Carrying a real loss

You're carrying a loss that's genuinely heavy, and you don't have to make it sound smaller so other people stay comfortable. Grief isn't a problem to be solved; it's love continuing on after the thing it held has gone. There's no schedule for this, no correct way to do it, and no part of you that's doing it wrong. You're allowed to set the weight down for the length of this page and simply breathe.

Grief is one of the most universal and most personal experiences there is, and no two people carry it the same way. It has no deadline, no correct method, and no order it must be felt in. There will be days that feel a little lighter and days that feel heavy again, and both are part of it. You do not owe anyone a cleaner grief than the one you have.

Healing from loss is not about getting over someone or something. It is about learning to carry them with you, gently, while you keep living. In time the ache softens from the size of a wall to the size of a room you can live inside, but the love does not shrink. You are not doing this wrong. The love stays, and so do you, and that is the whole of what healing asks of you today.