Grieving is an emotional process that all of us have to deal with at some point or another in our lifetime. Losing someone usually involves a feeling of sorrow because we miss the person who has passed.

But what about when we lose someone that we were supposed to be close to, but weren’t? I’m going to use myself as an example to help explain. My grandmother passed away several months ago. For many reasons, I never really knew my grandmother. Considering that I didn’t know my grandmother, I shouldn’t have been all that upset when she passed away, right? Well, that was not the case. I was incredibly sad that she passed away. To confuse things even more, I didn’t know why I was sad. I mean, I didn’t really know her, so I shouldn’t be that upset right?

As I’ve grown older, I encountered more and more people who have found themselves in similar situations. They lost someone who was supposed to be an important, influential person in their lives but they either weren’t close to them or they had a bad relationship with them. This can make the grieving process very confusing.

I find this an important matter to discuss because I believe that grieving does not have to solely involve sorrow. Let me repeat that.

Grieving does not have to solely involve sorrow.

For most, grieving only involves sorrow. However, for others, grieving can involve a multitude of emotions including but not limited to confusion, anger, relief and even happiness. There is no single feeling related to grieving, at least not in my experience.

The important thing to take away from this is not to brush off your feelings just because you think you shouldn’t be having them.

After talking with some close friends, I figured out that I wasn’t just sad that my grandmother had passed away. I was sad because I never had the chance to know her and never would. It’s difficult to put into words, but once I knew what I was sad about, it made the grieving process a lot easier.

There can be many emotions tied to grieving. Don’t push your feelings under the rug to let simmer just because you’re unsure of why you feel them. Talk to a friend or write about it in a journal. But most of all, don’t feel bad for feeling the way you do because grieving does not have to solely involve sorrow.