Grief doesn't only show up after a death. It shows up when you stop expecting a parent to love you the way you needed, when a friendship quietly ends, when your body or your health changes and doesn't change back, when you outgrow a version of your life you used to want. That kind of loss is real, even when no one sends flowers for it.

I sit with grief in all its forms — the ones with a funeral and the ones without. We won't rush it, and we won't tidy it up into five stages you're supposed to move through in order. Grief is not a problem to solve; it's something to be accompanied through, at whatever pace and in whatever shape it actually takes for you — including the days it looks like nothing, and the days it looks like everything. My own life has put me in close contact with loss, so I don't need you to convince me it's serious or perform being okay in between sessions.

What I can offer is this: you can hold grief and still build a life you want. Hope doesn't erase what you've lost — it learns to live alongside it.