Grief - One Size Fits One
After trauma, what do we do with grief?
During Sexual Assault Awareness Month, we’ve been reflecting on how sexual violence affects those who have been victimized. One response deserves more attention than it often receives: Grief.
Sexual assault is disorienting. It takes us on a journey we did not choose—from what is known, through uncertainty, into something new. And along the way, something is lost.
What’s lost deserves to be grieved. But grief is not straightforward.
Some feel the pull to move on too quickly, to regain control, to appear “normal,” to leave the pain behind. Yet when grief is rushed, it has a way of returning, leaving us feeling ambushed.
Others experience the opposite. Life seems to freeze. The world moves forward, but they remain suspended in loss, wondering if relief or hope will ever come.
Between these extremes lies something worth naming:
There is such a thing as good grief.
Not grief that rushes past pain.
Not grief that becomes a permanent place to live.
But grief that is given time.
Grief that is supported.
Grief that allows movement—slow, uneven, but real.
As a pastor, I sat with many navigating this difficult terrain. I have seen how essential it is to resist both the urge to bypass grief and the temptation to remain isolated within it.
Ann Lamott once wrote that hope is the cousin of grief—and both take time. They cannot be forced, rushed, or repaired with quick solutions. Instead, healing emerges through small acts of care, connection, and compassion.
In East of Apple Glen, Nathan and Robbye suffer different forms of violence and loss. As their stories unfold, the question is not whether they experience grief, but how they engage with it. How do they, each in their own way, move through it? Do they struggle against it? Or become defined by it?
Grief is not something to avoid or overcome. It is something to move through. It is something to move “beyond.”
And the path through grief is not meant to be walked alone.
