To ask if you ever feel normal again after grief?

Me too, never used to name change had the same one for over a decade, but with the changes to the nature of the site, I name change a lot now. Im glad min & many others haven't though. I love seeing the 'old' posters & swing that some very special ones are doing 'ok' 💋

I was just thinking exactly the same thing.

I had a different username in those days but vividly recall your lovely posts about your boy.😥

12 years - unreal.

I cried every day for nearly two years over my greatest grief and weekly for much longer. I truly thought I could die from the heartbreak and would never recover.

I am happy again now, 20 years later. I can't say I'm "back to normal" - it's been so long I'm a different person and so it's a different normal. But I can look back at happy times with fondness.

Personally I didn't find the "month for every year" thing true at all, and I didn't like that phrase because it made me feel bad for still grieving much longer than that.

I wish you all the best.

I lost my mum 17 years ago and not a day goes by where I don’t think of her. She was my best friend, to this day I don’t think I have ever loved anyone as much as I did her (bar my children). I can still remember that sharp physical pain - there was just a constant ache. It hurt me to the point I had a complete mental health breakdown.
Having said that to explain my devastation at the time. I still miss her SO much. I’d give anything for her to be here. I still have moments of complete and utter rage, days where I cry so much my body shakes. But what used to be an hourly occurrence have now become much less frequent. What used to be a flood that I couldn’t control is now a big lump in the throat and a few tears before I calmly state “Enough. She would not want this to ruin my lifetime”.
So while I will truly never, ever get over this. She’d want me to live. And I try to remember that on the darkest days.

Time helps OP. But there is no timeline on grief, no one should tell you how to feel or for how long.
I have had many amazing moments since, I would never wish to go back but it’s shaped me and I am stronger now. Other losses cut too but nowhere near as deep as that did.

You will find a way to enjoy life again. Not only because of time passing but because
that’s what our loved ones who have passed would want for us.

You will absolutely feel normal again and the pain of that raw grief will die down. What your won't feel though is exactly the same kind of normal as before. That's what's meant by growing around the grief - it isn't going to go away but new memories, new happinesses etc will start to grow and fill the hole.
Right now the hole is huge. In the first year you might get metaphorical green shoots growing in that space and a few years and decades down the line they'll have evolved into branches and leaves and flowers and the hole might not even be visible.
I'm so sorry for your loss. Try not to rush feeling normal, or better, or being over with grieving. It'll take as long as it takes for you and that'll be a very personal experience. Feel as sad as you need to right now. It's so incredibly normal to feel sadness at that loss, because it reflects how much love you had and have for that person. And don't feel bad when you feel happy too. The day after my mum died my BIL accidentally threw food all over himself. It was so ridiculous we couldn't help but laugh, despite being in the trenches of grief. It was helpful to find that moment of light in the dark. You'll find that over time the light moments increase in numbers as the dark ones decrease.

I’m so sorry for your loss OP. I lost both parents within 18 months, both very suddenly and with little to no warning, in my early 30s. My life is forever divided into before and after those events. I am
a different person now. I wouldn’t necessarily
say I’m sadder - that’s somehow too simple - but everything feels more grounded and less important, somehow.

I’m so sorry for your loss 💓
I lost my sister about ten years ago after a very, very short illness, and I was in a fog of grief for some time afterwards. Recovery is not a linear process, so the fog would lift for a bit then come back down, then lift a bit more. Looking back, it took about five years to completely get back to normal. I wasn’t in a fog for five years, it’s just that I could still suddenly dissolve into tears because of certain triggers. I did access grief counselling, which helped a lot.

When I say that I am back to normal, that is not entirely true – I think I’m a better person since I lost her. I’m more compassionate about other people‘s feelings and I am more appreciative of the privilege of getting older, now that I am indeed getting older than she ever lived to be. I hope that you’ve got good support in your life and that you’ll be able to celebrate his life at appropriate points. For example, we have had gatherings for my sister’s anniversary and birthdays sometimes and that has really helped to remember her in a positive and joyful way. Lots of love to you 💐

My dad died suddenly and unexpected when I was 10. I made several attempts to kill myself when I was in my early teens. I've suffered depression horribly all my teenage years but got no help and my mum had a breakdown so our life was shit. As an adult I see we should have had sooo much help to deal with our grief!! We got FUCK ALL. I hope you can get grief counselling. Im so sorry for your loss xx

We lost one of our two sons eleven years ago. The grief at the time was almost unbearable. Somone told me that grief like that is a rucksack on your back full of stones. Over time the stones go away but the rucksack never will.

What a lovely response and what great advice.

I love the sack analogy, its perfect and you describe exactly how I felt when my own mum died suddenly 4 years ago.

Those early stages of grief are brutal and I remember thinking that I would never ever smile again, or be happy ever again and that my life would never be the same. I honestly couldn't see how I could ever recover. BUT little by little, I started to feel a little less heavy and burdened by it.

Grief counselling helped me massively. My bereavement counsellor was worth every penny I paid her. She listened to me intently, allowed me to be quiet when I needed to, encouraged me to talk about my Mum and help me understand my grief and the steps to take to navigate my way through it. I felt like she held my hand through the process and pulled me out the other side.

