When we lose something we love – no matter what that is – our natural response is grieving.

Grieving means experiencing an inner emptiness, a loss, and this loss makes you feel sad, finding yourself with no motivation to do anything you used to enjoy anymore. Grieving is a highly individual experience; a person can grieve over the loss of a loved one, or over the loss of a relationship, or over the loss of cherished good, or over the loss of a significant opportunity, or even over the loss of their childhood innocence.

Whatever the situation, coping with the loss of someone or something you love can cause grieving. On this webpage, we will focus on the grieving over the death of a loved one.

When we lose someone we know and we are on the grieving stage, we may be shocked by the inner emptiness we experience. It is like we actually lost a part of ourselves. There is one common component of how relationships between friends, family, partners, or colleagues work: love. We live in the hearts of those we love, and they live in ours. Therefore, it is completely normal to experience the loss of someone as ours, their physical absence as an inner emptiness. The emotional suffering you feel it’s exactly because someone you love is taken away.

Right after loss, you may cry randomly and uncontrollably. A memory of your loved one, a photograph or the mention of your past beloved, awakes a whole series of memories and emotions. It is important to face your feelings and acknowledge the pain. Expressing your feelings and accepting that grief can trigger many different and unexpected emotions, will help you cope with the pain, come to terms with your grief and heal. If after crying you are experiencing distress or frustration instead of calmness, then it is likely there is something deeper in the way you perceive death or your past beloved, that doesn’t help you heal.

In this case, trying to control your tears – without completely holding them back – will help you have a clear mind to look into yourself, your thoughts and your reactions. Maybe thinking about death makes you feel distressed and feeling overwhelmed. Or maybe you had an argument with the person that died, and you lost the opportunity to resolve it. Regardless the case, a calm self-exploration – or getting support from somebody else, if needed – will reveal what causes you despair and frustration and help you to finally grieve and regain your sense of calmness. Grieving will help put your own thoughts and feelings into perspective, become wiser and learn to accept not only the joy and potentials in life, but also the pain and the limitations. Apart from the pain of loss, you may eventually find peace, purpose and hope.