Grief Is Informative: Why Sitting With Your Pain Creates Freedom
- Katherine Hatch
- Sep 20, 2025
- 3 min read
Your Grief Has Something to Tell You
I think a lot about my relationship to grief—both my own personal losses and the grief I encounter related to world events and the ongoing struggles in our country. And here's what I've come to understand: My ability to be with my grief directly informs my ability to discern the actions I take.
When I can sit with my grief, when I can acknowledge it and let it move through me, my actions come from a place of truth and heart—not from a place of fear.
The Grief-Is-Informative Flow Chart
Let me walk you through how this works:
Sitting in the Pain of Grief
It starts here. When we're grieving—whether from personal loss, collective trauma, or the weight of what's happening in the world—we have a choice. We can push it away, numb it, or try to skip over it. Or we can sit with it.
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Allows the Experience to Relate to Us
When we sit in the pain, something important happens: the experience becomes real in our bodies and hearts. It's no longer just an abstract concept or something we're "supposed" to feel. It becomes part of us, informing us from the inside out.
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Allows Us to Have a Relationship With Our Grief
Instead of being owned and directed by our grief—instead of it controlling us from the shadows—we can have an actual relationship with it. We can listen to what it's telling us. We can let it guide us without letting it consume us.
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Increases Our Tolerance to Face Our Fears of Death and Helplessness
Here's where it gets powerful: when we practice being with grief, we expand our capacity to face the hardest truths. Death. Helplessness. Powerlessness. These fears lose some of their grip when we've already practiced sitting with discomfort.
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Allows Us to Claim Our Own Powerlessness (of Having Ultimate Control)
This might sound counterintuitive, but facing our powerlessness—actually acknowledging it—mitigates fear. When we stop fighting against the reality that we can't control everything, we paradoxically find more freedom to act and decide.
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Facing Our Powerlessness Actually Mitigates Fear → Less Fear Allows for More Freedom to Act and Decide
And this is where we arrive: increased freedom in the face of fear allows for informed, embodied action driven by our hearts.
Not reactive action driven by panic.Not paralyzed inaction driven by overwhelm.But clear, grounded action that comes from knowing ourselves and what matters to us.
This Is Not Giving Up
Let me be crystal clear about something:
Sitting in the pain of our grief and acknowledging that we have it is informative. Being in this pain and expanding our ability to tolerate this distress IS NOT an act of giving up or giving in or being helpless.
It is an act of courage.
It is an act of resistance against a culture that tells us to move on, get over it, stay positive, and keep producing.
It is an act of wisdom that recognizes we cannot skip steps in the healing process.
In Times of Great Struggle
Right now, many of us are carrying multiple layers of grief:
Personal losses
Collective trauma
Ongoing injustice
Environmental devastation
Political turmoil
The daily onslaught of hard news
It can feel like too much. It can feel like sitting with all of this grief would mean drowning in it.
But here's what I've learned: When we give our grief moments to happen—when we let ourselves feel what we're actually feeling—we create space for discernment.
We can figure out what actions are right for us in the face of great struggle.We can respond rather than react.We can move with intention rather than desperation.
An Invitation
Please give your grief moments to happen.
Not forever. Not to the exclusion of everything else. But moments.
Moments to acknowledge what hurts.
Moments to feel what you're feeling.
Moments to let your body and heart inform you about what matters and what's next.
Because your grief is informative. It has something important to tell you about who you are, what you value, and how you want to move through this world.
And when you can hear it—when you can sit with it long enough to let it speak—you'll find that it doesn't trap you.
It frees you.
If you're looking for support in sitting with your grief and discerning your path forward, we're here. Grief therapy isn't about getting rid of your grief—it's about learning to be with it in ways that allow you to live more fully.
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