Growing Around Grief Many people are familiar with the idea that grief becomes smaller over time. Lois Tonkin’s Growing Around Grief model offers a different way of understanding grief. Rather than grief shrinking, Tonkin suggests that our lives grow around it. The grief can remain, while there is gradually more space for relationships, experiences, memories and moments of joy. This doesn’t mean that grief becomes less important or that we “move on” from the person we have lo