The Grief That Wouldn’t Let Mara Go — And How She Found Her Way Back

Mara lost her mother in March. By June, she had cleared the flat, sorted the paperwork, organised the service, and written the thank-you cards. By July, everyone else had moved on.

Mara hadn’t moved on. Mara was barely moving at all.

She was 45. She’d been close to her mother in the quiet, unglamorous way of adult daughters who speak every few days about nothing in particular — the television, a recipe, a small irritation from the day. It was the texture of her life, and now it was gone. What surprised her was not the magnitude of the grief. It was its physical weight. Some mornings, she woke up and couldn’t understand why her limbs felt too heavy to lift.

She had not expected grief to live in her body. She had thought it would live in her mind, and she would be able to think her way through it.

What Grief Actually Is (And Why We’re All Taught to Do It Wrong)

Western culture has developed a profoundly unhelpful relationship with grief. We celebrate efficiency in mourning — the speed of return to function, the ability to “stay strong,” the reframing of loss as an opportunity for growth. We give the grieving person a few weeks before asking, implicitly or explicitly, whether they’re “getting back to normal.”

Bessel van der Kolk’s foundational research on trauma and the body makes clear that loss — especially the loss of someone deeply woven into the texture of daily life — is stored not just as thought but as body memory. The nervous system, accustomed to signals that indicated safety and connection (a particular voice, a specific phone number on the screen, the habit of Sunday calls), continues to search for those signals. When they’re not there, the body registers a threat. Grief, physiologically, is partially the body processing the absence of something it had been calibrated to expect.

Mara’s heaviness wasn’t depression, though it resembled it. It was her nervous system searching for something that was no longer there.

The Grief That Wouldn’t Follow the Schedule

Mara’s first mistake — if it can be called that — was assuming grief had a timeline. She expected to be “better by autumn.” Autumn came and went. She felt guilty that she wasn’t further along. The guilt about the grief added a new layer of suffering to the original grief.

Her therapist introduced her to the work of grief scholar William Worden and his Four Tasks of Mourning — a model that is radically different from the (widely debunked) five-stage grief model. Worden’s framework understands grief not as a series of stages to pass through but as a set of active tasks to engage:

• Accepting the reality of the loss — not intellectually (Mara knew her mother was gone) but emotionally and sensorially.
• Working through the pain — feeling the grief rather than managing around it.
• Adjusting to a world without the person — including identity adjustments (Mara was no longer someone’s daughter in the active sense).
• Finding a way to remain connected to the deceased while embarking on new life — not letting go, but integrating.

Mara had done task one. She was actively avoiding task two.

The Three Things That Helped Her Find Her Way Back

1. Somatic Work — Moving the Grief Through the Body

Following van der Kolk’s body-based approach to processing trauma and loss, Mara’s therapist introduced gentle somatic practices: deliberate, slow breathing with awareness placed on body sensations; a weekly yoga class specifically designed for grief; and the practice of placing one hand on her chest when the heaviness came and saying, simply, “I know.” Not a cure. A form of acknowledgement that the body understood.

The weight didn’t lift immediately. But it began to feel less like something crushing her and more like something she was carrying — and carrying, she discovered, was possible in a way that being crushed was not.

2. Continuing Bonds — Staying Connected

Modern grief psychology has moved significantly from the old model of “letting go.” The concept of continuing bonds — maintaining an ongoing relationship with the deceased through memory, ritual, and internal dialogue — is now well-supported by research and widely practised in grief therapy.

Mara began a small ritual: Sunday mornings, she would make the same tea her mother drank, sit in the chair her mother had always sat in during visits, and talk to her. Not performatively. Not for anyone else’s benefit. Just to maintain the thread of relationship that death had changed but not severed. This practice, which might sound unusual, gave Mara something her grief had been desperately missing: a way to remain a daughter.

3. Allowing Grief to Be Non-Linear

Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy principle — that meaning can be found even in the most painful human experiences — shaped Mara’s relationship to her grief’s unpredictability. There would be good weeks followed by a day that knocked her flat. Rather than reading the setbacks as proof she wasn’t healing, she began reading them as proof that her mother had mattered enough to produce grief of genuine depth. The grief, reframed, became testimony to the love.

That reframe didn’t make grief painless. It made it bearable.

Where Mara Is Now

Two years on, Mara still has Sundays with her mother’s tea. The heavy mornings still come sometimes, but less often, and she moves through them differently now — with the confidence of someone who has learned that grief peaks and passes and that she, reliably, survives it.

She is not over the loss. She does not expect to be. She has, instead, made room for it — as a permanent and not unwelcome part of who she is now.

For more on grief and healing, explore our Heal resource hub and our piece on emotional resilience through loss. If your grief feels overwhelming, please reach out to a professional — BetterHelp has grief-specialist therapists available online.

If You Are Carrying a Loss Right Now

1. Release the timeline. Grief has no schedule. The expectation that it should is itself a source of suffering.
2. Feel it in your body, not just your mind. Put a hand on your chest. Breathe slowly. Let the sadness be somewhere, rather than suppressed everywhere.
3. Find a way to stay connected. A ritual, a photograph, a chair, a Sunday morning. The relationship changed. It didn’t end.

This content is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health care. Grief can be complex and sometimes requires professional support. Please reach out to a licensed therapist if you are struggling. If you are in crisis, please contact your local emergency services or a crisis helpline.