The Button of Grief - An Analogy

Sometimes it's only analogies that can get you through these days

There’s a button in a box. A button of grief.

When the button is pressed, it releases all emotions associated with grief - sadness, anger, confusion, guilt, any feeling associated with the umbrella of loss.

Within this box, there’s also a ball.

In the early stages of loss, whether it be losing a loved one, a life you wanted, a relationship ending, or any of the complicated situations that can bring about grief, the box is really small.

Because the box is so small, the ball takes up the entire box and is constantly pressing the button. All that’s felt is a constant stream of grief - the overflow of emotions associated with the loss. The box is so small that this grief never lets up.

But, over time, the box starts to grow. This growth is representative of life moving on, of your life getting bigger as you take each day by day, as you meet new people, have new experiences, and begin on the life that you may not have wanted, but must embark on anyways.

The box grows and grows and grows, and the ball has so much more space now, so it bounces around the entire box, hitting the button less and less frequently. When it’s not hitting the button, there’s space for these other experiences, thoughts, and emotions to start to creep in - for a life outside of this grief.

Every now and then the ball hits the button again and the grief is pushed. It could be a random Tuesday at the grocery store and all of a sudden you’re overcome by a wave of sadness, or of the what-if scenarios, or the anger of why this happened.

These feelings of grief overwhelm you, feeling just as intense and just as deep as if it all happened yesterday.

Everyone says grief comes in waves - it does. But what they fail to tell us is that while the waves come less often as time moves forward, they crash into you just as hard. That button doesn’t decrease its intensity, just its frequency.

We can’t always control when the ball hits the button. We can’t always control the spur of emotions that can come with the grief. All you can do is greet yourself with open arms, allowing the feelings to be there for as long as needed, and just sit with them. You don’t need to try to change it or let it pass, for that will happen on its own.

Just let it be. While it’s not easy to do, it’s the only way. The only way through is through.