Some of the hardest moments in life are the ones where you’re expected to keep going when everything inside you is begging for a moment to fall apart.
There is something incredibly cruel about the way life continues moving forward when you’re grieving. The sun still rises, people still go to work, bills still need to be paid, responsibilities still demand your attention, and the world carries on as though nothing has happened. Meanwhile, you’re sitting there trying to understand how someone can be here one moment and gone the next, wondering how you’re supposed to return to your normal routine when something inside you no longer feels the same. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately, especially after receiving news of a recent loss that I never imagined I would have to process. It has made me realize just how quickly life can change and how little control we truly have over the things that happen around us.
I’ve always been someone who tries to keep going, even when life becomes overwhelming. Between being a mother, working, going to school, maintaining relationships, and trying to build a future for myself, there isn’t always much room to fall apart. I’ve become so accustomed to putting my emotions aside long enough to handle whatever needs to be done that sometimes I don’t even recognize how much I’m carrying until everything becomes too heavy. However, this recent loss has brought feelings to the surface that I haven’t quite figured out how to navigate, and for the first time in a while, I’m beginning to understand that being strong doesn’t necessarily mean being able to handle everything on my own.
What people don’t always understand about grief is that it doesn’t follow a schedule, and it certainly doesn’t ask whether you have enough time or emotional energy to deal with it. Sometimes it appears in the middle of an ordinary afternoon when you’re doing something completely unrelated, and suddenly a memory crosses your mind that makes your chest feel heavy. Other times, it waits until the house becomes quiet and there are no distractions left to protect you from your thoughts. You can spend an entire day laughing, talking, and functioning like everything is normal, only to find yourself struggling to hold back tears over something as simple as a song, a photograph, or a memory you hadn’t thought about in years.
Lately, I’ve been struggling with the anxiety that has accompanied this grief, and I think that has been one of the most difficult parts to explain. Losing someone doesn’t just make you think about the person who is gone; sometimes it makes you painfully aware of everyone you still have and how quickly everything could change. You begin thinking about conversations you haven’t had, people you haven’t checked on, and moments you assumed there would always be more time for. Suddenly, the uncertainty of life feels much louder than it did before, and even when you know logically that you cannot control everything, convincing your mind to stop worrying becomes an entirely different battle.
I’ve also been learning that grief can bring up emotions you didn’t even realize were still sitting somewhere inside you. Memories that once made you smile can suddenly become painful, not because you regret having them, but because you understand that they now belong to a chapter of life that can never be revisited in quite the same way. There are people who become part of our stories for only a certain amount of time, yet their impact doesn’t disappear simply because our lives take different directions. Sometimes you don’t realize how much a person contributed to the version of yourself you once were until you’re forced to accept that they are no longer here.
And perhaps one of the hardest lessons I’m learning is that you don’t have to justify your grief to anyone, including yourself. You don’t need to prove that you were close enough to someone, that your relationship lasted long enough, or that your memories were important enough to deserve the sadness you’re experiencing. Human connections are complicated, and the emotions attached to them don’t disappear just because circumstances change. You can love the life you’re living today while still mourning someone who belonged to you yesterday, and those two things do not have to contradict one another.
I’ve spent a lot of my life believing that I needed to have everything figured out, especially when other people depended on me. I’ve convinced myself that I should be able to push through difficult experiences because I’ve already survived so much, but I’m beginning to question why we place that expectation on ourselves. Why do we assume that surviving previous heartbreak somehow makes the next one easier? Why do we treat our ability to endure pain as evidence that we shouldn’t need help? If anything, I’ve learned that experiencing loss repeatedly doesn’t make you immune to grief. Sometimes it simply means you’re carrying more memories, more unanswered questions, and more emotions than you’ve ever allowed yourself to fully process.
That’s part of the reason I’ve started considering grief counseling. Not because I believe someone can magically make the sadness disappear, but because I want to understand what I’m feeling without constantly becoming overwhelmed by it. I want to learn how to make room for grief without allowing anxiety to consume every quiet moment. More importantly, I want to stop treating the need for emotional support as something I should be embarrassed about. There is a difference between being able to survive something and actually allowing yourself to heal from it, and I think I’m finally beginning to recognize that difference.
If you’re reading this and you’ve been struggling with something similar, I want you to understand that you are allowed to acknowledge when life feels heavier than usual. You are allowed to miss someone whose place in your life may have changed long before they passed away. You are allowed to have days when you feel completely fine followed by days when a single memory brings everything rushing back. Healing doesn’t require you to erase the sadness, and moving forward doesn’t mean pretending that what happened didn’t affect you.
But I also want to remind you of something that I’ve been trying to remind myself: please don’t become so focused on the people you’ve lost that you forget to appreciate the people who are still here. Tell people you love them while you have the opportunity. Make the phone call you’ve been putting off, take the photograph even when you don’t feel like you look your best, and stop assuming that there will always be another holiday, another birthday, or another ordinary Tuesday to make things right. Life doesn’t promise us unlimited time, and sometimes the moments we overlook today become the memories we would give anything to experience again.
I wish I could end today’s post by saying that I’ve found peace with everything that’s happened, but that wouldn’t be the truth. I’m still trying to make sense of emotions that don’t always make sense to me, and I’m still figuring out how to navigate the anxiety that has followed this loss. Some days I feel like I’m handling things reasonably well, while other days I find myself overwhelmed by the realization that someone who once existed in my everyday life is now someone I can only remember. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, and I don’t think there’s a perfect collection of words that could make it easier to understand.
What I can say is that I’m no longer interested in pretending that difficult things don’t affect me simply because I’ve survived difficult things before. I’m tired of measuring my strength by how quietly I can suffer, and I’m learning that there is nothing admirable about ignoring your emotional needs until they begin affecting every other part of your life. I want to be present for my daughter, continue pursuing my education, build a meaningful future, and genuinely enjoy the life I’m working so hard to create. To do those things, I also have to acknowledge the parts of myself that need care, patience, and healing.
So today, I’m not writing from a place of having all the answers. I’m writing from the middle of something I haven’t fully processed, hoping that somewhere between those words, someone else might recognize a feeling they’ve been struggling to explain.
And if there’s one thing I hope you take away from today’s post, it’s this: Stop waiting until you’re completely falling apart to give yourself permission to need support. You don’t have to reach your breaking point before your feelings become important. You don’t have to compare your pain to someone else’s to decide whether it deserves attention, and you certainly don’t have to convince the world that you’re okay when you’re still trying to figure out what okay even looks like.
As for me, I’m going to keep showing up for the life I have while learning how to carry the losses that have changed it. I’m going to give myself permission to have difficult days without allowing those days to convince me that I’ll never experience happiness again. I’m going to seek the support I need, hold my loved ones a little closer, and remind myself that healing isn’t about becoming the person I was before something painful happened.
Sometimes healing means learning how to become someone new while carrying the love, memories, and lessons of the people who helped shape who you are.
And maybe that’s where I am right now.
Not completely okay, not completely lost, but somewhere in between, learning that I can be grateful for the life in front of me while still grieving the people who are no longer part of it.
Because the world may not stop when yours feels like it’s falling apart, but that doesn’t mean you have to rush yourself into being okay just to keep up with it.
Until next time,
Between the Words
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