Grief is Not Linear: The Movement of Loss & Healing
Grief Moves Like Water
The West has a weird way of dealing with grief.
It wants grief to be contained, processed, and completed. It expects us to follow a map, to check off the “stages,” as if healing is a straight path away from loss.
But grief is not linear. Nor is it circular.
Grief is a living entity with no form—a force, a tide, an ocean.
The same water that greets the shores of Ayiti will eventually meet the land of Australia. The same grief that washes over us one day may drift into the background the next—only to rise again in ways we never expected.
We cannot schedule its arrival. We cannot command its departure.
We can only learn to move with it, to listen to it, to let it shape us.
Western Grief Models & the Illusion of Progress
Modern grief frameworks love predictability. The "Five Stages of Grief" model—while useful in some ways—has taught us to believe that grief is a process we can move through in a structured order.
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance
But what happens when you cycle back to anger after you thought you had found acceptance?
What happens when, after years of supposed healing, grief still knocks the wind out of you when you least expect it?
Western psychology often measures grief by how quickly one “recovers.” But what if grief isn’t something to recover from at all?
What if it is something we carry—a current that shapes us, a river we learn to swim in?
Grief is a Relationship, Not a Timeline
In Ifa, death is not the end. Our ancestors do not disappear—they transition into another form.
Grief, then, is not about letting go. It is about learning how to stay in relationship with those we have lost, with the parts of ourselves that have changed, and with the stories that still need tending.
Grief does not require us to move on. It requires us to move with.
Like water, it changes form—sometimes a crashing wave, sometimes a still and endless expanse. But it is always there, shaping the shorelines of our lives.
Tending to Grief as a Sacred Practice
If grief is something we live with rather than move beyond, then the question is not "How do I heal from grief?"
The question is: "How do I tend to it?"
Grief does not need to be solved. It needs to be witnessed, honored, and carried with care.
Some ways to tend to grief in its movement:
Water Rituals for Release – Visit the ocean, take a bath, pour a libation. Speak your grief into the water.
Breathwork & Stillness – Allow space to be with grief, rather than pushing it away.
Ancestral Connection – Name them. Call them forward. Let grief be a bridge rather than a wall.
Creative Expression – Write, paint, sing. Let grief move through you rather than become stagnant within you.
Grief does not ask us to “move on.” It asks us to move with it—to honor its ebbs and flows, to recognize its shape, to allow it to be what it is.
Walking With Grief: An Invitation
If you are seeking support in navigating loss, integrating grief into your life, or deepening your ancestral connection, I invite you to:
Grief is not something to be fixed.
It is something to be lived with, something to be carried, something that—when honored—becomes a river rather than a weight.