At the end of our sessions I felt I could see a way forward. I could see a future without my Mum in it and for once not feel broken and sad and full of dread. During the end of the process I was able to turn all my negative feelings and thoughts into positive ones and instead of think of her and feel sad, I would think of her and feel utterly utterly grateful that I had her as my Mum. I was grateful for all the times we shared, all the love we had, for the Mum she was, for the Nanny she was and that this wonderful human being was part of my life for as long as she was.

You may not feel that way now, but hopefully one day you will look at and see things differently to the way you do now.

I am so so sorry for your massive loss.

Please be kind to yourself and know that the deep grief you feel now will one day be less. You WILL get there. It does get better, I promise.

Sorry for your loss.
I've never experienced a sudden and unexpected death so I'm not sure if it will be the same. I have lost people to cancer and for a good few months I thought I would never get over it and never feel happy again. It has got easier, I still miss them but when I think of them I can smile at the memories. It was a gradual improvement so I couldn't put a timeframe on it but it was still quite raw after a year. My life has now gone back to normal, there's a bit if guilt with saying that but I am living a full life and I don't think they would've wanted anything less.

Thank you, and to you

I’m so sorry for your loss OP.
It’s 7 years since my younger brother died. The feelings of pain and loss were so excruciatingly hard. I didn’t think there would ever be a time when thinking about him wouldn’t reduce to me to tears and cause that tearing sensation inside, but that has passed. I can think of him now and not be transported back to finding him as I did. I think about him a lot, but not everyday now, and thinking about him makes me smile because I focus on the happy times.
It will be different for everyone. I hope your able to remember the good times soon

OP, please watch Billy Bob Thornton talking about grief about his brother dying. It is so accurate about grief in general.

Hi @ThousandYardStare my own lovely dad died in March. My mum is the same. It’s genuinely awful to witness. Sending love to you 🩷

I am sorry for your loss.

Everyone is different. That said I do think it stops taking so much space in your day to day life. I lost my mum in my early twenties, so almost 20 years ago. In the beginning I was like you, I almost felt I couldn't go on, would cry all the time. I think it took me a good 5-7 years to not cry about it fairly regularly but the intensity definitely got "less". It took me maybe 15 to let go of the guilt. Only last year did I finally have the capacity to seek clarity on some potentially hereditary implications of her death which I worried about for almost 20 years, but yet just couldn't get myself to address because it was too painful. Some things trigger some of those feelings still (I can feel that lump in my chest writing this), but most of the time I don't think about her too much. I guess some of it is you don't think about it as much as time and experiences and life fills that space with time.

I can from personal experience (of having not done it) really recommend seeking help to deal with some of your feelings. I think things would have been far better for me had I done so many years ago.

I read something once that described grief very well. I can’t remember it exactly but I remember thinking it was accurate.

It described your mind as a square box, and grief is a big ball that fills that box at first, touching the sides of the box on all sides. All the other parts of your life are tiny balls filling the small gaps.
As time passes, the grief ball gradually gets smaller so it hits less frequently and the other balls get bigger. It’s always there, but other parts of your life gradually come back and take up more headspace. I’m not sure if I explained it very well but yes, in time it gets easier.
You’re still at the stage where it’s all consuming - that grief ball is constantly filling your mind. Sorry for your loss 💐

I heard someone say one time that grief doesn't become lighter, you just become more used to carrying it. That is kind of how I have felt. I lost both of my parents in my early twenties and I still miss them every day and that will always be with me, but it's easier.

I think you need to redefine 'normal'. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross wrote

“The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.”

My experience is that grief leaves you battered and hollowed out, but after a while the agony is less and eventually you get to choose what to do with that huge hole in your life. I decided that filling it with things I'd learned from my bereavement was better than filling it with anger, pain and resentment and I made an effort to acknowledge the good that has come from it. I learned things from it that I would not be without. I just wish I could have learned them another way.

I lost my sister when I was 17 and my mum 5years ago. My sister it took aFew years to feel normal. Now over 30 years later I occasionally think of her but I don’t grieve or feel sad unless I replay her death/funeral in my head. My mum had a painful drawn out death. I felt a lot of relief. I still miss her but my grief isn’t acute anymore.

But every one and every situation is different. There’s no right or wrong

Very sorry for your loss. I lost my mum when I was 32 and my brother at 34 - both cases it was very sudden and unexpected. That was more than a decade ago, and yes, I feel “normal” almost all the time. Every so often I do feel a wave of overwhelming grief - but they come less and less frequently. I miss them both, a lot, but the fog of devastation in the immediate aftermath has definitely gone.

I lost my mum when I was youngish, and my dad a few years back. Living around it for me means the acceptance that my life has fundamentally changed, and a part of it can't be returned to. A bit like closing the door to a room and knowing you'll never go in again.
However, I still have all the other rooms in the house open to me, with new doors appearing ever so often. And the things in those rooms are different but just as beautiful.
In practical terms, it means that in my day to day, I'm happy and enjoy and feel fulfilled by my life. I don't think about my parents all the time, and when I do, it might be a passing thought or a funny one or one that makes me feel happy.
Now and again something will trigger a sadness. My mum not being there for important milestones, thinking how much my dad would have loved this or that. The death of other people, my friends parents, my parents friends. Then I might even have a little cry. But mainly, time has given me another life, full of other people and distractions, so it passes and doesn't hurt too much for too long anymore.