When Grief Makes Everything Hard: Managing Daily Life After Loss
Simple tasks feel impossible when you're grieving. Gentle guidance for managing daily life when grief makes everything overwhelming.
Key Takeaways
- Grief brain is real and biological. Difficulty with daily tasks during bereavement is not weakness or failure. It is a documented neurological response that affects memory, concentration, and decision-making.
- Your brain is doing its job. When grief consumes your emotional energy, basic functioning becomes genuinely harder because your brain prioritizes processing the loss over routine tasks.
- Permission to struggle is permission to heal. Lowering your expectations during grief is not giving up. It is protecting your limited energy for what matters most.
- Small steps count more than perfect ones. "Good enough" is a victory when you are grieving. Done is better than perfect.
- Reducing decisions protects your healing. Every decision you can eliminate, delegate, or postpone preserves energy for the deeper work of grieving.
Reflections on love, loss and the ways we hold them.
Anyone who has ever lost someone they love knows this unmistakable fog. The way the world softens at the edges, how your mind wanders, how simple tasks suddenly feel impossible. This isn’t carelessness or weakness. It’s what researchers now call grief brain—a real, measurable neurological response to loss.
In the first months of bereavement, the brain does something extraordinary: it reallocates its precious energy toward emotional survival. The prefrontal cortex, normally responsible for planning and decision-making, quiets down. Meanwhile, the limbic system, the part of the brain that holds our memories, fears, and deepest attachments, takes over. You’re not imagining the forgetfulness, the inability to focus, the sudden overwhelm in the grocery aisle. Your brain is working overtime to integrate a new, painful reality.
I think of a client, Elena, who once told me she kept losing track of her days. “I’d open the fridge and have no idea why I was there,” she said. She apologized for not “functioning better.” But when she received her husband’s solidified remains—a handful of smooth, warm Parting Stones, she found herself holding one in her pocket whenever the fog closed in. “It grounded me,” she whispered. “It reminded me that I’m still here… and that I’m allowed to move slowly.”
This is the heart of grief work: lowering the bar, protecting your energy, and offering yourself the same compassion you would readily give a friend. Grief brain is not permanent, and it is not failure. It is love, making its way through the body.
One gentle moment at a time, clarity returns. But for now, simply doing what you can is more than enough.
Cathy Sanchez Babao
Parting Stone Grief Coach
You Are Not Falling Apart
If you found this article searching for help with grief daily life tasks at an hour when you probably should be sleeping, know this: you are not broken. You are grieving. And those two things can feel identical, but they are not.
Maybe you forgot to pay a bill. Or pick up your kids. Or eat anything besides crackers today. Perhaps you have been wearing the same shirt for three days because the thought of choosing a different one feels impossible. Maybe someone asked you a simple question and your mind went completely blank, and you stood there wondering what happened to the person you used to be.
This is what grief does. It rewrites the rules of daily functioning, and nobody warns you about this part.
How do you function in daily life when grieving? You function by understanding that grief fundamentally changes how your brain operates. You manage daily tasks during bereavement by radically lowering expectations, simplifying decisions, accepting help, and treating yourself with the same compassion you would offer a dear friend in crisis. Most importantly, you function by recognizing that struggling right now is not a character flaw. It is the natural consequence of carrying something impossibly heavy.
This article is not going to tell you to "stay strong" or offer a ten-step program for getting your life back on track. Instead, it will help you understand why everything feels so hard right now and offer gentle, practical guidance for navigating each day without adding to your burden.
You're Not Alone in Wanting Something Better
If you're here, you likely understand something that 75 million Americans are still discovering: traditional cremated remains often create more anxiety than comfort.
Families who choose solidified remains share a common understanding: your loved one deserves better than to be hidden away in a closet, garage, or basement. They deserve a memorial that you can interact with, share with family members, and incorporate into the meaningful moments of your life.
These families understand that premium memorial solutions aren't about spending more—they're about choosing something that actually serves the emotional needs of grief and healing.
Understanding Grief Brain: Why Everything Feels Impossible
If you have experienced the mental fog that descends after losing someone you love, you have encountered what researchers and grief counselors now call grief brain. This is not a metaphor. It is a measurable neurological phenomenon with real consequences for daily functioning.
The Science Behind the Struggle
Research published in Brain Research Bulletin has documented what bereaved people have always known instinctively: grief changes how your brain works. The intense stress of bereavement disrupts the relationship between different brain systems, creating what many describe as a sense of "brain fog" that makes even simple grief daily life tasks feel overwhelming.
