257. Permission to Grieve: How Feeling It All Makes You More Complete

March 25, 2026

This is it — the finale of our 10-part series on grief, and we're closing with a Gate that might be the most quietly powerful one yet: Other. That's right, the catchall. The one that says: if your loss doesn't fit neatly into a framework, it still counts. If you're feeling it, it counts.

Losses that fall into this category include: Identity shifts, infertility, retirement, faded friendships, the life you thought you'd have — and anything else. We also reflect on the full arc of the series, sharing four essential takeaways about grief, and perhaps most importantly, making the case that grief and joy aren't opposites. They're companions. And working with one deepens your capacity for both.

If you've been putting off your grief because it seemed too small, too strange, or too hard to explain to anyone else — this episode is your permission slip.

This episode is part of a 10-part series on grief. You can jump in here and circle back to Episode 248 when you're ready.

p.s. Find a Simple Joy practice for this episode right here at our blog.

About: The Joy Lab Podcast is an Ambie-nominated podcast that blends science and soul to help you cope better with stress, ease anxiety, and uplift mood. Join Dr. Henry Emmons and Dr. Aimee Prasek for practical, mindfulness-based tools and positive psychology strategies to build resilience and create lasting joy. Take the next leap in your wellbeing journey with the Joy Lab Program.

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Key moments:

[00:00:00] — This is the final episode of Joy Lab's 10-part Grief Series, beginning with episode 248. Overview of the framework: Francis Weller's Five Gates of Grief, with additional gates from other practitioners.

[00:01:00] — Introducing the Ninth Gate: Other. Examples include: identity transitions, infertility, miscarriage, abortion, aging, retirement, relocating, faded friendships, missed opportunities, a diagnosis. The message of this Gate: your grief is valid, even if it doesn't fit a category.

[00:02:00] — Why the "Other" Gate matters: it gives permission to grieve things we didn't think were grievable. Henry reflects on grief he carried about the life he imagined for his later years. Sometimes the losses that linger longest are the ones we felt we weren't allowed to name.

[00:03:00] — The Ninth Gate as permission: no framework, however good, can contain all of grief. If it feels like a loss, it is a loss. This Gate honors grief's vastness and individuality.

[00:04:00] — Connecting grief to our Element of Joy for this month: Equanimity. Real equanimity isn't about avoiding highs and lows — it includes grief.

[00:05:00] — Real equanimity is the ability to stay present with whatever's happening — joy, fear, sorrow, love — without being swept away. Grief can be a storm, but we can learn to work with it rather than be destroyed by it.

[00:06:00] — How grief becomes workable: by practicing with smaller emotions when they're less overwhelming, we build capacity. Touching grief lightly, letting it move through — that's how the storm becomes survivable. The whole series has been about building exactly this capacity.

[00:07:00] — Four Key Takeaways from the Grief Series:

Takeaway 1: Grief is not a problem to solve or something to get over. It's a natural response to loss — and loss is part of living.
Takeaway 2: Grief is communal. Billions of people are working with these gates. You are not alone.
Takeaway 3: Grief is a skill we have to practice — consistent, regular grief-hygiene rituals help us work with frequent losses before they accumulate. The small "Other" griefs percolating in the background? Name them. Work with them. That's great training.
Takeaway 4: Grief isn't just about death or obvious losses. Curiosity about how loss touches us is itself a powerful mental health skill. When we're willing to see and hold our losses, we can also see and hold the love around us — and within us.

[00:09:00] — The gifts of grief, Part 1: Henry reflects on what this series — and his own prolonged experience of grief — has given him. Grief opens us to compassion. When you've been through real loss, you recognize it in others. You understand their struggle at a level you couldn't before. That's profound connection.

[00:10:00] — The gifts of grief, Part 2: Grief brings wisdom. You learn what really matters. You stop wasting time on what doesn't. Henry shares something personal: "I am more tender now. More permeable. I feel things more deeply." And because of that, he's more open to joy — because you can't close yourself off to pain without also closing yourself off to beauty, love, and wonder.

[00:11:00] — Grief and joy are not opposites — they're companions. The deeper your capacity for grief, the deeper your capacity for joy. Both require an open heart. Henry's closing encouragement: "Don't be afraid of grief. Let it be your teacher. Let it make you more of who you really are."

[00:12:00] — Closing wisdom from Kahlil Gibran: "The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain."

