Redefining 'Okay' After Loss
/ General : Eleanor Haley
What does "being okay" after loss mean to you?
Not happy or healed, not successful or self-actualized — but okay.
Would it be having more good days than bad? Feeling capable of meeting your basic needs and the needs of those in your care? Finding peace with difficult memories? Or finding a continued connection with someone who’s died?
The question of what it means to “be okay” may be a helpful one for grieving people to ask themselves when they’re ready. Although, as many have pointed out, it’s okay not to be okay — especially when you’re grieving.
A sense of okayness might be hard to envision for people feeling ravaged by the intense emotions and distressing thoughts of acute grief. When the only world that makes sense feels destroyed by a significant loss, it can be difficult to imagine that any reality other than the one you had before could ever feel acceptable.
But this is precisely why okayness is important to consider. Otherwise, it can continue to feel impossible — as though it’s something you’ll only find when you’ve either "healed" from your grief or finished building a time machine to take you back to before your loss — whichever happens first.
When we think this way, we may find ourselves:
- Focusing on the wrong things - for example, trying to “go back to normal” when that version of ourselves has been forever changed.
- Judging ourselves by impossible standards - for example, feeling like we need to work towards “getting over” or "resolving" our grief.
- Viewing “okay,” “happy,” or “healed” as final destinations - for example, buying into the idea that we battle through grief to get to the other side, where we finally feel better — overlooking the reality that emotions and experiences like joy, sadness, peace, and pain are transient, often overlapping states.
You Can't Wait Out Grief
Have you ever had somewhere you wanted or needed to be, but as you’re getting ready to leave, you notice that it’s pouring outside? You think, "Maybe I can wait it out," so you stand there and wait…and wait, but there’s seemingly no end in sight. Eventually, you say to yourself, "I can’t stand here forever. I have to go about my life despite the rain," and so you make a run for it.
Grief is the longest rainstorm — one that threatens to rage at any moment, even years after it first began. Eventually, you have to find ways to live your life despite the rain. Because one thing time makes evident is that, despite our heartache, the world keeps spinning. We can’t reverse its rotation to return to the way things were before; we must learn to live our lives alongside grief. As we said in our book:
People often mistake hope as something that can only come after grief, but that doesn’t make sense if you think about it. Hope must exist alongside grief because without darkness, why would you ever wish for light? Hope exists because you’re lost in suffering, and before you find the path out, you must have hope that you’ll find it.
In her work on ambiguous loss, Pauline Boss shares a concept she calls “redefining hope.” She says that hope, in the midst of ambiguous grief, is not expecting a perfect outcome. Instead, it’s asking: What might provide me with a small sense of meaning, purpose, connection, comfort, or peace — even in the midst of my current pain and struggle?
Though ambiguous loss is its own experience, this concept is useful for people experiencing all types of grief. Unfortunately, many painful life experiences are not brief or time-limited; they linger. They cast a shadow over your life and cause ongoing daily struggles, so waiting until they resolve to find points of healing, comfort, pleasure, or purpose may not be reasonable.
Being a grieving human in the world means constantly cycling between ups, downs, and in-betweens. Positive states like happiness or fulfillment are not endpoints; they’re passing states just like sadness. The most realistic way to live post-loss is to recognize that these seemingly opposite feelings will, at some point, coexist.
So what does a more realistic sense of “okayness” look like to you? One that recognizes loss has left an unfillable hole and that grief has changed you and the way you see the world. One that acknowledges life is a series of ups and downs and that, when you’re grieving, the potential for setbacks and sad days always exists. One that is reasonable, but not impossible.
We’re not asking you to be this — or any other form of okay — right now. Only to hope that there’s a version of it that makes sense in your life after loss.
Is it an “okay” that needs more room to accommodate the range of emotions that will always be part of your life?
Is it an “okay” that keeps one eye on the past because that’s where the people and places you treasure exist?
Is it a little more guarded and protective because you’ve learned that the worst can happen?
Does it understand the need to value small but meaningful everyday moments?
Mark June 1, 2026 at 12:51 pm
It’s okay to realise and accept my life has fundamentally changed.
I have memories but can never in reality revisit the time and place they belong to. I will always at some level grieve privately. But that is okay because my grief is based on a deep love that will never die, in turn based on having shared a wonderful relationship with a diamond mum over many years. I will move forward, try to live a good and positive life, but the grief will now be part of my DNA. Most importantly that is okay because grief has become a strange type of friend who taught me many things. One day I hope I can support others close to me when intense grief visits their door.