According to neuroscientists, the basal ganglia and medial temporal lobe circuits that normally work together to help you function become imbalanced during grief. This competitive relationship explains why you might drive to a familiar location and suddenly have no idea why you are there, or find yourself standing in front of an open refrigerator with no memory of what you needed.
Studies from Columbia University's Center for Complicated Grief have found that intense grief symptoms are associated with measurable changes in attention, visuospatial processing, and overall cognitive function. The same research indicates that grief can temporarily reduce cognitive performance across multiple domains, affecting everything from memory retrieval to emotional decision-making.
Your Prefrontal Cortex Goes Offline
During grief, the prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for planning, decision-making, and executive function, becomes less active. Meanwhile, the limbic system, which governs emotions and survival responses, takes over. As the Lindner Center of HOPE explains, this shift means your brain is allocating its limited energy to processing the enormous emotional experience of loss rather than helping you remember where you put your keys.
This is why simple tasks require extraordinary effort when you are grieving. Your brain is not malfunctioning. It is prioritizing. And right now, it is prioritizing the monumental work of integrating the reality that someone you love is gone.
How Long Does Grief Brain Last?
The cognitive effects of grief brain typically begin improving within 6 to 12 months for most people, though this timeline varies significantly based on the nature of the loss, your support system, and many other factors. Research published in Psychological Medicine suggests that while most bereaved individuals show cognitive resilience over time, those experiencing prolonged grief may show greater cognitive challenges that warrant additional support.
The important thing to understand is that struggling with grief daily functioning right now does not mean you will struggle forever. Your brain is capable of healing. And in the meantime, there are ways to work with your limitations rather than against them.
The cremated remains of Garth's mother felt meaningless sitting in his clothing closet for 2 decades. Learn how solidified remains helped dissolve the relationship barrier he felt with her and integrate her memory into daily life.
The Invisible Labor of Grief
Beyond the biological reality of grief brain, there is another reason daily life feels so overwhelming: grief is work. Emotional work. Cognitive work. Spiritual work. And this labor is entirely invisible to the outside world.
The Energy Equation
Imagine your daily energy as 100 units. Before your loss, perhaps routine tasks required 30 units, work responsibilities took 40, relationships needed 20, and you had 10 left over for yourself. This was manageable. This was life.
Now grief has entered the equation, and it demands 80 units. Every. Single. Day. Sometimes more. The math no longer works, and yet the world expects you to function as though nothing has changed.
Speaking Grief, a public awareness initiative about grief, captures this perfectly: "If you think of the mind as having 100 circuits of energy, grief takes up 99 of those. Grief is like your brain turning this information over and over and trying to find a place where it fits."
This explains why making dinner feels like climbing a mountain. Why answering emails feels like translating a foreign language. Why choosing what to wear feels like an impossible riddle. You are not lazy or incompetent. You are running a marathon while the world expects you to sprint.
The Performance of Normalcy
Adding to this burden is the unspoken expectation that you should be "fine." Society gives us remarkably little time to grieve. A few days of bereavement leave. A couple of weeks of people checking in. And then, implicitly, we are supposed to be back to normal.
So you perform normalcy while falling apart inside. You smile at coworkers. You answer "I'm okay" when you are anything but. You push through meetings and school pickups and grocery shopping while your internal world is in complete disarray.
This performance is exhausting. It consumes energy you do not have. And it often makes grief daily struggles worse because you are not only grieving, you are also hiding your grief.
Permission to Struggle
Here is what we want you to hear: You have permission to struggle. You have permission to be exactly where you are, functioning at whatever level you can manage today. You have permission to lower the bar so far that just getting out of bed counts as an accomplishment.
This is not giving up. This is wisdom. This is recognizing that you cannot pour from an empty cup, and right now your cup has a hole in the bottom.
@chloebluffcakes Thank you @partingstone 🤍 youve given me an unimaginable gift. One day I will share these with my little sister and carry her wherever we go in life together. #grief #partingstone #loss
♬ Repeat Until Death - Novo Amor
Practical Strategies for Daily Functioning
Understanding why grief makes everything hard is important. But you also need practical guidance for navigating each day. The strategies below are designed for people operating with limited cognitive and emotional resources. They ask very little of you because right now, very little is what you have to give.
