“I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.” -Carl Jung

My Interpretation: Grief did not end me. It remade me. Not softer. Not harder. Truer.

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Series 4 – Post 5: The Grief Spiral

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Everyone wants a timeline.

 

They want a beginning, a middle, an end.

They want grief to follow a plot –

to build, break, resolve.

 

They want to believe that once the funeral ends,

once the sympathy texts stop,

once you post a pretty tribute…

you are okay again.

 

But I am not done.

 

I am still becoming.

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I am still carrying invisible weight

into rooms where no one asks.

 

I am still having conversations

where my voice sounds fine

but my chest feels like it is caving in.

 

I am still crying in parking lots

to songs that were never sad before.

 

Still waking up some mornings

forgetting they are gone –

then remembering all over again.

 

Not in a loud, shattered way.

Not in a dramatic sobbing-on-the-floor way.

 

But in that ghost-soft,

do-I-really-have-to-do-this-again kind of way.

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Grief does not just change your life.

It changes your DNA.

 

Thread by thread,

it rewrites you.

---

It changes your laugh.

Your reflex to “I’m fine.”

Your ability to plan too far ahead

because now you know

nothing is guaranteed.

 

It changes the way you hold others.

The way you notice the

tremble in someone else’s voice.

The way you stay after

the party to help someone clean up

because you remember what it is like

to feel invisible.

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The version of me that existed before?

She did not know how to carry this.

 

This weight.

This wisdom.

This wreckage.

 

She laughed louder.

Trusted faster.

Believed people always meant what they said.

 

I miss her sometimes.

But I do not want her back.

 

Because she did not know

what I know now:

 

That real strength

is not surviving the break-

it is learning to live beside the cracks.

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I have lost people.

I have lost parts of myself.

I have lost futures I prayed would happen.

Dreams I swore were real.

 

But I have not lost me.

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I am still becoming.

 

Even when it is slow.

Even when it is quiet.

Even when the girl in the mirror

feels unfamiliar –

she is still mine.

She is still becoming.

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If you are still grieving –

Years later.

Quietly.

Fiercely.

Privately.

 

If you are still aching for a dog, a person,

a version of life you never got to live –

 

If you are still crying in the shower

& smiling through meetings –

 

You are not broken.

You are in process.

 

You are becoming.

 

& that

is more than enough.

 

Xoxo ♡