It’s justifiable that it is just for people who are going through grief to never get over it. Grief is a very tough stage that we all go through at some point, whether it is losing someone who has passed or someone who is still alive but not physically present.
Studies have shown that the idea of recovering from grief or loss is the ‘end goal’ from mourning back to Sigmund Freud. He said that mourning could turn into dangerous delusions that can physically and mentally prevent people from engaging with the world and can give us a desolated feeling. The opposite is said when Queen Victoria wore black and mourned, for her entire life after her husband, Prince Albert passed away in 1861. This type of mourning can be seen today as too ‘extreme’ and even diagnosed as a prolonged grief disorder if Queen Victoria was here today. I see this as a misunderstanding because if we put ourselves in her shoes we would probably have a better understanding of why her grief lasted so long.
Studies have shown that “traditional mourning practices have fallen out of favor in the West”. Meaning that less and less people value the mourning process and are not as memorable as thinking of the people that passed away anymore. This can be the cause of peer pressure because some people don’t want to forget their loved ones but are encouraged to do so, by for example, if your parents have died your pressured into selling their house or donating their things to charity and this is not okay for some people because it’s the only values that they have left of them.
In conclusion, it should be your choice to choose how you handle your mourning process. Some people may criticize if they don’t see you wearing black or if they do see you wearing black for a long time. In my opinion, clothes don’t define your feelings when mourning someone.