Growing around grief

When Sophie at It’s Time told me that this month’s theme is ‘growing around grief’, I couldn’t believe the appropriateness. This past week, I changed employers for the first time in 4 years. This also means that I changed employers for the first time since I lost my dad. 

For me, change is one of the hardest things about grief longer term. When you go through grief at a young age, it can be one of the first truly permanent changes you’ve experienced. Our brains don’t like change – predictability = safety. Losing a loved one is the kind of change that unravels your sense of safety and the world you once understood.

That’s why when another big change comes, it can be triggering and anxiety inducing. Changing jobs for example – when I was offered my previous job at innocent I was chuffed. My dad was the first person I called and we celebrated together. This time, I was also over the moon. But as soon as I came off the call where I was offered a fabulous opportunity, I burst into tears. 

Why? It was a huge win that my dad wasn’t here to witness and take pride in. A new job means a big life change that my brain now associates with trauma. It’s a stage of my life that my dad isn’t here to see, and so in a way a step further away from the version of my life where I had my dad here. 

Growing with your emotions, not 

When grief strikes, you have no choice but to grow around it. Years down the line, grief has made me more resilient, more empathetic, more grateful – though I can’t claim that I felt this in the early days. 

People often refer to the 5 stages of grief – for me, I felt different ‘stages’ in all sorts of orders and all at once. The important thing was to allow myself to feel them all. This meant I got better at recognising different emotions and, in turn, better at processing them. 

Writing down my thoughts helped create a space for me to identify what I was feeling. I learnt that I had to be strict with my routine (aiming to journal a few times a week) to really see the benefits. With all the change, it was good to have control over something – even if it was just my own routine. 

Grief as a superpower 

Significant loss, especially sudden, is a stark reminder of mortality. It's an impossibly loud alarm bell to stop you sleepwalking through life. It teaches you what really matters to you the most.

Grief also has the capacity to rewire your brain and make you better equipped for dealing with stress and adversity going forwards. I’ve learnt that grief, though none of us ask for it, can be a bit of a superpower. 

So where am I now? I’ve just finished the first week of my new job and I loved it. Though I wish more than anything that my dad could be here to see, I’m prouder of myself than I’ve ever been – and that’s got to count for something.