GRIEF: A 3-Part Series for Women Navigating Loss 

There’s a quiet, almost unspoken expectation placed on women: be strong, keep yourself together, keep going. Even in the middle of grief, we become the ones who keep things moving, who tend to what needs tending, who show up for everyone else but ourselves. 

But grief doesn’t respond to performance. It asks something entirely different. It asks for presence. It desires to be in relationship with us.

What if, instead of resisting grief, you allowed it to sit beside you? Not as something to fix—but as something to witness.

Befriending grief begins when you release the idea that it’s something you’re supposed to overcome. Grief isn’t an obstacle. It isn’t a hurdle to jump. It isn’t a problem to resolve. It’s a season of reflection—of love, of attachment, of meaning, of reconciliation, of transformation. The depth of your grief speaks to the depth of what mattered and what still does.

And for many women, grief doesn’t come alone. It’s layered with expectation along with roles—daughter, partner, sister, aunt, mother, caregiver. There’s often this internal pressure to “stay strong” for everyone else, which leaves very little space to tend to your own heart. But real strength isn’t about holding it all together. It’s about allowing yourself to feel what’s authentically true.

Grief is also deeply unpredictable. It doesn’t follow a clean timeline or a checklist. You will feel steady one moment, and the next be completely undone by a scent, a song, the bananas in the produce section of the market, or a memory that catches you off guard. That’s not you failing in grief—that’s grief moving through you.

To begin befriending it, you have to give yourself permission.
Permission to feel deeply.
Permission to not have answers.
Permission to not be okay.

Permission to take time for you.

There is a gentle power in naming what’s real:
This hurts.
I miss them.

I hate this.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

When you stop resisting grief, something beautiful begins to happen. It doesn’t disappear, but begins to soften over time. It becomes less like a storm you’re trapped in and more like a tide—something that still has power to move, but something you can begin to move with. Tides come in and go out—always.

Women are so often the holders of everyone else’s emotional world. Befriending your grief means learning to hold yourself with the same level of care, compassion, and attention you give everyone else.

You don’t have to rush grief. This isn’t the grief Olympics.
You don’t have to make it look neat or put together. No lipstick needed.
You only have to be honest with yourself. The beginning of deep self-awareness.

Grief isn’t here to undo you. It’s here because you have experienced a loss. And that…is always worth honoring.

Invitation: befriend your grief.

Name what you’re feeling—without minimizing what you feel. Pause with hand over heart and say, “This is grief,” or “This is sadness.” Naming your emotions creates space between you and the intensity, allowing you to respond with compassion instead of expected performance.


Why resisting your grief may be making it harder to navigate—and what to do instead
By Pam Monjar, MA, LPC-MHSP, NCC, CGP