Sources and Notes for this full grief series:

Joy Lab Program: Take the next leap in your wellbeing journey with step-by-step practices to help you build and maintain the elements of joy in your life.
Grief Series:
- The Grief Series: The Wholeness of Being Human [part 1, ep 248]
- Everything We Love, We Will Lose: Navigating the First Gate of Grief
  [part 2, ep 249]
- Welcoming Back the Parts of You That Have Not Known Love [part 3, ep 250]
- Why You Can't Escape the Sorrows of the World (and why that's a good thing) [part 4, ep 251]
- Born to Belong: Grieving What Should Have Been There From the Start [part 5, ep 252]
- Breaking the Cycle: Ancestral Grief, Epigenetics, and the Power to Change Your Legacy [part 6, ep 253]
- How Facing the Harm You've Done Can Set You Free [part 7, ep 254]
- How the World's Pain Enters Your Body and What to Do Next [part 8, ep 255]
Related Episodes:
- Savoring the Present and Overcoming FOBO (it's kinda like FOMO...) [ep 45]
Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller
The Four Things That Matter Most by Ira Byock, M.D.
Beckes & Sbarra, Social baseline theory: State of the science and new directions. Access here
Beckes, et al. (2011). Social Baseline Theory: The Role of Social Proximity in Emotion and Economy of Action. Access here
Bunea et al. (2017). Early-life adversity and cortisol response to social stress: a meta-analysis. Access here.
Eisma, et al. (2019). No pain, no gain: cross-lagged analyses of posttraumatic growth and anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress and prolonged grief symptoms after loss. Access here
Hirschberger G. (2018). Collective Trauma an d the Social Construction of Meaning. Frontiers in psychology, 9, 1441. Access here
Kamis, et al. (2024). Childhood maltreatment associated with adolescent peer networks: Withdrawal, avoidance, and fragmentation. Access here
Lehrner, et al. (2014). Maternal PTSD associates with greater glucocorticoid sensitivity in offspring of Holocaust survivors. Access here
Maier & Seligman. (2016). Learned helplessness at fifty: Insights from neuroscience. Access here
Sheehy, et al. (2019). An examination of the relationship between shame, guilt and self-harm: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Access here
Strathearn, et al. (2020). Long-term Cognitive, Psychological, and Health Outcomes Associated With Child Abuse and Neglect. Access here
Yehuda et al. (1998). Vulnerability to posttraumatic stress disorder in adult offspring of Holocaust survivors. Access here.
Yehuda, et al. (2018). Intergenerational transmission of trauma effects: putative role of epigenetic mechanisms. Access here

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Episode Transcript

257. Permission to Grieve: How Feeling It All Makes You More Complete
===

[00:00:05] Henry: Hello, I'm Henry Emmons and welcome back to Joy Lab.

[00:00:09] Aimee: And I'm Aimee Prasek. So we are in our final episode of our Grief Series. This series started with episode 248. We are leaning on the "Five Gates of Grief" from Francis Weller, and then we've added some additional gates from other practitioners. And today's Gate is "Other."

I think Sarah Platz might have first added this as a catchall for any grief that doesn't fit the other Gates, and I love this because it acknowledges that grief is vast; it's individual; we can't possibly categorize every kind of loss, and even when we have a system or a framework to help navigate grief, like these Gates of Grief, it's still not exhaustive.

So what kinds of grief might fall into this Ninth Gate?

It could be grief about identity transitions, infertility, miscarriage, or abortion. It could be grief about aging, retirement; grief about moving to a new place. Grief about friendships that have faded, missed opportunities like a job you didn't take, or a relationship that could have been; the place you never got to visit; grief about a diagnosis.

This Gate is wide open.

There are infinite forms of loss, and the message of this gate is simple.

It is this: your grief is valid, even if it doesn't fit a category. Even if no one else understands it, even if it feels or seems small, or weird, or complicated, the power of this Gate is a reminder, or the permission, to grieve things that maybe we didn't even think we're grievable or were worth grieving.

It's permission, mostly, to slow down and feel.

[00:02:12] Henry: I love it, Aimee, this is perfect for those of us who have trouble making decisions. Hahahaha.

[00:02:19] Aimee: Ha! I know! Me too. God, put "Other" in every framework.

[00:02:24] Henry: " Other." It's great.

I think it's also honest about the limits of any framework, you know, no matter how good it is. And the Gates of Grief framework, I think, is really, really good.

But grief is just too vast. It's too personal, it's too specific to each person's life, and I think there's something freeing about that, you know, it means you don't have to fit your experience into a box. If it feels like a loss, it's a loss. Period.

I think I've noticed in my own life that some of the griefs that have stayed with me the longest are the ones that seem kind of small or private, things I didn't think I was allowed to grieve, you know, like the life I thought I was gonna have in my later years.

And that sounds like Anticipatory Grief, but I think it's different 'cause it's grief for a future that is not gonna happen; that's already gone, even though, you know, we're still here.

[00:03:21] Aimee: Yeah. Right.

[00:03:23] Henry: I carried that for a long time without naming it, 'cause who wants to complain about a life that hasn't happened yet, but it was there and it needs to be acknowledged.

So I think this Gate is permission. It's permission to grieve whatever needs grieving, even if it doesn't make sense to anyone else.

[00:03:44] Aimee: Yeah. I love that, 'cause it's like... it's reminding us, this isn't self-indulgent to grieve that. You're feeling it. Let it flow through. This also relates so much to our Element of Equanimity because equanimity is about holding all of life's experiences with some steadiness; not being thrown so much by the highs and lows. And as we've learned through this Series, grief is a natural, common experience in life; you can't have equanimity if you're constantly pushing away grief or pain. That's avoidance. So we can't avoid it, and we can't let it accumulate in us. We have to feel it. We have to move with it, and through it.

