More Than a Tick-the-Box Process: Five Things I Learned Through Grief

By Abbie Johnson

During the worst time, the people I love, the articles I found and the therapist I spoke to all repeated incessantly information about the five stages of grief. 

‘It’s normal, how you’re feeling,’ they’d say, ‘everyone goes through it.’ 

Whilst this was said in attempts at calming me down, rallying the metaphorical troops and normalising my emotions, at that time it didn’t help. It stirred anger in me. The audacity of the world to suggest that anyone, ever, had understood how I felt.

Now that my grief has plateaued, I’ve regained a sense of humanity, found new parts of life to focus my energy on and crawled out of the heavy depths. 

I refuse to be another voice in the void sharing the five stages of ‘normal’ grief to try and console people who have had their lives flipped upside down. Instead, I want to suggest five life lessons that grief has provided, a solace that makes them mean something rather than diluting them down into a tick-the-box process. 

The Hardships of Rock Bottom

My grief made me aware of my prior naivety. It magnified the insignificance of my minutes of panic and the mundane nature of my anxious days. It provided a juxtaposing perspective on everything. It provided a new facet of relativeness where, though bad days may be bad, they were never and will never feel as crushing as the grief I experienced. 

The Significance of Photographs

After the initial shock to the system, as I tried to navigate the new dark world I resided in, I realised how much the photographs I had of my loved ones meant. 

I sought candid style photographs with the innocence of childhood, the photos where you can physically see that I’d never imagined that those who populated the pictures with me would no longer be here. Each one provided a hit of adrenaline. 

The meaning of these photographs continued to change. Initially a new focus of my attention, they moved on to become the only thing that accompanies my memories. They prompted positive feelings. They didn’t hurt to look at; they weren’t vicious reminders. They were a piece that remains.

True Depth of Love

You truly don’t understand the love you have for someone until they’re no longer here. 

The final words shared between you and them become the lasting impression of the love you showed them and, luckier than some, I’d done everything I could to make sure I used those words wisely. For those who don’t get that opportunity, I’d argue that the grief you experience afterwards is the way those words embody into actions. You can’t know the true depth of love without the grief, and it hurts because of what they mean to you. 

I began to realise that the blackhole of my emotions wasn’t a vacuum. Instead, it was a safety net of love that showed I was lucky. I was lucky to have had this emotion inside me, to have shared the moments with someone I could love so much that my whole world had come undone, lost its infrastructure, and felt like it had been left in ruins. 

I knew a love that deep could only be a good thing, and my perspective began to change.

Finding Beauty in The Small Things

You never feel like you haven’t been robbed of time, that you haven’t had something precious stolen away from you. For some, this part is too much to bear – I can understand that. 

I was lucky enough to have guides around me, people who could navigate when I couldn’t. People who loved me and knew me well enough to know what I needed when I didn’t. Slowly, I began to refocus my thoughts, and I found something small each day that numbed the hurt and mustered a smile.

It’s cheesy, but it’s true. The sun sets every day, yet only then did I begin to notice the real beauty of it, the extra warmth in it. The air felt a bit fresher, hugs felt tighter and the small moments of life began to feel much more special. 

The Importance of Life

Finally, and most importantly, it didn’t matter how much money was in the bank or the mistakes that I’d made. All that mattered was that I had something to wake up to every day that made me smile. That made it worth it, and that helped me spend my life doing something I love every day.

Everything realigned. A slow but powerful epiphany: happiness can be found, but it has to be there in your everyday life. Life isn't spending Monday to Friday waiting for the happiness of the weekend, it isn’t counting down until the warmer days of summer to come. It’s making sure you have the power to smile every day, that you understand what you need, what you want and what you don’t want and that your life reflects that.

It’s recognising that life is too short to live in halves. It is understanding that it is worth it, the pain of loving wholly.