Kathy May 31, 2026 at 5:36 pm
I am “okay” when I volunteer. For those hours, I think about something else other than myself.
My husband has been dead for 9 years. I have “okay” moments during the day. I rarely have full days where I feel completely “okay.” And, that is “okay ” for me!
Janet Alvey May 30, 2026 at 5:09 pm
On June 9th, it will be 2 years and 3 months since my husband died. We were together 63 years, married almost 61. Sometimes I feel “okay” and other days, I still feel at loose ends. I ask myself, what should I be doing? I do feel happy sometimes. I got a new kitten last October and he brings me joy. He’s a character. Plus I have 3 other cats to take care of. But the giant hole 🕳 is still there.
Ann Margaret Ulrich May 30, 2026 at 3:27 pm
Some days being okay is with tears in the corner of my eyes but no visible teardrops. And sometimes, being okay is reading that there is a priceless gift of love , but the due bill comes much later. Sharing the joy and the pain does help for the most part.
~k May 30, 2026 at 10:12 am
Thank you for this excellent education!
My 2 cents is: take one day at a time,
“stay in the day.”
Barb May 30, 2026 at 6:35 am
It is almost 4 years since I lost my husband and yet at times I am still so sad. I miss him so; yet I know I am ok. Underneath the sadness is the deep sense that “All is well”. My circumstances have changed…God has not and I am thankful…I will always miss him but I am ok. .
Maria May 29, 2026 at 8:46 pm
What if you feel like you’ll never be ok?
Holly May 29, 2026 at 6:46 pm
For me, reaching “OK” is grasping routine again–the old and now, some new pieces of routine. I read this post just after coming inside from my daily afternoon walk with my standard poodle. That is the routine I had before my beautiful husband died two years ago, and it continues. But as I’ve gained more stability in this loss, I’ve added new walking routes–places we haven’t been and it’s lovely. It’s a small thing, but means so much as I live with this profound loss.
I can also do this walk listening to some of my favorite songs that remind me of Ted and I no longer feel crushed by tears and pain in hearing them. More often than not, I smile as I listen, and I tell Ted I am going to be OK.
It’s the little things that show me I am and will continue to be OK. I don’t take them for granted.
Debbie H May 29, 2026 at 5:11 pm
I will be “okay” in my grief when I can accept both the ups and downs as tolerable, allowing me to be active in the daily activities I am doing. If I can live each day by contributing more than I have to skip or miss then I will be able to feel I am living. Right now I am only existing, and going through the motions of life without much joy or reason for existing.
AJWINGS May 29, 2026 at 3:34 pm
Thank youf for this article, idea of “okayness”, and quote from Pauline Boss. Finding the small sense of meaning alongside grief and coinciding in current state is a journey in and of itself. Its glimpses or hope or purpose that seem to slip away. Only to come up as another glimpse one day. I have yet to have more than these glimpses, not sure how to make the first real step. Currently I co-exist in status. Understanding I don’t have to wait to lean into this glimse of purpose. It’s still a cloudy idea which I have faith will become more clear to me, and then will be able to make the step, alongside the pain.
Jeanne Johnson May 29, 2026 at 2:35 pm
I’m only okay to the point I can function and find joy intermittently. It’s never really okay thoroughly. I feel I just have to live with the grief and try to live in the moment. Some days are good if I keep busy and some days just don’t work well!
Robbie Bommele May 29, 2026 at 2:30 pm
For nearly 11 years, I never allowed myself to grieve the loss of my husband. I thought I had. I always said I was “okay”, whatever that meant. I threw myself into the lives of my children and totally focused on them. Everyone around me recognized what I was doing except for me. Then finally, a few months ago, I crashed. Depression filled my days and I struggled through every day. I felt like I had lost myself. I started to read books that made me realize what was happening and what I needed to do for ME. I began to understand that the Lord needed to be a significant part of my life and help me through all this. Several months have passed and I am doing so much better. Happy thoughts of my husband fill my days. I have relocated and given my children the space they needed to develop their own ways. I am peaceful, finally and content. I am now more than okay.
Kay May 29, 2026 at 2:30 pm
I find that ‘okay’ is easily accepted when someone asks how you are. It is my go to answer to make others comfortable because they dont really want to know 8 years later why you are not ‘great!’
Brenda Phillips May 29, 2026 at 1:40 pm
I don’t want to be “okay”. That is not really living, is it?
Eleanor Haley June 1, 2026 at 10:45 am
Understandable, Brenda. I guess the idea is that you have to start somewhere. But getting to a place where you feel you are beyond baseline is, of course, ideal.