Although it has been more than a month since the Feb. 14 shootings, it’s normal to grieve still.

Diane Dardon, campus pastor at Lutheran Campus Ministry, said there is no set time for people to stop grieving.

“There are some who will always be grieving about ‘what-ifs,'” Dardon said.

Micky Sharma, director of the Counseling and Student Development Center, expressed similar sentiments.

“It is not possible to grieve too long or too much,” Sharma said. He added that some people might have a delayed response to traumatic events.

However, both Sharma and Dardon acknowledged that grieving becomes a problem when it begins to interfere with one’s daily life. Sharma said some signs of this can include insomnia, lack of concentration and energy, and eating too little or too much. Dardon said that if grieving begins to become a problem, she encourages people to open up to someone.

“I encourage people [to talk to someone] if they feel they are stuck in an abyss of grief and there’s no way out,” Dardon said.

Triggers can also be a problem. Dardon said that events such as the Feb. 14 shootings can resurrect certain memories of other traumatic events in individuals, which Dardon describes as “bringing the baggage of the past back to the front.”

Grieving, as Sharma and Dardon agreed, has no set formula, even though there are steps in the process. Sharma said that students will experience many different emotions as they grieve.

“Be mindful that it’s important to honor your emotional response; be accepting of your emotional response,” Sharma said. “I would want students and others to not judge their own emotional response.”

Dardon said, in terms of emotions, people should simply be in the moment.

“What I tell people here is let yourself be where you are at,” Dardon said. “Let your emotions take you where they want to take you.”