Grief Is Not a Season—It’s a Language We Learn to Speak

There’s a phrase I used to hear all the time:

“Grief is just a season.”

At first, I clung to it like a lifeline. A season meant temporary. A season meant there would be an end. A season meant I could eventually go back to who I was before the loss.

But now, twenty-five years after losing my son Drew, I know better.

Grief is not a season.

It’s a language—one we are forced to learn when our world splits apart. A language of silence, ache, surrender, memory, and presence. A language that shapes the way we move through the world forever.

And like any language, it takes time to understand. Time to become fluent. Time to learn how to speak it, not just feel swallowed by it.

The First Words We Learn in Grief

In the beginning, grief only knows how to scream.

It doesn’t come with words or wisdom. It comes with a roar—a guttural, breathless, bottomless wail that language cannot hold. That’s how it was for me in the hours after Drew died. The sound that escaped me was something I didn’t recognize in myself.

It was raw. It was primal. It was truth.

And it was the beginning of my fluency in a language I never wanted to learn.

When the World Speaks a Different Language

One of the most painful parts of grief is realizing how few people around you speak it.

You’re walking through a grocery store with a broken heart, while everyone else talks about weekend plans and birthday parties. You go back to work and people expect you to “be okay” again, as if the return to routine means the return to your former self.

They don’t mean harm. They’re just speaking a different language—one of goals and tasks and surface-level conversation.

And you? You’re listening for echoes of your child’s voice in a quiet room. You’re deciphering meaning in a song, a scent, a flicker of light that feels like a message. You’re still holding their toothbrush. Their favorite cup.

You’re speaking grief. And it feels like no one else can understand.

Finding the Words to Stay Alive

There’s a point in grief—different for each of us—when we stop trying to survive the pain and start trying to understand it.

That’s when grief begins to shift from chaos into communication. From screaming into whispering. From a force that flattens us to one that speaks to us—if we’re willing to listen.

I remember when I began to journal again. I didn’t have anything profound to say. All I could write was:

“I got out of bed today. I fed the dog. I cried in the car.”

But even that was progress. It meant I was starting to give shape to my sorrow. Starting to find rhythm in the storm. Starting to interpret the language of grief, one fragile word at a time.

The Language Evolves

Over time, the way grief speaks to us changes.

In the beginning, it’s all pain.

Then it becomes memory.

Then it becomes perspective.

And sometimes—when we least expect it—it becomes love again.

Not the kind of love we once knew. Not the cuddles and giggles and hand-holding kind. But a spiritual, infinite, knowing kind. A love that transcends time and space and touches you in the quiet.

Sometimes I feel Drew in the way a breeze moves through a room. In the lyrics of a song I wasn’t expecting. In a stranger’s laugh that sounds just like his.

That’s grief, speaking in a new dialect.

That’s love, answering back.

Grief Fluency in the Real World

You don’t stop grieving.

You learn to grieve well.

You learn to let it move through you without controlling you.

You learn when to speak it and when to hold it in silence.

You learn how to show up in joy and still carry your loss with grace.

This is fluency.

This is what it means to live inside the language of grief while still building a life worth living.

Speaking Grief in Relationships

Learning to speak grief doesn’t just help us understand ourselves—it helps us communicate with others.

It teaches us how to ask for what we need. How to say “I’m not okay” without apology.

It teaches us to hold space for others without needing to fix them.

It teaches us how to sit in discomfort, to bear witness, to be present.

Grief made me a better mother to my living children. A better partner. A better friend. A better guide for others. Not because I figured out how to get over the loss—but because I learned how to stay with it, and with myself, and still live.

You Don’t Have to Be Fluent Yet

If you’re still in the screaming phase—where words don’t work and nothing makes sense—I want you to know:

You’re not broken. You’re learning.

Grief doesn’t come with a dictionary. There are no phrasebooks. No easy translations.

But the more you meet yourself in it, the more fluency you gain.

One day, you’ll find yourself explaining your grief in a way that helps someone else feel seen.

One day, you’ll notice beauty again—and realize that grief has taught you to notice it more deeply.

One day, your grief will say something so honest and so clear, you’ll feel your own soul nod in agreement.

And that’s when you’ll know:

You didn’t get over it.

You didn’t let go.

You learned how to speak it.

Grief Has a Voice. Let It Speak.

We don’t need to silence grief. We need to give it vocabulary.

We don’t need to outrun it. We need to understand its rhythms.

We don’t need to deny it. We need to learn how to live inside it.

Grief is not a season. It’s not temporary. It’s not linear.

It’s a sacred language—and when we learn to speak it, we also learn how to live again.