How to climb out of grief when you feel trapped

Amy Roberts
03/25/2025

Finding our way to empowerment

 

 

At the Heart of It

• Grief can feel like a bottomless pit that’s impossible to escape.
• While there is no “getting over it,” we can gradually climb out of that pit and find joy again.
• We do that by making small, intentional choices that lead us to empowerment and, eventually, healing.

If you type “depictions of grief” into your search bar, it won’t take long for you to find images of black holes, deep pits, and yawning caverns. It’s a common motif for expressing how it feels to grieve: like you’re trapped somewhere you can’t escape, or like all the light has been snuffed from your life, even as the world carries on around you.

The image of a hole created by loss is something many of those in griefwork—academic, medical, therapeutic, or otherwise—try continuously to understand. In a 2023 bereavement study, Dr. Lucy Poxon of the University of East London interviewed volunteers about their experiences with bereavement. One participant, Mabel, described her grief as a hole that she was slowly falling into: “And now I just feel like I’m hanging on the edge of this big dark hole and my fingers are just my last fragments of sanity and that relentless tormentor called grief is trying to peel my fingers away from the edge of that hole. And I don’t know where I’ll go when my fingers come off.”

So it was both surprising and painfully familiar when we brought our GRIT program to middle school students in Garner, NC and stumbled upon the image of a hole yet again. The program teaches young people resilience, empathy, confidence, and empowerment through validation, art projects, and specialized prompts. During one of the sessions, the instructor asked the students in the program to simply “draw grief.” When the session was over, one of the drawings stood out in particular.

Like many, this student chose to portray their grief as a hole in the ground. But this image was different. Here, the figure in the drawing isn’t trapped inside the hole; they are emerging out of the dark pit and into the sunlight. They are victorious.

So how did they manage it? How do we do the same when we’re experiencing grief?

We climb.

One day at a time, one handhold at a time, one choice at a time, we climb up.

That’s not to say that we can or should try to “get over it.” Grief is love with nowhere to go. It’s always with us to some degree or another. When we learn to process through our grief, our more helpful goal can be not to forget our pain but to move forward and adapt. Over time, we realize that, though we may feel helpless, we can make choices that lead us closer and closer to the surface and out of the hole. That realization is called empowerment.

empowerment (n)

the process of becoming stronger and more confident, especially in controlling one’s life and claiming one’s rights.

 

As we move upward, we have to remember: there will be obstacles on the way out of this hole. There will be slippery handholds, moments we need to stop and rest where we are, and even times when we slide back down a bit. We will need a support system to help us out – friends, family, and loved ones to give us a boost. But with each new step upward comes a new choice. In reality, those choices don’t need to be monumental. They may look a lot like:

1. Get out of bed

2. Eat breakfast

3. Get dressed

And so on. Sometimes, grief is so present in our hearts and minds that those are the only choices we can focus on, and that’s okay. But every time we choose to take action despite the obstacles in front of us, we empower ourselves further. We get closer to the light, closer to that triumphant character emerging from the darkness of the hole.

We become more and more resilient.

 

Pause for a Beat

• Has grief ever felt like something you couldn’t escape? How did that impact your life?
• What does “empowerment” mean to you? What about “resilience?”
• What are some small ways you can empower yourself day-to-day?

 

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