With any change comes loss and grief is our natural response.

This is as true for a bride as it is for a new widow. One is anticipating a life changing event and the other has experienced it. One threshold is associated with positive emotions and the other is associated with negative ones. But often our emotional response to change is more complex and nuanced. The bride is just as likely to feel joy as she is to feel sadness and the widow can feel both despair and relief. Grief is messy, because life is messy. Making sense of it all is part of what it means to be human.

Some examples of changes that we don’t typically associate with grief include:

• Moving to a new city

• Leaving home for the first time

• Switching careers

• Graduating from high school or college

• Getting married

• Becoming or being a parent

• Sending kids off to college

• Retiring

• Receiving accolades such as an award or promotion

These changes can sometimes be even more disorienting for the very reason that they’re not “supposed” to be difficult or painful. They could be exactly what you were working toward all along which makes the mixed emotions even more confusing. Not only are you grieving the change, but you might also be judging yourself for having a hard time with it in the first place.

Examples of life moments that are more broadly associated with grief include, but aren’t limited to:

• Getting diagnosed with an illness—either you, a family member or friend

• Having a parent, child, sibling or spouse die

• Losing a job

• Deciding or needing to quit a sport or end an athletic career

• Experiencing a separation and/or divorce

• Being unable to conceive

• Aging

• Having a friendship end

• Becoming a caregiver for a parent or partner

• Coping with a disability

• Losing financial security

• Being forced to give up a lifelong dream

• Witnessing climate change, racial and social injustice and a global pandemic

Change is often hard—no matter what kind. Coping with it involves making sense of the past, accepting the present, and beginning to imagine the future. Grief therapy can facilitate this process.