Protecting Your Energy Through Radical Prioritization
When your energy is severely limited, everything cannot be a priority. This is the time for radical triage.
Consider dividing your responsibilities into three categories. Essential includes things that absolutely must happen today: taking necessary medications, feeding children or pets, attending to genuine emergencies. Important covers tasks that matter but can wait a day or two: laundry, returning phone calls, grocery shopping. Everything else is exactly that: everything else, and it can wait indefinitely.
During acute grief, aim to handle only essentials. Let important tasks slide when necessary without guilt. Release everything else entirely, at least for now.
Linda, New Mexico 🖤 discovered this after losing her husband: "When I feel overwhelmed with emotions, I reach for a stone and know that I have the heart of my loved one to keep me strong. As silly as it sounds, you can carry your loved one in your pocket. It is worth every penny!"
Simplifying Decisions: Eliminate, Delegate, Postpone
Decision fatigue is real under normal circumstances. During grief, it becomes debilitating. Every decision, no matter how small, depletes your limited reserves.
The solution is to reduce decisions wherever possible. Eliminate choices by establishing defaults: eat the same breakfast every day, wear the same basic outfit rotation, take the same route everywhere. Delegate decisions to trusted others: let someone else choose the restaurant, pick the meeting time, handle the logistics. Postpone any decision that does not absolutely require immediate action, especially major life decisions about selling property, changing jobs, or making significant financial moves.
Many families find that some of the most persistent decisions involve what to do with their loved one's belongings and remains. These decisions can feel urgent but rarely are. Giving yourself permission to postpone them until you have more capacity is not avoidance. It is wisdom.
Building Bare Minimum Routines
Structure can be a lifeline during grief, but only if the structure is simple enough to actually follow. Complex morning routines and ambitious schedules will only add to your sense of failure when you cannot maintain them.
Instead, create what you might call bare minimum routines: the simplest possible structure that keeps basic functioning intact. This might look like: wake up, drink water, take medications, eat something (anything), get dressed (even if it is just different pajamas). That is a morning routine. It counts.
The National Center for PTSD emphasizes that "simple actions like drinking more water and creating a basic sleep routine can provide meaningful support during grief." You do not need a complicated wellness plan. You need something sustainable for right now.
Asking For and Accepting Help
This one is hard. Many of us were raised to be self-sufficient, to handle our own problems, to never be a burden. Grief asks you to unlearn all of that.
People want to help. When they say, "Let me know if there's anything I can do," give them something specific: pick up groceries, handle carpool on Thursdays, sit with you while you sort through paperwork. Specific requests are easier to fulfill than vague offers, and accepting help is not weakness. It is allowing others to share the load.
Sarah, New York 🖤 found that accepting help with decisions about her husband's remains brought unexpected peace: "I was having difficulty deciding on an urn. Parting stones made it easier to share my husband's remains with our large, close-knit family. He was an avid rock collector, so everything about this made sense and has given me peace."
Self-Compassion as a Daily Practice
Perhaps the most important strategy is one that costs nothing and requires no energy: speaking to yourself with kindness.
Grief researcher Heather Stang, MA, C-IAYT suggests a simple self-compassion practice: Place one hand on your heart and the other on your cheek. Say to yourself, "This is hard, and I am doing my best." This small act of self-kindness acknowledges your struggle without judgment and reminds you that effort counts, even when results are imperfect.
You would never speak to a grieving friend the way you speak to yourself. You would never tell them they should be handling things better or doing more. Offer yourself that same grace.
Parting Stone Editors
When Tasks Feel Impossible: Specific Guidance
Some areas of daily life present particular challenges during grief. Here is gentle guidance for navigating them.
Work Responsibilities
If you must work while grieving, be honest with yourself and, where possible, with your employer about your limitations. Consider whether reduced hours, modified duties, or remote work options might be available temporarily.
Set small, achievable goals each day. Instead of "finish the quarterly report," try "work on the report for 30 minutes." Use lists obsessively because your memory cannot be trusted right now. Build in more time for everything than you think you need.
And when you have a terrible day at work, when you cannot concentrate or you cry in the bathroom or you forget something important, remember: this is temporary. You will not always be functioning at this level.
Household Management
Lower your standards dramatically. A clean enough house is fine. Frozen dinners are fine. Paper plates are fine. Laundry that sits in the dryer for days is fine.
