Beneath the surface, the roots of both intertwine and form the profiles of two human faces looking at each other,
representing the invisible bonds and the silent conversation of love that endures even after physical absence.
In this way, the scene reinforces the idea that, in grief, memory and connection continue to unite those who remain and those who are gone.
Grief is a pain that does not appear in exams, that hides in sighs, silences, and sleepless nights. It is the inevitable pain of affective loss – silent, yes, but deafening. Even if not all grief is visible, its marks are visible with the pain of mourning.
Sometimes, this pain comes with the death of someone we love very much. Other times, with the separation of a relationship, of a shared life, of a presence that was daily. And what remains is an emptiness we don’t know where to put. Neither in the chest, nor in time, nor in reason.
In this article, we will talk about this, about what the pain of mourning does to us. And, essentially, how to deal with it, going through it serenely, with truth and, who knows, with some hope.
How to Understand Grief Through the Painful Ticking
The empty space caused by the pain of grief can be perceived through music, which emerges as a bridge between what we feel and what we cannot say. Whoever has heard El Reloj, by the Mexican singer Roberto Cantoral, a bolero that seems to have been written in tears, might understand (1).
He pleads with the clock to stop marking the hours, as if that could stop time. He is afraid of going mad from the pain of watching his beloved leave forever — a one-way journey that leaves him alone with the emptiness.
The clock, which once marked the rhythm of routine, now turns into an enemy. The ticking hurts. Every passing second takes someone away — or, worse, confirms that they will not return. In this plea for time to stop, there is a truth that many of us have already felt: the pain of not wanting to let go. The desperate attempt to hold onto what slips away.
This plea is the perfect portrayal of the beginning of mourning: denial, the desperate attempt not to let go. Time, which was once just routine, now hurts. The clock’s ticking turns into a countdown to absence.
How to Understand Grief Through the Light That Goes Out
The song “One More Light” by the band Linkin Park takes us to another stage of mourning: the awareness of loss in an indifferent world, and it touches a wound you might know:
“Who cares if one more light goes out
in a sky of a million stars?
Well, I do.”
The song asks who cares when a light goes out. And the answer, simple and devastating, is: “I do.” Because when we lose someone – whether to death, to distance, or to silence – it seems the world continues as if nothing happened. But inside us, everything has changed. A light has gone out. And even if no one notices… we do.
These songs speak of grief, yes – but they also speak of love. Because grief only exists where there was true affection. And perhaps the beginning of grief is precisely this: the struggle between what we feel and what we need to accept. Between what was and what still hurts.
If you are going through this moment, this text is for you. To remind you that feeling this pain is not weakness — it is humanity. That living through grief is not standing still in time — it is learning, little by little, to walk with a piece of longing in your heart.
The Body Feels, the Soul Screams: Grief Manifesting Itself
Grief is not just emotional — it is biological, psychological, and existential. In the first few days (or even weeks), the body reacts: loss of appetite, altered sleep, chest tightness, difficulty concentrating.
It’s common to feel numb. Or, on the contrary, hypersensitive: everything hurts, everything reminds, everything weighs. Emotions become jumbled — sadness, anger, guilt, fear, longing. An internal tsunami that seems endless.
And it’s okay to feel all of this. Mourning has no formula, schedule, or manual. Each person lives it in their own way, in their own time.
Whoever has experienced a loss knows: the heart feels first, but it is the brain that needs to learn to deal with the emptiness. And it doesn’t learn overnight.
Neuroscientist Mary-Frances O’Connor invites us to see grief differently — not just as pain, but as a learning process of the brain. In her book *The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss*, she explores how the mind tries to reorganize itself in the face of absence — and how grief is, in fact, a way of relearning how to live. (2)
The Stages of Grief: Not a Staircase, But a Spiral
Many people are familiar with the common framework of five stages of grief, popularized by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. While these offer an initial guide, it’s vital to recognize that grief behaves more like a spiral, where emotions can emerge and re-emerge in a non-linear fashion.
For an in-depth exploration of the nature and complexities of stages of grief, their nuances, and how neuroscience explains this non-linear journey, check out our dedicated article: The Stages of Grief: A Spiral Journey and What Neuroscience Says .
Grief: A Way to Continue Loving
Neuroscientist Mary-Frances O’Connor, in her book The Grieving Brain, proposes an even more gentle and clarifying view of these stages. For her, grief is not just an emotional sequence — it is a neurological process of adaptation.
Thus, grief ceases to be a path to be fulfilled and becomes a way to continue loving — even without touch, without speech, without physical presence. And this, however painful it may seem, is also a profound form of emotional wisdom.
