It's been six months, a year or maybe three years and someone, with the best of intentions, says something like "aren't you feeling better by now?" You smile and say “yes” because it's easier than explaining that grief doesn't really work like that.

As a counsellor in Surrey and Hampshire, one of the things I find myself saying most often is this: there is no timeline for grief. And yet so many of us carry a quiet shame about how long it's taking or why a perfectly ordinary Tuesday can still knock us sideways without warning.

Grief is most often associated with death and, of course, losing someone you love is one of the heaviest things a person can carry. But grief shows up in other places too. The end of a relationship. A diagnosis. A job you loved. A version of your life that didn't turn out the way you imagined. Loss comes in many shapes and so does the pain that follows it.

What makes grief so hard to navigate is that it isn't linear. You might feel fine for weeks and then hear a song, catch a smell, see a date on the calendar and suddenly you're right back in it. It’s not a setback. It’s just how grief works. It doesn't move in a straight line from pain to recovery. It circles back. It sits quietly for a while and then resurfaces when you least expect it.

The five stages of grief, which most of us have heard of, were never meant to be a checklist. They were an attempt to describe experiences that many people share and not a process you're supposed to complete in order and then be done with. Real grief is messier than that and more personal.

What I'd gently encourage, if you're in the middle of it, is to stop measuring yourself against where you think you should be. Grief takes as long as it takes. That isn't weakness. It's a reflection of how much something mattered to you.

And if you're finding it hard to carry alone, or if grief is starting to affect your daily life, your relationships, or your sense of who you are, that's worth talking to someone about.

At Imogen Ellis-Jones Counselling I offer a space to do exactly that. No pressure to be further along than you are. Just a place to be honest about where you're at.