The price of having loved: A guide to navigating complex grief

Mourning someone or something dear to us is a profound, devastating, and life-changing experience. Whether we’re grieving a relationship, the death of a loved one, health declines, or other drastic transitions, processing the loss can be all-consuming.

Few people make it far into adulthood without experiencing grief in some form, and yet the concept is still widely misunderstood and, in some circles, taboo to discuss. 

Catherine Ashton created Critical Info to help Australians prepare for and navigate bereavement. 

After surviving a serious car accident in 2019 and losing a loved one suddenly in 2023, she realised how a lack of readiness can compound the confusion, stress, and suffering that follows the death of someone dear to us. 

What do we mean when we talk about grief?

Grief is a universal human experience, but many of us may not understand the myriad ways grief can show up in our lives. 

“One of the biggest misconceptions is that grief only shows up when someone dies,” said Ashton.

“That simply isn’t true. Some of the most profound grief I’ve experienced wasn’t about death at all.” 

She recalls the intense anguish that followed the car accident she survived in her 40s, which caused her to leave a career she had built for more than 13 years.

“That loss hit me in ways I didn’t expect,” she said.

“I felt isolated, I questioned who I was without that role, and I grieved my independence, my identity, my sense of certainty about the future.

“I experienced a range of emotions, sadness, confusion, anger, fear and grief for the version of myself I thought I was going to be.”

Ashton explained that we often underestimate experiences of grief that aren’t linked explicitly to the death of a friend, partner or family member. However, she said that a loss of identity, health, purpose or independence can be just as destabilising and difficult as grieving someone who has died. 

Grief is a deeply complex, personal, individual, non-linear process. A range of factors influence how we experience grief, including our unique personal histories, relational contexts, intersectional identities, and baseline emotional and nervous system regulation. 

The commonly used five stages – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance – are a helpful but overly simplistic and linear way to conceptualise grief. This framework can help prepare for the range of emotions that grief may bring, but it’s far from a perfect formula for every scenario. There is no magic formula for grieving ‘properly’ and no perfect timeline of moving through it.

Ashton said: “Grief doesn’t come in neat stages. That idea is outdated. Grief is messy, unpredictable, and deeply human. Some days you’re coping, some days you’re not, and that’s normal.” 

Her work encourages being prepared and having strategies to keep yourself moving forward, while practising patience, kindness and self-compassion for the unexpected ways you may find yourself responding to grief. It’s critical to avoid adding layers of shame, self-judgement, or dismissal of your emotions onto an already distressing and challenging process.

A mosaic of mourning: Understanding the many faces of grief

We’ve established that grief can result from a wide range of life events outside of losing a loved one. But even within grief specific to the death of someone dear to us, it can feel very different depending on the context of our relationship with the person we’re mourning.

Ashton explained how the grief she feels about losing her father 12 years ago is very different from what she experienced when a close friend died unexpectedly in 2023. This distinction is not to rank grief from least to most difficult, but rather to capture how diverse and unique it is for each person and each situation. 

“Then there’s grief that isn’t about death at all,” said Ashton.

“The grief I experienced after my car accident – losing my career, my independence, my sense of identity – was a different kind of grief again. That loss reshaped my life.” 

Grief can even follow life events that are traditionally seen as joyful, such as a post-partum loss of identity among new mothers. Even those who have great experiences and love having children may have to mourn the independence and freedom which naturally change when another human depends on you to survive. 

Emotions don’t exist in a vacuum; they interact with the broader context of our lives and can trigger seemingly contradicting emotions. Certain life events may simultaneously produce joy, sadness, grief, relief, anger, resentment, and fear, among others. Rather than running from or denying complex or challenging emotions, we can learn to observe and make space for them, allowing them to guide us towards what we need to heal and to integrate our loss into our lives moving forward.

Mourning someone who is still here: What is anticipatory grief?

Grief has no set end date, when we miraculously wake up and are completely over the event that caused our anguish. Likewise, we don’t always know when our grieving process will begin. Sometimes we may grieve something or someone long before they are actually gone from our lives – an experience known as anticipatory grief. 

“Anticipatory grief refers to feelings of loss and mourning that occur before an actual death or end of life,” said Ashton.

