The myth of the timeline

Five stages. One year. Closure. None of these are real — and believing in them might be making things harder.

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There's a particular kind of pressure that comes about three months in. People stop bringing casseroles. Texts get less frequent. Someone, gently, asks whether you've thought about therapy. Underneath all of it sits the same quiet question: shouldn't you be a bit further along by now?

The honest answer is no. There is no "along." There is no curve you're supposed to be moving up. The five stages of grief weren't designed to describe people who'd lost someone — they were observations about people who were dying. We borrowed them, flattened them into a checklist, and then handed that checklist to the bereaved as if grief were a project with a deadline.

It isn't. And the sooner we stop measuring ourselves against a timeline that was never real, the sooner we can actually do the work in front of us.

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A sub-heading goes here

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Another sub-heading

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[Placeholder paragraph. Close the post with something that points forward without rushing the reader. A question, a small permission, an invitation to the free call. Keep it quiet.]

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If you're somewhere in this, and the timeline isn't fitting — you're not behind. You're just somewhere else on a road that doesn't have signposts. Book a free call if you'd like company on it.