“Time heals all wounds” is an adage that people often express when someone is grieving, but if grief is a wound, surely it will heal and fade away?
For many of us, this simply isn’t the case. We may expect that, with time, our grief will grow smaller, but what if it doesn’t?
Dr Lois Tonkin developed a new way of thinking about grief. At first, grief can be all-consuming. It can feel like our life has been eclipsed by this grief.
As time goes on, rather than this grief shrinking, our life begins to grow around it. The loss is still there, as large as ever, but life slowly expands around it.
Rather than grief being viewed as a wound that should heal or a problem that needs to be solved, Tonkin’s theory accepts that grief is a part of who we are now. It accounts for how, on certain days like birthdays or death anniversaries, the grief that was experienced when the loss first occurred can feel just as intense and painful, no matter how much time has passed.
Instead of ‘getting over’ the loss and ‘moving on’, we are learning to live with our grief by carrying our loved one with us.
