Learning to Live With Grief | Bonus

: This is the mini solo series, The Things We Carry. Small moments and themes that keep me thinking way after the conversations on the Life Shift podcast. Hi there. This is one of those short solo episodes that I created to kind of explore the themes that really rise to the surface in the stories that my guests share. And so I like taking a little time to look at what keeps showing up. And I hope it meets you where you are today. Of course, I've been sitting with the way grief moves through a life. It is my through line. It's not something you figure out or finish, but it's really something tangled and alive. I've lived through my own layers of it, losing my mom, losing my grandmother, losing Mikey. All those losses shaped the way I understand grief long before I ever sat across from a guest with a microphone between us. So when I think about people like Nina and Jonathan and Kathleen, I'm not learning grief from them. I'm recognizing it. Their stories kind of echo the things that I've already felt, just in a different voice and a different life. My friend Nina talked about grief as something that burns everything to the ground. I know that version too. The way loss can pull apart routines and identity and the sense of who you thought you were. Losing Mikey did that in its own smaller but super profound way. It broke open spaces I did not. anticipate? Nina's story reminded me of the landscape grief creates. Changing with the seasons, sometimes stormy, sometimes calm, but always present. We learn to live there rather than move past it. Then there was Jonathan. He described grief as waves. No progression, no stage, just movement. And I know that feeling in my body. The loneliness of it. The moments where no one can follow you into a place where the grief sits. He also named the hope that comes when you reach out anyway, when you let yourself be honest and unsteady. And that part really mirrored so many moments from my own life when I finally stopped pretending that I was fine. An upcoming guest, Kathleen, said grief felt like a friend who came often, stayed too long, then slowly drifted away. I understood that totally. Grief has never been permanent for me, but it's always nearby. sometimes sharing space with joy, sometimes taking up the entire room. When my mom died, felt like a shadow that shifted constantly. Sometimes so close I could barely breathe and sometimes so distant I wondered if I really just imagined it. But it never really disappeared. And Kathleen's language helped me name something that I already knew. Grief shows up on its own timeline, messy and complicated and still very human. So all of these stories stay with me because they reflect back pieces of what I've lived through. And they remind me that I'm still navigating my own grief. Sometimes I forget it's there. And then sometimes it surprises me all over again. Of course I miss my mom. I miss my grandmother that I thought would always be that steady place. I miss Mikey and that grounding presence that he brought into my home. Grief isn't linear for me. It feels more like a dance. Sometimes forward, sometimes back, sometimes still. None of that is failure. It's just simply being alive. So I want to invite you to hold space for your own grief, whatever shape it takes. Notice if you have a line in the sand moment, that point where everything changed and life rearranged itself. It might be old. It might be recent. It might feel super sharp or maybe it's just a soft spot. Wherever it sits inside you, try meeting it without judgment. Grief is not a problem to fix. It's just part of your story. So take one gentle breath today and tell yourself that I am here, I am still here, and even when grief visits, I have the strength to feel it, to honor it, and keep moving in the only way any of us can, one small step at a time.