What I Wish I Had Known About Grieving with God

Grief doesn’t have a timeline. It doesn’t follow a five-step process, and it doesn’t wait until you’re ready. It just shows up. Fully raw, aching, or disorienting. And sometimes, the only thing we can do is let it.

When I was sixteen, my mom died unexpectedly. She was thirty-seven. I was an only child living with my father, a Marine and Vietnam vet who had learned to survive by shutting down emotion. His response was simple: “We survive.”

So that’s what I did. I didn’t get counseling. I didn’t talk to anyone about it. I started school a few weeks later and kept going. Looking back, I realize that wasn’t healing. That was survival.

Now, years later, I know the truth: we don’t get over grief. We live with it. We grow around it. And every birthday I celebrate, I still feel it. When I turned thirty-eight and realized I had outlived my mother, it hit in a new way. I grieve not only her absence, but also the presence she never got to have in my children’s lives, or in mine as a mother.

Grief is not weakness. It is not something to avoid. Grief is love that has nowhere to go. And processing it, allowing yourself to feel it, is one of the holiest things you can do.

I’ve learned to sit with my grief instead of running from it. On the days that feel heavier, like my birthday or Mother’s Day or the anniversary of her passing, I let myself breathe through it. I pay attention to my body, to the tightness in my chest, the clenching in my gut, or the heaviness that sometimes sits in my throat.

This is what’s known as a somatic experience: the way our bodies hold emotion when words fall short. When we allow ourselves to notice and name those physical responses, we open a door to healing. We let the grief move through instead of getting trapped inside.

Grieving with God has also changed the way I process loss. For a long time, I didn’t know how to bring my pain to Him. I thought healing meant being strong. But I’ve come to learn that God doesn’t ask us to pretend. He invites us to bring our broken hearts just as they are.

There is space for sorrow in the presence of God. There is space for questions, for tears, for aching. And there is also peace, not the kind that erases grief, but the kind that sits with you in it.

I wish someone had told me that grief would revisit. That it wouldn’t vanish after a year or two. That it would show up quietly, sometimes uninvited, and remind me of what was lost. But I also wish they had told me it was okay to feel it. To let it be real. To let it soften me rather than harden me.

If you’re walking through grief right now, I want to offer this encouragement:

You’re not weak for feeling it.
You’re not failing for needing time.
You’re not broken for still crying, even years later.

Let it be what it is. Let it be tender. Let it be honest.

And when it comes, ask yourself gently: Where do I feel this? What do I need right now? Who can I trust with this piece of my heart?

Then take a breath. Let it move through. Picture it like a cloud passing or a wave rising and falling. Let it do its work, and trust that healing is happening, even when it doesn’t look like it.

This is the sacred work of grief. It doesn’t mean forgetting. It means remembering with love, feeling with honesty, and living with deeper compassion.

Your grief is not too much. Your heart is not too fragile. God is not afraid of your sorrow. And you are not alone in it.

Healing won’t erase what was lost. But it will create space to carry it differently, with tenderness, with strength, and with grace.

You’re doing better than you think.

And you are so deeply loved.