Ask A Therapist - Grief Tending

I’d love to ask a question about grief. I’m entering a period of my life where I know there will be a lot of loss, and I’ve been hearing people talk about “grief tending.” I’m wondering whether it’s possible to prepare for grief by learning about approaches like this or whether I'm kidding myself, and grief will hurt just as much no matter what. I’d really appreciate hearing a therapist’s perspective.

Dear Anonymous,

Thank you for your question. The way you describe entering a 'season of life' is so poignant. For some people, this season is about losing loved ones to death. For others, grief takes different but equally weighty forms; the end of a relationship, children growing up and leaving home, a change in health, the loss of identity through work or circumstance, or even the quieter grief of realising that life does not look the way we imagined it would.

Grief is not only about death. It is about any experience where we are asked to live without something or someone that mattered deeply. Often, multiple losses can converge at once, the obvious ones alongside the less visible ones, leaving us feeling flooded by change. It makes perfect sense that you would want to ask if there is a way to prepare, a way to soften what feels inevitable.

You are not alone in wondering whether grief can be prepared for, or even in fearing what it will do to you. That fear is, in many ways, a part of grief itself. We do not only grieve when the loss arrives. We also grieve in anticipation, carrying dread about how much it will hurt, whether we will survive it, and whether we will be undone by it.

The truth is that no amount of preparation can erase the ache of loss. Grief will always bring pain, because pain is the echo of love. What you can do, though, is soften the ground so that when grief comes, it has somewhere to land. This is where the idea of grief tending can be valuable. Your use of the word 'seasons' reminds me of the story of Demeter and her daughter Persephone from Greek mythology.

When Persephone is taken to the underworld, Demeter, the Goddess of the Harvest, falls into deep mourning. The earth withers, the crops fail, and the world is plunged into winter. But Demeter does not banish her grief, nor does she try to push through it. She tends to it. She allows the world to reflect her inner state, barren, still, waiting. When Persephone is allowed to return each spring, Demeter’s grief shifts and softens, making space for growth again.

This story reminds us that grief has seasons. It comes in cycles of intensity and reprieve. To tend to grief is not to end it but to create a rhythm with it, just like Demeter, who allowed her mourning to be honoured, expressed, and visible, and in doing so gave it movement.

The word tending also brings to mind something that asks for patience and care. It is a little like tending a garden where you cannot control the seasons, but you can choose how to show up for the soil, the growth, and the decay.

Some days grief is like winter; barren, grey, and stripped back to nothing. On those days tending may look like rest, quiet, and allowing yourself to acknowledge that there is no colour and nothing feels in bloom. Other days grief feels more like spring, with memories returning tenderly and small shoots of joy or laughter surfacing unexpectedly. Tending then might mean noticing and allowing them without guilt. Summer brings fullness, sometimes overwhelming waves of emotion that feel too much, just as gardens can grow wild and unruly. Autumn holds both richness and loss, the paradox of gratitude for what was, and sorrow as things fall away again.

A gardener does not demand constant blossom, and they do not abandon the soil when it looks bare. They keep showing up, watering when it is dry, pruning when it is tangled, feeding the soil when it is depleted, and sitting patiently when all they can do is wait.

In therapeutic language, grief tending is found in rituals, patience, community, and the willingness to sit with what feels unbearable until it shifts into something we can live alongside. Rituals provide a container, a rhythm, a repeated practice, a gesture that allows grief to be acknowledged, honoured, and expressed. They transform inner experience into something outward and tangible.

Rituals in grief tending do not have to be grand or religious, although they can be. They can be simple and personal, like lighting a candle each evening, writing a letter to the one who has been lost, keeping a photo or object in a chosen place, returning to a favourite walk or song, or telling a story aloud. Rituals give grief shape and let your body and mind know that this has somewhere to belong.

Grief tending is also found in patience. Grief is not linear. It swells and recedes, sometimes without warning. Tending means allowing yourself to meet it when it comes and trusting that it will shift again. What feels unbearable at its height will, over time, soften into something you can carry.

Community is another form of tending. Grief does not survive well in silence. Sharing your story, whether with friends, family, a group, or a therapist, helps disperse the weight. When others bear witness, grief moves more freely.

Perhaps most importantly, grief tending means the willingness to sit with what feels unbearable. Not to resolve it but to allow it space. Over time, that steady attention and act of witnessing can transform grief from something overwhelming and hostile into something woven into the cycles of your life, something you can live alongside.

It is also worth remembering that grief lives in the body. The heaviness in your limbs, the lump in your throat, the tightness in your chest. These are part of the process too. Sometimes tending means moving, stretching, singing, crying, or resting, so the feelings can travel through you rather than hardening inside.

You are right that grief will still hurt. It is part of being human, and we cannot think or plan our way out of that stinging ache. But grief tending is not about making it hurt less. It is about learning how to be with the hurt in ways that feel bearable, meaningful, and even sometimes life-giving.

So, no, you are not kidding yourself. What you are doing right now, by pausing, asking, acknowledging the grief to come, and meeting yourself with compassion, is already a form of grief tending. You are saying, I cannot stop the winter from coming, but I can prepare the ground for when spring eventually returns.

With warmth and steadiness for the seasons to come,

Lynsey