Everyone here is giving you good advice mostly but I’m going to depart from that and give you a potentially unhealthy crutch.

Food.

Start baking or trying to get good at asian food or something new to you. As long as you dont massively overeat it gives you something to research, guves you an activity that keeps you from wallowing and when you nail it dopamine from delicious food.

Music. Art.

I once stumbled upon an image that now I regret I lost. It showed a Venn diagram with two circles, one circle was your personality. The second, smaller and inside the first one but definitely took most of the space of it, was grief.

Now, most people think that over time the grief gets smaller. But that’s not true at all. The grief doesn’t change, it stays there. But, if you grow as a person, as your personality gets larger, while the grief is the same size, it starts to take less space inside you.

This is why the worst thing one person can do about grief is doing nothing. If you do nothing, and you stay the same, the grief will always hurt the same.

But if you start to move, slowly at first as you must. And grieve when you have to. And laugh when you have to. Connect with others, and slowly start moving forward and growing and learning again. You grow, and the grief, little by little, takes less space. And it still hurts, but it hurts a little less.

Lost my wife of 15 (together 20) years a year ago tomorrow.

Dont hide from the grief. Grieving is a natural process. Cry for an hour or two every few days. Be sad about it. Remember the good parts and bad parts.

The human mind is fucked up. None of your memories are real. Traumatic memories that stay repressed stay traumatic. It is only through remembering those memories from a safe place that you start to quantify them and feel safe around them. Your worst memory is actually just a memory of the last time you remembered it. So remembering it in the safety of your own home while eating your favorite food and listening to your favorite song will over time slowly dull the pain of that memory.

Same for grief. You want to grieve. You need to grieve. But do it from safety and security and over time the pain will lessen.

This is why talking to a therapist is useful because they create a safe place to remember in. But also remember that everyone is different and not everything works the same for everyone. You have to find your own path, be it personal, therapy or counseling or group meeting etc.

Personally I could not do counseling or group counseling. It made me irrationally angry to hear someone try to talk me through it and it made me sad and upset to listen to other people’s grief. So I did my own thing.

Good luck! The great healer is time but only if you let it.

Process it, don’t bury it.

Basically you don’t. I mean you don’t “deal with it”. It deals with you. It hurts like fuck. It’s supposed to. Everything is worse now. It will get better though. Eventually the pain fades.

If you have any friends or family nearby don’t be afraid to lean on them for support. Ultimately all we have in this world are the connections we make, that’s why it hurts so much to lose one forever. Use the ones you still have.

I lost my mom in 2009. I’m still grieving. Having friends and family that can share the experience with helps alot.

When I lost someone decades ago, a friend of mine said,“Allow yourself 3 days to grieve. Then remember them happily.” It helped me.

Counseling/therapy. Friends. Family. Community. Psychiatrically prescribed drugs, if the depression is severe enough, and your counselor and psychiatrist agree it’s a good idea.

Don’t pish yourself to “move on” if you feel like it’s not what you need.

Too many people try to push the idea that you have to always move on and basically completely stop feeling bad after a while (and often a short one) but that’s bullshit. Think about what you need, what you want, try to find inner peace whether it is by keeping your emotions, or letting them go.

And obviously, therapy.

Its ok to be sad and to take as much time as you need. Everyone’s grief looks different. It’s really hard and I hope you have family or friends you can spend time with.

deleted by creator

Fuck if I know.

Remember that healing is not the same as forgetting. What heals is your ability to function as an empathetic human. Learning to carry grief can make you a stronger person to help others bear their losses.

Also, people will unintentionally hurt you during your time of grieving. Accept it as part of the process of healing. Think of it as the world reminding you that it’s not all about you.

Whatever works for you. If you regularly use drugs or alcohol, don’t completely stop, but be careful with them. There’s plenty of lists of strategies and not everything works for everyone. The only real universal thing is to take time being not ok.