Every Grief is Different: What I've Learned from Loss

This year, I lost my grandparent. Five years ago, I lost my sibling. Two very different losses, two very different versions of grief, and both have shaped the way I understand what it means to mourn someone. I’ve been thinking a lot about how grief isn’t singular. It doesn’t follow rules, and it doesn’t care about timelines or expectations. Grief is deeply personal, shaped by the relationship, the circumstances, and the parts of ourselves that a loss touches. These two losses in my life could not have been more different, but together they have taught me something important: every grief is valid, every grief is different, and every grief deserves room to exist without judgment.

The Grief of Losing Someone Suddenly

When my sibling died five years ago, it was sudden and unexpected. We hadn’t spoken in a couple of years. The relationship was complicated, painful, and unresolved. And because of that, I felt like I wasn’t allowed to grieve them. There’s a type of loss that feels invisible: the kind where you didn’t have the “right” kind of relationship for people to understand why you’re hurting. I carried a lot of confusion and guilt. Was I grieving them, or grieving the possibility of what could have been?

Over time, I realized something important:

Both can be true. And both are allowed.

It was the healthiest choice for me to have them out of my life. That boundary was necessary. But even healthy boundaries come with their own pain. I was still allowed to miss them- not the version that caused harm, but the version I hoped they might someday become. Grief can exist even for someone who wasn’t good for us. Grief can exist alongside relief, distance, or self-protection. Loss is complicated, and so are we.

The Grief of Losing Someone Slowly

My grandparent’s passing has been a different kind of heartbreak. Their decline was long, stretching over years in a nursing home. Dementia slowly took pieces of them, and I have been grieving those pieces one by one. When they died, it was not sudden. It was “a long time coming.” People might say that as if it makes the grief easier, but it doesn’t. It just makes it different. I’ve been hit harder than I expected. I’ve felt swallowed by a sadness that comes in waves, catching me off guard at inconvenient moments. And alongside that grief is an immense- and confusing- sense of relief.

Relief that their suffering is over. 

Relief that they are no longer living a life they didn’t want. 

Relief that the slow, painful decline has finally stopped.

And here is the truth I’m trying to accept: Those two emotions are allowed to exist together. I can be heartbroken and relieved. Mourning their loss while feeling peace. Grief doesn’t punish us for having mixed emotions. We do that to ourselves.

Every Grief Is Different, and That’s Okay

Losing my sibling and losing my grandparent have shown me two different emotional worlds. Neither grief has looked the same. Neither has behaved in the way I thought it “should.”

And that’s the point.

Grief looks different for everyone, because every relationship is different. Every story is different. Every loss touches a different part of who we are.

There is no correct way to grieve. No timeline that makes it easier. No single emotional blueprint that works for everyone. What is the same is the need to let emotions come as they come, without judging them, minimizing them, or trying to rush them away.

Sometimes the only way out of grief is straight through it. Not all wounds fully heal, but time can soften the sharpest edges. And with each loss, we learn more about ourselves, our capacity to love, our capacity to hurt, and our capacity to keep moving forward.

If you’re grieving, no matter what your loss looks like, your grief is real. Your grief is allowed. And your grief deserves space to unfold in its own way, in its own time.

-Anonymous