Where She Still Lives.

Grief is interesting. When we lose someone—through death, divorce, the end of a friendship, or any profound shift that life gives us—we often know that grief is coming. We brace for it. But the truth is, we never know how or where it will find us. And it will find us.

For some, grief is quiet. It arrives in waves of tears and sadness. Honestly, I envy that version. I envy the release, the clarity, the surrender. Feeling sadness and letting the tears fall has always been hard for me. My grief tends to show up in my body instead—rashes, headaches, dizziness, panic attacks, anxiety, tightness in my chest, loss of appetite, or sometimes insatiable hunger. For a long time, I didn’t understand what was happening. I just assumed I was born broken.

It wasn’t until I lost my beloved dog, Oliver—and then, just months later, my beautiful friend Carrie—that I began to understand what grief really is, and what it can do to your body when you try to outrun it. Or, in my case, when you don’t even realize you’re running.

When Oliver died, my heart broke. I broke it on purpose—choosing to end his pain and hold him in his final moments. It was the worst day of my life. People say the bond we share with our dogs is sacred—and it’s true. I still feel the echo of that goodbye.

When Carrie died, my spirit broke. I had never lost a friend that close—someone who was truly family, chosen and cherished. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t even know how to begin grieving.

After they were gone, I looked fine. I rationalized their deaths, shed a few tears, and moved forward—just like I always had. But something inside of me changed. My nervous system began to unravel. I started having dizzy spells that would stop me in my tracks—sudden, relentless, terrifying. It went on for months until I could finally name it: grief. Not gone—just disguised.

When my mother passed, grief came again—but in a different costume. This time, it showed up as apathy. I stopped caring about the small things—bills, plants, exercise, appointments. I disconnected from the routines that once grounded me. I disassociated. Everything I was naturally good at just… fell away.

And still, I don’t cry much. I wish I did. I wish I could feel that sweet release more often—to let it all go and allow someone to hold me in the middle of it. But the tears come only when they absolutely have to—at a memorial, or in quiet, fleeting moments. Even then, they don’t stay long. It’s like a wall goes up the moment grief gets too close.

That wall… it isn’t new. It was built long ago—out of habit, conditioning, survival. It lives in my body, in my blood. Somewhere along the way, I learned that grief wasn’t safe. That feeling it fully might destroy me.

In retrospect, grief has been with me for a long time—a quiet passenger, often riding alongside depression. Some time before losing Oliver, Carrie, or even my mother, I experienced a string of losses: my sister-in-law, who I lived with; my father, with whom I had a strained relationship; then his sister; then another aunt I was very close to; and, not long before that, my grandmother. One after another. And still—I felt nothing. I tried. I forced tears. I made excuses to miss work. But mostly, I was just numb.

It wasn’t until months later that my body began to speak the language my mind couldn’t: panic attacks, sudden and terrifying. I didn’t know what they were. I truly thought I was dying. But it was grief—delayed, buried, and finally surfacing the only way it knew how.

But I’m learning. Bit by bit. With honesty, and a little more courage than before, I’m beginning to understand that grief isn’t something to escape or silence. It’s something to meet—to honor, to make space for, to understand. Even when it doesn’t look the way we expect. Even when it’s messy, inconvenient, or unfamiliar. Even when it doesn’t come in tears. Even when it takes its time.

Maybe we’re all grieving something—or someone. And maybe that’s okay. It just might be okay to fall apart a little and let grief speak. Maybe we are all safer than we think we are — because grief isn’t always here to break us. Sometimes, it’s here to open us.