Grief, Space, and Letting Go of Who We Think We Should Be
“Grief is a change that we did not want.” — David Kessler
Read about grief through a trauma-informed lens, gently challenging the idea that it should follow a set path or timeline. Drawing on the work of Francis Weller, David Kessler, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, and Kristin Neff, this piece invites a shift toward creating space for grief, loosening external expectations, and meeting yourself with greater compassion wherever you are.
Grief is not something that needs to be corrected or resolved. What tends to create strain in the nervous system is the lack of space for it—especially when it is layered with trauma—and the pressure to contain it in ways that align with external expectations.
In The Wild Edge of Sorrow, Francis Weller writes, “Grief requires us to feel, to let our hearts break.” When this is allowed to land, even gently, it begins to shift the way grief is understood. It is no longer something to manage or move past, but something that reflects connection, attachment, and meaning. And yet, despite this, many people feel they must contain it, override it, or present themselves as coping in ways that align with an internalized version of strength.
This version of strength is often quiet, controlled, and composed. It is the ability to keep going, to hold it together, to function without interruption. While this can be adaptive in moments where survival requires it, it can also begin to restrict the natural movement of grief over time. When there is pressure to remain strong in this way, grief has very little room to breathe. It becomes held in the body, in the nervous system, in places that are not easily accessed through thought alone.
What is often needed is not more effort, but more space.
Space to feel without needing to explain, space to soften without needing to collapse, and space to not know how long something will take. From a trauma-informed perspective, this kind of space is not passive; it is a form of active support that allows the nervous system to begin to settle, to process, and to integrate what has been carried. When grief has room, it tends to move. When it is constrained, it tends to harden or fragment, showing up in ways that can feel disconnected from the original loss.
Part of creating this space also involves gently loosening the grip on rigid ideas about what grief is supposed to look like. Many of these ideas are shaped by societal narratives, including the widely known stages introduced by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. These stages—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—were originally developed to describe how individuals come to terms with their own mortality, not as a structured pathway for grieving loss. Over time, they have often been misapplied as a sequence people should move through, which can leave individuals feeling as though they are grieving “incorrectly.”
What often sits quietly underneath this is a deeper pressure—to be somewhere in the process that feels more acceptable to others, to appear as though we are coping in ways that make sense externally, or to move at a pace that aligns with what is comfortable for the people around us. But grief does not belong to external expectations.
It is not something that needs to be shaped, timed, or softened to fit into other people’s understanding. Much of what we believe about how we “should” grieve is based on interpretations, discomfort, and the limits of what others know how to hold—not on what is actually required for integration. And this extends beyond grief itself.
The more we try to fit into the molds of others, the further we move away from ourselves. We begin to organize our internal world around external expectations, often without realizing it. When we are living in fear of judgment, or in response to other people’s limiting beliefs, there is often a subtle sense of disorganization that develops internally. It can feel like tension, contraction, or a kind of disconnection from our own knowing.
Paradoxically, it is often in those moments where we feel more constricted, more aware of what is not aligning, that something true about us is trying to emerge. Ease and freedom do not come from fitting into someone else’s understanding of who we should be. They come from allowing space for what is actually present, even when it does not match external expectations.
There is no place you need to be in your process in order to be acceptable. There is no timeline that makes your experience more valid. There is no version of your grief—or yourself—that needs to be adjusted to fit into someone else’s idea of what it should look like.
In more recent years, David Kessler, who worked closely with Kübler-Ross, introduced a sixth element: meaning. His work emphasizes that grief is not linear and that these experiences are not steps to complete, but states that may arise and return over time. This perspective aligns more closely with what is seen clinically, particularly when trauma is present, where grief does not follow predictable patterns and often requires relational space to unfold.
Alongside this, the work of Kristin Neff offers an important anchor. Self-compassion becomes especially relevant in grief, where people often turn toward self-judgment rather than care. Neff outlines three core components of self-compassion: self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. Self-kindness invites a softer, more understanding response toward ourselves in moments of pain rather than criticism. Common humanity reminds us that grief is not something that isolates us as different, but something that connects us to others in shared experience. Mindfulness allows us to notice what we are feeling without suppressing it or becoming fully overwhelmed by it.
When these elements are present, even in small ways, they begin to shift the internal environment. Instead of pushing grief away or evaluating it, there is a gradual movement toward allowing it.
This is where a different understanding of strength begins to emerge. Strength, in this context, is not about holding everything together. It is about allowing space for what is there without turning away from it. It is about recognizing when something needs to be witnessed rather than managed. It is about permitting the body and the nervous system to respond in ways that make sense, given what has been experienced.
Journal/Reflection Prompts
You might consider gently turning toward your own experience, not to analyze it, but to create a bit more space for it.
1- Where in your life have you been holding yourself to a version of strength that leaves little room for what you are actually feeling, and what might begin to shift if you allowed even a small amount of space for that experience to be present?
2- If you were to respond to your current pain with self-kindness rather than self-judgment, what would you say to yourself, and how might it feel to remember that this experience is part of being human rather than something you need to navigate perfectly?
3- As you reflect on what has been lost, what feels most meaningful about what or who you are grieving, and how might that meaning continue to live in your life in a way that feels authentic to you?
4- What grief are you carrying that has not yet been fully witnessed, and what would it be like to imagine that this grief is not yours alone, but part of a larger, shared human experience?
Angela Larmer
