Analogies Unique to Grieving

When you are walking through grief, it can be hard to explain how you’re doing or what your loss feels like. Many analogies and metaphors have been written to describe individual loss experiences, and perhaps one of these listed below will help you more accurately describe your own experiences.

1. "Grief is like a heavy weight on my chest that I can't shake off." This analogy accurately captures the physical and emotional feeling of grief, which can often feel overwhelming and difficult to move on from.

2. "Grief is like a wave that comes in and out, sometimes overwhelming me and other times receding into the background." This analogy accurately captures the fluctuation of grief and how it can ebb and flow, sometimes more manageable and other times feeling unbearable.

3. "Grief is like a never-ending journey, it changes as time goes on, but it never truly goes away." This analogy accurately captures the idea that grief is a process. It's not something that can be "fixed" or "cured" but something that one learns to live with and becomes a part of one's life.

4. "Grief is like a hole in my heart that can never be filled." This analogy accurately captures the loss and emptiness that comes with the death of a loved one, especially a mother, and how that hole can never be filled.

5. "Grief is like a heavy cloak that I wear, it's always with me, but I learn to carry it with grace." This analogy accurately captures the idea that grief is something that is carried with you always, but over time, one learns to take it with more ease and grace.

6. "Grief is like a puzzle, you try to put the pieces together, but some of them will always be missing" This analogy accurately captures the feeling of trying to make sense of loss and trying to understand the void left by the death of a mother, and how it can be hard to understand and put together.

7. “Grief is like a catastrophic physical injury.” The hurt of loss and the grief that comes with it has such a physical effect it often feels like a painful bodily injury.

8. “Loss is like a person called Grief.” In this analogy, grief comes to be with you after losing your loved one. They are with you constantly, and no one else can see it. In the beginning, grief scares you, and you hate its presence. But as time passes, you get used to suffering and understand it’s your constant companion. 

9. “Grief is like a broken foundation.” In this analogy, losing a loved one crumbles the foundation of life, weakening everything you believed to be true. The work that comes through healing in your grief is to repair your foundation. 

10. “Grief is like a box with a ball in it and a pain button.” In this analogy, life is a box with a pain button inside. Each memory or trigger bounces around and hits the pain button without warning.  

It could be an exercise of healing to begin to put words to your grief. With a blank journal or the notes app on your phone, you, too, could start to pen words that describe your feelings of loss—remembering that there is no right or wrong way to move through this exercise. If you’re stuck, try prompts like, “For me, grief is like…” and see where your heart takes you.