Nearly 95% of people who have experienced loss report dealing with at least one symptom of physical or mental distress. Approximately 10% of them develop prolonged grief disorder, a persistent and debilitating form of grief that does not ease with time.

Often, this grief is due to the death of a loved one, but it may also be caused by the loss of a friendship, a divorce or even a job loss.

Grief affects not only mental health but also physical well-being, and it can increase the risk of heart disease, immune dysfunction and even death.

Holidays and special occasions, which often include family gatherings, traditions and reminders of what’s missing, can amplify this pain, leaving those grieving feeling isolated and overwhelmed.

As a clinical psychologist and professor of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences working with cancer patients and their families, I see the profound toll grief takes on people. I’ve also experienced grief personally, both when my mother died suddenly at the age of 66 and when my father passed after a long illness at the age of 84.

Those experiences, combined with my research, have driven me to dedicate much of my career to understanding grief and its effects, and to finding effective ways to support those who are struggling with it.

Mourning vs. prolonged grief

Grief is a natural response to loss, encompassing emotional, cognitive, physical and social reactions. Common signs include sadness, withdrawal, difficulty concentrating, disrupted sleep and physical symptoms like fatigue or aches.

Grief is deeply personal, and while there is no “right” way to grieve, most people move through the process over time, finding a new equilibrium in their lives.

However, some people experience prolonged grief disorder, a condition newly recognized in psychiatry’s gold-standard manual, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, in 2022.

This condition is characterized by intense yearning, sorrow or preoccupation with the deceased that persists for 12 months or more, significantly impairing daily functioning. People experiencing this disorder often feel disconnected from life and unable to find joy or meaning.

Unlike nonpathological grief, prolonged grief disorder is associated with chronic activation of the brain’s stress response system, particularly in areas like the amygdala. The amygdala is a small, almond-shaped cluster of neurons in the brain that plays a key role in processing emotions, especially fear, stress and threat-related responses. Prolonged grief disorder is also linked to mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

As you support a friend or family member in their grief, it’s important to watch for signs of prolonged grief disorder because it requires targeted interventions. Research, including my ongoing studies on the use of psilocybin-assisted therapy for the treatment of grief, highlights the importance of innovative approaches to help those stuck in the cycle of prolonged grief.

If you suspect someone you love is struggling with prolonged grief, encouraging them to seek help and offering to support them in the process can be life-changing. Resources are available, from grief counseling to support groups. Organizations like the American Grief Foundation and local mental health services can provide further guidance for helping a loved one get the treatment they require.

Caring for our own grief on holidays and special occasions

Research supports several strategies for addressing grief, whether typical or prolonged:

• Express emotions: Suppressing grief can exacerbate mental and physical health issues. Talking with trusted friends, journaling and joining support groups can be therapeutic.

• Engage in rituals: Personal or cultural rituals, like lighting a candle, visiting a grave site or creating a memory book help integrate loss into one’s life.

• Create new traditions as a way to honor your loss: If you’re mourning a death, consider integrating your loved one’s memory into the occasion by preparing their favorite dish, playing their favorite music or hanging an ornament in their honor.

• Seek professional support: Cognitive behavioral therapy or complicated grief therapy can be effective treatments for prolonged grief disorder. Psychedelic-assisted therapy is also emerging as a promising option in clinical research.

Supporting someone as they grieve

For those grieving, holidays and special occasions like a birthday or Mother’s Day can be especially difficult. Here are some practical tips for supporting someone who is grieving during these times:

• Remember that grief is not a problem to be solved, but a process to be supported.

• Be present. A common fear is saying the wrong thing to someone who is grieving. Often, it’s not about saying the “perfect” thing, but simply showing up and listening without judgment.

• Acknowledge the loss. Saying “I’ve been thinking about (their loved one) and how much they meant to you” or “I want you to know that I’ve been thinking about you and the significance of what you’re experiencing right now” can be more comforting than avoiding the subject.

• Offer practical help. Grief can be debilitating and exhausting. Assisting with tasks like cooking, shopping or child care can relieve some of the burden.

• If you don’t know what to say, it’s OK to admit it. A simple “I don’t have the right words, but I’m here for you” can mean a great deal.

• Avoid phrases like “They’re in a better place” or “Everything happens for a reason.” While the intentions behind them are often good, these platitudes can feel dismissive.

• Focus on empathy and validation. Saying “This must be so hard for you” or “Tell me more about what you’re feeling” opens the door to meaningful conversation and helps make space for the complex emotions that grief brings.

