In your 20s, life is meant to be messy, full of dreams that stretch wide and fears that anchor deep. You’re supposed to be learning how to navigate adulthood – managing jobs, relationships, and the relentless search for purpose. But what happens when grief knocks the wind out of you, demanding you grow up faster than you’re ready for? Four months ago, I found out. In ten days, I lost two pillars of my life: my dad and my grandfather. Suddenly, the life I thought I was fumbling through felt like shards I was too fragile to touch. When you’re young, you imagine loss as something far away, reserved for a later chapter of life. But here it was for me, uninvited and unrelenting, forcing me to grow up in ways I wasn’t ready for.
I think grieving in your 20s is different. It’s raw. It’s isolating. It’s the ache of realizing the people you counted on to guide you won’t be there for your big moments. And yet, there’s rent to pay, deadlines to meet, and a world that expects you to move on. Your twenties are supposed to be about making mistakes and discovering who you are. But when loss enters the picture, it rewrites everything.
I wish I could give you a formula for this. A guide, a step-by-step manual, something to tell you how to get through it. I wish I could tell you how I found my way. But here’s the most cliché thing I can say: there is no guide to this. Grief is chaos. It doesn’t follow rules, and you cannot control when it will resurface. What I can tell you, though, is this: people will play roles in your grief, and those roles will shape how you navigate it.
There will be a friend who gets it, who checks in on you not just in the days after, but for years to come. There will be strangers who, having known grief themselves, become your chosen family, your tribe for life. Therapists who hold space for the heaviness. Family members you grew up with, who now seem like strangers because grief has changed them, or maybe it’s changed you.
And then there will be the people you meet who will never know your loss, who only see the person you are now. There will be colleagues who cut you slack without ever saying a word about it (shout out to the last Glass team: Ben, Tione, Jacinta, Celeste, love you all).
But there will also be those who hurt you. Not out of malice, but because people can be thoughtless or simply clueless. Sometimes, the people closest to you will not understand your grief, and that will hurt in ways you didn’t think possible. They won’t know what to say, so they’ll say nothing. Or worse, they’ll say the wrong thing, platitudes that feel like salt rubbed into wounds they can’t see. Sometimes, the people closest to you will avoid your grief altogether, acting like it’s an inconvenience they’d rather not address. It will leave space for anger to creep in, filling the cracks left by your loss.
Because anger is easier to hold onto than the weight of grief. It feels sharp, immediate, almost manageable compared to the ache of what’s missing. And there will be moments when being angry at the people who didn’t show up, who said the wrong thing, or said nothing at all, feels more bearable than the pain of loss itself. It will glue itself to you, sometimes stronger than anything else. And it will be a lonely time, wrestling with the comfort you wanted from others and the bitterness of realizing they couldn’t give it.

Grief has a way of rearranging you, like someone took apart all the pieces of your personality and forgot to put a few back. It changes what you value, how you see people, and even how you laugh. The jokes you found hilarious before might not hit the same anymore, and suddenly you’re finding solace in dark humor that leaves everyone else uncomfortable (PS – It’s therapeutic until you accidentally make a joke in the wrong crowd and suddenly, you’re trending on Twitter or, if you’re in India, facing a defamation suit.)
Loss will teach you patience, mostly with yourself, but also with others who fail to maneuver your loss with you. You become hyper-aware of time, like there’s a constant countdown in the background reminding you of how fleeting everything is. Grief doesn’t just change you; it introduces you to parts of yourself you didn’t know existed, parts that are stronger, more tender, and, let’s be honest, a little bit exhausted. It teaches you to pretend you’re okay. People don’t know what to do with your sadness, so you feel like you must package it neatly or hide it altogether. “How are you holding up?” they’ll ask, with that look that says they’re bracing for a meltdown. And you’ll smile and say, “I’m fine,” even though you’re not.
But the truth is there will be nights when you light a candle for them or cook their favorite meal, laughing through tears at a memory so vivid it feels like they are still there. You will cry, laugh, and sometimes even forget for a while, only to have the grief rush back, faster than before. The milestones will cut the deepest. Birthdays, graduations, weddings, and heartbreaks will arrive, and their absence will echo louder than the joy of the moment. These are supposed to be the firsts you share with them, but instead, they become reminders of everything they are missing.
You don’t have to be okay. You don’t have to meet anyone’s expectations, not even your own. This isn’t something you conquer; it is something you live with. There’s no timeline, no finish line, no guidebook. You are allowed to grieve in your own way, at your own pace, and no one gets to tell you otherwise.
You aren’t alone, helplines to reach out :
- Griefline – Call the helpline 1300 845 745 8am to 8pm, 7 days a week, 365 days a year AEDT/AEST. Online moderated forums, and grief and loss resources are available 24/7.
- Grief Australia
- QUT Health Services – +61 7 3138 9777
- Reach out to us for more help 🙂