Claiming Your Right To Grieve: making space for what matters
- Kate Henderson
- Apr 13
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 20
How often are we met with the need to hide, rush, or 'tidy up' our grief? We’re told—directly or indirectly—that we should “be strong,” “move on,” or “get back to normal.” But grief doesn’t work like that. It asks for us to be present and to feel, not manage it.
You have a right to grieve - fully, openly, and without apology.
My own experience of loss - and the grief that followed - revealed just how hard we can be on ourselves when it comes to meeting social and cultural expectations about 'how' to grieve. Sometimes our losses are so unrecognised that it can be especially difficult to claim our right to make room for and honour them.
Grief is NORMAL
Grief is not a weakness. It’s not a flaw or a sign that we’ve fallen to pieces for good. It’s a natural, valid response to love and loss—whether that’s the death of someone close to us, the end of a relationship (or the relationship as we knew it), the loss of a dream or opportunity, a change in identity, or the closing of a chapter we weren’t ready to end.
Unfortunately, grief is one of the most minimised emotions in our culture. People often don’t know how to sit with it—so they try to make it smaller, more comfortable, easier to bear… for them.
The thing is, we don’t have to make our grief easier for other people to hold. We only need to make space for it to be what it is.
Claiming Your Right to Grieve
There is no one way to experience grief. It can show up in many forms; from tears to numbness, anger, laughter, insomnia, silence, forgetfulness or crazy bursts of busyness and energy. Claiming our right to grieve means giving ourselves permission to feel all of it—even the parts that don’t make sense. It means letting our body and heart guide the process, rather than silencing it to fit someone else’s expectations.
We are allowed to miss what we’ve lost. We are allowed to slow down. We are allowed to not be okay.
Making Space
Making space for grief doesn’t mean being consumed by it. It means creating room for it to be acknowledged, expressed, and nurtured. Sometimes that space is internal—like taking time to journal, cry, rest, or speak to someone who truly listens and can offer you their presence. Sometimes it’s external—like setting boundaries, carving out quiet time, or marking anniversaries and memories in meaningful ways. We get to decide how our grief is honoured. The space we make for this is necessary! When we deny grief, we also deny love. And when we make space for grief, we also make space for healing, depth, connection, and ultimately—for being fully alive.
Letting go of Timelines
There’s no deadline on grief, so we need to be prepared to throw our 'shoulds' and timelines in the bin. We don’t have to be 'over' it in six months, or a year, or ever. We’re not failing if our grief resurfaces years later. It doesn’t mean we’re stuck. It means we’re human, and our love, our memories, and our sense of meaning still matter.
We have the right to grieve at our own pace. And if someone tells us otherwise, that’s about their discomfort, not our truth.
We are allowed to grieve deeply, quietly, messily, beautifully. We are allowed to hold our pain with tenderness. We are allowed to take our time. We are allowed to be changed by what we’ve lost.
Grief is not something we 'get over'—it’s something we learn to incorporate into the library of our life and live alongside. As we honour our grief, we discover the sacredness of love that endures and of our own humanity and wholeness.
Do you need support to make space for your grief? Reach out here to connect.
Comments