I recently heard someone compare deep grief to a traumatic brain injury. It’s like we’ve been hit really hard in the head and the heart. Especially in the first few days, weeks, months, we have to learn how to live again. How to get out of bed, eat, sleep, talk, work, even breathe. Eventually, we start to figure out how to live in this new reality; we have good days and bad days. We won’t ever “get over it”, we are changed forever. That analogy makes a lot of sense, and reminds me to be gentle with myself.
This is my life and not logical to anyone who is not mourning a loss as profound as child loss. Other losses are also incredibly difficult but parents are not meant to outlive our children. Thank you for sharing
Thank you for sharing this. Yesterday I tried to return an unwanted Christmas gift to the store. An easy task or so I thought. It took everything I had to hold it together. The gift was finally returned but that was enough for one day and I had to go home. I then got cross with myself as the previous version of me would have managed the situation just fine.
This is a such a good example of how loss changes what we're capable of, not our character.
What was easy before may simply require more now. And sometimes more than you have to give. Judging yourself as if nothing has changed only makes things harder than they already are.
Wow did this speak to the spiraling I admit to this holiday season. I challenged myself to face being mostly alone, except for Christmas dinner, with my memories this year. The thinking was consistent with my need to accept leaving the old life behind.
Carrying grief into my fifth year without my husband seems too enormous a burden to bear. Instead, the opposite occurred. I rested in memories, and was desolate most of late December. Challenging myself to attend a New Year’s Eve gathering with all couples was probably good, but that flight instinct drove me home after two hours. Explaining myself is exhausting and I am not the same person they once knew. Thank you, John for manifesting this by writing about it. I understand.
Hi Candy - thank you so much for reading and adding your voice to the conversation.
This is a clear example of how grief doesn’t stay contained to an event or a year. It changes what feels manageable, how you understand yourself, and where your limits show up...for a long, long time.
Moving through social situations as if things are the same, no matter how much we wish they were, can be what makes them feel unbearable.
It’s not a failure of will. It’s information. Loss changes how much the system can safely manage at once
Yes. Thank you for this post. I kept saying WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME? The answer was that both everything and nothing was wrong. Now I can better deal with the waves when they come.
I think that’s a brilliant way to put it, friend. I’m so glad you found it helpful.
I don’t know if you saw my post about a book club I’m doing but I think you might get a lot out of it. It’s totally free.
If you’re interested you can register here. And if you have any questions I’m happy to answer them. Hey Brother. It’s on zoom. I’m so glad you’re interested.
You can register here. You’ll get an email with the details to connect once you do.
This landed fully. I’ve been living inside it since my dad died—now amplified by anticipatory grief for my mom. We’re moving her into assisted living on Monday. She’s not safe on her own anymore. Living on borrowed time—months past what the oncologist expected.
I keep wanting life to feel normal again.
Hey! I woke up breathing today! I shouldn’t be sad—my parents lived long, mostly healthy lives!
But my dining table tells a different story. It’s covered in the things I carried home from my mom’s apartment the other day—old photos, my grandfather’s patents, copies of ancient bills. Remnants of their lives. Things they couldn’t let go of.
Is it my turn to save them now?
One glass of wine the other night cracked something open and a tidal wave came rushing through. Grief does that. Quiet, quiet, quiet—then suddenly, everything.
Thank you for putting words to this. It helps to feel less alone in the middle of it.
You’re welcome Lynn and I admire your willingness to be so real in what is and will continue to be such a challenging time in your life.
The call back to a life that no longer exists reminds me of the Sirens from Homer’s Odyssey. They sing a song so beautiful it lures sailors to their deaths.
If we heed the call it will the death of our healing, joy and peace. And yet it’s so damn tempting.
It is the way a familiar task suddenly feels incorrect in your hands.
You stand in the kitchen, reaching for something you have reached for a thousand times, and your body hesitates. Not because you forgot how. Because the gesture belongs to a version of you that no longer fully exists. The room is the same. The rules are not.
This is how grief enters. Quietly. Without spectacle. It does not shatter the world. It shifts the physics.
Everything still functions, but nothing agrees with you anymore.
