When someone you love dies, your world shatters. Even simple things can feel like climbing a mountain in bare feet.

In grief, you might look at the concept of self care and think that’s for other people.
People whose hearts aren’t broken into a million pieces without their person.

Trauma isn’t necessarily about what happened. It’s more about what happened after, how you process the death, and everything that you hold as you navigate your grief.

Many people expect grief to follow a clear path, a grief timeline with stages that arrive in order and then fade away. That idea is comforting, but it’s not real. Grief doesn’t obey rules and it doesn’t expire after a set number of months or years.

Grief is not tidy. It’s not the movie version where someone cries once, hugs a friend, and moves on. Grief is jagged and unpredictable. If your best friend’s dad just died, you’re stepping into a reality that feels foreign, maybe even frightening.

The death of a best friend is unlike any other death. It’s completely disorienting. It’s the ripping away of the person who held your secrets and your unfiltered self. When a best friend dies, it can feel like the world has tilted off its axis, leaving you searching for solid ground.

You believed the future was yours. You and him…married just a few short years, dreaming of decades together. Then he died. The world shifted under your feet, and suddenly time itself felt fractured. You find yourself asking “How do I go on?”

Grief doesn’t always cry softly. Sometimes it shows up as heat. A clenched jaw. A fast heart beat. Words you don’t mean flying out like daggers. It’s sometimes agitated, erratic, and honest.

You’re standing in the wreckage of something that shattered your world entirely, and your body hasn’t gotten the memo that it’s over. Grief isn’t just sorrow and pain…it’s a body that keeps reliving the moment injustice made itself real.

Grief isn’t just sadness or crying in the dark or thinking about the person that died in every single moment. It’s also nausea that won’t go away. It’s the exhaustion that sleep can’t fix. It’s chest tightness, foggy thinking, headaches, and loss of appetite.

Until now, the only significant death you’ve experienced was your childhood dog. That hurt, I know it did. But grief never really feels the same. No matter who dies, it’s different. 

Sure, “time heals wounds” (really it just changes them) but, grief doesn’t go away just because the UV index is higher. 

And you might be feeling... stuck.
Grieving. Missing them. Feeling like a ghost in a season that once held your best days.

Really, there’s no manual for this.

No morning routine checklist that makes space for grief and breakfast and getting ready for daycare.

You don’t have to slap a smile on your face because the calendar says “celebrate.”

You don’t have to cheer for a kind of freedom that feels so out of reach. 

You don’t have to pretend that that crack of the fireworks feels fun and comfortable. 

No one teaches you how to live after death.  No one tells you that you might crave a relationship before your heart feels ready. 

That laughter might feel like betrayal. 

That kissing someone new might leave you sobbing in the shower after. 

They were your home. Your person. The one who saw you in your quiet moments, who finished your sentences, who made you feel like you could exhale in a world that never seems to let up.

There’s this moment after someone dies where everything goes strangely quiet. The world has stopped spinning and life feels like it’s paused. Your heart is numb and raw.

Grief anniversaries don’t announce themselves. 

They don’t send a reminder. 

Even if you have them marked on the calendar, they still crawl into your chest when you least expect it.

Let’s get one thing straight: Grief doesn’t come with an expiration date.

We’ve all heard the phrase that “time heals all wounds,” but anyone who’s actually been cracked open by loss knows the truth: time changes grief. 

Of course it’s okay. It’ more than okay.

Oftentimes, people say these phrases and words when a loved one dies — they are automatic and built into our language. But, they aren’t helpful.

We're fed a misleading idea: grief as a tidy process with clear phases and stages. But our lived experience never matches that convenient narrative. Our grief doesn't follow a predictable path toward some predetermined resolution.