OH MY GRIEF

I didn’t expect grief to make me feel more. I thought it would numb me, maybe make me bitter. But instead, it’s made everything louder. Softer, too. Like someone turned the contrast up on life.

I’ve been going through my own loss recently. And while I won’t spill every detail here, I will say it didn’t break me the way I feared. It bent me. Quietly. In ways I’m still noticing.

I catch myself wondering about people and my decisions more deeply now.

What they’ve lost. What they carry. What they don’t say. I look at someone laughing and think, I wonder what they’ve survived to still laugh like that. I hear a song and feel it differently, like it’s brushing against something tender I didn’t know was there.

Grief hasn’t made my heart turn to stone. If anything, I feel things I used to brush off. I cry at things that aren’t even sad. I hold onto moments longer. I ask more questions. Not out loud, but in my head. What did they mean to me? Should I be doing more to live a "full life"

It’s strange how loss makes you notice presence. How it sharpens the edges of memory. How it makes you want to hold people tighter, even if you don’t know how to say it. The biggest notice is who isn't present, who hasnt shown up or a feeling on missing for those you havent seen in along time.

But I know this: grief doesn’t just change people. It reveals them. And maybe, just maybe, it teaches us how to love with more intention.