It can often occur alongside receiving a serious diagnosis or when someone enters palliative care. 

Ashton’s platform, Critical Info, helps people prepare for the grieving process and end-of-life planning, to minimise the overwhelm and element of surprise that often accompanies grief. She said that individuals and families often begin to grieve the future impact of someone’s death long before it occurs, particularly in dementia caregiving contexts, where the decline is gradual but marked by significant change.

One powerful support tool for anticipatory grief in dementia care is person-centred digital narrative work. Using technology to document life stories, preferences, and memories can improve psychosocial outcomes for people living with cognitive decline and their carers.

“These storytelling activities have been shown to strengthen relationships, enhance person-centred care, and deepen understanding between carers and the person with dementia – outcomes closely linked with improved emotional wellbeing and reduced isolation,” she said.

Here but not here: How to navigate ambiguous grief

Ambiguous grief occurs when a fundamental part of a relationship is lost, but the person is still living.

Ambiguous grief can result from a separation or divorce, a friendship break-up or estrangement, a loved one moving overseas, being incarcerated, or physical or mental illnesses that impact a relationship.

Certain conditions, such as dementia or Alzheimer’s, can drastically alter someone’s personality and communication style, and lead to a shift in the relationship from one of mutual love to a more one-sided carer relationship. In this instance, it makes complete sense that you would mourn the version of the person you knew and relied on, even though they are still with you in a different way. 

Even in situations where no change has occurred, it’s normal to grieve the kind of connection you wish you had. For example, a person may have a parent or sibling with a debilitating illness that alters the family structure in complex ways. Even though it’s all you have known with this person, it’s not always easy to come to terms with not having experienced the type of familial relationship you wish you could have with them.

Ambiguous loss can pose unique challenges when it doesn’t present in the stereotypical ways we view grief. People may not understand their emotional experience as a normal and healthy grieving process, and instead feel shame or embarrassment alongside confusion, anger and isolation. Without being able to name what we are feeling, it’s much harder to confide in our support systems and seek the appropriate help to heal from trauma.

Loss is non-linear: How to avoid getting stuck in your grief

There is a very understandable inclination to simplify grief as a structured process with a handful of predictable milestones. In times of great difficulty, humans are hardwired to try to make sense of their situations to cope. But Ashton explained that grief in real life is rarely linear or logical, and that two people could experience a similar loss in drastically different ways.

“Whether grief feels ‘simpler’ or more complex depends on so many factors, how sudden or traumatic the loss was, your relationship with the person or situation, what you’re actually grieving, what support you had, and what else was happening in your life at the time,” she said.

“Sometimes people aren’t just grieving a person, they’re grieving safety, identity, trust, or the future they imagined.”

Grief involving trauma, shock, or unresolved issues can lengthen the duration of the grieving process and add more layers to work through. In some cases, grief takes a back seat to the survival mode that takes over when there are so many practical and logistical matters to tend to. Emotions may stay quiet while funeral arrangements are made, children are supported, and financial or administrative processes are completed. 

“Grief can surface later when life slows down or when something triggers it, like a birthday, an anniversary, a smell, a song, a life milestone,” said Ashton.

“It also depends on what you’re actually grieving. Sometimes it’s not the loss itself, but what that loss represents. There’s nothing wrong with you if grief resurfaces. It doesn’t mean you’ve failed to ‘heal’. It means your body and mind are processing something meaningful.”

For people who are struggling or feeling stuck in the midst of their grief, Ashton reminds them to offer themselves grace.

“There’s no right way to grieve, no timeline you need to meet, and no benchmark for what ‘coping’ looks like. If something feels heavy, confusing, or unresolved, listen to that. Talk about it with someone safe.”

She suggests seeking professional mental health support early, rather than waiting until you’re overwhelmed or in crisis mode. 

You can also use the support of a therapist to process your feelings, or listen to stories of people with lived experience of complex grief through online support forums or podcasts. 

Finally, avoid the temptation to minimise or compare your grief to someone else’s that appears bigger or more dramatic than yours. Loss is loss, and your needs and experiences are valid, important, and worthy of the time, self-compassion, and care that it takes to come out the other side. 

Life may never be the same but it does go on, our grief staying with us as a reminder of the love that was deep and real enough to leave a permanent mark.