5 Myths About Grief That Hurt Grieving Hearts
After more than fourteen years of walking beside grieving families, I’ve heard just about everything people say to the brokenhearted. Most of it comes from love. Some of it comes from fear — because grief makes people uncomfortable, and uncomfortable people reach for easy answers.
But easy answers can wound. So today I want to gently set the record straight on five things our world gets wrong about grief.
Myth 1: Grief has stages, and you move through them in order
You’ve probably heard of the “five stages of grief.” What most people don’t know is that they were never meant to describe grieving a loved one — and grief has never once followed a tidy staircase for anyone I’ve ever known.
Real grief is more like the ocean. Some days the water is calm. Some days a wave knocks you flat when you least expect it — in the grocery store, at a red light, hearing a song on the radio. That’s not going backward. That’s grief. There is no order, no schedule, and no wrong way to move through it.
Myth 2: Time heals all wounds
Time alone doesn’t heal anything. I wish it did.
What heals is what we *do* inside that time — the tears we allow, the stories we tell, the support we accept, the ways we learn to carry our person forward with us. I’ve met people forty years into their grief who never let themselves feel it, and their wound is as raw as the day it opened. And I’ve met people two years in who have done the tender, courageous work of grieving, and there is light in their eyes again.
Time is the container. Love and intention are the medicine.
Myth 3: If you’re still grieving, something is wrong with you
The world gives us about three months. After that, the invitations to “move on” start arriving.
But here is the truth: we don’t “get over” the people we love. We learn to carry them differently. Grief is not a problem to solve — it is love with nowhere familiar to go. It will find new places to live: in memory, in ritual, in the ways we honor our loved ones, in the people we become because we loved them.
You are not grieving too long. You are grieving exactly as long as love requires.
Myth 4: Grief only lives in your heart and mind
Grief lives in the body. This is one of the most important things I teach.
The exhaustion that sleep doesn’t touch. The fog that makes you forget why you walked into a room. The tightness in your chest, the knot in your stomach, the arms that physically ache to hold someone who is gone. None of that is your imagination — it is grief, stored in your body.
That is why my work includes gentle, body-centered practices — breath, movement, sound, stillness. Not because movement erases grief, but because the body needs a way to release what words cannot reach.
Myth 5: Being strong means not falling apart
Somewhere along the way, we decided that “strong” means dry-eyed and composed. I’d like to offer a different definition.
Strong is showing up to a grief group when everything in you wants to stay home. Strong is crying in front of another person and letting yourself be seen. Strong is saying your loved one’s name out loud. Strong is asking for help.
In Japan, there is an art form called Kintsugi — repairing broken pottery with gold, so the cracks become the most beautiful part. That is what grief work looks like to me. We don’t hide the broken places. We fill them with gold.
You were never meant to do this alone
If any of these myths have been weighing on you — if you’ve been told to move on, be strong, or get over it — I want you to know there is another way. A gentler way. One where your grief is honored, your loved one is remembered, and your light is patiently waited for.
That is what Loss Into Light is here for.
*With love and light,*
*Debbie*