Someone you love is gone. It may have been your grandfather, your father, your mother, a friend from the Club, or that pet who slept close to you every night. And now there is this hole in your chest that feels like it will never close. If you are feeling this, breathe: you are not broken, and you are not wrong.
This is called grief. It is the pain of loving someone who is no longer here. Everyone who loves feels it one day. There is no "right" way to go through it, and no deadline for the pain to leave. This text will not pretend it has a magic answer. But it will walk alongside you.
The good news is this: you do not have to go through this alone. Not in silence, not hiding what you feel. Come with us, gently.
Grief is normal — and it truly hurts
Grief is the name of the pain that comes when we lose someone we love. And it hurts throughout the body: it tightens the chest, takes away your appetite, scrambles your sleep, leaves you tired without having done anything. This is not being dramatic. It is your heart processing a huge loss.
No one prepared you for this at school. Suddenly the chair at the table is empty, the number on your phone will never be called again, and the world keeps spinning as if nothing had happened — which sometimes even makes you angry. All of this is part of grief. It is a normal reaction to something that is not normal: losing someone who is part of you.
And yes, losing a pet is real grief. That dog or cat was company, was routine, was love with no strings attached. If someone says "it was just an animal," don't believe them. The longing you feel measures the size of the love you had. And great love hurts greatly.
There is no right way to feel
Some people cry all day. Some people can't manage to cry at all. Some feel anger, guilt, relief, numbness — sometimes all in the same day. None of this is wrong. Grief does not come in a straight line; it comes in waves. One day you think you're better, and the next a song or a smell knocks you down again.
The psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross described some common reactions in grief: denial, anger, bargaining, deep sadness, and acceptance. But be careful: this is a map, not a track. You don't have to go through all of them, nor in that order, nor "finish" each one to move to the next. Each person feels in their own way.
So be careful with the rush — yours and other people's. No one has the right to ask "is it over yet?" as if longing had an expiration date. Don't force a smile to make others comfortable. You have permission to feel what you feel, for as long as you need.
Jesus wept too
Maybe someone has told you that if you had more faith, you wouldn't cry. That is not in the Bible. Do you know the shortest verse in all of Scripture? "Jesus wept" (John 11:35, NIV). He was standing before the tomb of his friend Lazarus, surrounded by people he loved and who were suffering. And Jesus — God in person — wept with them.
This changes everything. It means crying is not a lack of faith. Crying is what Jesus himself did in the face of the death of someone he loved. God does not ask you to pretend everything is fine. He draws near precisely to those who are not.
Psalm 34:18 (NIV) says: "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." And Jesus promised, in the Sermon on the Mount: "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted" (Matthew 5:4, NIV). It's not that He erases the pain with a wave of the hand. It's that He does not leave you in the middle of it.
Read alsoDoubts of faith: how to cope without losing hopeThe hope that changes the way we suffer
The Christian faith does not ask you not to feel the loss. It offers hope within the loss. The apostle Paul wrote to the Christians in Thessalonica: "we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep, so that you do not grieve like the rest, who have no hope" (1 Thessalonians 4:13, NIV).
Notice the phrase: it is not "do not grieve." It is "do not grieve like those who have no hope." The sadness is real and permitted. What changes is that our pain has a horizon. In the next verse, Paul explains why: "For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him" (1 Thessalonians 4:14, NIV).
In other words: death is not the final period. For those who believe, it is like a see-you-later, not a goodbye forever. This does not make the longing go away today. But it gives you ground to stand on when it seems the ground has vanished. If praying about this helps you, it's okay to start simple — you can learn ways to talk with God on the page about how to pray.
What to do with the longing
There is no recipe, but there are things that usually really help. The first is the simplest and the hardest: allow yourself to feel. Cry when the urge comes. Keeping everything inside doesn't make the pain disappear — it only makes it come out in a worse way later.
The second: talk about the person. Many people avoid the subject for fear of "reopening the wound." But the opposite usually comforts more. Tell stories, laugh at the good memories, look at photos, write a letter to the one who is gone even knowing they won't read it. Saying the name of the one who departed keeps the love alive, not the pain.
Third: take care of the basics and be patient with time. Drink water, try to sleep, go out in the sun a little, slowly return to the things of the Club and the Unit. Don't blame yourself for bad days. Healing is not forgetting; it is learning to live carrying that love in a new way. And that takes however long it takes.
You don't have to carry it alone
Grief weighs less when it is shared. Look for people you trust: a father, a mother, an older sibling, your Counselor, a teacher, a friend who knows how to listen without trying to fix. You don't need to have the right words — just say "I miss them" or "today is hard."
Take it to God too. You can tell Him everything: the longing, the anger, the unanswered questions, the "why." He can handle your truth. Many who are grieving find comfort precisely in these honest conversations, without cover-ups.
And if it's a friend of yours who is suffering, you don't have to solve their pain. Just be close: sit beside them, send a message, remember them on the marked days. Listening is worth more than any ready-made phrase. If you want to know how to support someone in crisis without making things worse, it's worth getting to know psychological first aid.
When it's time to seek more help
Feeling intense pain in the weeks and months after a loss is expected. But there is a point where grief can lock up life — and then it is wise to seek professional help, the same way we seek a doctor for a broken bone. It is not weakness; it is care.
Watch for some signs that drag on for a long time: you can no longer do any of your daily activities, you stop eating or sleeping for weeks, you isolate yourself from everyone, you feel that life has completely lost its meaning, or you have thoughts of hurting yourself or of not wanting to live anymore. If any of these appear, tell a trusted adult right now.
Look for a mental health professional — a psychologist or psychiatrist. In Brazil, the CVV (Center for the Valorization of Life) offers free and confidential emotional support by phone at 188, 24 hours a day. In an emergency, call your local emergency number (in Brazil, SAMU 192). Asking for help is one of the most courageous things you can do. You matter, and your pain deserves to be cared for.