Grief doesn’t follow a script.
It doesn’t care about the calendar, doesn’t respect productivity goals, and definitely doesn’t wait for you to be “ready.” One day, you may feel like yourself again, able to laugh at a memory or show up for work with purpose. The next, a smell, a song, or an empty chair can break you open in ways you didn’t expect. That’s grief. Unpredictable, personal, and profoundly human.
Grief is Love with Nowhere to Go
When we lose someone we love whether to death, distance, or even the ending of a relationship, we don’t just mourn their absence. We mourn the future we imagined, the rituals we’ll never repeat, the version of ourselves that only existed in their presence. That ache? It’s the love that has no home anymore. It’s love that still wants to show up, still wants to pour out—but now has to find a different path.
And that process is messy.
There’s No “Right Way” to Grieve
Maybe you cry every day. Maybe you haven’t cried at all. Maybe you throw yourself into your work, or maybe you can’t get out of bed. None of that makes your grief wrong. We each carry loss differently, and comparing your process to someone else’s can become another form of self-judgment you don’t need.
Grief doesn’t follow the five stages in order. It doesn’t care if people around you think you “should be over it by now.” There is no over it. There’s only through it.
Let the Grief Have Its Space
You don’t have to be strong all the time. You don’t have to explain your pain to people who haven’t lived it. You don’t even have to understand it yourself. Let grief be what it is: a testimony to how deeply you loved.
Allow space for the silence.
For the anger.
For the confusion.
For the sudden moments of peace or joy that feel like betrayal, because even that is part of healing.
Healing Doesn’t Mean Forgetting
Healing doesn’t erase the person or the pain. It just means you’re learning how to carry it. Some days, the weight feels unbearable. Other days, lighter. But slowly, gently, you build the muscles to hold it without collapsing under it.
In time, you might find beauty in unexpected places. You might hear their laughter in your own. You might see parts of them in your child, your smile, your values. That’s how they live on—not in the absence, but in what they left behind.
To Anyone Grieving Right Now:
You’re not broken.
You’re not weak.
You’re doing the best you can with a heart that’s learning how to keep beating in a world that feels unfamiliar.
Grieve in your way. Take your time.
And remember, even when it feels like it—you are not alone.
