Grief Has Become My Life

Can You Relate?

Hi guys.

It’s been a minute.

I know I have not written here lately. Not because I have run out of things to say. Ha, if you know me, you know that is basically impossible. But because I have been traveling. I went grief camping. I went to a grief convention. And I took some griefy time for myself.

The truth is, grief has become my life.

Now hold on. I know that sounds terrible. I know some of you are thinking, “Oh god, I can’t do this forever. This cannot be my life. If this is what she is saying the rest of my life will look like, I am out.”

Take a breath. Let me explain.

Because I am not saying that early grief has become my life.

Early grief is something else entirely. It is its own beast. Big. Constant. Crushing. It feels like being skinned alive. It is the kind of pain that makes you forget how to breathe.

Early grief is eating crackers for dinner and crying when your phone lights up, hoping it is them, even though you know it cannot be. It is driving and forgetting how you got there. It is sitting on the edge of your bed for two hours with one sock in your hand. It is fear, blankness, panic, exhaustion, and disbelief.

Early grief is also when things have quieted, but inside, nothing feels better. When no one asks how you are doing anymore. Now they ask how your weekend was, with a bright smile, just like everything is normal!

And your answer, whether you say it out loud or not, is still, “It sucked, because they are dead.”

It is waking up every single day and getting hit in the face with the same awful truth. Replaying it all in your head. It is regret and numbness and deep, deep confusion, sometimes all in the same hour. It is unbearable.

I know it is.

I remember it is.

But early grief is called “early grief” for a reason. And I know some of you are probably thinking, “Well, it has been (insert time here), so I cannot possibly still be in early grief.”

But my dear friend, I am so sorry to tell you, yes, you can.

If you are still shocked, still feeling like this cannot be real, still bracing yourself every morning, you are probably still in early grief. If the outside world is starting to look at you like you should be doing better by now, and you are wondering what is wrong with you, this is probably because you are still in early grief.

It lasts longer than people think.

Much longer.

And if you are in that place right now, I am not going to lie to you or try to wrap it in pretty language. It is hell.

At some point, you may have heard someone talk about the shift in grief.

That mysterious, can’t-quite-explain-it transformation that supposedly happens down the line. The one where grief changes shape. Where things stop feeling so heavy.

Maybe you have read about it. Or someone said it to you, like a promise. “You will feel different. It will not always be like this.”

Maybe I am the person who has said it to you.

And maybe you nodded politely while screaming inside.

Because when you are in early grief, the shift sounds like complete bullshit. You cannot picture it. You have no frame of reference for what that even means. It is the emotional version of someone telling you that one day you will grow wings and fly.

You want to believe them, maybe. But you also kind of hate them for saying it. And maybe part of you fears it will not happen for you. Or maybe even scarier, you fear that it will happen, and then you will feel guilty for changing.

The shift can be confusing. Not just because you do not understand it, but because you are not sure you want it.

And that is ok.

I did not want it either. Not at first. I could not imagine a version of myself that would ever feel anything but destroyed. I did not want to be “better” if that meant being fine with what happened. I did not want to feel peaceful if that meant letting go. I did not want to shift.

Hard truth now. Life is change, my friend.

Everything in our world, in the earthly world we live in, keeps moving. The seasons change. Trees lose their leaves, then grow them back. The tide comes in and goes out. Animals migrate. Flowers bloom and then disappear for a while.

And you. You are not the same person you were ten years ago, are you? You can look back and see it. Little changes. Big ones too. Some painful, some welcome, some that happened without you even noticing. That is what humans do. We change because we are part of this ever-changing world.

The way we relate to things changes. The way we relate to our work. To our bodies. To our values. The way we relate to our friends, our families, our homes, ourselves.

The way you relate to grief changes, too. The way you relate to the person who died. The way you relate to this world that has been irreparably changed.

And sometimes we are terrified by this because we relate changing grief to forgetting. We think that if it shifts, it means we are letting go. That we are leaving them behind. That we are somehow ok with something that will never be ok.

But we can shift that too.

We can begin to understand that changing grief does not mean forgetting. It never has.

There is nothing, no amount of time, no healing, no personal growth, that will erase your love for them. No version of you will ever exist in this life where they are not still yours.

Grief has become part of the way I live. Part of the way I love. Part of the way I relate to everything.

These days, when I take griefy time, it is something I choose. Those days are not spent sleeping and sobbing alternately, with the occasional drunken binge thrown in. That was another version of grief. A different time. A different relationship to it. Now, my griefy time is intentional. I take space to remember, to feel, to stay connected. Not because I am falling apart, but because I still love them. Because they are still part of my life. Because I still want to be with my grief in a way that feels authentic to me.

This is how I relate to grief now. I do not fight it. I do not fear it. I make room for it. Because it is still here. And so are they. Grief is not all I am, but it is part of who I am now. Not because I am stuck, but because I still love them.

And love does not end.

I have learned a lot about grief since it first entered my life. But this is the most important thing I know, the one I want to offer you if you are still deep in the hardest part: they do not go away. They are with us still. The relationship does not end. They do not fade like a childhood memory.

My son. My husband. They are just as present and real to me today as they were when they were here in the flesh. My relationship with them continues. I make new memories, and I bring them with me into every single one.

That is what the shift is. Not forgetting. Not moving on. Not leaving them behind. Just learning how to love them in a new way. A way that lets me keep going, without ever letting go.

And if you cannot imagine this right now, that is ok. I could not either. If you are still in the part where it hurts all the time, where nothing makes sense, where the pain is bigger than anything else in your life, I am not here to tell you it gets better. I am just here to tell you it changes. If you keep showing up for it... if you keep feeling it, screaming it, writing it, breathing through it, talking about it... the shift will come to you. And when it does, your love for them will still be right there.

You do not have to be afraid of the shift.

Because they will not leave you.

And you will never stop loving them.