There’s no doubt – grief is intense. But does that mean our response must match the intensity? This week, I wanted to invite us into a gentler way of approaching our grief work. One that helps eliminate the shame or guilt of doing less and allows us to expand into small and steady expressions of healing and integration.
We live in a world of spectrums – color, light, energy, emotion. Like pendulums, some swing wildly with pressure while others shift quietly and hold steady. As human beings, our ability to act and function is just as fluid. Despite what may feel like stuckness, we have an incredible tendency to wiggle our way into the work that loosens the bonds. It’s just that sometimes that’s really hard to notice. Sometimes our wiggling feels like struggling. Sometimes it feels fruitless and empty – and so in response to that sensation of stagnation, we swing hard for the fences – believing a home run is the only measure of success when we feel this behind.
Beloved griever and friend, hear me when I say this: All progress is progress. Slow progress is better than no progress. And what feels like backward progress or loss is more expansion than you can possibly realize. Here’s another example, and I realize I’m mixing metaphors here – pendulums, baseball, and now soccer teams – but stay with me because growth and movement happen in each of them for the same reason: pressure applied over time.
This fall, the soccer team I coach earned a bronze medal in a rainy tournament – a big win for a season riddled with injuries. Going into our final game, we already knew we’d finish third, even as we faced the undefeated first-place team. So I told my players to take risks and have fun. We lost 5–1, but in the last ten seconds, my players scored the only goal anyone had made against that team all weekend. The uproar from our sidelines was wild – parents, coaches, everyone cheering like we’d just won the whole thing. The other team walked off subdued, while other spectators looked confused by our celebration. But as we accepted our bronze medals, it was clear we’d gained far more than a win: we’d learned to find joy in the middle of loss.
When I was a player, coaching was purely about the win. In my tenure as a soccer coach, I’ve witnessed countless coaches shouting down their players (children, remember?) for bad touches, missed goals, and low effort on the field. These types of coaches see the sport and life as a black and white outcome. Where only the match winners are successful and losers are never good enough.
Our grief work is easy to shove into this same framework. Only the most hopeful people are successful with grieving and the grievers who remain are never healing enough. Have you placed that same pressure on yourself? I sure have. In different ways, the intensity of my loss and desire to feel differently has pushed the proverbial finish line farther than the horizon. The fact that a finish line is even part of the conversation is pressure itself – who said grief would come to an end?
The spectrum of our healing experience is not about finding a place in the process and saying, “Okay – healthy enough. Now I can live again.” It is about learning how to live joyfully and intentionally in the process of healing. If healing is an ongoing process that we are all experiencing, at what point can we name ourselves as ready to live again?
Stay there with me for a moment. In my own grief work, there have been months and years where I felt as though life was on hold. I could not find the energy or the courage to be joyful. I did not know that both were possible. And when I was in the middle of a joyful moment, I consciously and subconsciously hesitated, lest I disregard the grief I also felt.
And that’s when I realized something important about my own grief work: I was so afraid of bypassing my pain that I started bypassing my joy.
Joy is a small, feisty, ever present and patient guide. But I viewed joy as the end goal. Healing as a permanent state of “healed.” My assumptions led to intense attempts to reconcile the pain. Lots of retreats and books and lessons; constant retreating from daily life, not to wallow but certainly to resist playfulness or lightheartedness. It felt like a betrayal of the work.
And that’s what I want to invite you to learn – what feels like a betrayal may just be an invitation to honor the slow and steady. Consistency in our grief work isn’t sexy. It’s not showing up on the internet claiming to be healthy and healed, covered in filters and sharing only a snapshot of the life we lead.
Consistency is messy. It’s bold. It’s uncomfortable. It is often measurable but feels like failure.
Let me offer a few snapshots of the consistency in my life lately. If you would look me in the eye and claim I’m failing at tending my grief, then perhaps you are also a little more centered on the intensity scale than allowing yourself to be on a spectrum of healing and living.
Instead of ruminating on a frustration moment, I offered myself four minutes to box breathe. Instead of holding back my tears of hurt, I was honest in a recent conversation. Instead of pretending I was okay, I took the days off and turned off my phone. Instead of rushing into the next thing, I slowed my body down and chose to breathe for 30 seconds before moving again. Instead of doing it alone, I confessed my pain to a friend. Instead of assuming their intent, I asked what they meant and clarified my boundary.
These are all moments where I can choose consistency and move with small intentions, or I can lean into the intensity I sense all the time. I could have yelled at the person who hurt me. I could have pushed through the illness and kept working myself to the bone. I could have hidden my pain and pretended to be fine.
Our healing isn’t about learning enough, doing enough, saying the right things, or resting enough. Healing work is about learning to integrate the things we’ve learned and experienced into our new experience. We are reshaping our inner landscapes, one neural pathway at a time. The brain goes slowly – that’s not a YOU thing – that’s a human thing. Pretending we need the intensity as our only mode of change means the only change we’ll validate are the monumental ones; the very changes that likely pointed us to grief in the first place. And that makes sense – if it hurts really big, it must need a really big response. But big things don’t start big. Healing isn’t huge at first. It’s molecular; tiny, and slow, and small, and consistent.
Thank you for listening to episode 216 of Restorative Grief. I wrote this essay on a foggy fall morning. The leaves are orange and brown and falling, and the gray sky makes my view a little less perfect than normal. But the consistency of sitting at my desk and listening to my heart and my gut and my brain and my spirit work together for the words I need is a gift to my own intense little self: a reminder that we must slow down, express the things we carry, and let them transform into whatever they will become on their own. We can’t force healing; we can only foster it. So whether your healing feels monumental or molecular, remember: what matters most is showing up with gentle consistency. The work works — even when it feels small.
If this is your first time listening to Restorative Grief with Mandy Capehart, I’m just so grateful you found your way here. This little project of love and consistency over the last five years has led to incredible growth and healing for thousands of people, and I am honored to count you as among the insightful and growing group of healers. Please be sure to leave a review and subscribe to the podcast so you’ll get each weekly episode on time. Thank you to the patrons of the show, who support the Restorative Grief community by keeping these episodes alive. Check out the show notes if you’re interested in learning more about becoming a Patron of the work for as little as $2/month. And as always, before we go, one last thing. Please remember, the only solution for grief is to do the work of grieving. Thank you for listening. I’ll see you next week.
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