GROWING THROUGH GRIEF
Written by Tony Hogan. A real experience and exploration of ‘growing through grief’.
Grief Awareness Week December 2025
The theme of Grief Awareness Week this year is ‘Growing Through Grief’. TNN meeting facilitator and attendee, Tony, shares his experience of this.
The theme comes in the same week as my therapist asked me if I had grown enough with my grief, to pat myself on the back.
I was telling him about the busy few weeks I’m having, including singing in a choir concert, and being voted Best Male Cameo role at my local theatre society.
I admitted out loud, to him, and now to you, that I have periods of fun, and even joy sometimes, with no underlying guilt or fear that it will be snatched away from me.
He reminded me of the profound grief I felt when we first started seeing each other. I couldn’t even say my husband’s name, Johnny, without sobbing, unable to fully explain what had happened.
At a crisis point, just over a year after Johnny’s death, and a few days after my dad Gerry’s funeral, we talked about starting anti-depressants, as I admitted the overwhelm of grief had swallowed me whole, and I could no longer function.
On Christmas Eve this year, it will be two and half years since my husband, Johnny, lay down in the shade of a tree, during my birthday picnic he had secretly arranged, in a beautiful Barcelona park.
He died very suddenly and with no warning, in public with our friends around us. I tried to resuscitate him and was moved away by the ambulance crew, left holding his new white trainers he had put on that day for the first time.
Six months later I returned to UK for the first time in 12 years and moved into my Dad, Gerry’s, house. Gerry died 10 months after Johnny and I was cut completely adrift.
I was broken and hopeless.
This week, celebrating some wins and feeling good about some fun things coming up in the next few weeks, I was able to talk about my grief for Johhny and Gerry, and at the same time anticipate fun in this new life I’m living.
I didn’t ask for it, I didn’t want it, but it happened anyway. And I keep waking up in the morning, so I can’t control it either.
Finally, I know that I will never forget my most treasured people, that I am doing what I do every day, as a grieving person, and I don’t have to mentally apologise if I laugh with friends or plan an outing.
This is my growth: alongside my enduring grief, including times when I sob for sheer loss of what I once had, I can live my current life as fully as I deserve.
Believe me, I use that “deserve” word with a lot of thought as it sat very heavily on me in earlier periods of my grief.
Being congratulated for what I had “achieved” in my widowhood and after being orphaned made me feel very uncomfortable. Now I am slowly being persuaded that this growth is justifiable and healthy too.
I never hated the holiday season. Johnny’s birthday is 20th December. The last two years have felt impossible at this time of year, but I don’t want to hate the holidays.
I’ll continue to grow and find new ways to honour my people, and find out what this version of me likes to do.
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