Divergently Grieving: Death and mourning from an ADHD perspective

The death of a loved one takes a toll on all of us, but the process of grieving death is different for neurodivergent people. Author Sophia Kaur shares their experiences of neurodivergent grief, including their different styles of emotional recognition and time awareness as a person with ADHD.

Maybe if we started creating the space that it takes for neurodivergents to grieve and process, neurotypicals would be able to allow themselves the time, space, and boundaries to grieve and process in their own way too.

Photo by Brett Sayles from Pexels

Content Note: This article contains discussion about grief, mental health, and death.

Divergently Grieving

Losing someone you love is never easy, and no matter how much we read about grief, we can never fully be prepared for it. For me, the last seven years have been so full of loss and hurt with a variety of family members — it started off with losing my mom, and ended with losing my mother-in-law. These losses were added onto with the sudden loss of my German Shepherd during the week of my 30th birthday, as well. It’d be an understatement to say that I am no stranger to Death. And that, maybe, we’ve actually become friends.

I know that this sounds strange to say, of course. We have such a hard relationship with Death. But, in losing my mother, my German Shepherd, and supporting my partner through the loss of his parents, I slowly started to realize that Death can be just as comforting as it can be cruel.

It took me a long time to get to this realization, and the process is by no means easy. I also want to stress that grief does not have an expiration date, nor is it a point of arrival where you can declare that you have grieved and finally close that chapter in your book. Each person’s grief is unique to them as an individual, and it does no one any good in comparing what each person’s grief looks like. Grief is a personal journey that never ends, but only brings us closer to ourselves and our loved one — even those that have moved on and passed over. That being…