Consider which household tasks can be eliminated entirely (do you really need to iron anything ever?), which can be done less frequently (weekly vacuuming can become monthly), and which might be delegated or hired out if resources allow.
Marie Curie UK, an organization supporting people through terminal illness and bereavement, notes that "when someone close to you dies, everything can change in an instant." Your household standards can change too.
Caring for Others
If you are responsible for children, aging parents, or others who depend on you, grief becomes exponentially more complicated. You cannot fall apart completely when others need you. And yet you are falling apart.
Be honest with children in age-appropriate ways. "Mommy is very sad because Grandma died, and sometimes that makes it hard to do things" is a perfectly acceptable explanation. Children benefit from seeing that grief is normal and that adults struggle too.
Accept help from extended family, friends, neighbors, and community. This is exactly the time when it takes a village. Let the village help.
Self-Care Basics
When grief is acute, self-care is not spa days and meditation retreats. Self-care is eating food, drinking water, sleeping when you can, and bathing occasionally.
Do not judge yourself for not wanting to eat or for eating only comfort food. Do not judge yourself for sleeping too much or too little. Do not judge yourself for skipping showers. Just do what you can, when you can, and call it enough.
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, which supports families through unimaginable loss, advises: "Break up tasks into smaller steps to make it easier to focus. Ask for help from friends and family." This applies to self-care too. You do not need to take perfect care of yourself. You just need to take some care.
Social Obligations
Here is your permission slip to cancel everything nonessential. Skip the party. Decline the invitation. Send a brief text explaining you are not up for socializing right now.
Real friends will understand. Acquaintances do not need explanations. Your social calendar can wait until you have energy for it again.
One Less Decision: Protecting Your Energy Around Remains
Among the many decisions that pile up during grief, one often creates ongoing stress that families rarely anticipate: what to do with cremated remains.
Seventy-five million Americans currently live with cremated remains stored in closets, basements, and garages. Many of these families desperately want to feel close to their departed loved ones, but conventional ashes create a barrier to connection rather than enabling it. The urn sits there, a reminder of a decision that feels too big, too permanent, too impossible to make right now.
This is one of those decisions that can be postponed indefinitely, and often is. But for some families, the ongoing weight of this unmade decision becomes its own source of stress, one more thing consuming precious mental energy.
An Option That Removes the Decision
Parting Stone offers one way to release this burden. Through a patented solidification process developed with Los Alamos National Laboratory, cremated remains are transformed into 40 to 80 smooth, touchable stones, a new form of remains that families can hold, share, display, and cherish without the discomfort many people feel around loose ashes.
This is not a memorial product or a decorative keepsake. Solidified remains are a complete alternative to cremated ashes: the same person, in a different form. One that many families find easier to live with, literally.
Barbara, Texas 🖤 shared her experience: "Not long before my soulmate became ill, I had discovered Parting Stone. We both decided that would be something we'd like to do. Now it is comforting to have these beautiful mementos of him that I can display, touch, kiss and pass down to our daughter."
Mary, Arizona 🖤 found that having solidified remains transformed her grief experience: "Friends and family joyfully accept and even request parting stones, some to keep, some to leave at places memorable to them and our departed loved one. As a widow, I found Parting Stones to be a valuable and comforting way to grieve, to remember shared experiences and to invite my late husband along on new adventures."
The process takes approximately 8 to 10 weeks, and the service is priced at $2,495 for human remains. For families who choose this option, it represents one significant decision they do not have to keep making, one source of ongoing stress they can release.
This is not the right choice for everyone, and there is absolutely no pressure to decide anything right now. It is simply one option that exists when you are ready to consider it. In your own time. On your own timeline.
Cremated remains can feel messy and meaningless. Instead of receiving a box of ashes following cremation, you can now receive a collection of stones. Solidified remains let you feel connection with the remains of your departed. Turn your ashes into stones at https://partingstone.com
Recognizing When You Need Additional Support
Grief is not a mental illness. It is a natural, healthy response to loss. And yet, sometimes grief becomes complicated in ways that benefit from professional support.
Signs That Additional Help Might Be Beneficial
Consider reaching out to a grief counselor or therapist if you experience:
Grief that remains just as intense many months after the loss, with no periods of relief or moments of lighter mood. Difficulty accepting the reality of the death, even intellectually knowing it happened. Complete inability to function in daily life for extended periods, beyond the normal severe disruption of early grief. Persistent thoughts that life is not worth living, or thoughts of harming yourself.
