Living Alongside Loss

Part three in the 5-part series on Grief - Finding Steadiness in Loss

I’m so pleased to have you hear reading this third article in the five-part series exploring grief through the lens of neuroscience, mindfulness and healing practices. In this one, I’ll explore what it means to coexist with grief over time, when the intensity of emotion softens, but the presence of loss remains.
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If you haven’t yet read the first two articles, you can find them here:
Part 1: The Weight of Grief
Part 2: Permission to Feel

Susan Guttridge

Living Alongside Loss

At first, grief can feel as though it takes up all the space in the room. It fills every corner of thought, every heartbeat, and every pause between breaths. And then, slowly, subtly, life begins to expand around it. You start engaging in old routines again, returning phone calls, making the appointments that once felt meaningless.

This isn’t moving on. It’s learning to live alongside loss.

It’s Not About Moving on
That is worth repeating: this isn’t moving on. Because, grief isn’t something we “get over.”
That phrase “moving on” can feel like an erasure, as if healing means letting go of the person or the love, that we’re leaving them behind. But the truth is, moving through grief doesn’t mean we let go of love; rather, it means we learn to carry it differently.

When someone we love dies, of course the attachment bond doesn’t dissolve. Research in the field of neuroscience presented by Mary-Frances O’Connor (2022) shows that the same neural networks involved in attachment and caregiving (including the anterior cingulate cortex, insula, and nucleus accumbens), remain active long after loss (O’Connor, 2022). These are the same regions that help us feel closeness and reward in relationships. So, the brain continues to reach for the person: to imagine, to remember, and even to feel them, because those pathways were built over years of connection.

So when you find yourself thinking, “I should be moving on by now,” please know that there is nothing pathological about still feeling your loved one’s presence or longing for them. This doesn’t necessarily mean you’re stuck in grief; it means your brain is still doing the sacred work of integrating love and loss.

Healing, then, is not “moving on”. More appropriately said, it’s moving with: with memory, with meaning, with an evolving relationship that now lives within you instead of beside you.
For me, this realization has been profoundly comforting, because I do still “speak to their memory in my heart.” The connection doesn’t end; it simply changes form. I carry them with me- in quiet moments, in choices made with their influence in mind, and in the love that continues to guide how I move through the world.

The Ongoing Presence of Grief

Based on my experience, both personal and in my counselling practice, and also from readings on grief, what I have come to learn is that grief doesn’t vanish with time. Rather, it changes shape.

In her book The Grieving Brain (2022), O’Connor shows that grief activates the neural networks associated with attachment and reward; the same areas that light up when we long for someone we love. So, in this way, grief is the brain’s way of maintaining connection while trying to adjust to absence. It’s hard work, reconciling love and loss, and this is how love learns to live in new conditions.

This is why you might still reach for your phone to text your loved one. Why a scent, a song, or a photograph can bring memories vividly back for a moment. Your brain isn’t confused or struggling to accept reality; it’s remembering. It’s rehearsing connection while slowly leaning into a new truth: that love continues, even in their absence. Over time, the brain learns to carry the bond differently- not by forgetting, but by weaving memory and love into a new form of connection.

Learning to Live Alongside

Psychologist William Worden described grief as a process of four tasks, not steps to complete, but ongoing adjustments that we perhaps move through many times (2018). They are:

1. To accept the reality of the loss.
2. To process the pain of grief.
3. To adjust to a world without the deceased.
4. To find an enduring connection while continuing to live.

I appreciate this model because it honours personal agency and reminds us that grief is not passive, nor is it a checklist. And, I’m mentioning the model here because the 4th task, finding an enduring connection with the deceased while continuing to move forward with life, reflects what so many people discover: that love doesn’t end, it transforms. Sometimes that looks like lighting a candle, visiting a meaningful place, or writing a letter you never send. Other times it’s even quieter, such as a sense of your loved one’s kindness or humour living on through you.

When the Absence Still Hurts

There are going to be days when grief’s sharpness returns, no matter how many years have passed, like on anniversaries, holidays, or just inexplicable waves of sadness that hit without warning.

One of my earliest losses was my mother’s death when I was a teenager. Years later, when I became a mother myself, those waves of grief returned in unexpected moments: when my baby wouldn’t sleep at night, when I wondered how my mom managed a toddler’s tantrums, or how she coped with a teenager’s eye rolls and desire for distance. The ache came not from forgetting, but from still needing her.

When the sharpness of grief returns in these waves, please know that it doesn’t mean you’ve gone backward; it means the bond still matters. And of course it does. When those potentially destabilizing moments come, instead of resisting the ache, would you be willing to try something to widen your capacity to hold both the ache and the life that continues? Imagine these as two rivers flowing side by side: one represents grief, and one represents your life continuing. Each flows at its own pace, and each shapes the other as they flow forward.

A Practice of Love and Remembrance

If you’d like to explore this coexistence, try this brief practice of reflection:
Start by taking a centering breath, inhaling in through your nose, noticing the tickle of air at your nostrils. Then, exhaling out through your mouth, just naturally

And, I’d like to invite you to bring to mind the person or loss you’re grieving. As you think of them, notice what arises. Perhaps a specific memory, a sensation in your body, or, perhaps even a bit of resistance. That’s okay, all your experiences are welcome here.

I invite you to place a hand over your heart and, if it feels right, say quietly (either aloud or just quietly in your mind), “You’re still part of me. I’m still part of life.”

Letting your breath be there, as your anchor, slowly flowing in and out. Allowing the steadiness of your breath to remind you that both love and living move through you, always.

Thank you so much for trying that with me. It’s okay if it brought up a lot; grief can look like that. Consider that this practice may be something you’d like to keep practicing in the days and weeks that follow.

Closing Thoughts

Grief is not a state one passes through and leaves behind, but an ongoing, evolving process that fluctuates in intensity over time. Rather than being a problem to solve, I hope you can come to see grief as a natural and adaptive part of continuing bonds with the person who has died, because these ongoing feelings reflect your persistent love and connection.

Grief doesn’t end, and that’s not a flaw in the system. It’s not a state we pass through and leave behind. It’s an evolving process that ebbs and flows across time. It’s a sign that love endures, finding new ways to belong in your life. Rather than something to “get over,” grief is the language of love adapting to new circumstances. When we live alongside loss, we carry our loved one forward.

When you’re ready, join me for the next article, “Small Anchors in the Dark,” where we’ll explore ways to find steadiness and moments of peace within the ongoing rhythm of grief.

References

• O’Connor, M.-F. (2022). The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss. HarperOne.
  
• Neimeyer, R. A. (2001). Meaning Reconstruction and the Experience of Loss. American Psychological Association.
  
• Stroebe, M., & Schut, H. (1999). The Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement: Rationale and Description. Death Studies, 23(3), 197–224.
  
• Worden, J. W. (2018). Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy: A Handbook for the Mental Health Practitioner (5th ed.). Springer.