The Grief We Don’t Talk About — Week 2
If you’re here, reading this series, chances are you are just as empathetic as I am. Which means you probably know exactly what it feels like to absorb the pain of someone you love without having any idea what to do with it.
This week I’ve been writing about vicarious grief, the grief we carry not for our own losses, but for the people who are devastatingly affected by someone else’s. It sounds like it should feel lighter than direct grief. It isn’t always. Sometimes it’s heavier, precisely because you have nowhere to put it and no permission to let it out.
You don’t want to spill your feelings onto the person who is actually grieving. You want to protect them from your emotions about their pain. So you hold everything. You go quiet. You pull back. And the grief just sits there inside you, dense and unprocessed, with no designated exit.
I’ve spent a lot of time with grief this past year, turning it over, finding all its nooks and crannies. One thing I’ve noticed about the proxy kind specifically: it might move through you a little faster than grief that belongs directly to you. As you watch your person begin to heal, as you see them slowly carrying it differently, you start to set yours down too. The grief is linked to theirs in that way.
But while you’re in it, it can feel just as deep and just as heavy as anything you’ve lost yourself. And it comes with a particular kind of helplessness. There is nothing you can do. You cannot take it from them. You cannot fix it. You can only be present, which sounds simple until you’re actually trying to do it while also managing your own grief about their grief.
Some people are better at this than I am. Some people can sit through the helplessness and still show up for their person without flinching. My instinct, when the emotions feel too big for both of us to hold at the same time, has been to move away. To create distance so I’m not adding to their pain. I’ve told myself that’s protective. And maybe sometimes it is. But I also know it’s left some relationships quieter than they should have been.
Part of why I’m writing this series is to bring awareness to my own patterns. And this one in particular: I want to learn how to stay.
If any of this sounds familiar, these prompts are for you. Take them slowly. One at a time if you need to.
• • •
Before we can work with this kind of grief, we have to recognize it for what it is.
— Is there someone in your life who has experienced a significant loss, and you have been carrying grief for them, alongside them, or because of what they went through? Who comes to mind first?
— Have you ever felt grief that wasn’t quite yours but you couldn’t explain where it was coming from? Looking back, was it connected to someone else’s pain?
— Have you ever pulled away from someone during their grief because you didn’t know how to hold your own feelings about their loss? What did that distance look like?
• • •
Naming what you’re carrying is the first step toward carrying it differently.
— Can you name what you were actually grieving in that situation? Was it the person lost, the pain of watching someone you love suffer, your own helplessness, all of it at once?
— Did you allow yourself to call it grief at the time, or did you minimize it because it wasn’t “yours”? What would it mean to give it that name now, even retroactively?
— Is there a vicarious grief you’ve been carrying for so long it has just become background noise? What would it feel like to actually see it clearly?
• • •
This is the part that requires the most courage, especially with grief that doesn’t feel like it belongs to you.
— Sit with the grief you’ve identified for a moment without trying to justify it or minimize it. What does it feel like in your body? Where does it live?
— Have you ever let yourself fully feel grief on behalf of someone else, or have you been managing it to stay functional and present for them? What have you been holding back?
— What emotions live inside your vicarious grief? Sadness, yes, but also helplessness? Guilt? Fear? Anger that this happened to someone you love? Let yourself name all of it.
• • •
Processing vicarious grief isn’t the same as processing your own. It requires a different kind of gentleness.
— Is there something you wish you had been able to say or do for the person you were grieving for? Is there a version of that you could still offer, even now?
— Have you ever given yourself permission to grieve alongside someone without making it about you? What would that look like, being fully present in your own grief while still holding space for theirs?
— What is one small way you could show up differently the next time you feel this kind of grief? Not perfectly. Just differently than you have before.
• • •
Grief isn’t only an emotional experience. It lives in the body too, and sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is work with it physically rather than think your way through it. These three practices are simple, require no equipment, and can be done anywhere you have a few quiet minutes.
Here are three simple practices you can try right now. You don’t need any equipment, any experience, or more than a few minutes.
Heart Space Breathwork
Proxy grief tends to sit in the chest, that dense, pressurized feeling of emotion with nowhere to go. This breath brings your awareness directly there.
Place one hand on your chest and one on your belly. Inhale slowly for a count of four, letting your belly rise first, then your chest. Exhale gently for a count of six, letting everything soften. Stay here for one to two minutes. Notice warmth, tightness, emotion, or quiet. You don’t need to do anything with what you find. Just let yourself feel it.
Intuitive Body Movement
This one might feel a little strange at first, but stay with it.
Close your eyes and bring to mind the grief you’ve been sitting with. Ask yourself: if this feeling had a shape or a motion, what would it be? Then let your body move that way. It might be subtle, a sway, a curling inward, a gentle rocking. It might be bigger. Follow whatever comes without judging it. Stay with it for one to three minutes, then lie still or sit quietly and notice what has shifted.
Self-Holding
This one is deceptively simple and particularly good for the helplessness that lives inside proxy grief, the grief you couldn’t do anything about.
Place your hands somewhere on your body that feels right, your thighs, your heart space, your face, your arms crossed over your chest. Feel the weight of your own hands. Feel the warmth. Don’t try to fix anything or release anything. Just notice that you are here, in your body, and that your body is real and present even when the grief feels like too much to hold. Stay as long as you need to.
• • •
There is an important distinction I want to leave you with this week, one I’m still learning myself.
There is a difference between witnessing someone’s pain and absorbing it. Witnessing means you are present, you are feeling, you are letting what is true for them actually land in you without flinching away. Absorbing means you take it into your body and carry it as if it were your own, indefinitely, with no way to set it down.
Both come from love. But only one of them is sustainable. And only one of them actually keeps you present for the person who needs you.
You are allowed to feel grief for someone else’s loss. You are not required to disappear into it.
The goal isn’t to stop feeling it. The goal is to learn to hold it without letting it hold you hostage, so you can stay in the room with your person instead of quietly retreating to protect them from feelings they probably already sense you’re carrying anyway.
Next week we’re going somewhere tender: the grief we feel ashamed of. I’ll see you there.
With you in all of it,
Kristin