I often return to this thought: what we call grief symptoms are often soul yearnings wearing a different face.
The restlessness you cannot explain. The sudden disinterest in things that once mattered. The longing that will not quiet, even when you beg it to. The tears that show up at strange times for reasons you cannot name.
We are taught to see these as symptoms — as things to manage, to medicate, to wait out. And sometimes they are. Grief is real and the body carries it.
But sometimes what looks like a symptom is actually your soul trying to get your attention.
The restlessness, because you are not meant to go back to the life you had. The disinterest, because some of what filled your days was never really yours. The longing, because there is a truer version of you trying to be born through all of this.
Grief cracks us open. And in the cracking, the soul has room to speak in ways it could not before.
I’ve sat with so many people who were treating their grief like a malfunction — something to fix, something to push through, something to apologize for. And what I’ve watched, again and again, is that the moment they stopped fighting it and started listening to it, something shifted.
Not because the pain disappeared. But because it started to mean something.
So the next time something rises in you that feels like a grief symptom, you might try a different question. Instead of what is wrong with me — try what is my soul trying to say.
You might not have the answer right away. That’s fine. Just asking the question changes things.