Latest / The Comeback Story: Real Stories of Resilience, Courage & Reinvention / Grief Has No Timeline: How to Sit With the Heavy Without Rushing | The Comeback Story
Transcript
- You are not broken because you still hurt. You are simply human, carrying a weight that has no expiration date. I want you to take a deep breath with me right now. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Feel your shoulders drop just an inch? Good. Because I need you to know something before we go any further today. Society is lying to you. It is telling you that grief is a problem to be solved. It’s whispering that if you just do enough journaling, or attend enough therapy sessions, or drink enough green smoothies, you will eventually arrive at a place where this pain doesn’t touch you anymore. And that is a dangerous lie. It makes you feel like you’re failing at being sad. Like you’re doing grief wrong because it hasn’t gone away after three months, or six months, or three years. Let’s sit with that for a second. That feeling of failure. It’s not yours. It belongs to a world that is obsessed with productivity and speed. We treat our emotions like tasks on a to-do list. If it’s not checked off, it’s clutter. But grief isn’t clutter. Grief is landscape. It’s the terrain you now live in. And you don’t rush across a mountain range. You hike it. You stumble. You rest. You look around at the view and sometimes you cry because the view is beautiful and terrible all at once. I remember talking to a friend last year who had lost her mother. She was exhausted, Kara. Not physically tired, but soul-tired. She told me she felt guilty every time she laughed at a joke with her coworkers. She said, 'If I’m having fun, am I betraying her?' Can you imagine that? The idea that joy is a betrayal of loss. That’s how heavy this gets when we try to fix it. We think we have to choose between honoring the past and enjoying the present. But here is the truth I’ve learned from my own messy reinventions and quiet losses: you can hold both. You can miss someone so much it feels like your chest is caving in, and you can also love the way the sunlight hits your kitchen floor on a Tuesday morning. These two things are not enemies. They are companions. When we try to rush the process, when we try to force ourselves to 'move on,' we actually push the grief deeper into the shadows. And what happens in the shadows? It grows roots. It becomes tangled. It starts dictating your choices without you even realizing it. So today, I am giving you permission to stop moving on. I am giving you permission to stay. To sit in the mess. To let the tears come when they come, not because you’re weak, but because you’re alive. We often talk about grief as if it lives entirely in our heads. As if it’s just thoughts, memories, regrets. But I need you to listen to your body today. Grief is physical. It lives in the tightness of your jaw when you hear a certain song. It lives in the hollow ache behind your ribs when you walk into an empty room. It lives in the sudden fatigue that hits you at 3 PM for no logical reason. When we try to intellectualize grief, to analyze it, to fix it with logic, we ignore the messenger. Our bodies are screaming, 'I am still processing!' And we’re saying, 'No, I’m fine, I have a meeting to get to.' That disconnection creates a kind of internal war. You start fighting yourself. You call yourself dramatic for crying over a spilled cup of coffee. You call yourself numb for laughing at a movie. Neither is true. Your body is just trying to metabolize the shock. Think of it like digesting a large meal. You can’t rush digestion by shaking the plate. You have to let time do its work. Grief is the emotional digestion of a life that has changed irrevocably. And you cannot speed up biology. You cannot negotiate with your nervous system. It needs safety. It needs space. It needs you to stop judging it for taking its time. There is a specific kind of loneliness that comes with waiting for grief to lift. It’s the loneliness of watching everyone else move forward while you stand still. You see your friends getting promoted, buying houses, planning vacations. And you feel like you’re stuck in quicksand. You want to shout, 'Look at me! I’m trying too!' But you can’t. Because you’re afraid that if you admit you’re still hurting, people will pull away. They’ll think you’re difficult. They’ll think you’re stuck. So you smile. You nod. You say, 'I’m good, just busy.' And inside, you are crumbling. This is the invisible labor of resilience. It’s the work of showing up when you feel like you’re falling apart. It’s the courage to keep living when living feels pointless. I want you to know that this visible stagnation is not wasted time. It is sacred ground. You are doing the deepest work of your life right now. You are untangling your identity from who you were before the loss. You are learning how to be a person who contains both joy and sorrow. That is hard work. It deserves rest. It deserves patience. You are not behind. You are exactly where you need to be in the architecture of your own healing. So, what do we do when the wave hits? When the memory of them crashes over you in the grocery aisle? When you find their old sweater and suddenly you can’t breathe? We don’t fix it. We anchor. We use small, tangible things to bring us back to the present moment. Maybe it’s pressing your feet firmly into the floor. Maybe it’s holding a cold glass of water. Maybe it’s calling a friend who knows not to offer advice, just to listen. These anchors don’t make the pain go away. They just remind you that you are still here. You are still breathing. You are still capable of feeling. And that matters. I remember when I went through my own career pivot, when everything I thought defined me fell away. I didn’t have a grand plan. I just had small anchors. One cup of tea. One walk around the block. One honest conversation with a trusted friend. Those tiny moments held me together until I could build something new. Grief requires the same granularity. Don’t try to solve the whole mountain. Just solve the next ten minutes. What does your body need right now? Water? Silence? A hug? Ask for it. Give it to yourself. You are allowed to be gentle with yourself during this season. You are allowed to prioritize your peace over other people’s comfort. Let’s talk about strength for a moment. We usually define strength as stoicism. As holding it together. As never breaking down in public. But I’m here to tell you that is a lie sold to women who want to control everything. Real strength is vulnerability. Real strength is admitting, 'I am not okay today.' Real strength is letting yourself cry in the car before you walk into the office. Real strength is saying, 'I need more time.' That wasn't just luck; that was your backbone. It takes immense courage to be soft in a world that demands hardness. It takes fierce resilience to stay open when everything in you wants to close up. You are building a new kind of strength. One that is flexible. One that bends but doesn’t break. And that is far more durable than the rigid armor we used to wear. So stop trying to fix the unfixable. Stop trying to rush the inevitable. Sit with the heaviness. Let it be there. It’s part of your story. It’s part of your depth. And it’s making you more human, more connected, more alive. You are not broken. You are becoming. Thank you for sitting with me in the heavy stuff today. Be gentle with yourself. I’m rooting for you, always. Until next time.