Expert Voice: National Grief Awareness Week – How Loss Changes Us

By Matthew Anderton, Counsellor, Moya Cole Hospice

National Grief Awareness Week invites us to pause, to honour the stories we carry and to acknowledge the quiet ways loss reshapes our lives. When someone we love dies we often hear phrases like “you’ll get back to normal” or “time heals” but anyone who has walked through grief knows; We don’t return to who we were. Loss alters us. Yet within that change there can be growth, meaning and even a new kind of fullness. 

This idea is central to Tonkin’s “Growing Around Grief” model, a compassionate way of understanding how we live with loss. Instead of imagining grief shrinking with time, Tonkin proposes something far more truthful: our grief stays, but we grow. 

We Don’t “Get Over It”—We Grow Around It 

Tonkin’s model portrays grief as circle that remains the same size no matter how much time passes. What changes is a space around that circle representing our life. Over time that space expands around the grief. The grief is still there, still significant, still capable of being felt but it no longer fills our entire space. 

Many people find this validating. The expectation that grief should fade, or that one day we won’t feel the ache can be isolating and feel like an impossible goal. Tonkin’s model honours the truth, that the love we had does not vanish and so the grief that comes from that love doesn’t vanish either. 

Tonkin’s model shoes us that grief doesn’t diminish, but we can expand around it. In that expansion we find room for memory, for meaning and for a life that honours both what we have lost and what we continue to become. 

Becoming Someone New After Loss 

The experience of loss marks a before and after. We often try to rebuild the “before” searching for the version of ourselves that existed when the world still felt whole. However the reality is that loss transforms us. Not just through pain of missing loved ones but through the deepening of our emotional landscape. 

After loss you may find: 

• Your priorities shift. 

• Your relationships may change. 

• Your understanding of time becomes sharper. 

• Your empathy grows. 

• In time your resilience expands in unexpected ways. 

We don’t go back to who we were. Instead we evolve into someone shaped by love, memory and the continuing bond we hold with the person who died. This growth isn’t about “moving on” it’s about weaving the loss into the tapestry of who we are becoming. 

Growing around grief does not mean ignoring it or pushing it aside. It means learning to carry it with compassion. There will be days when the grief feels small and quiet and days when it feels as large as ever anniversaries, milestones or unexpected moments that tug on the heart. Growth allows us to make room for joy alongside sorrow, for hope alongside longing. It allows us to build a life that honours the person we miss. 

Love Is What Shapes the New Self 

Every person we lose leaves an imprint not erased by time but carried forward through stories, shared moments and the ways they shaped our values and identity. We grow not only because of the grief but because of the love that sits at the centre of it. 

Tonkin’s model gently reminds us that our grief is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of depth. It marks the presence of a bond that continues even after physical presence ends. 

During National Grief Awareness Week, may we give ourselves permission to grieve as we are, not as others expect. I would encourage anyone grieving to recognise that it is natural to change in the face of loss. To aim to extend compassion to everyone carrying a circle of grief inside them, to be compassionate to yourself as you carry your grief.  Understanding that each of us is, in some way, is growing around something we didn’t choose.