There is a particular kind of silence that follows loss.

Not the silence of an empty room, but the silence of a missing voice —  the name you almost say before catching yourself, the chair that remains, even though the person who made it theirs is no longer there.

The silence of not understanding grief and the raw pain it leaves.

When you lose someone you love, it can feel as though something has been removed from the middle of your life.

People often tell you that time heals. Yet grief does not work quite that simply.

You do not stop loving someone because they have died. You do not reach a point where the loss becomes irrelevant. The shape of what you have lost remains.

What changes is what happens around it.

In the beginning, grief can feel all-consuming. The pain can affect everything: your sleep, your appetite, your concentration, your relationships and even your sense of safety. You may find yourself moving through the day on autopilot, while something inside you is struggling to comprehend that the person you love is no longer there.

This is why grief is not something you simply need to “get over”.

The aim is not to erase the loss. It is to allow the rawness of the grief to soften enough that you can begin to live alongside it.

That does not mean forgetting.

It does not mean leaving the person behind.

It means finding a way to carry the love without allowing the pain to consume every part of your life.

Sometimes, when the grief has become a little less raw, I ask a client to consider a simple question: