I've wanted to talk about this subject for so long now...grief. Grief is intense sadness you feel after someone has passed, it affects everyone at some point in their life and it affects everyone differently. Today I'm sitting here 5 years and 9 months after I lost a very important person in my life, I was 14, I am now almost 21 years old. I'm writing this because I want to help someone out there seeking advice and help. I will be sharing my story and my experiences with grief to help anyone who is going through what I went through for numerous amount of years.

Let's start with the start.

The person I lost all of them years ago was my Nan/Grandma. She was the sweetest and loving soul to ever grace this Earth. You see, my Nan was a heavy smoker, for many many years. She was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2013 and I was still in school at this point. You must understand how close I and my Nan was, she was my neighbor. She lived next to us for all of my life, I grew up with her by my side, I never imagined what life would be without her. She would always stand and look out the window to make sure I got home okay from after school. I got bullied a lot in school so she always looked out for me just in case anyone was hurting me etc. She stood in her kitchen looking out for me every single day, for years and years. She made me tea, she did so so so much for me as my mum was always working until late.

I'm not 100% sure what date my Nan got diagnosed with lung cancer but I know it was in 2013. I remember that day so well and I never know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I remember getting home from school and my mum waiting at my house for me, she told me to go see Nan as it was important. I knew from that second onwards that something wasn't right. I sat down at the kitchen table and my Nan told me she has lung cancer. My heart dropped. I had no idea what do say/do, I didn't know if I should cry or scream with anger? I wasn't angry at her obviously, I was angry at cancer. I went back over to my house, and cried, so much. A couple of weeks went on and she was slowly getting worse, to the point my sister and her kids had to move into our house so my sister could become my Nan's carer.

After Christmas, she got really bad and had to go to the hospital. I visited her almost every day after school and on the weekends. I was 14 at the time and thinking about it now, I don't think I should've visited her as much as I did because I was watching her get iller. I witnessed her downfall to passing away in other words. Which you know, being a 14-year-old, probably wasn't the best idea but she was so important to me and I didn't want her to leave me.

After visiting her after school, the day approached. The day I had to say goodbye as the doctors said that tomorrow will be her last day. I wanted to be there when she passed but my family couldn't let me witness that, especially being so young. I was waiting anxiously at home for my family to come back from the hospital. They came back, I asked "So, how was Nan?" the house fell silent. I got a reply from my sister. She said "She's gone" I felt like my heart just disappeared, I felt a great sadness. I fell to my knees and I cried against my sisters' legs. Months and months of tears poured out of my eyes in a matter of minutes. I expected the reply I got from my sister but at the same time, it was unexpected. Apart from I didn't believe her and a part of me did.

For months after her death, I sat outside her old house which was right beside mine and cried. I cried and I called out to her, I was in so much disbelief. I just wanted to go inside to see where she used to sat, to see memories, to see flashbacks of us having food and having sleepovers. I wanted to remember what it was like to have her around again. I cried every day when I say 'every day' I absolutely mean every day, 365 days, for 2 years. I just couldn’t stop crying, nothing I did stopped the sorrow I had, I hardly felt any happiness. If I did feel any happiness it was because of my partner. I also felt angry, I was angry at everyone, my friends, my family. I was just furious all the time, but I really couldn’t help it. I started seeing a therapist, which is something I would do as soon as someone you know passes away because it really does help to have someone to talk to. It really does make a difference having someone there.

It is now 5 years and 9 months after her passing and I've finally found peace and happiness. If you have read through all this post I think you might have caught on with the different stages of grief, if you read back I talk about how I was angry, then I was in disbelief and then I was sad and now I've accepted it. They are all stages of grief, some may not experience them in that particular order. Some may only experience one of the stages of grief.

The stages of grief are important to talk about because it's important to know the signs/stages of grief.



Stage 1 - DENIAL - Denial is the first of the five stages of grief. It helps us to survive the loss. In this stage, the world becomes meaningless and overwhelming. Life makes no sense. We are in a state of shock and denial. We go numb. We wonder how we can go on if we can go on, why we should go on. We try to find a way to simply get through each day. Denial and shock help us to cope and make survival possible. Denial helps us to pace our feelings of grief. There is a grace in denial. It is nature’s way of letting in only as much as we can handle. As you accept the reality of the loss and start to ask yourself questions, you are unknowingly beginning the healing process. 

Stage 2 - ANGER - Anger is a necessary stage of the healing process. Be willing to feel your anger, even though it may seem endless. The more you truly feel it, the more it will begin to dissipate and the more you will heal. There are many other emotions under the anger and you will get to them in time, but anger is the emotion we are most used to managing. The truth is that anger has no limits. It can extend not only to your friends, the doctors, your family, and even yourself Underneath anger is a pain, your pain. It is natural to feel deserted and abandoned, but we live in a society that fears anger. Anger is strength and it can be an anchor, giving temporary structure to the nothingness of loss. At first, grief feels like being lost at sea: no connection to anything. Then you get angry at someone, maybe a person who didn’t attend the funeral, maybe a person who isn’t around, maybe a person who is different now that your loved one has died.

