On the TODO list is to write more about the origin of “grief doesn’t shrink we grow around it”. For now, this is good enough:
The theory is from the influential 1996 article “Growing around grief—another way of looking at grief and recovery, Lois Tonkin TTC, Cert Counselling (NZ)”
Nowadays most people refer to it as the “grief jar”, see image below, but these weren’t the original images: those are on the right. Initially everyone thought that grief would shrink as seen in Figure 1 and Figure 2, but in fact we grow around it as shown in Figure 3.
Links:
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 