The American Psychological Association notes that approximately 7 to 10 percent of bereaved individuals experience what is now called Prolonged Grief Disorder, a condition characterized by intense grief symptoms that persist well beyond typical timelines and significantly impair daily functioning. This is not a failure of grieving properly. It is a recognized condition that responds well to specialized treatment.
Resources Without Pressure
Seeking support is not a sign that you are grieving wrong. It is a sign that you are wise enough to recognize when you need help.
Options include individual grief counseling with a therapist who specializes in bereavement, grief support groups where you can connect with others who understand, and in some cases, consultation with a psychiatrist if grief is accompanied by severe depression or anxiety.
Your primary care physician can be a good starting point for referrals. Many hospice organizations also offer free grief support services to the community, not just to families they served during the dying process.
Permission to Be Where You Are
If you have read this far, you have demonstrated something important: you care about yourself enough to seek help. That matters. That is a form of self-care in itself.
Here is what we hope you take away:
Grief makes daily life genuinely harder, not because you are weak or failing, but because your brain and body are doing the enormous work of integrating loss. This is normal. This is human. This is temporary, even when it does not feel that way.
You have permission to function at a lower level right now. You have permission to ask for help, to cancel obligations, to let things slide that would normally matter. You have permission to take care of yourself in the most basic ways and call that enough.
There is no timeline for grief. There is no right way to grieve. There is only your way, your journey, your unique process of learning to carry love and loss together.
And you do not have to carry it alone. When you are ready, support is available. Options exist. Help is out there.
In your own time. At your own pace. On your own terms.
We see you. We understand. And we are here when you need us.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does grief affect daily activities?
Grief affects daily activities by disrupting cognitive functions like memory, concentration, and decision-making. Research shows that bereavement can impair executive functioning, making it difficult to plan, organize, and complete routine tasks. Many bereaved individuals report a sense of "brain fog" that makes even simple activities feel overwhelming. This is a normal neurological response to loss, not a personal failing.
Why is it so hard to function when grieving?
Functioning during grief is difficult because your brain is allocating most of its energy to processing the emotional experience of loss. According to neuroscience research, the prefrontal cortex, responsible for planning and decision-making, becomes less active while the limbic system, which governs emotions, takes over. This biological shift means you literally have less cognitive capacity available for daily tasks.
How long does grief brain last?
Grief brain typically improves within 6 to 12 months for most people, though this varies based on the nature of the loss, your support system, and individual factors. Population-based studies suggest some cognitive effects may linger longer, particularly for those experiencing prolonged grief. If you continue to struggle with daily functioning beyond the first year, consider consulting with a grief specialist.
What are the signs of complicated grief?
Signs of complicated grief, now called Prolonged Grief Disorder, include: intense grief that does not diminish over time, difficulty accepting the reality of the death, feeling that life has no meaning without the deceased, persistent avoidance of reminders of the loss, and significant impairment in daily functioning lasting more than 12 months. According to the American Psychological Association, about 7 to 10 percent of bereaved individuals experience complicated grief.
How do you take care of yourself while grieving?
Self-care during grief focuses on basics: eating something (even if small amounts), staying hydrated, resting when possible, and accepting help from others. Grief experts recommend lowering your expectations dramatically, simplifying decisions, and practicing self-compassion. Avoid major life decisions when possible, and give yourself permission to cancel nonessential obligations. Seek professional support if you are struggling to function or experiencing thoughts of self-harm.
When should you seek professional help for grief?
Consider seeking professional help if your grief remains intensely disruptive for many months without any improvement, if you are unable to perform basic self-care or daily activities, if you have thoughts of suicide or self-harm, or if you are using substances to cope. The National Center for PTSD notes that grief support groups and individual counseling can also be helpful at any stage, even when grief is progressing normally.
About the Editor
Cathy Sanchez Babao is a Grief Coach at Parting Stone, a grief educator, counselor, author, and columnist who has dedicated her career to helping individuals and families navigate loss. She writes the “Roots and Wings” column for the Philippine Daily Inquirer and is the author of Heaven’s Butterfly and Between Loss and Forever: Filipina Mothers on the Grief Journey. Cathy holds a B.S. in Business Administration and Management from Ateneo de Manila University and an M.A. in Family Psychology and Education from Miriam College, with advanced grief training at the Center for Loss & Life Transition and the Center for Prolonged Grief at Columbia University.
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