Listen: Good Grief. Podcast, Episode 5

We hear it all the time: just give it time. In the fifth episode of the Good Grief. Podcast, Watershed Voice’s Aundrea Sayrie unpacks what happens when we stop waiting for the pain to disappear and start intentionally tending to the places that still hurt.

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Things We Thought We Knew About Grief | Myth #3: “Time Heals All Wounds.”

Seven months after my mother's passing, I was firmly scolded by a former bible study teacher for still being so consumed by grief that I hadn't resumed my responsibilities.

I was told I was allowing Satan to keep me from using the gifts God had given me. That there is "a season for everything, and it was time to move into a new season."

The exact words have blurred with time.

But the feeling never did.

I remember sitting there, stunned that my grief had become an inconvenience for someone else. Not long after, I quietly ended my membership.

Amen.

Two years after my mother's death, I had an amazing work day.

Without thinking, I grabbed my phone to call her.

The phone rang three times before reality set in.

My mother was never going to answer.

My world collapsed all over again.

The tears were just as hot.

The ache was just as immediate.

Time hadn't erased love.

So why would it erase grief?

By the third year, my body began telling a story my heart had been trying to carry.

I found myself being pushed through a hospital in a wheelchair, struggling to breathe.

I was eventually prescribed an inhaler after learning that chronic stress, prolonged anxiety, and unresolved grief can contribute to respiratory issues and stress-induced asthma.

My mother died.

And 

I had forgotten how to breathe.

It was then I realized...

Healing is an action word.

Time had passed.

But I had not yet begun intentionally tending to my grief.

Those are two very different things.

Psychologist J. William Worden offers an approach to grief referred to as The 4 Tasks of Mourning. Rather than describing grief as something that simply fades with time, he introduced the Tasks of Mourning as active work that helps us gradually adapt to life after loss. These include accepting the reality of the loss, processing the pain of grief, adjusting to a world without the person, and finding an enduring connection with them while continuing to live fully.

This framework gives us permission to participate in our own healing.

Healing isn't something that happens to us. It was something we have to participate in. Some days that means choosing to take a step. Some days it simply means choosing to keep living.

If time healed all wounds, every grieving person would awaken one morning completely whole.

Healing isn't measured by how much time has passed.

It's measured by the courage to keep showing up for yourself, one day at a time.