• Respect the boundaries of your loved one who’s grieving. Let them honor their emotions by going at their own pace.

Navigating holidays and special occasions with those who have experienced a loss can be complicated. But your presence and compassion in these moments can support their healing.

J. Kim Penberthy, Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences, University of Virginia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The three of us were all interested in the Moon, but from different perspectives: As a geophysicist, I thought about its interior; Thorsten Kleine studied its chemistry; and Alessandro Morbidelli wanted to know what the Moon’s formation could tell us about how the planets were assembled 4.5 billion years ago.

When we got together to discuss how old the Moon really was, having those multiple perspectives turned out to be crucial.

How did the Moon form?

At a conference in Hawaii in the late 1980s, a group of scientists solved the problem of how the Moon formed. Their research suggested that a Mars-size object crashed into the early Earth, jettisoning molten material into space. That glowing material coalesced into the body now called the Moon.

This story explained many things. For one, the Moon has very little material that evaporates easily, such as water, because it began life molten. It has only a tiny iron core, because it was mostly formed from the outer part of the Earth, which has very little iron. And it has a buoyant, white-colored crust made from minerals that floated to the surface as the molten Moon solidified.

The glowing, newly formed Moon was initially very close to the Earth, at roughly the distance that TV satellites orbit. The early Moon would have raised gigantic tides on the early Earth, which itself was mostly molten and spinning rapidly.

These tides took energy from the Earth’s spin and transferred some to the Moon’s orbit, slowly pushing the Moon away from the Earth and slowing the Earth’s spin as they did so. This motion continues today – the Moon still recedes from the Earth about 2 inches per year.

As the Moon moved away, it passed through particular points where its orbit temporarily became disturbed. These orbital disturbances were an important component of its history and are a key part of our hypothesis.

When did the Moon form?

When the Moon actually formed and receded away from the Earth is a thorny issue.

Thanks to the Apollo astronauts, scientists have a collection of Moon rocks, which they can measure the age of. The oldest rocks are all about 4.35 billion years old, which is roughly 200 million years after the birth of the solar system.

Many geochemists, like my colleague Thorsten Kleine, suggested (not unreasonably) that the age of these rocks is the same as the age of the Moon.

But people like Alessandro Morbidelli, who study planet formation, didn’t like this answer very much. In their models, planets swept up most of the material floating around the early solar system long before 200 million years had elapsed. A giant, Moon-forming impact as late as the rock samples suggested seemed pretty unlikely.

What did we suggest?

This is where Kleine, Morbidelli and I came in. We followed up on a suggestion from a 2016 study that found the Moon might occasionally experience extreme heating events during its slow outward journey from Earth.

This heating happens the same way that heating does on Jupiter’s hyperactively volcanic moon Io. The smaller body’s shape gets squeezed and stretched by tides from the big body. And just like a rubber ball warms up if you squeeze it enough, so too do the rocks on Io and the Moon.

All rocks contain little internal clocks – radioactive elements that decay and allow researchers to tell how old the rock is. But here’s the key point: If the Moon warmed up enough, its clocks would lose their memory and would start recording time only once the Moon cooled down again.

So in this picture, the pileup of rocks aged around 4.35 billion years isn’t telling us when the Moon formed, but just when it went through this tidal heating event. That means the Moon’s formation must have happened earlier.

An early formation date satisfies the physicists studying planet formation, while explaining that the later dating recorded from the rocks is due to the tidal reheating.

What next?

As often happens in science, two groups simultaneously came up with a similar idea. Our group focused on a tidal heating event that happened when the Moon was quite distant from the Earth, while research from Steve Desch at Arizona State University points to an event that happened when the Moon was closer. Sorting out which of these two hypotheses is right will take some time – and maybe neither is correct.

Testing these hypotheses will require more samples from the Moon. Fortunately, China’s Chang’e 6 mission just returned samples from the dark side of the Moon in June 2024. If these samples also show a lot of rocks all having ages of around 4.35 billion years ago, that would be consistent with our story. If the ages are much older, we’ll have to figure out a new story.

Very often in earth and planetary sciences, geochemists and geophysicists end up with different and contradictory hypotheses. This happens partly because these fields use different kinds of measurements, but also because they speak very different scientific languages. Overcoming this language barrier is hard.

Our study is an example of how – sometimes – bridging that linguistic and scientific divide can benefit researchers on both sides.

Francis Nimmo, Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.