Grief in Your 20s and 30s: Support When Loss Arrives Early in Adult Life
When loss reshapes life earlier than expected
If you’re bereaved in your late teens, twenties, or early thirties — or grieving an earlier loss during this period of your life — you can find yourself navigating grief alongside all the usual pressures of young adulthood.
This life stage already comes with the pressure of uncertainty, comparison, and social expectations. Grief can further disrupt your sense of belonging, leaving you feeling out of step with peers or unsure how to relate. You may also be mourning not just a person, but the life you imagined before the loss.
In our work together, we create space to make sense of your experience and begin healing at your own pace — without pressure to “move on” or fit someone else’s timeline.
Although I support adults of all ages, I have a particular understanding of the complexities that can accompany loss in early adulthood.
Why grief can feel different at this stage of life
Grief in your 20s and 30s often carries layers that others may not immediately see or understand.
☑︎ Your friends’ lives continue as before, while yours has been abruptly interrupted.
☑︎ Your sense of trust — in the world, others, and sometimes yourself — has been shaken.
☑︎ Your emotional world may feel unfamiliar — intense at times, or strangely muted — making it harder to recognise yourself day to day.
☑︎ You might find yourself making choices you wouldn’t normally make, as grief shifts your perspective on risk, time, and what matters.
☑︎ You feel out of step with your peers, carrying questions and decisions that now hold more weight.
☑︎ You feel forced to grow up faster than expected, losing the freedom your friends still seem to have.
This can be an especially lonely place — even when you are surrounded by people who care.
How I support you to feel less consumed by grief
People often contact me and say “I just want to go back to the person I was before”. I hear you — life felt a whole lot less complicated before. But the reality is, when any life-changing experience happens — including bereavement — it’s just not possible.
My work with you isn’t about getting you back to who you were before — it’s about helping you process what you’ve experienced and make sense of how it impacts your life today, lessening the heaviness and allowing you to live alongside and move with — not from — your grief.
Often, young adults are responded to in their grief through established models and theories — such as the five stages of grief, the growing-around model, and the dual-process model. While these frameworks can be helpful, they don’t always reflect the lived complexity of loss during earlier adulthood. This understanding shapes my TIME approach — a framework developed through research, professional experience, and lived insight into grief in early adulthood — and informs the way I support young adults living alongside loss.
If you’re still getting a feel for how I view grief experienced by young adults, Speaking Grief can give a more in-depth sense of how I work, at a pace you can take in your own time.
“One minute, everything is normal. The next, the world has cracked open.”
~ Speaking Grief ~
Grief doesn’t always look how people expect
You don’t have to be falling apart to seek support
Many people I work with are functioning well on the surface — working, parenting, maintaining relationships — yet privately aware that something within them has shifted.
When it’s time to talk
☑︎ You feel different but can’t easily explain why
☑︎ Others seem further ahead in life
☑︎ Your loss still shapes your world
☑︎ You are tired of carrying it alone
☑︎ You want somewhere you don’t have to hold it all together
Grief experienced earlier in adult life can shape you in lasting ways — but it does not have to be something you navigate unsupported. If you’re wondering whether therapy might help, you are very welcome to get in touch, or you can also read more about my broader bereavement counselling here.