Resisting Timelines, Choosing Presence

Much of my work has been shaped by a quiet resistance to how loss is often spoken about.

Grief is frequently presented as something with a trajectory — stages to move through, outcomes to reach, a point where it should soften or resolve. Yet the people I meet rarely experience it that way. Their stories are layered, interrupted, unfinished. They don’t move forward neatly. They circle, pause, return.

I’ve learned to be cautious of language that rushes this process.

From a postmodern, structural awareness, I pay attention to how certain narratives can unintentionally narrow what becomes speakable. When grief is framed as something to “work through” within a set timeframe, other experiences — ongoing attachment, anger, relief, numbness, contradiction — are quietly pushed aside.

Presence has become my response to that.

Rather than beginning with solutions or plans, I try to begin by sitting with what is already there. I’ve noticed how often people carry shame not only about what they feel, but about how long they’ve felt it. Offering an open-ended space — without a predetermined endpoint — can feel like a small but meaningful disruption to that pressure.

In this space, complexity is not a problem to be fixed.

Loss can be ambiguous. It can be disenfranchised. It can exist alongside gratitude, love, resentment, or exhaustion. When these experiences are allowed to coexist without being organised into a cleaner story, something often shifts. People speak more freely. They reclaim language that had previously been taken from them.

I’m also attentive to how power moves through helping relationships. A client-centred stance asks me to remain curious rather than authoritative — to collaborate rather than interpret too quickly. It reminds me that the person sitting with me is already an expert in their own experience, even when that experience feels confusing or fractured.

This is not an approach that promises resolution.

Instead, it offers room. Room for grief that does not end. Room for meaning that changes. Room for stories that resist being simplified.

In choosing presence over prescription, I’ve come to see support less as guiding someone toward a destination, and more as accompanying them as they make sense of where they already are.