🌻What Grief Continues to Teach Me

Grief is not something you “get over.” It’s something you learn to carry — like a heavy suitcase that never fully unpacks. You learn how to hold it differently, how to move with it, how to make room for both pain and peace.

It’s been years since my mom passed, and I’m still learning from my grief every single day. There are moments when I feel strong, and others when I crumble out of nowhere. A scent, a song, a photo — it all still brings me back. And honestly? I think it always will.

But what I’ve learned is that this isn’t a failure of healing — it’s the truth of love.

As a Therapist, I Thought I Understood Grief

Before losing my mom, I sat across from so many clients who carried grief in all its forms — death, divorce, distance, disappointment. I offered words of empathy and compassion. I taught grounding techniques, coping tools, and the importance of giving yourself grace.

But when it was me, when the loss was mine, everything I thought I knew became different. Grief made the professional in me sit down and the daughter in me finally speak.

I couldn’t therapize my way out of it. I had to feel it — every layer of it. And that changed the way I show up for others forever. Now, when my clients talk about loss, I don’t just understand — I feel it with them. I know what it means to live through an ache that has no timeline. I know what it’s like to smile in public and break in private.

Grief humbled me. It softened me. It made me a better therapist — not because I have all the answers, but because I’ve learned how to sit in the silence of what can’t be fixed.

The Lessons That Keep Finding Me

1. Love doesn’t end when life does.

I used to think closure was something you found — but I’ve learned it’s something you create. My mom didn’t get to respond to my last words, but I keep talking to her anyway. Through prayer, through reflection, through the way I live my life.

2. Forgiveness is a form of freedom.

I spent so long blaming my family, blaming myself. But healing began when I forgave us all — for not knowing how to handle the unimaginable. Forgiveness doesn’t erase the pain, but it lightens the weight.

3. Grief doesn’t mean you’re broken.

For a while, I thought being a therapist meant I should have known how to manage this better. But grief doesn’t care about credentials — it humbles everyone the same. You’re allowed to fall apart, even when others expect you to hold it together.

4. It’s okay that holidays and birthdays feel different.

I don’t celebrate the way I used to. I don’t force joy that isn’t there. I honor my truth. And that’s okay. Some years, healing looks like laughter. Other years, it looks like quiet. Both are sacred.

5. Healing isn’t about moving on — it’s about moving forward.

I still listen to my mom’s voice messages. I still read her texts. I still cry sometimes when I least expect it. But I also live with more gratitude. I show up for others more gently. I carry her with me in every space I enter.

Still Becoming

Grief continues to teach me that I am both the therapist and the daughter — the healer and the human. And I don’t have to choose between them.

Some days, I still feel like that broken version of me in the hospital room, whispering things I’ll never know if she heard. But even there — in that version — there is love. There is connection. There is meaning.

I’ve learned that grief doesn’t shrink — you grow around it. You build new life beside it. You find laughter again. You forgive again. You love again.

And that’s what it means to heal — not to erase the pain, but to rise with it.

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

With love,

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