Grief Isn't a Straight Line
On the Dual Process Model, and why moving between sorrow and living isn't doing it "wrong."
If you've been through a loss and found yourself crying one hour and laughing with friends the next — you're not doing it "wrong." You might be doing it exactly right.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately, after sitting with several clients whose losses looked nothing alike on paper — and yet the shape of what they were going through was strikingly similar.
Grief shows up in almost every client I work with at some point — and it isn't always the loss of a loved one. Sometimes it's a pet. A job. A relationship that ended. A divorce. The quiet ache of infertility — grieving a version of life you'd planned for but won't get to have. Becoming an empty nester and grieving a chapter, and an identity, that's ending. It doesn't always announce itself as "grief," but that's often exactly what it is.
Over 25 years ago, psychologists Stroebe and Schut developed something called the Dual Process Model of Grief, and it's still one of the most helpful frameworks I know for understanding what mourning actually looks like — whatever the loss. It says we move back and forth between two states:
Loss-oriented coping
Facing the pain directly. Crying. Missing what was. Sitting with the sadness of the pet who isn't there anymore, the job you loved, the marriage you pictured lasting, the baby you hoped for, the house that suddenly feels too quiet.
Restoration-oriented coping
Turning toward life. Updating your resume. Making dinner. Learning who you are on your own. Redecorating a bedroom. Laughing at a joke. Building a new routine.
Here's the key part: healthy grieving isn't picking one and staying there. It's the oscillation between the two — dipping into the sadness, then coming up for air, then dipping back down again. Over time, that rhythm shifts, but it never fully disappears, and it doesn't need to.
And this is the part I most want people to hear.
Stepping away from the grief isn't avoiding it. Those moments of distraction, of getting on with life, of even enjoying yourself — they're not a betrayal of the person or thing you lost, and they're not a sign you're not grieving "properly." Stepping away is a necessary part of coping. You're allowed the breather. You need the breather.
And it works the other way, too. You can have a good stretch — lighter, hopeful — then a wave of sadness knocks you sideways, and it feels like slipping back. Two steps forward, three back. But a low day isn't a relapse. Neither direction is a failure — a low day isn't going backwards, and a good day isn't running away.
So if you're grieving any kind of loss — a person, a marriage, a job, a dream of what your life would look like — try letting go of the idea that there's a "right" way to look sad enough, or a "right" pace to move at. There's no timeline you're falling behind on. There's just your own rhythm, and the slow, back-and-forth work of healing.
Be gentle with yourself. Grief has no straight lines, and it has more shapes than we're often taught to recognise.
