Grief is a naturally adaptive process. The intensity of the pain of grief changes over time but we are also changed by our grief. It’s a process through which we can grow and heal. Rather than “get over it,” we can accommodate it and learn to live with it, build our life around it, and it will alway influence us. We can be hit by grief decades after the person has died, triggered by our senses, like sights, touch, and smells, because they trigger our memory networks, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t processed our grief.