Being in the Middle: Grief, Loss, and the Messy Middle of Life

In therapy, I often talk about the middle—that place in life we never plan for, that arrives uninvited, and where clarity and control feel like distant memories. I call it the messy middle. It’s where grief, loss, heartbreak, and life’s transitions meet us head-on. It’s the space between what was and what will be, where confusion, pain, and chaos converge.

We rarely have patience for the middle. We want to know when the pain will end, when healing will come, when we can look back and finally understand what it all meant. But life doesn’t work that way. The middle is where the real work happens, whether we want it or not.

What the Middle Looks Like in Real Life

The middle can show up in countless ways. It might feel like:

A relationship ending, either by your choice or someone else’s decision, leaving you in a life you never imagined.
Packing up a child’s room for college, knowing you raised them to fly, but feeling gutted by the quiet and emptiness.
Family boundaries, where standing firm brings gut-wrenching worry that you may never see a loved one again, or that they are angry with you forever.
Sudden loss or tragedy, like death, illness, betrayal, or financial disaster, leaving you stunned, angry, and questioning why this is happening.
Transitions you never chose, like job loss, relocation, or dreams that collapse, leaving you untethered and uncertain.
Feeling trapped in a relationship, hoping the other person will change while your own needs and growth are on hold.

In the middle, we often tell ourselves, “this is how it’s supposed to happen,” without allowing our feelings to surface. We may suppress anger, grief, or despair because the emotions feel too raw. We might rationalize what happened or try to make peace with circumstances we do not understand.

But ignoring the middle doesn’t make it go away.

If you self-medicate with alcohol, drugs, food, gambling, pornography, sex, or fleeting relationships, you are only prolonging it. You may feel temporary relief, but old habits resurface. You are drawn to the same patterns, the same types of people, because you haven’t fully done the work in the middle.

The Messy Middle in Relationships

The messy middle isn’t just about grief or loss—it can disguise itself in relationships. It shows up when we:

Stay in a relationship waiting for the other person to change.
Cope by blaming them for our dissatisfaction.
Avoid taking action or making decisions because the status quo feels safer.
Ignore red flags or dismiss our gut instincts in hopes circumstances will magically improve.

The truth is: waiting for someone else to change is a trap. The messy middle keeps you stuck, repeating patterns, and postponing your growth. You may feel like you’re “trying to make it work,” but really, you’re delaying the work you need to do within yourself.

The Reality of Loss, Grief, and the Messy Middle

There is no such thing as moving forward by forgetting a chapter of your life. If you feel you have done so, you’ve likely chosen denial over truth. Life does not ask us to forget mistakes, heartbreak, or the people who devastated us. New beginnings do not require starting over. They require starting forward while owning the past, learning from it, and embracing the pain so you can reach the other side.

Sitting in feelings is essential. Let them crush you, dig into your soul, uproot your routines, and expose your humanity. Loss teaches empathy and understanding, connecting us to others navigating their own storms.

The messy middle can look like:

Feeling abandoned or trapped in a loss you didn’t choose.
Watching children leave the nest while your heart feels torn.
Creating boundaries with loved ones that hurt because they are necessary.
Standing in grief, shock, denial, anger, sadness, guilt, and fear.
Self-medicating through alcohol, drugs, food, gambling, pornography, or fleeting relationships.
Repeating old habits that feel different but are not.
Coasting in a relationship, waiting for the other person or circumstances to change, blaming others for your mess.It can feel endless.

You may ask, “How long should the middle last?” But healing isn’t about a timeline. It’s about processing the loss fully, feeling the feelings deeply, and doing the work in the middle.

The Adult Chair: Navigating the Middle with Conscious Awareness

When we are in the middle of grief, heartbreak, or life transitions, it’s easy to get stuck in overwhelm, anger, or confusion. This is where the concept of the Adult Chair becomes a powerful tool.

The Adult Chair is not about ignoring your feelings or pretending you’re okay. It’s about learning to sit in your emotions, observe them, and respond intentionally. You do not need prior familiarity with this concept—it works for anyone willing to step into awareness.

Think of it like this:

Child Voice: The part of you that feels raw, exposed, and often helpless. It cries, rages, or fears in response to loss. It is the part of you that wants the pain to disappear instantly.
Adolescent Voice: Reactive and impatient. It blames, waits for someone else to fix things, and may numb or escape from feelings instead of processing them. It’s the voice that says, “If only they would change, then I’d feel better.”
Adult Voice: The grounded, conscious part of you that can observe your Child and Adolescent voices without judgment, allowing you to sit with grief, sadness, or anger and make deliberate choices rather than react impulsively.

Using the Adult Chair in the middle of grief or loss helps you:

Witness your emotions fully, instead of avoiding them.
Understand patterns in how you respond to pain, heartbreak, or life changes.
Recognize when you’re stuck waiting for someone or something to change, rather than taking proactive steps for your own healing.
Step into empowerment by responding to life’s challenges intentionally, even when circumstances feel unfair or beyond your control.

The Adult Chair helps bring you back to reality in the middle, so you can move through the messy middle without bypassing it, ignoring it, or repeating old habits. It’s a practice of embracing the middle fully, sitting with the pain, and allowing it to teach you what you need to learn.

Life in the Middle: Raw Truths

The middle doesn’t follow a timetable; it lasts as long as you need to process it.
Avoidance and distraction prolong suffering.
Coasting or blaming keeps you trapped in cycles of heartbreak, repeating old habits, and revisiting the same painful patterns.
You don’t have to forget your past. Pain, mistakes, heartbreak—they are the crucible that shapes who you are meant to be.
The middle may be uncomfortable, messy, and lonely—but it is also the crucible of transformation, where you emerge stronger, wiser, and capable of true empathy.

Step Into Your Middle

If you’re sitting in the middle right now—heartbroken, grieving, stuck, or watching life pass while waiting for someone else or something else to change—you don’t have to face it alone.

You don’t need to rush to closure. You don’t need to “move on” before you’re ready. You need someone who will help you sit in the feelings, process the chaos, and step into your Adult Chair—the part of you that can witness, feel, and grow.

I can help you navigate this messy, uncomfortable, necessary middle so that when you emerge on the other side, it’s on your terms, stronger and more whole than you ever imagined.

Come see me—and let’s do the work that actually matters.