Grief Wears Many Faces

✨ “Grief isn’t only sadness. Sometimes it carries small flashes of joy, too — both are part of the walk.”

Grief is one of the most universal human experiences, yet it never arrives the same way twice.

Who we lose, where we are in our own lives, and even the shape of the love we shared all change how grief takes root in us.

For me, this truth has unfolded again and again.

When I lost my mom as a child, grief came with a strange kind of knowing.

At church one day, an old man approached me and quietly told me my mother was going to pass away, and I needed to take care of my grandmother.

Moments later, he was gone, vanished, as though he had never been there.

I knew she had died before my family did.

And then I went silent.

For an entire year, I didn’t speak.

When I finally found my voice again, I wasn’t the same girl.

I had been sassy, loud, even defiant at times, but after that silence, I had softened.

I became more compassionate, more tender.

That grief changed who I was at my core.

When my dad was murdered, the grief was heavier, edged with regret.

Even though I had mended my relationship with him as much as I could, I still felt the ache of what hadn’t been said.

That regret sank me into depression for about six months.

But slowly, out of heartbreak, a breakthrough came.

That grief reshaped me differently; it pressed me down, but it also gave me a deeper strength when I rose.

When my grandparents passed, the grief was softer, but not small.

They had raised me from childhood, so losing them was losing my caretakers and also the role of caregiver I had carried for so long.

It left me searching for who I was without them to tend to.

Their loss came with deep sadness, but also immense gratitude and reverence.

It wasn’t shocking; they lived into their late 80s and 90s, but it was a profound honoring of their stories and the lineage they handed me.

When I lost my husband, Derek, grief was a tidal wave.

It wasn’t only about death, but about the loss of shared rhythms: coffee cups left untouched, the silence on the other side of the bed, the plans that would never be.

And unlike with my parents or grandparents, where my memory blurred, with Derek, I needed to remember everything.

My mind worked so hard to hold onto him that I forgot how to do basic things, how to drive, how to use a fork, how to put on clothes.

It was as though my brain made space for every detail of him by letting go of daily life.

That immense grief lasted nearly a decade.

I had to work fiercely to find my way back to myself, piece by piece, to get to where I am now.

Each of these losses was different.

Each reshaped me differently.

And through them I’ve learned this: just as my grief has never looked the same twice, other people’s grief doesn’t look like mine either.

How We Can Hold Space for Others

• Listen without rushing to respond. Let them speak their loved one’s name or tell the same story as many times as they need.

• Resist the urge to fix. Grief is not a problem to solve, but a landscape to walk through together.

• Match their pace, not yours. Some need to linger, others move quickly. Let them set the rhythm.

• Acknowledge, don’t minimize. Words like “I see how hard this is for you” hold far more weight than “at least they lived a long life.”

• Offer presence, not platitudes. A meal dropped off, a hand held, quiet company — these matter more than perfect words.

• Honor the uniqueness. Their relationship was singular. Their grief will be too.
  

Grief wears many faces. The only constant is love, the love that remains, even when the person is gone.

What I’ve learned is that grief doesn’t end; it changes shape.

Sometimes it’s sharp, sometimes it’s quiet, sometimes it surprises you years later in the middle of an ordinary day.

But it is also proof: proof that we loved, proof that we were changed by someone’s presence, proof that their life mattered.

When we hold space for others in grief, we’re really holding space for love in all its forms, messy, painful, tender, enduring.

And maybe that’s the point: not to erase grief, not to rush it away, but to recognize it as love with nowhere to go, except into memory, into compassion, into the way we show up for one another.

So if you are grieving, or walking beside someone who is, know this: there is no wrong way to carry it.

There is only your way.

And in that way, there is always room for gentleness.