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What Grief Gave Me: Healing After Grief Through Small Moments

A bee on a purple flower against a blurred green background. The bee's fuzzy body and wings are detailed, creating a serene mood.
"The entire winged world was conspiring to bring me back to life, one soft landing at a time."

After Derek died, I forgot how to drive.

Not in the dramatic, Hollywood-style "can’t start the car" sense but in the "merge onto the freeway and forget what a blinker is" sense.

One afternoon, I sat at a green light with my hands gripping the wheel, completely blank.

Was the gas on the right or the left?

Where was I going?

Was I even wearing shoes?

A car behind me honked, long and angry.

I waved apologetically, tears welling up behind my sunglasses.

I wasn’t sure if I was crying because I was scared or because I realized I hadn’t felt anything in days. Maybe both.

That was the kind of grief I had: foggy, glitchy, oddly comedic.

I couldn’t tell if I was living in a sad indie film or an absurd sitcom, but either way, the plot was confusing, and the main character had lost the script.

What I didn’t realize yet was that healing after grief often comes through small moments — moments too quiet to notice until they break you open

.Post-it notes became my coping strategy.

They were everywhere on the fridge ("Eat food"), the bathroom mirror ("Shower"), the front door ("Phone? Keys? Pants?").

My phone was filled with alarms.

Wake up.

Drink water.

Check in with feelings.

Call Joy and Rachael back.

My best friends formed a text chain and rotated daily check-ins like I was an emotional Tamagotchi that needed regular feeding.

One morning, I sat in bed staring at a mug of coffee, trying to remember if I liked it with sugar.

I used to love coffee.

I used to love a lot of things.

But in the early waves of grief, it was like someone had taken my preferences, personality, and sense of time and tossed them in a blender.

And yet, somehow, the world kept spinning.

People went to work.

Neighbors mowed lawns.

Babies cried in the grocery store and the barista still asked if I wanted room for milk.

I didn’t.

But I said yes anyway.

In public, I passed for functional.

I smiled when I remembered.

I said "I’m fine" even when I wasn’t.

I answered emails and attended birthday parties.

I was efficient.

On time.

I made to-do lists and checked every box.

But inside, I was a ghost shut down, shut off.

I told myself it was resilience.

I didn’t realize it was armor.

Until one day in the park.

I wasn’t doing anything noble, just sitting with a book I had no intention of reading.

I remember the light: early afternoon, soft, filtered through high branches.

The pages in my lap fluttered in the breeze.

And then it came a small bee.

It landed right in the center of my open book.

Naturally, I freaked out.

I flinched and made that awkward “please don’t sting me” dance that only seems to attract more attention.

But the bee didn’t leave.

It hovered, circled, buzzed lazily like it was amused by me.

I moved benches.

It followed.

I moved again.

Still, it lingered.

Finally, I sat still. And the bee landed gently on my hand.

I stared at it.

It stared back (probably).

It didn’t sting.

It didn’t fly away.

It just rested there, like it had something to say.

I began to read my book, and it stayed there for the next 20 minutes, reading along with me.

That was the moment.

The one that broke my heart open.

A tiny creature, drawn to stillness.

Me, suddenly aware of my body again, my breath, my skin, the sun on my shoulders.

It was the first time in months I’d felt anything with clarity.

It wasn’t a lightning bolt.

Just a crack of light.

But it was enough.

After that day, I started noticing things again.

The smell of cut grass.

The way my neighbor’s dog barked, then sighed dramatically like an exhausted opera singer.

I took photos of the sky.

I watched squirrels like they were cinema.

And the bee was only the beginning.

In the weeks that followed, I had more of these quiet encounters with dragonflies that followed me to work and hovered near my car like tiny bodyguards.

One even flew up to the 29th floor of my office building and stayed there all day, perched like it had business of its own.

Bluejays started perching at my bedroom window.

Hawks appeared out of nowhere during walks.

It was like the entire winged world was conspiring to bring me back to life, one soft landing at a time.

It was proof that healing after grief comes through small moments — tiny signs reminding me that life was still reaching for me.

During that first year after Derek passed, everything was a fog.

I had to relearn how to do simple things.

And it wasn’t my first encounter with death.

My mom died when I was nine or ten.

After that, and with other losses, I forgot many of the memories and details.

My mind protected me by erasing them.

But with Derek, I didn’t want to forget.

I wanted to remember everything: his smell, his voice, the way he looked when he was deep in thought.

I held so tightly to those memories that I think I let go of the everyday ones.

It was like all my brainpower went into preserving him.

So, to have that moment with the bee and then with the dragonflies, the bluejays, the hawks, it reminded me that life was still expansive. That something was still reaching for me.

Maybe I didn’t need to understand it all.

I just needed to stay open.

I was hurting.

But I was also breaking open.

I was allowing myself to grieve, and in that grieving, I was becoming someone new.

Someone who could let light in again.

Someone who could be curious, even amid pain.

Grief didn’t make me stronger.

It didn’t turn me into a warrior or a guru or someone who writes long, inspirational threads on social media.

What it did was soften me.

It made me gentle with strangers.

Patient with slow cashiers.

It made me less afraid to cry in public, and more likely to hug someone longer than polite society allows.

It made me weirdly okay with silence.

And humor, dark, necessary humor, became a lifeline.

Like when I accidentally wore two different shoes to work.

Or when I introduced myself as “a black widow” in a class.

Or the time I bought five cartons of oat milk because I forgot I already had oat milk in the house. Twice.

If this is the "after" the strange, sacred life that follows loss, then it’s nothing like I imagined.

It’s messy and tender and full of quiet miracles.

It’s not clean or easy, but it’s real.

And real is enough for me now.

I’m learning to live here not as someone untouched by pain, but as someone remade by it.

A little more forgetful, sure.

A little more caffeinated, probably.

But softer.

Braver.

Buzzed by bees and broken wide open.


🌿 Gentle Invitation

“If grief has softened you, too, and you’re craving a space to breathe, write, and rise in your own rhythm — Crescendo was created for you. A six-week gathering of journaling, meditation, and reflection begins October 6.


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