I Have to Have a Place to Put My Grief

I have to have a place to put my grief.

Because grief doesn’t disappear just because the funeral is over. It doesn’t vanish because enough months have passed. It doesn’t politely pack itself into a box so you can get back to work, raise your kids, pay the bills, answer the texts, show up to the games, smile for the pictures, and keep moving.

It has to go somewhere.

So I’ve chosen places to put mine.

I started a business.

I started writing.

I started a podcast.

I started this blog.

And maybe from the outside, that looks like ambition. Reinvention. Staying busy. Moving forward.

Some days, it is.

But some days, it’s simply survival.

It’s taking all of the thoughts that have nowhere else to go and giving them somewhere to land.

Because there are things I think about at 2:00 in the afternoon that I can’t explain in a casual conversation. There are things I remember while driving that knock the wind out of me. There are realizations that come months after something happened. There are moments when I suddenly understand something about the life I had, the life I lost, or the life I’m building now.

And I need somewhere to put those things.

So I write them down.

For anyone who has ever wondered what the day-to-day of grief actually looks like—the struggles, the strange thoughts, the anger, the laughter, the rebuilding, the guilt, the relief, the loneliness, the unexpected happiness, the parenting, the friendships, the relationships, the things people say, and the things nobody says—I’ve started putting it here.

Not because I expect everyone to understand it.

But because I need a place for it to exist outside of me.

And no, none of it will be in chronological order.

Because grief isn’t chronological.

You can be grieving something from fifteen months ago on Monday, something from fifteen years ago on Tuesday, and something that hasn’t even happened yet by Wednesday.

You can write about the worst day of your life and then write about falling in love again.

You can miss the person who died while simultaneously loving the life you’re rebuilding.

You can laugh until your stomach hurts and cry in the car twenty minutes later.

None of those things cancel each other out.

That’s grief.

There isn’t a straight line from devastated to healed.

There isn’t a neat sequence of chapters.

And apparently, there isn’t going to be one here either.

I have pages and pages already written. Thoughts tucked into my phone. Half-finished drafts. Voice notes. Sentences that came to me in the middle of the night. There are several pieces from almost every month of this first year that I haven’t shared yet.

Slowly but surely, I’ll put them here.

Some were written in moments when I could barely see beyond the pain.

Some were written when I was angry.

Some when I was hopeful.

Some when I started recognizing myself again.

And some were written when I realized the woman rebuilding this life isn’t going to be the same woman who lived the one before it.

Maybe someday I’ll organize all of it.

But right now, I don’t need my grief to be organized.

I just need it to have somewhere to go.

So this is one of those places.

The business gives my hands somewhere to put it.

The podcast gives my voice somewhere to put it.

And this blog gives my words somewhere to put it.

Because carrying grief doesn’t mean I have to carry every piece of it inside me.

Sometimes I can set a little of it down.

And then keep going.