The Connection Between Trauma and Grief: Understanding the Overlap

The story you’re about to read was shared with me by a dear friend, who met someone in her support group that forever changed her perspective on grief, trauma, and healing. It’s not just a story—it’s a glimpse into the quiet, often invisible battles people carry every day. It's about pain, but also about unexpected grace in the middle of it. As you read, I invite you to hold space for the rawness and resilience woven through each moment. Some stories change us. This was one of them for me.

Now, let me take you into my friend’s and Callie’s world…

There are certain wounds that even the passing of time can’t fully heal. These are the kinds of losses that don’t just live in your memory—they alter your very perception of life. They change the way you move through the world, teaching your body to stay tense, to anticipate pain, even when there’s no obvious threat. It’s as if your nervous system starts living in a state of permanent alert.

Grief, in its rawest form, doesn’t always travel alone. Sometimes, it brings trauma with it, uninvited and overwhelming. They don’t knock politely or wait for their turn. Instead, they burst in together, loud and chaotic, blurring the lines between sadness, fear, anger, and confusion. 

When grief and trauma collide, the pain becomes more than emotional; it’s physical, psychological, and deeply embedded. And in those moments, healing becomes less about 'getting over it' and more about learning how to carry it, without letting it consume you.

I didn’t understand this until Callie walked into my life.

We met in a grief support circle. Most who joined the group came looking for comfort or connection. But Callie came looking for air.

She arrived late that first night, drenched from the rain, mascara streaked across her cheeks, and clutching a photo in her trembling hands. She didn’t sit right away. She looked at us like we were strangers in a dream she hadn't meant to walk into.

“I don’t know if I’m grieving or losing my mind,” she finally said, her voice shaky but sharp. “I just want the nightmares to stop.”

And with that, she cracked something open in all of us.

The Story Behind the Photo

Over the next few weeks, she began to talk—first in fragments, then in full. Her brother Ethan had been killed during a robbery. It was supposed to be a quick stop at the Thai place around the corner from his apartment. Instead, it ended with police tape, a flurry of reporters, and a headline Callie couldn’t stop seeing in her dreams.

“He wore red,” she whispered once. “The guy who shot him. Just a kid. Maybe 18. That color used to be my favorite. Now I see it and I freeze.”

I watched as her grief braided itself with trauma—how one emotion echoed the other, how her sorrow wasn’t just about Ethan’s death, but about what it stole from her, too: safety, predictability, a sense of peace.

She had stopped going out after dark. Refused to answer unknown numbers. Jumped at the sound of a dropped spoon.

What haunted her wasn’t just the loss—it was how violently, how senselessly, it had happened.

The Stranger in Aisle 7

The moment that changed everything didn’t happen in our circle. It happened at the grocery store.

Callie had been trying to do something normal. Something simple. She walked into a supermarket for oat milk.

But grief and trauma don’t care about errands.

“I made it halfway through the bottled pasta sauce aisle,” she said later, her voice barely a whisper, “and then someone dropped a glass bottle. It shattered, and I dropped too. Just…hit the floor.”

Panic took her. Shaking. Gasping. People stared. Some walked past. But one woman didn’t.

“She sat next to me. Didn't speak. Just… sat. Her silence was steady. Like an anchor.”

Callie didn’t know her name. But she remembered the woman had paint on her jeans and kind eyes. And in that brief moment, on the cold linoleum under buzzing lights, Callie felt seen. Not pitied. Not judged. Just… understood.

“That’s when I knew I wasn’t crazy,” she said. “I was human. Hurting. Healing.”

When Grief and Trauma Collide

Callie’s experience is more common than we admit. But because trauma and grief are often treated separately, many suffer in silence when they overlap.

Here’s a closer look at how they intersect:

Trauma vs. Grief: The Overlap

Healing becomes more layered when they occur together, like in Callie’s story. You’re not only mourning a person or a past; you’re also navigating the nervous system’s constant alarms.

Lessons in the Unspoken Moments

Callie didn’t “get over” Ethan’s death. But she learned to live with it. She learned that healing didn’t mean forgetting. It meant finding moments of peace within the chaos, like a stranger's quiet presence, or the courage to speak in a group when her voice still shook.

Healing began when she stopped asking, What’s wrong with me? and started asking, How can I honor what happened to me? 

The journey isn’t linear. It’s full of detours. But here are some practical steps that can help, whether you're facing loss, trauma, or both:

Practical Tools for Healing

One night, months later, Callie stayed after the group. Everyone had left but me. She was staring at the same photo from her first day.

“She loved him, too,” she said quietly, handing me the picture.

It wasn’t just Ethan in the photo—it was her and him, arms around each other at a beach I didn’t recognize. They were laughing. Alive.

“She’s the one who sat next to me. In the pasta sauce aisle,” she whispered. “I remembered her face.”

Goosebumps ran up my arms.

That was the full-circle moment. The stranger was no stranger at all. She had known Callie in a life before loss—and perhaps, in ways we’ll never fully understand, had come back for just one last act of love.

Grief doesn’t follow a script. Trauma doesn’t send a warning. But within the overlap is a fierce, fragile kind of beauty: the proof that we can be shattered and still survive.

We carry our losses. We carry our pain. But we also carry our stories—and they can become bridges to others, lifelines in aisle 7, and eventually, the roadmap back to ourselves.

So if you're holding something heavy, remember this:

You’re not broken.
You’re becoming.
And that is its own kind of miracle.