10/30/2025
This simple, yet powerful, illustration captures one of the deepest truths about grief.
At first glance, it appears that grief, the dark sphere in each jar, should shrink over time. That’s what most people assume, that healing means the pain gradually fades, becoming smaller and smaller until it’s gone. But in reality, grief doesn’t shrink. It remains with us, a permanent part of who we are. What changes is us. We grow around it.
In the beginning, grief fills the entire space of our life. It consumes every thought, every breath. As time moves forward, our world slowly expands again. We begin to rediscover moments of laughter, love, and joy. The pain is still there, but it no longer takes up every corner of our being. We create new memories, new relationships, new reasons to live, and in doing so, our “jar” grows larger.
This image reminds us that healing isn’t about erasing loss. It’s about learning to live with it. The person we’ve lost, the pain we’ve felt, and the love that remains, they all become woven into our growth. We carry grief differently, not because it disappears, but because we become bigger than the sorrow that once defined us.
It’s a quiet message of hope, the heart doesn’t get over loss, it grows around it.
