My first loss was when I was seven years old. My uncle died by suicide.
At that age, I did not have language for what I was feeling. I only knew that something had changed in a way that felt permanent and frightening. Loss entered my life early.
Since then, I have experienced many other losses. Family members. Friends. Beloved dogs who were woven into the rhythm of my daily life.
I have also devoted my professional life to studying death and grief. I am a thanatologist. I have spent years sitting with grieving people, teaching about loss, and writing about the human experience of it.
And yet, when my stepfather died unexpectedly, I found myself with a very simple, very human thought.
How am I going to get through this?
It did not matter that I understood grief. It did not matter that I had walked alongside hundreds of grieving clients. In that moment, knowledge did not remove the feeling of standing at the edge of something vast and unknowable.
It is important to say this clearly. This feeling does not only come with sudden loss.
Even when a death has been anticipated for months or years, even when you have sat at hospital bedsides and had hard conversations, even when you believed you were preparing yourself, the moment it becomes real can still take the breath out of you.
Preparation does not eliminate grief. It only changes its shape.
Whether the loss was sudden or expected, many people find themselves thinking the same thing.
I don’t know how I’m going to survive this.
When the Future Feels Impossible
One of the most disorienting parts of grief is how it affects your sense of the future.
Before loss, we live with an unspoken assumption that tomorrow will resemble today. Even when life is difficult, there is a thread of continuity.
After loss, that thread can feel snapped. The mind tries to move forward.
- What will holidays look like?
- How will I manage alone?
- Who am I without them?
- How will I function at work?
- How do I raise children, or grow old, or make decisions now?
And sometimes, the mind doesn't have an answer. Instead, it lands on a single overwhelming thought.
I can’t do this.
This does not mean you are weak. It does not mean you are incapable. It means your system is overwhelmed. Grief collapses time. It pulls the future into the present and asks you to feel it all at once.
No one could carry that without feeling shaken.
Neuroscientist Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor, author of The Grieving Brain, describes grief as the mind trying to learn a world that has changed.
“Grief is a heart-wrenchingly painful problem for the brain to solve, and grieving necessitates learning to live in the world with the absence of someone you love deeply, who is ingrained in your understanding of the world. This means that for the brain, your loved one is simultaneously gone and also everlasting, and you are walking through two worlds at the same time. You are navigating your life despite the fact that they have been stolen from you, a premise that makes no sense, and that is both confusing and upsetting.”
Many grieving people recognize this experience immediately. Part of you knows the person has died. Another part of you still expects them to be here.
Your mind is slowly learning a new reality.
Is It Normal to Feel Like You Can’t Cope?
Yes.
In all my years working in grief, I have never met someone who did not, at some point, wonder how they would get through.
- People who expected the death.
- People who did not.
- People with strong faith.
- People without a religious view.
- People who felt unprepared.
- People who had cared for someone for years.
- People who had complicated relationships.
The thought appears across circumstances.
If you anticipated the loss, you might add another layer of expectations that are not realistic.
I knew this was coming.
I should be more prepared.
Why does this feel so shocking?
Grief is not measured by surprise. It is measured by attachment.
You can know a death is coming and still feel bowled over when it arrives. You can say goodbye many times and still feel stunned by the finality. Anticipatory grief does not cancel the impact of actual loss.
The thought I can’t survive this is often a reflection of intensity, not reality. It is a nervous system response to something that feels too large to comprehend.
A thought is not a prophecy.
Grief and the Loss of Certainty
We like maps.
We like knowing how something unfolds. We want to believe that if we understand enough, prepare enough, or brace enough, we will soften the impact. Grief does not work that way.
Loss removes the illusion that we are in control of how life unfolds. It exposes how much of the future we quietly assumed was guaranteed.
When that illusion falls away, uncertainty rushes in. The mind wants to solve it. It wants a timeline. It wants reassurance that everything will be okay in six months or a year. But grief rarely offers that kind of clarity.
From a mindfulness perspective, this is one of the hardest aspects of loss. The mind wants certainty. The present moment is all that is available.
The work is not figuring out how you will survive the next ten years without this person. It is learning how to be with this breath. This hour. This conversation. This wave.
Not because it fixes grief. But because it makes it livable.
How People Actually Get Through Grief
So how do you get through grief when it feels impossible? Not by solving it in advance. Not by knowing how the next year will unfold.
People get through in increments. They get through the next phone call.The next morning.The next appointment.The next wave of tears.
Often, they do not even realize they are doing it.
Capacity expands slowly. The unbearable becomes survivable. The constant ache becomes intermittent. The future, which once felt impossible to imagine, begins to take shape again, not because it was forced, but because the human system adapts.
This adaptation is uneven. It is not linear. It does not follow a schedule.
But it happens.
Not Knowing Is Part of the Experience
If you find yourself thinking, I don’t know how I will get through this, you are not alone. You are not behind. You are not failing at grief.
You are standing at the edge of change. Not knowing how you will survive does not mean you will not survive. It means your system cannot yet see the shape of life beyond this moment.
Even after a lifetime of loss and a career devoted to understanding death, I have learned this.
Not knowing how you will get through is not a sign of weakness. It is part of loving deeply. It is part of being human in the face of something that matters.
You do not have to know how this ends.
You only have to be here, in this moment.
And from here, the next moment will come.
You Do Not Have to Navigate This Alone
If not knowing how you will get through feels especially unsettling right now, you are welcome to join my free monthly online workshop, Living With Grief.
It is a steady space to practice meeting grief one moment at a time, without pressure to fix or move on.
