We are told that grief should be a journey—one with meaning, transformation, resolution. A story that moves from devastation to insight, from darkness to wisdom, from suffering to strength. But what if it isn’t? What if grief just is? And what if that is enough?

Grief Doesn’t Need Heroes

There’s an expectation that grief should follow a familiar arc—the hero’s journey. The struggle that leads to insight. The darkness that, with enough resilience, is alchemised into wisdom. The broken heart that, by some mystical process of healing, emerges stronger, wiser, more grateful. It’s the story that sells. It’s the film people want to see. It’s the book people want to read.

Society loves a grief memoir with a satisfying redemption—one that shows the bereaved finding purpose, meaning, perhaps even a silver lining. A story that makes the loss feel necessary, that reassures people that all that suffering was not for nothing. Because the alternative—the truth that some losses remain just as raw ten years on, that some wounds never close, that some griefs will never be resolved—is too uncomfortable. Those stories would never sell. It is easier to believe in the story of transformation than to sit with the echoes of ongoing absence.

When a grief story doesn’t offer redemption, it often receives backlash. People want meaning. They expect inspiration. They demand an ending that justifies the pain. When they don’t get it, they push back. They dismiss, they criticise, they judge.

“Why are you still talking about this?”
“Haven’t you found closure yet?”
“Haven’t you moved on?”
“You must not be grieving properly.”

Grief is not a linear process. It is utterly messy and unpredictable. There is no finish line. No guaranteed transformation. No medal received for hanging in there long enough. And yet, that does not make it a story unworthy of telling.

The Pressure to Turn Grief into Something Useful

I resist the pressure to make my grief a story of overcoming adversity. There’s pressure to be able to explain how I am better, more evolved, somehow improved by living through these losses. That it was all worth it. That my grief has produced wisdom and depth, and that I can now hold it up as a hard-earned badge of honour.

I reject the notion that grief needs to be packaged into something useful, that it must give back in order to be valid. There is enormous pressure to shape loss into a story with an uplifting takeaway—something that others can learn from, something that makes it worthwhile. But that expectation misses the point.

Grief doesn’t need to be productive. It doesn’t need to lead to some grand epiphany to still be real. My grief exists because my love for those I have lost still exists. My dead loved ones are still dead. And so I grieve their loss. Still.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t also found meaning. But meaning isn’t always Meaning with a capital M—the kind that channels loss into a clear, purposeful path, that makes it all somehow worthwhile. Sometimes meaning is small, quiet, woven into the fabric of daily life. Sometimes it is simply the recognition that I am still here, for some unfathomable reason. Still finding ways to live, even as I always ache as I carry all I have lost in every cell in my body.

Meaning Without Capital Letters

This is where Pauline Boss’s work on ambiguous loss is helpful. She says, “Human experience is meaningful when it is comprehensible to those who are having the experience.”

When we hear the word meaning, we tend to assume Meaning—with a grand significance, a greater purpose, a revelation that makes sense of the pain. It’s the kind of Meaning that people put in books, that makes for an inspiring TED Talk, that provides clear lessons for others.

But for many of us, meaning in grief happens with a lowercase m. It’s not a grand transformation. It’s not the moment where suddenly everything makes sense. It is the slow, painstaking work of reconstructing a life after loss, of mapping out and shaping who we are in the world now that everything has so radically changed.

It is not only in the happy ending of a hero’s journey or a transformational arc that we should look for meaning. It is in the storytelling itself. As Boss says, “Human experience is meaningful when it is comprehensible to those who are having the experience.”

Maybe meaning, small m, is as simple as understanding that this is my life now. Maybe it’s recognising, I am still here. Maybe it’s as simple as getting up every day, making a coffee, walking with my dog, even though the weight of grief still sits heavily. Maybe it is the act of getting to tell our stories—still raw, unresolved, unfinished—that is the meaning.

Growing Around Grief

Which moves me on to the notion of growing around grief, from Lois Tonkin’s model. Unlike the hero’s journey, this does not demand resolution. It does not promise cinema-worthy transformation. Instead, it acknowledges that loss doesn’t shrink or dissolve—it stays the same, an unmovable central piece in one’s life. But new life grows around it, slowly and gradually. The pain does not disappear, but new experiences, new love, new joys, and new challenges form around its edges.

Fortunately, there is another story—one that doesn’t demand that we slay the dragon, conquer the darkness, and return home triumphant and “better.” It is the Heroine’s Journey, a different kind of arc, one that is not about overcoming, but about integrating. A path that recognises descent as part of the process, that understands that deep loss is not something to be fixed but something to be lived with, woven into the fabric of our being, breath by breath.

If the Hero’s Journey is about victory, the Heroine’s Journey is about surrender—about succumbing to the depths rather than fighting against them, about allowing grief to shape us into something different, rather than forcing a narrative of resilience and triumph. It is a story of descent, of hanging around in the underworld, of navigating spaces where the old self is stripped away with no inkling that a new self might ever emerge. It is about the long, slow unfolding, the willingness to sit in the messiness of grief without demanding resolution.

Sharon Blackie, in her work on myth and the feminine journey, speaks of a path that is not linear but cyclical, one that follows the rhythms of nature rather than the straight line of conquest. This is a journey that acknowledges wintering, fallow time, dormancy, and long dark nights where nothing seems like it will ever grow. It is about learning to trust that even in the depths of loss, something is stirring. Not heroic transformation in the way the world expects, but slow, patient integration.

And I see it now, in the way I meet others fresh into loss. The way I can feel, in an instant, what it must be like, what it was like. Often the recognition is so strong that it simply takes my breath away, as if no time has passed at all. As if I am still in that first rawness. If I didn’t know better, I might think I hadn’t absorbed anything at all. But I have.

It’s not that the grief is gone. It’s that my ability to carry it has changed. Like a muscle, worn and torn, and gently repaired, over and over, I have learned to bear the weight of grief differently. I know now that when the muscle gets heavily used—when I am thrown back into the sharp, stinging grief of another—I will recover. The weight is not lighter, but I am stronger.

And that, maybe, is the difference between a grief story that demands resolution and one that simply allows for growth around what can never be restored.

This isn’t healing as most people understand it. It doesn’t offer a happy ending. But it is a way to live life forward. Not by erasing what was lost, but by expanding life around the absence. Despite the ongoing absences.

Maybe that is its own kind of transformation. One that isn’t about overcoming grief, but about making space for it. One that doesn’t expect a return to who we were before, but allows for the quieter story of endurance, of softness, of holding grief in one hand and life in the other.

 

I am exploring these ideas and much more in my book, where I challenge the dominant narratives of grief and transformation. It’s a while away from being complete, so for now, I leave you with these questions:

• What if grief didn’t require you to become some kind of hero?
• What if it was enough to simply keep on keeping on?