Learning to Live with Absence
Perhaps the greatest difficulty at the beginning of grief is this: the body is present, but the mind keeps searching the past. We look in old messages, in familiar smells, in sounds.
We unconsciously expect that presence to return — even if we rationally know it won’t happen. And that is tiring. It hurts. It confuses.
According to neuroscientist Mary-Frances O’Connor, this happens because our brain doesn’t live by logic alone, but by affective models built over time. When we lose someone important, the brain takes a long time to update these models. It insists on searching, insists on waiting.
It’s as if a part of us hasn’t yet received the news — or doesn’t want to receive it. This conflict between real absence and mental presence creates a very deep kind of grief. A grief that bumps up against everything we were with that person: our routines, our references, our very way of being in the world.
But, little by little — with time, care, and listening — what was a search transforms into memory. And absence, which was once a void, begins to turn into a symbolic presence. It is no longer outside, but within. Love, then, has not disappeared. It has merely changed its place.
Learning to live with absence is, in fact, learning a new way of loving: without immediate response, without physical coexistence, but with a depth that remains.
Grief is proof that something was too intense to be erased. It is the echo of what was true. The trace of love that still lives within us.
And by recognizing this — by embracing the pain without trying to stifle it — we take the first step to overcome it without losing who we are.
If you are in this moment, know this: your brain is relearning to live. It is rebuilding paths, networks, and meanings. And that takes time. But it leads you to a new place — a place where longing no longer screams, but accompanies with respect.
When Grief Lasts Too Long
Grief is, by nature, a long and profound journey. But in some cases, it ceases to be a process of adaptation and transforms into a state of emotional entrapment.
Dr. Katherine Shear, director of the Center for Prolonged Grief at Columbia University, studies a condition called Prolonged Grief Disorder (3). According to her research, this form of grief affects between 3% and 20% of people who experience a significant loss – whether due to death or intense emotional rupture.
In these cases, suffering does not settle with time. It persists, unaltered, as if the wound remains open, without finding a way to symbolically heal. The grieving person feels emotionally paralyzed: longing does not transform into a gentle memory, love does not reorganize, and life – out there – seems to have lost its color.
This type of grief does not depend only on the fact of death, but on the emotional intensity of the lost bond and the way the loss was experienced. Therefore, Prolonged Grief Disorder can also manifest after deep romantic separations, unexpected emotional ruptures, or situations where there was no room for farewell or processing.
It is necessary to unfreeze emotional time!
Dr. Shear explains that in situations of prolonged grief, the brain enters a permanent conflict between accepting the loss and maintaining attachment. The result is a looping of pain: absence is never understood, and the bond cannot be internally reintegrated.
These experiences can generate what neuroscience calls emotional engrams — intense memory traces that fix themselves in the body and brain circuits. These engrams function as deep affective scars: they not only recall the loss, but reactivate the pain with the same intensity as the moment everything happened.
It’s as if emotional time has frozen at that breaking point. People experiencing this type of grief report feeling a suffocating longing, a sense that life has lost its meaning, guilt for not being able to “move on,” and, often, the fear that overcoming the pain means betraying the memory of what was lived.
But grief does not demand that we forget. It only asks that, little by little, we reorganize internally what was taken from us externally. And, in cases of prolonged grief, this is only possible with professional support, sensitive listening, and strategies that help the brain exit the alarm state and return to a safe space for emotional reconstruction.
If you feel stuck in this type of pain — as if absence has stopped your life — know this: it is not weakness. It is a human response to a pain too great to bear alone.
And there is help. There is a way. Even with the scars, life can still regain its color. And so can you.
Emotional Pain and the Search for Resilience
Emotional pain, or deep emotional pain, does not need to be denied or repressed. It needs to be acknowledged — as legitimate, human, and, often, necessary. Because there is no significant loss without pain, that is, without grief. And there is no pain that, when embraced with time and care, cannot teach us something about who we are.
This pain, when viewed with listening and respect, ceases to be merely a burden and also becomes a memory of love. The void it carries is, in fact, the measure of the importance of whom or what we have lost.
Therefore, resilience manifests as the ability to navigate life’s adversities.
In this context, emotional resilience isn’t about avoiding pain; rather, it’s the capacity to persist and find purpose in life, even when pain is present. It emerges from transforming difficult experiences and reinventing one’s emotional landscape after loss.
Resilience isn’t about being immune to pain. It involves acknowledging wounds without letting them define one’s entire identity. It means accepting that suffering is a part of life’s journey, that it will be experienced, and yet choosing to move forward with a lighter heart.
