How Time Shifts & Distorts in Grief
It’s a new year - a time of new beginnings, renewed energy, inspired clarity, and renewed commitment.
Or so they say.
Sometimes the new year becomes the first year that our person didn’t see. Sometimes the turning of the calendar means moving into the year we’ve been dreading, the one we know could be the year we have to say goodbye. Sometimes a new year is another reminder that things are never going back to “before.”
New years don’t always mean new beginnings. Sometimes they are painful reminders of endings. Sometimes while the world is looking forward, we’re living in a separate space where time stands still, becomes muddled, or disappears altogether.
Time becomes an entirely different organism for the grieving.
When I look back on 2022 - the first year that I spent without my sister - I struggle to articulate what happened to my relationship with time. Time simultaneously froze, sped up, and disappeared. It became a shapeshifter, a mockery, an irrelevance, and a refuge. It became a painful reminder of all that I’d lost, and also a reason to hold out hope that maybe, one day, there would be a brighter future that I couldn’t yet see.
As I move into 2023, I’m noticing once again that my relationship with time isn’t the same. It’s fuzzier and slower; I have less ability to see ahead. When we’re grieving, so much of our mental and emotional space is occupied with integrating our loss. An already abstract concept like time is something that our brains often don’t have the capacity to track.
Time distortion is normal when you’re grieving. This is one of those places in grief where we can’t do much except understand that time is going to feel different and trust that it won’t be this way forever. We can lean in and give ourselves grace instead of (often fruitlessly) trying to experience time the way we once did.
For me that means consciously trying to stay at a speed of 35 instead of going from 0 to 60 after my holiday break. It means more being, less doing. More intention, less urgency. More quiet and more rest. It means reminding myself that while others around me may see January as a new beginning, my heart operates on its own timetable with no use for the calendar.
Wherever you are in this season of “new beginnings” is okay. If you don’t feel energy and enthusiasm for the year ahead, you aren’t doing this wrong. If the turning of the calendar feels painful - or pointless - you are not alone. As always, be gentle with yourself.
