Beyond Therapy: The Wisdom of Grief Tending vs. Fixing
In much of modern mental health and psychology, grief is treated as a problem to solve or a set of symptoms to manage. We see grief categorized into stages, measured by timelines, or diagnosed when it doesn’t resolve “fast enough.” But grief is not an illness nor a disorder. It is a natural, human, and deeply spiritual response to loss — the most raw human experience.
When we try to fix or pathologize grief, we rob it of its wisdom. Grief isn’t meant to be eliminated; it’s meant to be felt and witnessed. It carries us through paradoxical waves — pain and love, absence and presence, endings and beginnings. In embodying this paradox, we bring wisdom from the formless into form, making ourselves and those we touch just a bit wiser.
To rush through grief or label it as maladaptive is to bypass its ability to reshape us into something more open, more compassionate, and more alive. Yet too often, it is divided into “uncomplicated” versus “complicated” categories to fit prescriptive frameworks, reducing a sacred, universal human experience into clinical checkboxes and treatments.
I approach grief tending not as therapy and not within the traditional mental health framework, but as a sacred practice, a threshold crossing, and an experience of presence. Loss—whether of a person, a relationship, a role, or even a cherished vision of life—forever changes us. The task isn’t to return to who we were, but to let grief transform us into who we are becoming.
As a death doula and hospice volunteer, I’ve learned that what grief needs most is compassionate presence: someone witnessing, holding, tending, and relating. It is the witnessing that helps absorb the pain and make the paradox easier to carry. This requires the practitioner to be self-emptied, so they can hold space without imposing or fixing.
With presence and space, our innate human nature knows how to move through the natural oscillating waves of grief. Grief requires compassion, presence, and witnessing, not correcting, fixing, or judging.
Grief cracks the heart open… The question is not how to make the crack go away, but how to let it open us wider rather than close—to love more deeply, to connect more honestly, to live more fully in the fragile and fleeting beauty of life.
This is the work of grief tending: to walk with grief, not around it, and to discover the quiet aliveness it carries within.
The deeper the grief, the deeper the capacity for love. Wisdom is always a paradox, just like grief.
You could re-read this entire post and substitute “grief” with “trauma” and it still stands, but one critique at a time.
If you feel called to tend your grief in a sacred, compassionate way, I’d be honored to walk with you.
Warmly,
Susan Reis
