Reclaiming Grief: Learning to Stay with What Hurts
Lately, I’ve found myself drawn to the work of Francis Weller, whose writing on grief feels like it’s putting language to experiences I’ve sensed but never quite known how to name.
We live in a culture that doesn’t quite know what to do with grief. We minimize it. We rush it. We medicate it. Or we avoid it altogether. We treat it like an interruption to normal life — something to “get through” so we can return to functioning.
But what if grief is actually a central part of being human?
What if it’s not a problem to solve, but a capacity we’ve forgotten how to access?
Grief is our natural response to loss — and loss is woven throughout our lives. When I really sit with that, it feels obvious. Most of us are carrying far more sorrow than we consciously acknowledge. And much of it has never been given space.
In The Wild Edge of Sorrow, Weller describes what he calls the “five gates of grief,” and this framework has shifted the way I understand loss.
Everything we love, we will lose.
Impermanence is part of the deal. Love guarantees vulnerability.The places that have not known love.
The neglected, shamed, or unseen parts of ourselves.The sorrows of the world.
We carry grief not just personally, but collectively.What we expected and did not receive.
The life we imagined that didn’t unfold.Ancestral grief.
Sorrow passed down through generations.
So often, people dismiss their pain because “it wasn’t that bad” or “other people had it worse.” I hear that a lot. But grief is not a competition. It’s a response to loss — and loss is deeply personal.
Understanding grief through these gates helps legitimize the many forms of sorrow that often go unseen. It quietly says: your grief makes sense. It belongs.
We grieve:
The childhood we didn’t receive.
The affection we longed for but didn’t get.
Relationships that changed or ended.
Dreams that quietly dissolved.
Parts of ourselves we had to hide in order to belong.
The state of the world.
The innocence we can’t return to.
When grief isn’t expressed, Weller suggests it doesn’t simply disappear. It can harden into numbness, anxiety, depression, or addictive patterns. The energy of sorrow, when blocked, doesn’t vanish — it stagnates.
That shifts the question from, How do I get rid of this feeling? to, How do I make space for it?
Grief asks something of us. It asks us to slow down. To soften. To feel what hurts. In a productivity-driven culture, even that can feel radical.
Many of us learned early on that big emotions were inconvenient or unsafe. Maybe our tears were dismissed. Maybe there wasn’t room for anger or despair. So we adapted.
We became competent.
We stayed busy.
We intellectualized.
We numbed.
These strategies aren’t failures. They’re intelligent responses to environments that couldn’t hold our pain. But over time, the same strategies that protected us can also limit our aliveness. When we suppress grief, we often suppress joy too. We can’t selectively numb emotion.
Weller describes grief as having its own rhythm. It moves in waves. When welcomed, it flows. When resisted, it can feel stuck or overwhelming.
But when grief is given space, something often shifts. Not because the loss disappears, but because we are no longer fighting the reality of it. Energy that was spent on bracing or suppressing begins to loosen.
In my own life — and in the therapy room — I am learning that grief does not need to be forced or dramatized. It needs permission.
And when grief is shared, something else happens: belonging deepens. When it is hidden, isolation grows. Grieving together reminds us that sorrow is not a personal flaw — it’s part of being human.
As we move through loss, we are changed. Something is stripped away. And yet something else can grow in its place. Weller writes that grief ripens the heart, and I find that image stays with me.
What feels clear to me right now is this: when we stop treating sorrow as pathology and begin seeing it as a natural response to love and loss, something softens.
Grief humbles us.
It reminds us of impermanence.
It connects us to what matters.
In a culture that values speed, distraction, and constant positivity, choosing to sit with grief can feel radical.
But perhaps it is also deeply human.
And perhaps reclaiming our capacity to grieve is one of the quiet ways we begin to come home to ourselves.
Further Reading
If you’re interested in exploring these ideas more deeply, I highly recommend:
Weller, F. (2015). The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
Weller, F. (2017). In the Absence of the Ordinary: Soul Work for Times of Uncertainty. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.