What Is the Difference Between Grief, Mourning, and Bereavement?
And why these words matter when you’re hurting.
I used to think grief and mourning were the same thing.
I’d hear people talk about “grieving a loss” and assume it meant the whole messy tangle. The crying, the not-eating, the aching hollowness. The candle lighting. The numbness. The showing up to the funeral in something slightly too tight because nothing in your closet feels right for the occasion of someone you loved being gone.
But then grief came for me. And I wasn’t lighting candles. I wasn’t showing up. I wasn’t talking about it.
I was barely breathing. And I realized I was grieving, yes. But I wasn’t mourning.
There’s a difference. Between what we feel, what we show, and what we’re expected to carry quietly. And naming that difference matters more than we think.
So today, we’re going to untangle these three words: grief, mourning, and bereavement. Because sometimes naming helps us find our way through.
Grief Is the Internal Landscape
Grief is what happens inside of us.
It’s the aching, the shock, the disorientation.
The slow-motion panic of knowing something irreversible just happened.
It’s the guilt that creeps in when we laugh, the rage that flares when someone says the wrong thing, the emptiness that takes up residence in your chest and refuses to leave.
Grief lives in the body.
It shows up in the stomach. The jaw. The nervous system.
It steals sleep, appetite, and words. It fogs the brain and tightens the muscles.
Some days it’s sharp and stabbing. Some days it’s a dull, heavy hum that colors everything gray.
And here’s the thing: grief doesn’t always look like grief.
It can look like working too much. Snapping at the people you love. Forgetting everything.
It can look like numbness. Like zoning out. Like nothing at all.
Because grief is the internal response to loss. And not just the loss of someone we love, but the loss of anything that mattered: relationships, identities, dreams, homes, health, stability, safety.
Grief is how we metabolize absence.
How we try to make sense of what no longer is.
It doesn’t ask for permission.
It doesn’t keep office hours.
It shows up uninvited, again and again.
You can’t see someone’s grief just by looking at them.
Which is why so many people walk around unseen, deep in it, but outwardly composed.
This is the grief we carry alone.
The grief that lingers behind the eyes.
The kind that changes us from the inside out.
💌 You don't have to grieve alone.
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Mourning Is the External Expression
If grief is what we feel, mourning is how we show it.
Mourning is public. Relational. Cultural.
It’s the visible, outward expression of loss. What others can witness.
It looks like funeral rites, obituary writing, black clothing, memorial tattoos, and ritual meals passed around in silence.
It’s lighting a candle every year on their birthday.
It’s crying in front of someone and letting yourself be seen.
It’s wearing your pain in a way the world can recognize, even if just for a moment.
Mourning can be sacred.
But it can also feel scripted.
Because every culture, family, and system has ideas about what grief “should” look like. How long is it acceptable, how it’s supposed to sound, when it’s time to “move on.”
There’s often more room for mourning right after a loss, when casseroles arrive and sympathy cards fill the mailbox.
But what about six months later?
Two years later?
What about the kind of grief that doesn’t fit into a socially sanctioned timeline?
Many people are grieving without mourning.
Not because they don’t want to, but because they can’t.
Because the loss is invisible. Or stigmatized. Or private.
Because there was no funeral. Or no one showed up.
Because the person they lost is still alive.
Because their relationship wasn’t “recognized.”
Mourning is where grief gets seen, named, held, if we’re lucky.
But too often, we’re asked to keep our grief tidy, palatable, quiet.
To shrink it down into a few acceptable rituals and then move on.
And so mourning becomes something else entirely:
Not just a ritual, but a rebellion.
A refusal to hide what hurts.
A way of saying: This mattered. They mattered. I am still carrying this.
Bereavement Is the State of Loss
Bereavement is the word we hear the least, and yet it’s the one that often shows up on paperwork.
It’s a status. A condition. A label that says you have lost someone to death.
Where grief is emotional and mourning is expressive, bereavement is logistical.
It’s the official, clinical term that shows up on HR forms and death certificates.
“Bereavement leave” gets granted for a handful of days, then the calendar moves on. But you don’t.
Being bereaved doesn’t describe how you feel.
It doesn’t say anything about how close you were to the person who died, or what their absence is doing to your life.
It simply marks the fact that a death has occurred, and that you are, on some level, expected to be impacted.
But here’s the thing: we don’t always get to be recognized as bereaved.
Not if the relationship was complicated. Not if it was secret. Not if we’re not seen as “family.”
There are entire categories of loss that never get labeled as bereavement at all—ex-partners, estranged parents, friends who were more like soulmates, chosen family.
Bereavement is the box we’re supposed to check.
But many of us are grieving and mourning without ever being named as bereaved.
And that unspoken exclusion? It adds a second layer of pain, one that comes not from the loss itself, but from the way the world fails to witness it.
📣 If this piece helped you name something in your own story, would you consider sharing it? Someone else may need these words too.
But Also, Grief Doesn’t Follow Rules
Here’s the thing. Even with all these definitions, grief doesn’t care about tidy categories.
It doesn’t show up in order. It doesn’t wait for the funeral. It doesn’t need to make sense.
You might feel the weight of a loss long before someone dies.
Or go completely numb after they’re gone.
You might cry during a commercial, then feel nothing at the memorial.
You might not talk about them for a year, and then suddenly need to say their name every day.
Some people move through loss quietly, without any outward signs.
Others need ritual and repetition, space to wail, space to remember.
And some people don’t get acknowledged at all. Their loss doesn’t “count” in the eyes of others, even though it gutted them just the same.
These words, grief, mourning, and bereavement, can be useful.
They can help us name what we’re going through or explain what we need.
But they don’t capture the full story. And they don’t get to dictate how you move through yours.
Language is meant to guide, not confine.
You don’t have to fit into any one expression of loss.
Whatever you’re feeling, or not feeling, is part of the landscape too.
Closing Reflection
Maybe you’ve been grieving for a long time and didn’t have a name for it.
Maybe you were told to move on before you even had the chance to begin.
Maybe no one ever recognized your loss at all.
Grief, mourning, and bereavement they aren’t stages or steps. They’re threads in the larger fabric of how we love, how we lose, and how we try to live after.
You don’t need to perform your pain for it to be valid.
You don’t need a death certificate to justify your sorrow.
And you don’t need the right words to be worthy of support.
But sometimes, having language can help us find the edges of what hurts.
It can make space for our grief to be seen, honored, and held in whatever form it takes.
So I’ll ask you this, gently:
Have you felt grief you never mourned?
Have you mourned someone you weren’t “supposed” to?
Has your bereavement been quiet, invisible, unrecognized?
You’re not alone in that. And you don’t have to carry it all in silence.
Love today,
Heather 🌸
If this spoke to something you’re carrying—something wordless, something weighty—I want you to know there’s a place for that, too.
Still Here: A Grief Companion was created for the ones who are grieving quietly. For the ones who don’t know where to start. For the ones who need something more than platitudes and timelines.
It’s part guidebook, part ritual, part witness.
A place to lay things down. A place to pick up what matters.
Each week holds a written teaching, gentle prompts, small somatic tools, and space for what doesn’t yet make sense.
You don’t need to be eloquent or ready.
You just need to be willing to meet yourself where you are.
And to know that whatever you feel—whatever form it takes—counts.
You are still here. And that matters.