Model of Grief - Pt. 1

One helpful way to understand grief is to picture a short, wide jar. This jar represents our ability to cope with life’s challenges. Now, imagine placing a tennis ball inside the jar; this ball symbolises the pain of losing someone we deeply care about. The ball takes up a significant amount of space, leaving little room for anything else.

It might seem natural to assume that, over time, the size of the tennis ball will shrink. We might hope that after a few months or even years, the pain will diminish—perhaps shrinking to the size of a golf ball, then a marble, and eventually disappearing altogether. This shrinking ball would mean that the pain takes up less space, allowing us more room to handle life’s demands.

However, as grief expert Lois Tonkin suggests, a more realistic way to look at it is that the tennis ball remains the same size. The pain of losing someone close to us doesn’t necessarily shrink. Instead, what changes is our ability to manage that pain—our jar, or capacity to cope, grows larger over time, creating more space to deal with life.

This perspective can be comforting because it challenges the misconception that loss is something we simply need to “get over” or “move on” from. When we experience a significant loss, life often changes in ways that cannot be undone. We must allow ourselves time to adjust to these changes and create space to grieve.

Accepting that the pain never fully disappears is difficult, but there’s comfort in knowing that its presence is a natural part of the healing process. More importantly, there’s hope in realising that our ability to live with this pain can and will expand over time as we journey through grief. Therapy can play a crucial role in this process, offering a safe space to explore and make sense of the complex emotions that surface after a loss.