Approaching Grief

In the work I do, I often find myself speaking in front of groups of people, sometimes large groups and sometimes small. Like many people, I experience a lot of fear and anxiety when all the focus is on me in a group setting. My body begins to tremble, and I sweat. Sometimes I lose the thread of what I want to say. For much of my life, I thought I could control the fear of being in the spotlight by pushing it aside or pretending that it didn’t exist. I hoped no one would notice what I was going through. Looking back, I do not think that approach worked all that well.

Eventually, I learned to befriend fear and to no longer need to push it away. Now, I let it be there when it arises. Often, I will even name it out loud so others know what I am dealing with; putting it out there feels easier than concealing it. When I welcome the emotion of fear, it no longer gets in my way. I would prefer it didn’t arise at all, but it does, so I invite it in like an old familiar friend.

I have found that this mindfulness-based approach also works when it comes to grief. With this approach, you move right up close to the grief. You do not push it away for later or pretend it doesn’t exist. Mindful awareness is about authenticity and honesty, and it includes everything. So when grief arises, try to acknowledge it fully, and let it be included in your awareness. Even though the experience of grief is unpleasant, you allow it to be there completely because it is what is there for you.

The experience of grief is deeply personal, and it doesn’t do much good to compare your grief to anyone else’s. While it is supportive to seek companionship when coping with loss, there may be people in your life who will express expectations for how you should deal with your grief. Such expectations, whether conveyed subtly or directly, should be held very loosely. Grief is uncharted territory, and there are no rules or maps for navigating it. So although I am suggesting that you give yourself over to grief, that may not be the right approach for you. Ultimately, you need to decide for yourself what works for you. It is your grief experience.

Turning toward grief requires trust—trust that eventually you will emerge on the other side, where life after loss will become the new normal and the emotions of grief will settle down. Just as there is no road map for grief, there is no timeline. For you, it will take as long as it takes to reach the place where you are not overwhelmed by grief. Giving yourself the time you need to let grief run its course is not always easy. We live in a fast-paced culture that really does not support taking adequate time for grieving. You may perceive pressure from work, friends, even family to “get on with it.” Nonetheless, I hope you can give yourself permission to resist this kind of pressure and let your grief take as long as it takes. Grief is deeply personal, and it is for you to decide how long is too long. While grieving may take a long time, if it interferes with essential activities in your life or if feelings of overwhelm persist, it may be necessary to seek the support of a therapist.

Despite the difficulty of grief, like all struggles, it brings gifts.

Grief manifests in a variety of ways. While sadness is the emotion most often associated with grief, it is not the only one. You may shut down emotionally, or you may have outbursts. Whatever form it takes, you may find yourself in the midst of grief when you least expect it. Grief can take more energy than you will be ready to give it. Yet even so, pushing grief away works for only so long before it catches up with you.

Despite the difficulty of grief, like all struggles, it brings gifts. Recently, a friend who has been in a long-term relationship that ended described his time of grief as a time of awakening, a chance to reacquaint himself with what matters to him most. Grief is an opportunity to come back to one’s true self. Francis Weller writes beautifully about this in his book The Wild Edge of Sorrow: “To honor our grief, to grant it space and time in our frantic world, is to fulfill a covenant with soul—to welcome all that is, thereby granting room for our most authentic life.” Grief will return you to your most authentic life if you let it, if you give it your full attention.

The vulnerability of grief is universal. When we are in the depths of our grief, knowing that others also experience it may bring little solace in the short term. However, as time passes, we may find comfort from remembering that we are not alone in our pain. Loss and grief are part of our shared humanity.

After my mother died and I emerged from the period of overwhelming grief that disrupted all aspects of my life, I felt I had joined the vast community of people who knew what it meant to no longer have a mother. This was both saddening and reassuring. It brought comfort by reminding me that I would be OK. The universe has held those of us who have lost mothers for as long as there have been mothers.

There is a deeply moving story about grief that has been told since the time of the historical Buddha. To me, it speaks to the essential role of acknowledging shared humanity in the experience of loss and self-compassion. In the story, a young woman named Kisa Gotami seeks the Buddha after the death of her newborn child. She is overcome with grief and begs this powerful teacher to bring her only child back to life. The wise one tells her that if she can bring him a single mustard seed from a household that has not known the pain of loss, he would restore the infant to life.

Kisa Gotami searched her village and beyond for a family that had not known loss. Each person she spoke to offered her comforting words to ease her broken heart, but none gave her the mustard seed she was seeking. On her search, Kisa Gotami found communion in her loss with others who knew the kind of grief she was holding. She returned to the Buddha empty-handed and still full of grief but knowing she was not alone.

The Buddha’s assignment offered Kisa Gotami the compassion she had to learn for herself. When grief leaves us crazy and inconsolable, sooner or later we must find our way to self-compassion. If we are going to surrender to the grief experience, we must be able to fully acknowledge our suffering, we must remember we are not alone, and we must hold our experience with kindness. This is how we endure without denying our authentic experience.

It is never too late to change how you show up for the experience of grief.

As you have been reading along, have you thought about how you have dealt with your own grief? In the many years of working in the end-of-life and caregiving arena, I have come to observe that people have particular default attitudes and behaviors when it comes to experiencing grief. In a caregiver training my wife participated in, she shared that when grief begins to arise, she makes herself busy with housecleaning, a coping mechanism. Another caregiver shared that he loses himself in a work project. Others look for things to make them happy. Others still will find a creative outlet to channel the emotional experience. The style of grieving that includes getting busy with a task requiring thought rather than emotional processing is normal and in psychology literature is known as “instrumental grieving.”

Once you have identified your default approach to grief, check in with yourself and ask if it is the healthiest way to integrate grief into your life. You may decide you want to try a new approach. Setting an intention for how you want to show up for grief is a great place to begin.

Like Kisa Gotami, who desperately tried to find a household untouched by loss, you have likely learned that loss and grief are an inevitable part of being human. No one is untouched by the emotional pain that accompanies loss. It is never too late to change how you show up for the experience of grief. It begins with the desire to cultivate self-awareness and a willingness to change. Then you might try a new approach. Take your time, be gentle with yourself, and remember that only you know what is best for you.

♦

Excerpted from the book Zen Caregiving: How to Care for Yourself While Caring for Others. Copyright © 2026 by Roy Remer, reprinted with permission from New World Library