Frequently, emotional resilience manifests in everyday choices: summoning the strength to face the day even when sadness weighs heavily, practicing self-care without pressure, allowing time to heal, and maintaining faith that life still holds value despite profound losses.
Mary-Frances O’Connor, when talking about grief, emphasizes that the brain has plasticity: it can change, reorganize connections, relearn. And resilience is this capacity to allow affection to find its form within the new reality.
In summary, experiencing emotional pain is not the end — it is the beginning of an internal journey. And resilience does not eliminate pain, but transforms it into a path. Because it’s about acknowledging the past without letting it define the future, and instead finding a renewed purpose in the life that goes on after it.
Possible Paths: How to Navigate Grief with Care
No technique replaces time. Grief needs to be lived, respected, and traversed with presence. But there are paths that help soften the journey, like small practices that, added to daily care, can bring more lightness, clarity, re-signifying the experience.
Therefore, gradually, the intensity of emotional memory is alleviated, softening the pain of grief and allowing the path towards self-reunion.
Below are some of these small practices — all supported by authors and specialists who have deeply studied pain, loss, and the power of reconstruction that dwells within each of us:
Journaling – Writing to Organize Pain
Writing about what we feel is one of the most accessible and effective ways to process grief. According to psychologist James Pennebaker, a pioneer in studies on therapeutic writing, journaling helps to cognitively organize emotions, which reduces the impact of trauma and improves physical and emotional health (4, 5, 6, 7).
The practice requires no rules. Only sincerity. It can be a letter that will never be sent, a diary of longing, or a reflection on the life that continues. The important thing is to let the pain speak — without judgment, because “Writing gives shape to inner chaos.”
Mindfulness – Full Attention to the Present Moment
The way grief keeps us tied to the past is subtle and also devastating; we remain bound by the “what ifs?”, the “how would it have been?”, the “why did it have to be this way?”.
With this, the mind gets lost, repeating scenes that no longer return, and the heart drifts, navigating through memories that still hurt.
The practice of mindfulness, or full attention, offers a possible path, as it invites us to embrace pain gently, instead of trying to forget or deny it.
It calls us to gently recognize the only place where it is still possible to breathe with some peace: the now.
Physician and professor Jon Kabat-Zinn, creator of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, summarizes this with a phrase that is a whisper for difficult days: “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf (8).”
And perhaps a simple way to understand this is to remember the cold outside — and the warmth we feel under a warm blanket. The contrast between what happens in the world and what the body perceives in the present anchors us in the moment.
The same applies to the sound of rain. It falls outside. Inside, we are in silence. And when we focus on that sound — on that small detail of the now — something changes inside. The body relaxes. The mind finds shelter. The heart slows down.
These sensations do not resolve the pain. But they soften it. They offer the soul a small rest. A breath. They reduce the burden of the past and the fear of the future. They bring us back to the present moment — where it is still possible to find meaning.
For those seeking a more structured way to apply these practices, exploring regular sessions of mindfulness meditation can offer a deeper sense of clarity and stability.
Therefore, breathe, observe, feel the body. Every gesture, however subtle, is an anchor. And in the midst of the storm that grief causes, every anchor is welcome.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) – Reframe with Care
NLP proposes tools for internal restructuring: shifting focus, reframing memories, constructing new meanings.
In the context of grief, it can help transform dysfunctional mental states into safer paths for emotional processing.
Created by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, NLP shows us that we are not prisoners of our reactions, but we can create internal bridges that lead us to new meanings (9).
The technique does not erase the pain, but invites the mind to reorganize the experience – acknowledging the loss, yes, but also reconstructing possibilities to continue with more balance and presence.
Psychotherapy – Deep and Humanized Support
Finally, psychological therapy is one of the most important spaces for those experiencing intense or prolonged grief.
Based on welcoming listening and the therapeutic relationship, psychotherapy offers what is often lacking in the external world: time, patience, and understanding.
Psychiatrist Irvin D. Yalom, known for his existential approach, says that the therapeutic process does not rush grief, but helps the bereaved find meaning where there was only pain (10, 11, 12, 13).
Thus, “Healing happens through the relationship.” Psychotherapy does not aim to “cure” grief, but to walk alongside, helping the person transform absence into memory and longing into something bearable.
These practices do not erase the pain. But they offer structures, anchors, spaces for breathing. They transform grief into a journey. And the journey into a path of reunion — with life, with meaning, with what still pulsates.
When Music Makes Room to Begin Anew
There are songs that find us in the dark, that arrive as if knowing our silences. And without asking permission, they open the drawers of the soul — those where we hide memories that still burn.
