Not all Grief is Big and Loud – Some is Small and Hidden

As a death lawyer, I talk a lot about death and loss and entirely unsurprisingly, grief.

When I first started my estate planning practice, I was very intentional about focusing on living people. Partly because I didn't want to bite off more than I could chew and partly because I, entirely misguidedly, thought it would help me avoid conversations with grieving people.

How wrong I was! Grieving people are everywhere, not just sitting across from me when a family member or friend has died.

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It goes without saying that the kind of grief that joins me in the room during estate administration or supporting executors usually feels big. It's loud. It fills the room. Sometimes it changes shape to be more traumatic or complex, but for the most part, it's unmissable for both the griever and the people around them.

But during an estate planning meeting, entirely different kinds of grief show up. Quiet. Stealthy. Weird. Shaddowy. I can't tell you how many times it has jumped-scared me and the person sitting opposite me.

Psychologists have names for it: anticipatory grief, delayed grief, ambiguous grief, abbreviated grief. *

It can sit dormant waiting for an unsuspecting estate lawyer to ask just the right question to trigger its appearance, a song, a smell, a day on the calendar that never sits quite right.

It's the kind of grief that gets carried around with nowhere for it to go.

These pockets of grief are just as real and just as worthy of your attention. The question isn't whether to feel them. It's what to do with them, so they don't quietly build up inside you.

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Here are 10 small ways grieving people have shared with me that they acknowledge their quiet (often unseen) grief on the days it feels big and heavy.

1.Give yourself permission

Sometimes the greatest thing you can do is allow yourself permission to feel whatever you feel in the moment. Park the productivity, stop processing, moving on, ignoring, or pushing through. Sometimes the most honouring thing you can do is stop performing okayness.

2. Make a mini-shrine

Create or add items to a mini-shrine. It doesn't have to be elaborate or permanent. It could be a corner of a shelf, a spot in your garden, a jar, a frame. Add a photo, an object, something they collected, or would have been excited to see. A shrine says you/this existed, you/this mattered, you/this is still part of this space.

3. Grieve through your hands

So many people tell me they didn't take up a hobby or an activity until after someone died, but doing the same thing they loved feels like a way of connecting. Paint, sew, carve, garden, run, crochet, knit, play tennis. Moving grief out of your body stops it from sitting and growing.

4. Light a candle

This one is almost embarrassingly trite, and yet there's something intentional, quiet, and comforting about creating a moment of ceremony that doesn't require anything more of you than your presence and turning your mind to the person or thing you're grieving.

5. Do something they loved

Watch the film they made you sit through three times. Put the football on. Tend the garden, they were always fussing over. Go to the farmers' market. Walk on the beach. Go to their favourite restaurant or park. You don't have to enjoy it the same way they did; you're showing up to remember these things were important.

6. Cook their (or your) favourite meal

Food is one of the strongest memories (yes, one day I'll get around to compiling that book of dead people's recipes I get given!). I've heard of people who make jam, people who make dumplings, people who make a full roast dinner because the process of it brings their person close for just a moment.

7. Write it down

A journal won't judge, it won't ask questions, but it does help you get your thoughts out of your head and onto paper. What you do with them after that is up to you (sell them, screw them up, keep them to read later). I'm not a journaler but based on how much benefit others get from it, I could probably be converted.

8. Wear a piece of their jewellery or clothing

A ring, a scarf, an old jumper don't need explanation, they're a way of quietly saying I'm bringing you with me today.

9. Call someone who loved them too

Not to process, not to debrief, not to announce your grief, just to say their name. To tell a story. Laugh about something you've remembered or share something you miss. Grief can be lonely when it feels like the world has moved on and you're the only one still thinking about them.

10. Treat yourself

Developing a shopping habit isn't a way of dealing with grief, but when you're living a life with loss in it, you deserve to treat yourself with kindness, care, and small acts of self-compassion on a hard day.

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* Anticipatory grief can be common if you're expecting the loss of someone close to you (common if you're caring for someone with a terminal illness, dementia, or advanced age).

Ambiguous grief can happen when your loss isn't recognised or is stigmatised (the loss of a pet, a lover, a hidden relationship), or you have grief around something that isn't an actual death(loss or change in a meaningful relationship, losing connection of financial security, estrangement, infertility, abandonment).

Delayed grief can happen when the emotional reaction to a death happens years after a loss.

Abbreviated grief can occur when someone 'moves on quickly' after a death or when there wasn't a strong connection or attachment.

Information from Griefline

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Need support?

• Lifeline 13 11 14
• Griefline 1300 845 745
• Compassionate Friends 
• Red Tree Foundation