🌻 Grief Changes You — Even When You Think It Won’t

I used to think I understood grief. I thought it only hit hard when you were deeply close to someone — when the bond was tight and unbreakable. So when my mother passed, I told myself I’d be okay. We weren’t that close. Our relationship had its distance, its silence, and its pain. I thought I had already accepted that — that I’d already done my grieving years before she took her last breath. But I was wrong.

Grief doesn’t ask if you’re ready. It doesn’t check how close you were. It doesn’t care about how strong you’ve been pretending to be. It finds its way in — through the smallest cracks, through the memories you thought you’d buried, through the love you didn’t know you still had left to give. Losing my mother hit me in ways I didn’t expect. It wasn’t just about missing her presence — it was about mourning the moments we never got to have. It was realizing how much I still wanted to hear her voice, even if we didn’t always see eye to eye. It was the guilt, the longing, and the love all tangled up together.

And when I found myself in that space — broken, confused, and quiet — I expected people to be there. I thought those I’d shown up for would show up for me. I thought comfort would come easy. But it didn’t. Instead, I learned one of grief’s hardest lessons: sometimes the people you think will be there, won’t be. And that can hurt just as much as the loss itself.

You start realizing how heavy healing can be when it’s just you and your thoughts. You learn to stop expecting people to understand the depth of your pain — and start learning how to hold space for yourself. That was one of the biggest lessons grief gave me: self-comfort. Then came other losses that deepened that lesson. Walking away from football — something that gave me focus, strength, and identity — felt like another piece of me slipping away. That game was therapy. It was the reminder that I could still fight, still push through. Losing it made me grieve a version of myself I wasn’t ready to let go of.

And then I lost Energy and Queso, my peace. The kind of love that doesn’t need words. Their absence created a silence that echoed through the walls. Losing them was losing small pieces of home.

All of it — my mom, football, Energy, and Queso — came together like a storm I couldn’t control. But it changed me. It stripped me down to what was real. It reminded me that grief isn’t about weakness — it’s about love. Even when that love is complicated. Even when it’s unspoken. Even when it feels one-sided. Grief teaches you who you are when everything familiar is gone. It shows you who really stands beside you — and who you become when they don’t. It makes you grow softer, wiser, more aware of what truly matters.

I’ve learned that it’s okay to grieve people you weren’t close to. It’s okay to feel disappointed by those who didn’t show up. It’s okay to mourn the life you thought you’d have — and still choose to keep living with open hands and a full heart. Because grief changes you, yes — but it also reveals you. And I’m learning to love the woman I’m becoming because of it.

💛🌻“You are not what happened to you. You are the strength that rose from it.”

With Love,

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