 Stage 3 - BARGAINING - At this stage, people attempt to determine how they could’ve avoided death. Questions like “did he receive the right treatment” or “should I have taken her to the doctor sooner” or “if they didn’t leave the house” will plague the mind.  The “if only” cause us to find fault in ourselves and what we “think” we could have done differently. We may even bargain with the pain. We will do anything not to feel the pain of this loss. We remain in the past, trying to negotiate our way out of the hurt. People often think of the stages as lasting weeks or months. They forget that the stages are responses to feelings that can last for minutes or hours as we flip in and out of one and then another. We do not enter and leave each individual stage in a linear fashion. We may feel one, then another and back again to the first one.

 Stage 4 - DEPRESSION - After bargaining, our attention moves squarely into the present. Empty feelings present themselves, and grief enters our lives on a deeper level, deeper than we ever imagined. This depressive stage feels as though it will last forever. It’s important to understand that this depression is not a sign of mental illness. It is the appropriate response to a great loss. We withdraw from life, left in a fog of intense sadness, wondering, perhaps, if there is any point in going on alone? Why go on at all? Depression after a loss is too often seen as unnatural: a state to be fixed, something to snap out of. The first question to ask yourself is whether or not the situation you’re in is actually depressing. The loss of a loved one is a very depressing situation, and depression is a normal and appropriate response. To not experience depression after a loved one dies would be unusual. When a loss fully settles in your soul, the realization that your loved one didn’t get better this time and is not coming back is understandably depressing. If grief is a process of healing, then depression is one of the many necessary steps along the way.

 Stage 4 - Final Stage - ACCEPTANCE - Acceptance is often confused with the notion of being “all right” or “OK” with what has happened. This is not the case. Most people don’t ever feel OK or all right about the loss of a loved one. This stage is about accepting the reality that our loved one is physically gone and recognizing that this new reality is the permanent reality. We will never like this reality or make it OK, but eventually, we accept it. We learn to live with it. It is the new norm with which we must learn to live. We must try to live now in a world where our loved one is missing. In resisting this new norm, at first many people want to maintain life as it was before a loved one died. In time, through bits and pieces of acceptance, however, we see that we cannot maintain the past intact. It has been forever changed and we must readjust. We must learn to reorganize roles, re-assign them to others or take them on ourselves. Finding acceptance may be just having more good days than bad ones. As we begin to live again and enjoy our life, we often feel that in doing so, we are betraying our loved one. We can never replace what has been lost, but we can make new connections, new meaningful relationships, new inter-dependencies. Instead of denying our feelings, we listen to our needs; we move, we change, we grow, we evolve. We may start to reach out to others and become involved in their lives. We invest in our friendships and in our relationship with ourselves. We begin to live again, but we cannot do so until we have given grief its time.

 Here is a video so you can learn a little bit more about the stages and anything else you might want to understand more: 



Things that helped me when I was going through grief was being open about my feelings and crying when I needed too, this is absolutely important. It's so good to cry, it is. I'm not kidding, crying is the best thing you can do when going through grief because bottling it all up can cause long-lasting mental health problems.

 If you put a lid on a boiling pot, eventually the contents will rise to the top and spillover. Human emotions are no different. If we push our feelings down and down and try to avoid them, eventually, they will explode out more fiercely than before. This is one main reason people sometimes refuse to tap into their feelings, according to psychologist Perpetua Neo. She told INSIDER people can be over-rational, because they think the alternative is someone who cries all the time, is incredibly angry and erratic, and can't control themselves.
"When you ask somebody 'why can't you trust your feelings?' They'll tell you 'because last time I lost my temper, everything went to pot," Neo said. "Actually, it's this whole vicious cycle that happens when we oppress our feelings." If we bottle things up, they don't just go away. Emotions will stay down until we physically can't contain them anymore, then they'll burst out fiercer than before. And it won't just be that one feeling, it will be everything else that's been thrown on top of it since. For some people, it can be years, or even decades, or repressed experiences.
Cry if you need to cry.

I say this to all of my friends when they're going through a tough time, "Time heals all wounds, it may take a while but time is the ultimate healer" it can take a hell of a long time for you to accept someone's passing. It took me years. But never try to rush the process of grieving, always try your best and stick with it because in time, you will be at peace and you will be happy. Going to see a therapist is a really good decision to make, especially just after a loss. 

I hope reading about my experiences and my story has helped you in any way possible. I've provided some numbers/contacts to some websites that might be able to help you. Thank you for taking the time to read this, I really do hope I have helped someone with my story.

Childline: 0800 1111 
Click here for contacting page on the Childline website
Click here for the Samaritans contact website