TL;DR –Six years after writing "Yes, sweetheart, you DO actually get to grieve this," Annie found herself Googling her own article during a particularly hard day when grief she thought was "done" reactivated with painful intensity. This meta-moment captures a fundamental truth about trauma recovery: grief isn't linear, doesn't have an expiration date, and can resurface years later with surprising force, leaving us berating ourselves for "still not being over" something that happened decades ago. The shift from self-criticism ("Why does this still have such a grip on me?") to self-compassion ("Yes, after all this time, you STILL get to grieve this") represents the ongoing work of healing—not a one-time achievement but a practice we return to whenever old wounds reopen.
What makes this piece particularly powerful is its acknowledgment that even therapists who write about grief need reminders of their own wisdom, that the clearer, wiser voice that emerges in our best moments can serve us when we're drowning in reactivated pain. The essay becomes a permission slip for anyone whose grief feels "too old" to still hurt, validating that abstract losses—the childhood you never had, the parent who couldn't see you, the safety that was missing—deserve grieving just as much as concrete deaths. Because trauma recovery isn't about getting over things but learning to hold them with increasing tenderness whenever they surface.
Just over six years ago, I wrote an essay called “Yes, sweetheart, you DO actually get to grieve this.”
It was my answer and love letter to clients and readers of mine who would so often say something along the lines of:
“It’s ancient history. Shouldn’t I be over this by now? Why am I so sad? Why do I still have grief over this?”
That little essay went on to become one of the most trafficked and commented-upon pieces on my website.
It struck a chord. It resonated.
That essay did what I hoped it would: it gave people permission to feel all their feelings and grief no matter how much time had passed, and no matter how concrete or abstract the loss was that they had and were experiencing.
So why am I bringing this up?
Because there was a moment a few weeks ago when I was having a really bad day.
A day when something I thought I was “done” grieving got re-activated again in a potent and painful way.
So I went to my laptop and I literally Googled my own article so I could re-read it.
(Believe me: I’m not trying to be narcissistic here but I know that when I sit down to write, something wiser and clearer comes through me, and when I’m *not* in that place (which can be often) I’m served by those wiser self words I wrote once upon a time as much as the next person with a relational trauma history.)
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START THE QUIZYes, sweetheart, after all this time, you STILL get to grieve this.
So I re-read my article.
And while my writing style has changed over the years (and lord knows my formatting has evolved!), the content remained solid and just what I needed at that moment when I was berating myself for “still not being over” something that happened so long ago.
It helped my self-talk shift from, “Ugh, again?! Why does this grief still have such a grip on me?”
to “Yes, sweetheart, after all this time, you STILL get to grieve this.”
I figured, if revisiting my own article from 2016 could serve me today in 2022, it might be worthwhile to share it again with you.
So whether you’ve been on my newsletter from the earliest days (Spring 2015) or if you’ve only recently signed up in the last few weeks or months, I truly hope that seeing this archived piece of mine feels helpful, soothing, and increases your compassion for yourself and your experience.
Processing Recurring Grief in Trauma-Informed Therapy
When grief you thought was “finished” suddenly resurfaces with devastating intensity, trauma-informed therapy provides crucial support for navigating these unexpected returns to old pain without drowning in shame about “still” needing to process something from decades ago.
Your therapist understands that actively grieving your past isn’t a one-time event but an ongoing spiral where you encounter deeper layers of loss as your capacity to feel expands. They normalize the experience of being ambushed by grief at unexpected moments—when your child reaches the age you were when trauma occurred, when you achieve something your parents couldn’t celebrate, when current losses reactivate ancient abandonments—helping you recognize these returns as evidence of healing, not failure.
The therapeutic space becomes a container for holding both the grief itself and your grief about still grieving—the meta-layers of shame, frustration, and exhaustion that compound the original loss. Your therapist helps you distinguish between the inner critic saying “you should be over this” (often an internalized parental voice) and your authentic need to honor losses that fundamentally shaped you.
Through approaches like EMDR for reprocessing grief-laden memories, somatic work for releasing grief held in the body, or parts work for embracing the grieving parts without judgment, you develop increasing capacity to welcome grief’s return as a teacher rather than a tormentor.
Most importantly, therapy reframes recurring grief from pathology to wisdom—understanding that some losses are so profound they require a lifetime of integration, that grieving in spirals rather than straight lines allows you to metabolize pain at the pace your nervous system can handle.
Your therapist holds steady witness as you learn to extend the same compassion to yourself that you would offer a friend, developing an internal voice that responds to grief’s return not with “again?!” but with “yes, sweetheart, after all this time, you still get to grieve this”—transforming self-attack into self-compassion, isolation into connection, and ancient pain into integrated wisdom.
Please enjoy my original article about grief from 2016 here. And, if you feel so inclined when you’re done reading it, leave a message in the comments below to let me know if it resonated with you, and if it soothed and supported you.
Here’s to healing relational trauma and creating thriving lives on solid foundations.
Warmly,
Annie
