grief doesn’t shrink we grow around it
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/06/09
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:
- [Wayback/Archive] origin grief doesn’t shrink we grow around it – Google Suche
- [Wayback/Archive] Growing Around Grief – Whats your Grief (browse back through the Wayback history to view the unblocked page; Cloudflare seems to dislike the Wayback Machine):
- People think that grief slowly get smaller with time
- In reality, grief stays the same size, but slowly life begins to grow bigger around it
‘Growing around grief’ (Lois Tonkin, 1996)
Besides the image on the right (which comes from TheRalphSite, see mention below), this page has a few more really nice visualisations as well. I think I like this one most:
- [Wayback/Archive] Growing around grief—another way of looking at grief and recovery | Bereavement Care
- [Wayback/Archive] Vol. 15 No. 1 (1996) | Bereavement Care
- [Wayback/Archive] View of Growing around grief—another way of looking at grief and recovery
- [Wayback/Archive] 02682629608657376.pdf [Wayback PDF View/PDF View/PDF View original]
On the grief before one dies, I wrote this prior blog post: Bereavement or grief do not just take place after death, adverse life changing events are also cause for them.
The grief jar
The concept of the “grief jar” image on the right might has not have been introduced by [Wayback/Archive] Moving forward, not moving on | The Ralph Site Blog: I want to do further research on this as that page got only published in 2021 whereas the original research was 1996. That 2025 years difference which feels long.
The older 2012 [Wayback/Archive] Grief Themed Pictures | The Little White Cat has much less stylized grief jar image sequence which few use. I found it via the 2017 post [Wayback/Archive] Grief Jar | Grant’s Place.
Queries
- [Wayback/Archive] Growing around grief—another way of looking at grief and recovery Lois Tonkin TTC, Cert Counselling (NZ) – Sök på Google
- [Wayback/Archive] the grief jar lois tonkin at DuckDuckGo
- [Wayback/Archive] grief jar at DuckDuckGo
- [Wayback/Archive] jar grief 2015 – Google Zoeken
--jeroen
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 
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