I think we’ve gotten very uncomfortable with grief.

We rush it.

Explain it away.

Try to find the lesson in it before we’ve even allowed ourselves to feel it.

Someone tells us it gets easier with time.

Someone reminds us that everything happens for a reason.

Someone encourages us to focus on the good memories.

And while all of those things may be true, none of them change the fact that sometimes your heart simply hurts.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how many things I’ve grieved this year.

Not just people.

Not just death.

Seasons.

Versions of myself.

Relationships.

Expectations.

Dreams that changed shape.

The comfort of familiar things.

And recently, our family cat.

She had been part of our lives for nearly seventeen years.

Seventeen years.

Long enough for her presence to become part of the background of life.

The kind of presence you stop noticing because it’s always there.

Until one day it isn’t.

The strangest thing about loss is how ordinary moments become the most painful.

Walking into a room and expecting to see them.

Hearing a sound and forgetting for a second.

Waking up and realizing the world has changed, even if only in a small way.

The morning after she was gone, the house felt different.

Not dramatically different.

Just enough.

Enough to notice.

Enough to ache.

And that’s what grief has felt like lately.

An ache.

Not always loud.

Not always overwhelming.

Just present.

Like a quiet companion sitting beside me.

I’ve cried more than I care to admit.

Sometimes over the cat.

Sometimes over things that seem unrelated.

Sometimes because grief rarely stays in the lane we assign it.

It reaches backward.

It pulls on old memories.

It reminds us of other losses.

It asks us to acknowledge all the things we’ve loved.

I think that’s what surprised me most.

The realization that grief is not proof of weakness.

It’s proof of attachment.

Proof of connection.

Proof that something mattered enough to leave an imprint.

Because we don’t grieve what meant nothing to us.

We grieve what we loved.

We grieve what became part of us.

We grieve what helped shape who we are.

And maybe that’s why grief can feel so physical.

Because love is not just an emotion.

It’s an experience that settles into our bodies, our routines, our memories, and our identities.

When something we love leaves, part of us has to learn a new way of existing without it.

That takes time.

More time than we usually allow ourselves.

I’ve spent much of my life trying to be resilient.

Trying to bounce back.

Trying to move forward quickly.

Trying to convince myself that strength looks like carrying on.

But lately, I’m learning that strength sometimes looks like sitting with the ache.

Letting the tears come.

Speaking the name.

Remembering the season.

Acknowledging the loss.

Not because I’m stuck there.

But because it mattered.

Some things deserve to be grieved.

Not rushed.

Not minimized.

Not explained away.

Just grieved.

And maybe that’s the most loving thing we can do.

To honor what was.

To thank it for what it gave us.

To miss it honestly.

And then, when we’re ready, to carry its memory forward with us.

Not as a wound.

But as evidence that we loved deeply enough to feel its absence.