“Dos Cruces” by Carmelo Larrea Spanish singer and composer is like that. A bolero that carries the sound of unspoken goodbyes, of loves that were lost without ever truly understanding each other. It speaks of the pain of a love that ended without ever being fully lived (14).
Two crosses engraved on the mountain of forgetfulness. It’s not just poetry — it’s the perfect translation of grief: that mourning that doesn’t end, because it remained unfinished. That pain that marks the body with absence and the mind with “what if…”.
This music touches the wound directly. It retraces the path of loss. It rekindles the engram — that deep emotional memory, imprinted in the brain when love transforms into absence.
But music can also be healing. There are songs that call us back, that softly whisper that there is still a road ahead, even if we don’t see it.
And perhaps none says it as well as “My Way” — immortalized by Frank Sinatra (15).
This song doesn’t promise us an absence of pain. It doesn’t erase the falls. But it celebrates the choice to carry on — with authenticity, with truth, with dignity.
When heard at the right moment, “My Way” plants another seed in the heart, reminding us that, despite grief, we are still the authors of our own story. And that living our way, even with scars, is an act of courage.
And it is when we manage to shift our focus — even for brief moments — that we begin to weave, within ourselves, a new emotional narrative. Thus, the right song, the right movie, the right poem… can be the key. Not to erase what was, but to open a space where the love that remained can breathe.
And when that space opens, perhaps we can, even whispering, say with a heart in pieces, but still beating: “Gracias a la Vida”, the iconic song composed by the talented Chilean artist Violeta Parra.
And just as music can touch what words cannot, some inspirational movies also help us reconnect with meaning and emotional resilience in times of deep grief.
Because life goes on. And, sometimes, it surprises us with beauty where there was only silence.
Disclaimer
The information presented in this article is for educational, informational, and personal development purposes only and does not constitute medical, psychological, or professional advice. Please consult a qualified healthcare professional, psychologist, or other specialist for any health concerns, medical conditions, or mental well-being issues. Self-help and general wellness techniques described herein do not replace the guidance of a therapist, psychologist, physician, or other qualified healthcare professional.
The focus of these articles is your human journey, aiming at your personal growth and the improvement of your life. When technical methods from areas of personal improvement are mentioned, they are presented for informational purposes only, to broaden your knowledge and encourage further exploration if desired. Scientific references, when included, serve to illustrate that the topics discussed have a basis in research and foundational studies.
References
- Cantoral, R. (1956). El reloj [Song recorded by Roberto Cantoral]. Musart. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Cantoral
- American Psychological Association. (2022). How grieving changes the brain, with Mary-Frances O’Connor, PhD [Podcast episode]. Speaking of Psychology. Available at: https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/grieving-changes-brain
- Center for Prolonged Grief. (n.d.). Katherine Shear, MD. Columbia University. Retrieved May 2025, from https://prolongedgrief.columbia.edu/team/katherine-shear-md/
- Pennebaker, J. W. (2004). Writing to heal: A guided journal for recovering from trauma and emotional upheaval. New Harbinger Publications.
- Pennebaker, J. W. (1997). Writing about emotional experiences as a therapeutic process. Psychological Science, 8(3), 162–166.
- Pennebaker, J. W. (2018). Expressive writing in psychological science. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13(2), 226–229.
- Pennebaker, J. W., & Beall, S. K. (1986). Confronting a traumatic event: Toward an understanding of inhibition and disease. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95(3), 274–281.
- Kabat-Zinn, J. (1994). Wherever you go, there you are: Mindfulness meditation in everyday life. Hyperion. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wherever_You_Go%2C_There_You_Are%3A_Mindfulness_Meditation_in_Everyday_Life
- Bandler, R., & Grinder, J. (1979). Frogs into princes: Neuro linguistic programming. Real People Press.
- Yalom, I. D. (2002). The gift of therapy: An open letter to a new generation of therapists and their patients. Harper Perennial.
- Yalom, I. D. (2008). Staring at the sun: Overcoming the terror of death. Jossey-Bass.
- Yalom, I. D., & Yalom, M. (2021). A matter of death and life. Stanford University Press.
- Yalom, I. D. (1980). Existential psychotherapy. Basic Books.
- Larrea, C. (1952). Dos cruces [Song lyrics]. Retrieved June 6, 2025, from https://tuna.upv.es/cancion/prescancion.asp?Id_Cancion=C0035
- Anka, P. (Lyricist), Revaux, J., François, C., & Thibaut, G. (Composers). (1969). My Way [Song recorded by Frank Sinatra]. On My Way [Album]. Reprise.
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