Grief Isn’t a Season—It’s a Language I’m Learning to Speak

When my husband died, people told me grief was a season.

They meant well. They meant temporary. They meant “this too shall pass.”
And I wanted to believe them. I wanted my pain to be neatly bound within a calendar year, like winter giving way to spring. But grief didn’t listen. It didn’t thaw. It didn’t fade. It changed—and keeps changing—but it never truly left.

Now, I see it differently.
Grief isn’t a season.
It’s a language.

And I am still learning to speak it.

“To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven… a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.”
— Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4 (NKJV)

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The Vocabulary of Absence

Grief speaks in silences:
the empty side of the bed,
the texts you still can’t delete,
the conversations you start in your head and realize—mid-sentence—they’re not coming back.

It has its own vocabulary—unspoken, often untranslatable:

• The ache when your child achieves something and there's no one else who would cheer exactly like he would.

• The quiet stab when someone says, “You’re doing so well,” and they don’t see you cried in the shower this morning.

• The tightrope walk between “moving on” and “holding on.”

These aren’t things I can explain easily. They are felt. Like idioms of the soul.

“The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves such as have a contrite spirit.”
— Psalm 34:18 (NKJV)

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The Grammar of Triggers

I used to think grief was linear. Now I know it's more like learning a new dialect—one full of irregular verbs and unexpected accents. Some days, I understand it. I can sit with the memories, breathe through the pain, even feel joy in what was.

Other days, a smell, a date on the calendar, a song in the grocery store knocks the wind out of me.
And suddenly, I’m illiterate again.

I forget how to function in the world. I speak in tears. I stumble through the day like a foreigner in my own skin.

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me.”
— Psalm 23:4 (ESV)

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Fluency Takes Time

There is no crash course in grief. No Rosetta Stone for heartache.
But slowly, I’ve learned:

• How to say, “I miss you,” without words.

• How to carry someone’s memory without it crushing me.

• How to ask for help without apologizing for still needing it.

And yes—how to sit with others in their sorrow without trying to fix it.

Because when you’re learning this language, you realize how few people truly speak it. And how precious it is when someone simply sits beside you and listens without correcting your grammar.

“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”
— Galatians 6:2 (NKJV)

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Hope Has a Dialect Too

Even in this strange tongue, I’ve found grace.

Grief has taught me how deeply I loved.
How much I still do.
And how Jesus meets me here—not just to translate the sorrow, but to walk with me through it.

His Spirit groans with me, prays with me, and teaches me to hope again—not by forgetting, but by weaving memory into something redemptive.

“Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses... the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”
— Romans 8:26 (NKJV)

Maybe fluency isn’t the goal.
Maybe learning to speak grief is simply learning how to love after loss.
To live with the ache without being owned by it.

And maybe, just maybe, there’s a sacred dialect of joy that can only be spoken by those who’ve grieved deeply.

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So no, grief isn’t a season.
It’s a language.
And I’m still learning.

But I’m not alone.

“He will swallow up death forever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces...”
— Isaiah 25:8 (NKJV)