We tell ourselves this resistance means we are failing. That if ordinary moments feel heavy, it must be because we are doing grief wrong. Not trying hard enough. Not healing efficiently. Not returning to baseline with the enthusiasm everyone seems to expect.
But weight is not failure. Weight is evidence.
Loss does not empty us. It installs itself. It adds mass. A second skeleton. An internal architecture that was never part of the original design. You do not become lighter by pushing harder against it. You become injured. Or dishonest. Or both.
Effort, in this landscape, stops meaning acceleration. It becomes consent.
Consent to slower movement. Consent to days that do not resolve. Consent to the ache that shows up in neutral places. The grocery store. The sidewalk. The sound of a voice that does nothing wrong and still undoes you.
What we often call resilience is just refusal with better branding. A way of demanding productivity from pain so other people can stay comfortable in our presence. We praise endurance when what we really want is silence. We celebrate strength when what we actually mean is compliance.
Real endurance looks less impressive.
It looks like staying when the instinct is to escape. It looks like letting a day remain uneven without rushing to redeem it. It looks like releasing the belief that meaning must announce itself loudly to count as progress.
Grief is not a puzzle. It is a climate. It alters time. It changes posture. It shortens breath. It makes simple decisions feel expensive. Not because you are weak, but because you are now carrying something that does not set itself down.
Here is the uncomfortable truth we rarely say out loud. Some people do not get better in the way we like to imagine. Some lives become narrower. Quieter. Less efficient. And still, they remain deeply, stubbornly meaningful.
Healing is not the erasure of weight. It is learning how to move without demanding that the body return to a shape it no longer holds.
Eventually, life resumes. Not because the burden lifts. But because you stop requiring its disappearance as proof that you are allowed to live.
One of the things I love about Substack is when brilliant people engage with our writing, and I find myself offering a virtual toast of my mint tea in thanks.
I recently heard someone compare deep grief to a traumatic brain injury. It’s like we’ve been hit really hard in the head and the heart. Especially in the first few days, weeks, months, we have to learn how to live again. How to get out of bed, eat, sleep, talk, work, even breathe. Eventually, we start to figure out how to live in this new reality; we have good days and bad days. We won’t ever “get over it”, we are changed forever. That analogy makes a lot of sense, and reminds me to be gentle with myself.
This is my life and not logical to anyone who is not mourning a loss as profound as child loss. Other losses are also incredibly difficult but parents are not meant to outlive our children. Thank you for sharing
Thank you for sharing this. Yesterday I tried to return an unwanted Christmas gift to the store. An easy task or so I thought. It took everything I had to hold it together. The gift was finally returned but that was enough for one day and I had to go home. I then got cross with myself as the previous version of me would have managed the situation just fine.
You’re ahead of me. I won’t even return it. It’s too much right now. So I commend you for even trying.
Thank you for being so vulnerable, friend.
This is a such a good example of how loss changes what we're capable of, not our character.
What was easy before may simply require more now. And sometimes more than you have to give. Judging yourself as if nothing has changed only makes things harder than they already are.
I'm glad you got that one thing done ❤️
Wow did this speak to the spiraling I admit to this holiday season. I challenged myself to face being mostly alone, except for Christmas dinner, with my memories this year. The thinking was consistent with my need to accept leaving the old life behind.
Carrying grief into my fifth year without my husband seems too enormous a burden to bear. Instead, the opposite occurred. I rested in memories, and was desolate most of late December. Challenging myself to attend a New Year’s Eve gathering with all couples was probably good, but that flight instinct drove me home after two hours. Explaining myself is exhausting and I am not the same person they once knew. Thank you, John for manifesting this by writing about it. I understand.
Hi Candy - thank you so much for reading and adding your voice to the conversation.
This is a clear example of how grief doesn’t stay contained to an event or a year. It changes what feels manageable, how you understand yourself, and where your limits show up...for a long, long time.
Moving through social situations as if things are the same, no matter how much we wish they were, can be what makes them feel unbearable.
It’s not a failure of will. It’s information. Loss changes how much the system can safely manage at once
Yes. Thank you for this post. I kept saying WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME? The answer was that both everything and nothing was wrong. Now I can better deal with the waves when they come.
