What Hamnet Gets Right About Grief: A TMGL and Loss Template Perspective
- Sonya Lorelle
- Mar 19
- 5 min read
Spoiler warning ahead
Hamnet was a major presence this film awards season, with Jessie Buckley winning the 2026 Oscar for Best Actress for her portrayal of Agnes Shakespeare. After watching it, not only did I find myself with tears streaming down my face, I found myself thinking deeply about grief and how powerfully the story reflects the Transcending Model of Grief and Loss (TMGL).
What stood out to me most is that Hamnet does not portray grief as neat, linear, or easily resolved. It shows grief as embodied, relational, and life-altering. Through a TMGL lens, we can see how this loss is not only the death of a child, but also partially anticipatory loss once illness enters the home. It is a loss that changes everything.
The family is no longer organized around the same roles, safety, or shared future. Their marriage is strained, their home feels altered, and their identities are disrupted. Agnes is not simply “sad”; she is transformed by the loss. William is changed too, though he expresses it differently.
Grief does not happen in a vacuum
One of the most meaningful aspects of Hamnet is how clearly it shows that grief is always shaped by context. In plague-era England, illness and death were part of daily life, but the death of a child is still profoundly destabilizing. The family has very little control as illness enters the home, and Agnes’s healing knowledge cannot ultimately save Hamnet. That helplessness intensifies shock, guilt, and the struggle to make meaning from what has happened.
The film also suggests that grief never arrives alone. Agnes’s experience seems shaped by the earlier loss of her mother, whose absence still echoes during major life moments like childbirth. Past losses can deepen sensitivity to later grief and make new losses feel connected to older wounds. In this sense, grief is layered. It is rarely just about the loss in front of us. It often carries the weight of losses that came before.
And beyond the family itself, Hamnet reminds us that grief is always influenced by larger systems and messages: gender expectations, limited medical knowledge, geographic separation, and social suspicion toward Agnes and her healing practices. The result is a grief experience that is not only personal, but also relational, cultural, and deeply contextual.
Why a loss template matters
This is exactly why we find loss templates so helpful in grief work.
A loss template is a structured way of understanding grief that moves beyond simply asking, “Who died?” or “How sad is this person?” Instead, it helps us look at the many factors that shape how grief is experienced, expressed, and carried over time.
A loss template invites us to consider questions such as:
What type of loss was this?
Was it expected or unexpected?
How much control did the person have?
What past losses may shape this grief?
What messages has the person received about grief?
How do identity, attachment, and developmental stage influence the experience?
What coping strategies, support systems, rituals, and spiritual beliefs are present?
In other words, a loss template helps us see grief in fuller context. It provides a framework for understanding that two people can experience the same loss very differently because of their history, relationships, roles, beliefs, and support systems.
This matters in both personal reflection and clinical work. Without a framework like this, grief can easily be misunderstood, oversimplified, or reduced to symptoms. With a loss template, we begin to ask better questions. We become more curious about what is shaping the grief, what is intensifying it, and what may help support integration over time.
Seeing Hamnet through the loss template
When we view Hamnet through this lens, the grief becomes even more complex and recognizable.
This is primarily a death loss, but it also contains elements of traumatic and partially anticipatory grief once illness enters the home. It is both contextually imaginable and personally shocking. In a time when illness and death were common, the family may have known such outcomes were possible, but that does not make the loss any less devastating.
The loss is also marked by very low control. Agnes cannot protect or heal her child in the way she longs to. William is physically absent for parts of the family’s life and cannot stop what unfolds. That helplessness matters because grief is often intensified when people feel powerless.
The film also shows how grief can strain relationships because people grieve in ways that become almost unrecognizable to one another. Agnes’s grief is embodied, intuitive, relational, and emotionally immersive. William appears more distanced at first, channeling grief into work and later into art. Judith, as the surviving sibling, carries grief in quieter ways. Their grief is shared, but it is not the same.
That difference is important. One of the most painful realities of grief is that it can create distance between people who love one another deeply. Not because the love is absent, but because the grief is expressed through different coping processes, different forms of emotional engagement, and different capacities for connection.
The loss template helps us name these differences without judging them. It reminds us that grief is not just an emotion. It is shaped by attachment, developmental timing, identity, social support, rituals, spiritual struggle, and meaning-making.
What Hamnet reflects so powerfully
What Hamnet captures so beautifully is that grief is not something people simply “move on” from. It is ongoing, non-linear, and deeply relational. It lives in the body, in silence, in memory, in family dynamics, and in the spaces between people.
That is what makes TMGL feel so relevant here. The film reflects what we believe deeply in our work: grief changes us, and we revisit it across time. Loss is not a single event that ends when the funeral is over. It is something that can re-emerge through developmental transitions, relationship shifts, anniversaries, parenthood, creativity, and memory.
An invitation to reflect
If you have seen Hamnet, you might reflect on these questions:
What factors shaped each family member’s grief?
How did control, or lack of it, influence the experience?
What past losses seemed to echo in the present?
How did social roles and cultural expectations affect the way grief was expressed?
Where did grief create connection, and where did it create distance?
These are the kinds of questions a loss template helps us ask.
We want to share how you can see an example of how the movie can be understood through the lens of our loss template.
And if this resonates with you, our workbook, Griefly Speaking; A Reflective Workbook to Understand how Grief and Loss Shape Your Life, is coming soon. It is designed for anyone carrying grief the world does not always acknowledge, with reflection prompts, creative exercises, and a framework intended to meet people where they are as they integrate loss across the lifespan.
You can sign up for our email list for a free grief resource and to hear when the workbook is available.
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