Why Grief Feels Endless
There’s a sentence many grieving women say to themselves, sometimes out loud to one trusted person, that almost no one says in public. This is never going to end. It comes up months after the loss. It comes up years after. It comes up in moments when the grief, which was supposed to be getting […]
Why Grief Feels Different for Everyone
If you have ever looked around at other people going through loss and wondered why your grief looks so different from theirs, you are not alone in that wondering. Grief is one of the most individual experiences a person can have, and yet the cultural script around it suggests there is a correct way to […]
How to Survive Losing Your Spouse
There is no way to prepare for losing your spouse. Even when the loss comes after a long illness, even when part of you knew it was coming, the actual moment of it lands differently than anything you could have anticipated. The world continues moving. People continue calling and bringing food and saying the things […]
Grief & Denial Stage
There’s a phase of grief that gets a lot of bad press. The denial phase. The one where you can’t quite take in that the loss has actually happened. Where you keep reaching for the phone to call them. Where you find yourself walking into a room expecting to see them. Where some part of […]
Coping With Grief in Daily Life
There’s a strange thing about grief that almost nobody warns you about clearly enough. The big moments aren’t usually the hardest. The funeral is hard, but you’re surrounded by people. The first holiday is hard, but you’ve braced for it. The big anniversaries are hard, but they’re expected. You can prepare, in some way, for […]
How to Cope With Losing Your Spouse
There’s a particular silence that fills a house after a spouse dies. It isn’t only quiet. It’s the absence of someone whose sounds you knew without knowing you knew them. The way they cleared their throat in the morning. The way the floor creaked under their footsteps. The way the front door opened at the […]
Rebuilding Confidence After Loss
There’s something nobody warns you about clearly enough when you lose someone. The loss takes more than the person. It takes the version of you that existed in relation to them. The wife who was someone’s wife. The mother who had a particular child. The daughter who had a particular parent. The friend who was […]
Signs of Complicated Grief
Most grief, given enough time and the right conditions, slowly integrates into the rest of your life. It doesn’t disappear. It changes shape. It takes up less of your daily weather. It becomes one chapter in a longer story instead of the only chapter. For some women, that integration doesn’t happen. The grief stays at […]
Grief After Losing a Child
There’s a kind of grief that doesn’t fit any of the frameworks. The stages don’t apply. The timelines don’t apply. The phrases people use to comfort other kinds of grief don’t apply, and most of the time, the people saying them know it. If you’re a mother who’s lost a child, you already know this. […]
Anger Stage of Grief Explained
There’s a stage of grief that almost nobody warns you about properly. It doesn’t show up first. It often doesn’t show up for weeks, sometimes months, after the loss. By the time it arrives, the people in your life have stopped asking how you’re doing. They’ve moved on. They expect you to have moved on […]