Grief Has No Timeline — A Note for Anyone Still Carrying It

Someone said to me recently: “I should be over it by now.”

They were talking about a loss from three years ago. A baby who came too early. A grief that had no funeral, no ceremony, no casseroles on the doorstep. The kind of loss that people around you quietly expect you to recover from — because they don't know what else to do with it.

I sat with them in that moment and I thought: who told you that? Who taught you that grief has a deadline?

Grief is not a process you complete

It is not a set of stages to move through and emerge from, ticking boxes as you go. It is not linear. It does not respond to time the way we want it to. It resurfaces at strange moments — in the cereal aisle, on a Tuesday afternoon, when a song plays that you didn't even know was connected.

That is not failure. That is love, with nowhere to go.

What grief needs is not time. It needs witness.

The reason so many people carry grief quietly and alone is that our culture does not know how to sit with it. We rush to comfort. We offer silver linings. We say at least and you'll get through this and they're in a better place — because the discomfort of witnessing someone's pain is almost unbearable.

But what grieving people often need is not solutions or timelines or encouragement. They need someone to stay. To sit in the hard room with them, without flinching or looking for the exit.

That is what I try to offer in my practice. And it is what The Quiet Holders, at its heart, is about.

If you are still carrying something

You are not behind. You are not broken. You are not failing at grief.

You are carrying something real, and real things take time — not a prescribed amount of time, but the right time. Your time.

If you would like support — whether through Havening, massage, coaching, or simply a held space — my door is open.

You don't have to carry this alone.