A normal and natural human response to a significant emotional loss, grief is a sense of despair brought about by life circumstances beyond our control. It may be the loss of a loved one or the loss of a relationship.
 

If it is a death, the grieving process will take as long as it needs to take, depending on many things such as the closeness of our relationship to the deceased, the cause of death, age of the deceased and whether the death was unexpected or not. Grief is not an illness to be cured, and the emotions attached to it are normal. This very human emotion often brings on a crisis in faith, because a significant loss challenges all of a person's basic beliefs about the nature and fairness of the universe, the existence of a higher power, or even the very nature of God. Grief is a long process of adjustment. Learning to live life without your loved one, whether it is from death or a lost relationship, is a difficult path to find yourself on.

Grief is sometimes manifested in unexpected composure, lucidness, and productivity that seems out of place. Feelings of emptiness, shock and anger are just some of the common symptoms of grief. Unable to think about anything else, grief is not only emotionally exhausting, but physically exhausting also. Physical symptoms that might appear vary from tightness in the throat, heaviness in the chest and an empty feeling in the stomach to tiredness and fatigue, headaches, and other such ailments.

Death can be a painful and permanent loss experience, and one of the hardest from which to recover. Grieving reminds us how fragile life is and how vulnerable we are to loss.