So, real equanimity includes grief, and equanimity is not just a state of being, as we talk about here, it is a skill. So we have to build that skill and practice working with grief so we don't get destroyed by it, and the practices we've introduced throughout this Series are aimed to help you do that.

[00:04:50] Henry: So I just want to emphasize the word "real." Real equanimity.

'Cause I think that — I think avoidance gives us a sense of equanimity, but it's just very short-lived and it's very fragile, but it's... but there's a huge temptation to go there when things feel uncomfortable — there is for me, I know that — and get the sense that, okay, okay, I've rebalanced things, you know? But it's just incredibly fragile.

I think equanimity and grief are actually really deeply connected, 'cause equanimity is not about being untouched by life, not at all. It's not about achieving some Zen-like state where nothing bothers you. That's not human. It's not even desirable, I don't think.

Real equanimity is the ability to stay present with whatever's happening.

Joy, sorrow, fear, love, whatever, without being swept away by it. It's holding steady, even in the middle of a storm. And grief can be a storm. It can be overwhelming. It can feel like it's going to drown you.

But if you practice being with difficult emotions when they're not so overwhelming, if you've learned to touch them lightly and then let them move through you, then grief becomes something you can work with, instead of something that knocks you down.

That's what this whole Series has been about, I think, is building the capacity to be with grief, to let it in without letting it take over, to feel it fully without getting stuck in it. And that capacity, that is equanimity. It's knowing that you can survive this. You've survived losses before, you'll survive this one too, and not even because you're so strong, but because you're willing to feel what's there; to be with it.

[00:07:00] Aimee: Yes.I will put our Equanimity Series of Emotional Storms in the show notes . So let's expand as well on some of, like, the other takeaways from this Series. So I've got four that have stood out for me.

First, grief is not a problem to solve. it's not something to just get over. It's a natural response to loss. And loss is a part of living.

Second, grief is communal. It's not meant to be carried alone. Billions of people are working with these Gates too, and that alone connects you to everyone, everywhere. Third, we need to practice the skill of working with grief. We are apprentices. So these rituals, practices; engaging in something consistently, like weekly; like grief-hygiene, as we talked about earlier, are really helpful to work with the frequent losses of living and to not let them accumulate. It's great practice to pick these little ones too, that we were just talking about even, in this "Other" category, that might just be sort of percolating in the background, but you feel them... naming them, working with them.

Fourth, grief isn't just about death or the obvious losses around us, and the more curious we are about the ways loss touches us, [that] is actually a powerful skill that supports our mental health. So when we're willing to see the losses and to hold them , then we can also see the love that's all around us, and the love for ourselves as well, we can hold that too. Which I think reminds me of that paradox of grief, which is that it can break us open and make us more whole.

[00:08:50] Henry: Hmm. Listening to that summary you just gave Aimee, makes me feel like there's something really beautiful about grief. You know? It's not something to be avoided. There's something really beautiful and human about it. Yes, grief is painful. Yes, it's hard, but it is also what makes us fully human and there are gifts in it that we just can't really get any other way.

I think grief opens us up to compassion, really. Remember, we've said this before, that really it's about opening us up, and it opens us up to compassion for ourselves and for others. When you've been through real loss, you recognize it in other people too. You see their struggle; you understand it at a level you couldn't have done before. That's a profound kind of connection, which is beautiful.

I think grief also brings wisdom. You know? You learn what really matters, and you can choose to stop wasting as much time on things that don't. You know, you appreciate what you have while you have it, and that is worth a lot.

[00:10:08] Aimee: Hmm.

[00:10:10] Henry: And here's something else I've learned about myself through all this: that I am more tender now. It's tenderizing. I'm more permeable. I feel things more deeply. I've always felt things pretty deeply, but it's gone deeper. And that is sometimes uncomfortable, I will be the first to admit, but I think it also has made me more open to joy, 'cause you can't close yourself off to pain without also closing yourself off to beauty; to love; to wonder.

[00:10:45] Aimee: That's right.

[00:10:46] Henry: So grief doesn't just break us open. It makes us more whole, more complete; more able to hold all of life, not just the parts we like or want.

The last thing I'll say is this. We've said this before, that grief and joy are not opposites, they're companions. They walk together. The deeper your capacity for grief, I believe, the deeper your capacity for joy. Both of them require an open heart, which is really how we want to live.

So don't be afraid of grief. Don't push it away. Let it be your teacher. Let it change you. Let it make you more of who you really are, your authentic self.

[00:11:40] Aimee: Oh, I love that. Yeah. More of who we really are. Yeah.

We've covered a lot in this Series. I hope that you, feel more empowered to work with your grief; to courageously explore it. Because you can, you're wired for it and it's some of the most powerful, meaningful work we can do.

So, to close our time today and our Series on Grief, I wanna share some wisdom from Kahlil Gibran.

"The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain."

[00:12:18] Thanks for joining us!: Thank you for listening to the Joy Lab podcast. If you enjoy today's show, visit JoyLab.coach to learn more about the full Joy Lab program. Be sure to rate and review us wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

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257. Permission to Grieve: How Feeling It All Makes You More Complete

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