In the midst of grief we can feel stuck. Stuck in the experience of loss without any idea how to get out of it. We wonder if life will ever be normal again or is this what our new normal will be? No matter where you are in your grieving process, you may not be aware of the obstacles that are keeping you from moving beyond your grief and into a place of well-being. Below are the things I see most commonly that prevent people from moving forward and on with their lives.

You believe you failed somehow. If you think the reason you are grieving is because you failed in some way, you are going to stay stuck in a cycle of self-loathing indefinitely. You get to define what failure is. Stop making it mean something awful about you. Stop believing you did something wrong.

You believe that things should have happened differently. Don’t let yourself stay hung up thinking that some part of the loss you experienced should have happened a different way. Moving into a place of acceptance for what did occur allows you to stop the mental torment of constantly thinking things should have been different than they were. It allows you the freedom to accept what has happened.

You believe that you will never be happy again. Grief is hard because we usually don’t see pathway out of it easily. Right now you are living through a hard moment in time. It is okay to grieve. It is important to grieve. And it is possible to be happy again. You’ll want to know exactly how to do it, but in this moment it may not be possible to for you to see it. Although, if you open up to the possibility that some day in the future you will be happy again, that you’ll laugh and smile and not cry all the time, then you will crack the door just enough to let the light in to move you in that direction out of the dark.

Anne Roiphe has a beautiful quote that I think sums up the experience of grief quite well. She says, “Grief is in two parts. The first is loss. The second is the remaking of life.”

Are you ready to remake your life? Let’s get started.