Nobody Told You Grief Had a Deadline

I have been thinking about you since the first post. About how you are still navigating the quiet commentary at family dinners, still catching the announcements, still having the moments where grief finds you in the most ordinary places. The grocery store. A song in the car. A date on your phone that you cannot quite bring yourself to delete.

Before anything else, I need to say something. And I need you to really let it land.

You do not have to be further along than you are. You do not owe anyone a version of you that has already processed this. Not your family. Not social media. Not even yourself.

Grief has a way of making us feel like we are doing it wrong. Too slow. Too emotional. Still carrying something the rest of the world seems to have set down. But there is no correct pace for mourning a life you imagined so clearly you can still picture the ordinary Tuesday mornings of it.

So rather than telling you how to get through this season, I want to offer a few gentle invitations. Take what fits. Leave the rest.

Let the day be small. You do not have to make Mother’s Day or Father’s Day mean something. You are allowed to let it be just a Sunday. Waffles if you want them, a walk, a movie, something that asks nothing of you emotionally.

Name what you are grieving, specifically. Not just the baby, but the first birthday party you had already planned in your head. The way you practiced saying the name out loud in the car. The particular version of your future that felt so close you could almost touch it. Specific grief is real grief. It deserves to be honored exactly as it is.

Find at least one place where you do not have to explain yourself. This is not a small thing. It is actually everything. One person, one space, one community where you can arrive mid-sentence. Where you do not have to start from the beginning or quietly manage someone else’s reaction to your pain.

That last one matters deeply to me. Because one of the loneliest parts of this kind of loss is how often we end up comforting other people about our own grief. How often we soften it, make it easier to hold so that others can stay in the room. You deserve a space where your grief is simply received. Where being held and heard asks nothing of you in return.

And I want you to know this too. This corridor between May and June will end. The calendar will turn. I am not saying that to rush you. I am saying it because sometimes, when you are deep inside a hard season, it helps just to remember that seasons do move. That June becomes July. That you will not always feel this exposed.

But for now, if you are still in it, if this month is tender, then let it be tender. Let yourself be someone who is in the middle of something hard. Let the people who love you well come close.

You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book? — Psalm 56:8

Every tear counted. Every restless night recorded. Not one loss unwitnessed.

That is the kind of seen I hope you feel, by the people around you and by this space.

You are doing something hard with so much quiet grace. I see you in it.

— Held & Heard