When Grief Feels Heavy: The 3-Jar Method That’s Helping Me Survive (Free PDF)

They say that grief is love with nowhere to go.

I disagree.

My love has somewhere to go. It didn’t disappear the day he did. I knew how much he loved me right up to the end, and that knowledge keeps me going. That love still exists. It just doesn’t have a physical place to land anymore.

But try telling that to my body at 3am.

I now look in the mirror and see a different face staring back at me. Not different emotionally, I still know who I am. But I can see that grief is taking its toll on me physically.

I’m not suicidal. I’m not depressed.

I am just existing in a world that feels deeply unfair and nothing like the one I thought I would be living in.

I always look for the glimmers. That’s what he would want me to do. And most days I can find them. But then a wave hits and with that the realisation that I will never see him, touch him, or talk to him again. Suddenly I’m back on the floor wondering how on earth I will pick myself up.

And yet, somehow, I do.

For the past 11 months, I have picked myself up many times The hardest days are behind me… or maybe they’re still ahead of me. I’m about to enter year two, the year people warn you about. Apparently it’s worse than the first.

But how can anything be worse than the year of hell I’ve just walked through?

People like to talk about the “stages” of grief. I’ve learned that grief doesn’t move in neat, numbered steps. It moves in waves. Some gentle. Some violent. None predictable.

The landscape of friendship changes too. There are those who rise to the challenge and those who can’t. I don’t judge the ones who can’t, I’m not sure how I would cope if roles were reversed. But the ones who stay, who sit in the discomfort, who don’t try to fix it, they are my tribe now.

Widowhood is not how it’s portrayed in the movies. It’s layered with fear and anxiety that intertwine with grief. I’ve always tried to make sure that hope is bigger than fear. Because when fear gets louder, that’s when I feel myself slipping.

I call this my Wobblemetre, and I do my best to keep the hand pointed to hope.

Healing isn’t as simple as choosing hope. I wish it were. But I can’t walk alongside my grief without it. Without hope, grief takes over. Sofa rotting creeps in. Overdrinking becomes tempting. And I know neither of those are sustainable.

Grief is exhausting.

And being exhausted is exhausting.

On the hardest days, a happy future where grief isn’t part of every thought feels completely unavailable. But I speak to widows further along this path, and they tell me something important: one day, you will think of them and smile before you ache.

Those women are my future self. They are who I am aiming towards.

Right now, though, I still have to work at it. I have children watching me. We are a team, and I’m their team captain. Captains don’t get to leave the pitch.

Soon I’ll be an empty nester too, and that thought scares me. Parenting has been such a huge part of my identity. I remember how hard it was when my son left for university, and I wasn’t grieving then. This time will be different.

So I see now as a start to my training.

If someone were training for a marathon, they wouldn’t wait until race day to start preparing. Right now, I’m in training for being a widowed empty nester. I never imagined a life that looked like this. I loved my safe family life, cinema trips, meals out, simple routines. The thought of going to the cinema alone feels overwhelming. Some people love it. I don’t know yet if I would love it or hate it, and that uncertainty feels huge when your nervous system already feels fragile.

That’s why I created the jars.

Because I realised something important. I can’t control when the waves hit. But I can control what I do when they do.

I have three activity jars at home. Low energy. Medium energy. High energy.

On the days when I wake up and feel lost, when grief is heavy and purpose feels thin, I don’t try to overhaul my life. I just choose the jar that matches my energy.

In the early days, “doing one thing” meant getting out of bed, showering and getting dressed. Those were events. Now they’re givens. That alone shows me I’ve moved forward, even when it doesn’t feel like it.

But when I’m in the deepest, darkest holes of grief, my energy disappears. Making a cup of tea can feel like climbing a mountain. So my jars reflect that reality.

Low energy might mean lighting a candle, doing a word search, or singing one song.

Medium energy might mean changing the bedsheets or baking something simple.

High energy might mean going for a walk, washing the car, or batch cooking for the week.

It’s not about productivity.

It’s about breaking the cycle before it swallows me whole.

The jars give my mind something to focus on. They remove the decision fatigue. They stop me spiralling into a full weekend of sofa rotting and wine drinking. Occasionally this might be needed but isn’t a long-term plan for the life I want.

I have quite an addictive personality. I know how easily “just this weekend” could turn into something much longer. Future me deserves better than that.

So current me made her a promise.

When I feel stagnant for too long, I ask my future self what I should do. I listen. I pick a jar. I choose one activity.

I never regret choosing from the jar.

It’s not easy. It’s not magic. It doesn’t remove the grief. But it shifts something even slightly. And sometimes slightly is enough.

If you have days that feel heavy and unstructured, I made something for you.

Three jars.

Three energy levels.

One small promise to your future self.

Download the Grief Activity Jar PDF below. Print it. Cut it out. Fill your jars. Add your own ideas too - maybe solo cinema trips are your thing.

And on the days when you don’t know what to do, let the jar decide.

You don’t have to fix your grief.

You just have to do one thing.

And that is enough.