Grief Doesn’t Always Look Like Crying
Someone at the funeral tells you how strong you’re being. You nod, say thank you, and don’t bother explaining that you don’t feel strong at all. You feel like you’re watching the whole day happen to somebody else, from somewhere just behind your own eyes.
That’s the bit nobody warns you about. Grief is supposed to look a certain way. Tears, a black dress, a box of tissues passed quietly down the pew. So when it doesn’t show up like that, you start to wonder what’s wrong with you.
Maybe you went back to work after four days because the silence at home was worse than the small talk in the office. Maybe you’ve caught yourself laughing properly at something on telly two weeks later, then felt sick with guilt about it five minutes after. Maybe you didn’t cry at the funeral at all, and you’ve been quietly carrying that around like evidence against yourself ever since.
None of that means you’re cold, or coping brilliantly, or doing it wrong. It means grief doesn’t read the textbook. There’s no five stages politely queuing up in order. Some people cry for a year solid. Some people go numb for six months and then it catches them completely off guard in the cereal aisle on an ordinary Tuesday in March, for no reason they can point to.
Here’s the thing about loss. You’ll spend days choosing the right hymn, the right coffin, the right words for the order of service. You’ll agonise over the flowers. Nobody hands you a checklist for what to do with the part of you that’s now missing. Nobody tells you that forgetting your own front door code for a fortnight is normal, or that snapping at your kids over nothing is grief wearing a different coat, or that functioning isn’t the same as fine.
You can chair the meeting, make the school run, hold the whole week together, and still be quietly falling apart underneath it. Coping and healing aren’t the same thing. Most people only find that out the hard way, usually much later than they needed to.
I’m Mark, a counsellor and hypnotherapist, and I come to you. Your sofa, your kitchen table, wherever you already feel like yourself. I work across Dorset, in Dorchester, Bournemouth, Poole, Shaftesbury, and out as far as Yeovil over the Somerset border. No clinical room with a box of tissues on a side table. No waiting room. No sitting in a car park afterwards trying to put your face back together before you drive home, on top of everything else.
You don’t need to be at some imagined rock bottom to deserve support. You don’t need a tidy explanation of what you’re feeling, or proof that it’s bad enough to count. Most people start with “I’m not really sure why I’m ringing, but it’s been a while and I just don’t feel like myself.” That’s enough. That’s the whole reason to call.
If grief has stopped looking like the thing you expected, and started looking like exhaustion, or numbness, or guilt, or just not being able to find your way back to yourself, get in touch. A call or text on 07968 696 664, or an email to mark@unboggleyourmarbles.co.uk. Sometimes the hardest part is just the first conversation, and that one can happen right where you’re sitting now.
