Held in the Heart of Grief
A Reflection on Loss, Pain, and the Quiet Power of Being Held
There are no words vast enough to fully capture the weight of grief. When someone we love dies, the world shifts in an instant. I remember when my father died, everything that once felt certain became blurred. The days became heavier, the nights longer. Time no longer behaved like I thought it should. Moments stretched and collapsed with little warning. I found myself reaching for a voice that wouldn’t answer, a hand that no longer was there, a presence that was suddenly… absence.
This is the pain of losing someone.
It is the ache of love with nowhere to go.
Grief, in its truest form, is not a problem to be solved or a wound to be quickly bandaged. It is a sacred unfolding, an experience of love’s deepest cost. It can feel raw and relentless—like waves crashing against the shore of our very being. And in those crashing moments, it’s easy to feel like we’re unraveling. That we are completely, utterly alone.
But grief, while deeply isolating, also carries within it a quiet truth: we are meant to be held.
Not fixed.
Not hurried.
But held.
To be held means someone sees your pain and stays.
It means allowing yourself to be supported—not only by others, but by something larger: memory, nature, spirit, love itself.
It may come through a friend who simply listens without judgment. It may come through ritual—lighting a candle, writing a letter, whispering their name into the stillness. It may come through the embrace of nature—digging in the earth, looking into the trees that remain rooted through every season, hearing the birds that keep singing, or the way the sun still rises even when our hearts are heavy.
To be held is not to remove the grief—it is to be accompanied within it. As a grief counselor, I often witness the tension between wanting to “move on” and the longing to be still, to feel, to remember. The truth is, we don’t move on from grief. We oscillate between worlds. We carry it. We integrate it. And sometimes, we collapse beneath its weight—but even there, we are not abandoned.
Imagine a forest after a storm. Branches broken. Leaves scattered. The silence after the wind. But the roots—deep below the surface—remain. Still connected. Still strong.
This is the quiet work of grief.
This is the work of being held.
You don’t need to be strong every moment. You don’t need to explain your sorrow or make it tidy. You don’t need to rush through the mourning process. Instead, you give yourself permission to pause and lean into whatever holds you—your breath, your faith, your memories, your people, the earth itself.
Grief is not a journey we take alone.
Even in the darkest nights, there is a presence that meets us—sometimes unseen, sometimes unnoticed, but always there.
We are held in the memory of love.
Held in the rhythm of life that continues.
Held by others who have known this sorrow too.
And when the ache rises again—and it will—may you feel, even for a moment, that you are not alone in it.
You are being held.
Written by Lisa Story, MSCP, LPC, CT
Founder & Clinical Director
Focus of the Month | Be Held
Flower of the Month | Gentian
Essential Oil of the Month | Melaleuca (Tea Tree