becomes warped and never seems to work the same way.

I've learned that grief is visceral in that you feel it in your body, in your bones, in your soul.

It's like a giant dome suddenly drops over your life while the rest of the world keeps moving normally outside of it. People are still going to work, laughing, posting online, making plans, and meanwhile, your world has completely stopped.

And you sit there thinking:

"How the fuck are people still functioning? Don't they know what just happened?"

People ask what I offer grieving clients now that I've experienced loss myself.

Honestly?

I mostly give them space.

I ask them to tell me about their person. Over and over if they need to. I let them cry, scream, sit in silence, laugh at memories, or feel angry about things they're ashamed to admit out loud.

Because grief is complicated as hell.

And what I've learned is that most grieving people don't need someone to fix their grief. They need someone willing to sit beside it with them.

I remind them to eat.

To sleep.

To drink water.

To move their body when they can.

And while I can offer coping skills and grounding exercises and psychoeducation, the truth is I still don't fully understand grief.

I don't think I'm supposed to.

What I do know is that grief now has a permanent seat at my table.

I don't ignore her anymore.

She exists because love existed first.

And she's here to stay.

I've learned grief is different with every person we lose.

I've learned guilt exists inside grief.

I've learned self-awareness doesn't protect you from pain.

I've learned no amount of education prepares you for certain losses.

And maybe the biggest thing I've learned is that a lot of us grieve in ways we're scared to admit out loud because we think it means we loved someone wrong.

But I don't think we're alone in that.

I think grief is just far more human, complicated, contradictory, and painful than most people are prepared for.

And honestly?

As a therapist, I still don't understand it.