When a major loss happens, one of the least-discussed casualties is often faith. The beliefs you carried into the loss may not survive the loss. Or they may deepen in ways you could not have anticipated. Or they may do both at the same time — deepening in some places, shattering in others.

If your relationship with faith, religion, spirituality, or meaning itself has been shaken by your loss, please know: you are not alone, you are not broken, and your grief is not a failure of faith. Some of the most spiritually serious people I have walked alongside have gone through profound religious upheaval after a death — and emerged on the other side with deeper, more honest faith than they had before.

For more than two decades, my mother, Dr. Gloria Horsley, and I have walked alongside thousands of bereaved people through Open to Hope. Grief and faith is one of the most layered conversations we have. Here is what I have learned.

How Grief Affects Faith

The American Psychological Association recognizes spiritual struggle as a documented part of bereavement for many grievers. Grief tends to affect faith in several common ways:

Anger at God

Many bereaved people experience deep anger at God or the divine after a significant loss. Why did this happen? Why wasn’t I protected? Why did you take them? This anger is not a failure of faith — it is, paradoxically, often a sign of faith. You only get angry at someone you believe is there.

The Book of Lamentations and the Psalms include some of the angriest faith-writing ever produced. Anger is part of the spiritual tradition.

Doubt and Crisis

Some bereaved people find that beliefs they thought were rock-solid suddenly feel impossible to hold. Heaven, an afterlife, a benevolent God, a meaningful universe — all of it can suddenly feel like fantasy. This is called “spiritual crisis” and it is well-documented in bereavement literature.

Deepening Faith

Other bereaved people experience the opposite. Faith deepens, becomes more central, more sustaining. Practices that were nominal become essential. Communities that were peripheral become primary.

Mixed and Shifting Experiences

Many grievers experience both at once — crisis in some areas of faith, deepening in others. The mature spiritual life after loss often holds doubt and faith together rather than choosing between them.

7 Compassionate Ways to Navigate Grief and Faith

1. Allow the Crisis to Be Sacred

If your faith is in crisis, the crisis itself can be a form of spiritual seriousness. The most damaging response is to suppress the doubt out of guilt. Doubt that is wrestled honestly often leads to deeper faith. Faith that is performed without honesty often shrinks.

Many of the deepest religious thinkers across traditions — Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist — have written explicitly about the spiritual value of crisis. You are in good company.

2. Express the Anger Honestly

If you are angry at God, say so. In prayer. In journal. To a trusted clergyperson or spiritual director. A God who cannot take your anger is not a God worth worshiping; a God who can take it is one worth being honest with.

Many spiritual directors and chaplains specifically welcome this anger as faithful expression. (See Grief and Anger: Why You Feel So Angry After Loss.)

3. Find a Spiritual Director or Bereavement-Trained Clergyperson

If you have a faith tradition, finding a clergy member, chaplain, or spiritual director who can hold space for grief specifically is invaluable. Many hospitals, hospices, and faith communities offer bereavement chaplaincy. The Association of Professional Chaplains maintains directories.

If your tradition’s local clergy cannot hold your specific grief, please know it is okay to seek elsewhere. The Hospice Foundation of America has long emphasized that bereaved spiritual care is its own discipline.

4. Be Selective With Faith Communities Right Now

Many bereaved people find that some faith communities are deeply nourishing after a loss, and some are actively painful. Toxic theology (“God needed another angel,” “everything happens for a reason”) can damage already-tender grief. Compassionate theology can heal.

You are allowed to step back from communities that hurt and seek out ones that help. Your healing matters more than attendance.

5. Allow Belief and Disbelief to Coexist

You do not have to choose between believing everything and believing nothing. Many bereaved people end up holding multiple, sometimes contradictory beliefs simultaneously: “I am not sure there is a God, but I still pray.” “I am not sure there is an afterlife, but I talk to my loved one.” “I am not religious anymore, but I find meaning in ritual.”

All of this is normal. Spiritual life after loss is rarely tidy. (See Connecting With Departed Loved Ones for more on continued connection.)

6. Engage With Spiritual Writers Who Know Grief

The bookshelves of bereaved people often fill with writers who have written honestly about faith and loss: C.S. Lewis (A Grief Observed), Anne Lamott, Henri Nouwen, Rabbi Harold Kushner (When Bad Things Happen to Good People), Joan Didion (The Year of Magical Thinking), Cole Arthur Riley, Mirabai Starr.

Reading writers who have wrestled with the same questions you are wrestling with is one of the most powerful spiritual practices in grief.

7. Take Your Time

Spiritual reconstruction after a major loss can take years. Resist the urge to settle quickly into a new “answer.” Let the questions live. Let your beliefs evolve. The faith that emerges five years after a profound loss is often very different — and often deeper — than the faith you carried in.

A Word About Continuing Bonds

Most religious traditions across human history have honored the continuing relationship with the dead — through prayer, ritual, ancestors, saints, sacred remembrance. The modern Western “let them go” framework is actually unusual in human history.

Continuing to feel connected to your loved one, to talk to them, to feel their presence — this is spiritually mainstream in most of the world’s wisdom traditions. (See Are Psychics and Mediums Real? for one bereaved mother’s exploration of this.)

A Word for Those Who Have Left a Faith Tradition After Loss

Some bereaved people leave the religious tradition they were raised in after a loss. This is not a failure. It is often a profound spiritual movement — a refusal to perform belief that has become hollow. Some of the deepest spiritual people I know are people who left organized religion because of grief and built something more honest in its place.

A Word for Those Whose Faith Deepened

If you have found that your faith has deepened through loss, please honor that. You are not “in denial” about the grief; you have simply found that your tradition can hold it. Both deepening and crisis are valid spiritual responses.

Hope on the Other Side

The spiritual life after significant loss is rarely the same as the spiritual life before. It is often messier, more honest, more hard-won. Many bereaved people describe their faith — whatever shape it eventually takes — as one of the most precious things they carry forward from the loss.

We are with you. The Open to Hope community is with you. And whatever your tradition or lack of one, the search for meaning is sacred work.

Dr. Heidi Horsley is a licensed psychologist, adjunct professor at Columbia University, and co-host of the Open to Hope podcast. After losing her 17-year-old brother Scott in a car accident, she has dedicated her career to helping bereaved families find hope after loss.