How long does grief last?

Learning to live with the death of someone close to you can take a long time, and just as everyone’s grief is different, each person feels differently as time passes after a bereavement.

This short video about how long grief lasts was produced for our Grief Kind campaign to help people support those they care about who are grieving. However, the information in it is also relevant if you are grieving and have questions around how long it will last. It might also provide some ideas for ways you could ask people to help support you.

You and the people around you may have expectations about how quickly you should move on. But grief changes over time, as you understand how different your life is without the person.

We are all different and there is no timetable or grief timeline for how long it will take you.

In the early stages of grief you may be caught up in a whirlwind of things that you need to do and sort out, or you may feel shocked and numb.

After several months, the initial support you had from friends and family may start to fade. At the same time, as people start to provide less support, you may find you start to feel less numb.

It generally takes about a year to realise how much has changed in your life, both emotionally and practically. Some things only come up once a year, like celebrating a birthday or Christmas, or doing something the person who has died used to do, like renewing the car insurance. Each time one of these things happens, you are reminded of your bereavement, and your feelings of grief may come to the surface.

It may feel as if you are on an emotional roller coaster, where one minute you are coping and the next you feel overwhelmed by grief. You are likely to find you have some good days and some bad days.

As time passes, the balance between good days and bad days shifts and gradually you will find you have more good days and fewer bad days. But these changes are gradual, and each person is different, so the balance for you may not be the same as someone else after the same length of time.

Some of the physical symptoms of grief, such as having trouble sleeping and losing your appetite, also lessen over time. Taking care of yourself by eating well, getting some exercise and sleeping will help you to feel better in yourself and to cope.

Although the intensity of your feelings may lessen over time, there is no timetable for how long you will grieve. The length of time is different for each person.

For most people their mourning period is a long process and it can take years. After about two years you are likely to know the places, events and occasions that trigger your emotions. As you start to know these, you will also learn what helps you to cope with them.

After a while people around you – family, friends and colleagues at work – may forget what you have been through, or may encourage you to move on. You yourself may even feel that you ought to have moved on. But the goal is not to move on. Your grief is not something that can or should be “fixed”. The goal is to find a way to live with and cope with your feelings.

You may eventually come to a point where your feelings of grief are a reminder of the person, and that in itself can be a source of comfort.

You may be thinking to yourself ‘Is how I’m feeling normal?’ We asked some members of our Online Bereavement Community to describe some of the hardest parts of learning to live with grief and gathered their experiences together here.

Exploring Am I Normal? Common thoughts and feelings may be reassuring as you learn you are not alone in how you are feeling and help you reflect on why you may be feeling the way you do.

The idea of growing around grief is one that many people have found helpful in recent years. It may help you see a more hopeful future for yourself, without the pressure to ‘move on’.

Sometimes, when you are grieving, it can feel as if you will never feel like yourself again. Often your daily life and activities are disrupted because the person who has died has been a part of it. Some of the hardest things can be simple, everyday activities that remind you of your loss. Learning to build a new ‘normal’ for yourself and finding new meanings in your activities and roles is part of the process of learning to live with grief.

When someone dies you may find that you are rebuilding your own identity. This can feel like a very hard thing to do, particularly as some of your friendships and relationships may change. You may be surprised by some of the people who might provide support and comfort to you as you adjust.

Rebuilding your life in this way can be slow. You might feel overwhelmed by grief and not able to face anything new, but over time your life will regain shape and meaning.

Finding a new balance does not mean that there is no place in your life for the person who has died. The bond you had with them will continue, and lots of people, particularly if it is their partner who has died, carry on talking to the person. This is a normal and healthy response to the death of someone you are close to. Sometimes having a particular routine or ritual can help you to reconnect with them, such as visiting the place where their ashes are scattered, or going on a walk that you did together.

As with grief after any bereavement, there will be no set timeline for how long your grief will last after your partner’s death. However you feel, remember that there is no right or wrong way to grieve for your partner. Everyone deals with a bereavement in their own way and this is the same when a partner dies. Take the time to grieve in your own way and don’t be too hard on yourself.

There is no way to say how long your grief will last after the death of your mum, dad or other parental figure. Everybody’s experience of grief is different. You may find that you go through different emotions as you try to process the death of your mum or dad. Your grief might leave you feeling shocked and sad, but you might also become angry about their death, feel guilty or feel regret.

By highlighting parents and partners above, we are not suggesting you will feel a different or lesser grief with other relationships such as siblings, children, friends and grandparents. We just know that these are two of the most common experiences that bring people to this page.

Your grief and how deeply it affects you is determined by a huge variety of factors, including your relationship, the circumstances of their death, how you were feeling at the time and much more. There is no wrong way to grieve. You deserve support however you are feeling and whatever your relationship was to the person who has died.

There may be some thoughts and feelings you share with others grieving someone with the same relationship as you. And it may be comforting for you to explore what these are and why in our information pages on:

• Losing a sibling
• Coping with the loss of a baby or child
• Coping with the death of a friend
• Losing a grandparent