SURVIVING LOSS

What Nobody Tells You About Grief

From someone who’s learned to live with it.

Photo by Josh Hild

I haven’t published anything in a while. In part, that’s because I’ve started a new job and have had a lot of complicated things going on in my life, as any thirty-something does. But also, the grieving process, like anything else, waxes and wanes.

While in 2019 I had a lot to write about, in recent years, I’ve been mostly content to stay quiet.

I do, however, have a lot of drafts – fragments of ideas I need to catalogue somewhere, thoughts I don’t want to forget. One of these drafts has become the article you’re about to read.

I hope it resonates.

I lost my father in 2018, my family dog in 2019, my grandfather in 2020, and my pregnancy in 2022. Plus, like most of us, I lost my sense of safety during the pandemic.

There are a lot of things nobody tells you about loss and how to survive it.

While I’m certainly not an expert, I learned how to live with it, so I thought I’d share some things I’ve picked up along the way.

First, I need to put this out there: losing a loved one is as bad as you think it is — in fact, it’s even worse…