I think that’s a brilliant way to put it, friend. I’m so glad you found it helpful.
I don’t know if you saw my post about a book club I’m doing but I think you might get a lot out of it. It’s totally free.
If you’re interested you can register here. And if you have any questions I’m happy to answer them. Hey Brother. It’s on zoom. I’m so glad you’re interested.
You can register here. You’ll get an email with the details to connect once you do.
https://leadingthroughloss.myflodesk.com/bookclub
This landed fully. I’ve been living inside it since my dad died—now amplified by anticipatory grief for my mom. We’re moving her into assisted living on Monday. She’s not safe on her own anymore. Living on borrowed time—months past what the oncologist expected.
I keep wanting life to feel normal again.
Hey! I woke up breathing today! I shouldn’t be sad—my parents lived long, mostly healthy lives!
But my dining table tells a different story. It’s covered in the things I carried home from my mom’s apartment the other day—old photos, my grandfather’s patents, copies of ancient bills. Remnants of their lives. Things they couldn’t let go of.
Is it my turn to save them now?
One glass of wine the other night cracked something open and a tidal wave came rushing through. Grief does that. Quiet, quiet, quiet—then suddenly, everything.
Thank you for putting words to this. It helps to feel less alone in the middle of it.
You’re welcome Lynn and I admire your willingness to be so real in what is and will continue to be such a challenging time in your life.
The call back to a life that no longer exists reminds me of the Sirens from Homer’s Odyssey. They sing a song so beautiful it lures sailors to their deaths.
If we heed the call it will the death of our healing, joy and peace. And yet it’s so damn tempting.
I wish you peace and healing friend. ❤️
Thanks, Jason🫶
Hang in there, Lynn. You are not alone.
Thanks, Jamey.
The first sign is not the sadness.
It is the way a familiar task suddenly feels incorrect in your hands.
You stand in the kitchen, reaching for something you have reached for a thousand times, and your body hesitates. Not because you forgot how. Because the gesture belongs to a version of you that no longer fully exists. The room is the same. The rules are not.
This is how grief enters. Quietly. Without spectacle. It does not shatter the world. It shifts the physics.
Everything still functions, but nothing agrees with you anymore.
We tell ourselves this resistance means we are failing. That if ordinary moments feel heavy, it must be because we are doing grief wrong. Not trying hard enough. Not healing efficiently. Not returning to baseline with the enthusiasm everyone seems to expect.
But weight is not failure. Weight is evidence.
Loss does not empty us. It installs itself. It adds mass. A second skeleton. An internal architecture that was never part of the original design. You do not become lighter by pushing harder against it. You become injured. Or dishonest. Or both.
Effort, in this landscape, stops meaning acceleration. It becomes consent.
Consent to slower movement. Consent to days that do not resolve. Consent to the ache that shows up in neutral places. The grocery store. The sidewalk. The sound of a voice that does nothing wrong and still undoes you.
What we often call resilience is just refusal with better branding. A way of demanding productivity from pain so other people can stay comfortable in our presence. We praise endurance when what we really want is silence. We celebrate strength when what we actually mean is compliance.
Real endurance looks less impressive.
It looks like staying when the instinct is to escape. It looks like letting a day remain uneven without rushing to redeem it. It looks like releasing the belief that meaning must announce itself loudly to count as progress.
Grief is not a puzzle. It is a climate. It alters time. It changes posture. It shortens breath. It makes simple decisions feel expensive. Not because you are weak, but because you are now carrying something that does not set itself down.
Here is the uncomfortable truth we rarely say out loud. Some people do not get better in the way we like to imagine. Some lives become narrower. Quieter. Less efficient. And still, they remain deeply, stubbornly meaningful.
Healing is not the erasure of weight. It is learning how to move without demanding that the body return to a shape it no longer holds.
Eventually, life resumes. Not because the burden lifts. But because you stop requiring its disappearance as proof that you are allowed to live.
Nothing is fixed.
Nothing is conquered.
The world keeps going, and you go with it.
Heavier. Altered. Still here.
And that is not weakness.
That is adaptation.
One of the things I love about Substack is when brilliant people engage with our writing, and I find myself offering a virtual toast of my mint tea in thanks.