Dear Hope: How Long Does Grief Last?

Dear Hope, How long does grief last? It’s been years and I still can’t get over my person. It feels like it’s never going to go away.

Let’s get one thing straight: Grief doesn’t come with an expiration date.

We’ve all heard the phrase that “time heals all wounds,” but anyone who’s actually been cracked open by loss knows the truth: time changes grief.  But it doesn’t necessarily or always feel “better”.  But healing? That’s not the same as forgetting. And it definitely isn’t the same as being “done.”

Grief doesn’t have a finish line.
It’s not a project you complete.
It’s not five stages you graduate from with a diploma and a gold star.

It’s something you live with.
Day after day. Year after year.
Sometimes minute by minute.

Honestly, you don't move on from grief.
You move with it.
You carry it into your morning coffee.
Into the songs you can’t listen to anymore.
Into the anniversaries that hit like a truck.

People love the idea of “closure” because it’s tidy. Grief is anything but tidy.

There’s no clean break. There’s no final chapter.
You’re not weak if you still cry five years later.
You’re not broken if the holidays still feel like walking barefoot over glass.

You're human. And you're grieving someone who mattered.

In the early days, grief is loud. It screams. It claws. It takes up all the air in the room.

Later, it might get quieter, but it never really leaves. It becomes something you learn to carry. Like a heavy coat in winter. Uncomfortable, but necessary. You might even forget you’re wearing it, until something reminds you. A smell. A joke they would’ve loved. A dream that leaves you wrecked in the morning.

Grief doesn’t always look like tears. Sometimes it looks like rage. Sometimes it looks like numbness. Sometimes it looks like laughing so hard at a memory that you start sobbing anyway.  Sometimes it looks like joy.

If You’re Wondering If It’s “Taking Too Long” here’s what I’ll say:

You are not too much.
You are not too sensitive.
You are not grieving “wrong.”

There is no right way to grieve.
No schedule. No chart.
No one gets to tell your heart when it should be “better.”

Grief doesn’t mean you’re broken.
It means you’re human.