It shows up uninvited, eats all your emotional snacks, and refuses to tell you when it’s leaving.
Let’s be honest… Whoever coined the phrase “the stages of grief” owes all of us a refund.
Because grief doesn’t politely move from denial to acceptance like it’s checking off a grocery list. It circles back. It double parks. It shows up at 2:17 a.m. because a random song came on at 8:29pm and you finally slowed down enough for it to catch up with you. It shows up because you smelled your grandmother’s perfume in the detergent aisle. Shit. One minute you’re paying your electric bill like a responsible adult. The next minute you’re ugly crying because your daddy would have known how to fix any problem you have or validate the hell out of your emotional meltdown.
Grief has absolutely no respect for your schedule. And can we stop acting like grief is only about death?
People grieve marriages that didn’t work.Children who grew up.Parents they never really had.Careers.Health.Friendships.The version of themselves that existed before life body-slammed them.
Sometimes you’re not mourning a person. You’re mourning the future you thought was guaranteed.
So Here’s What’s Really Going On…
From a therapist’s chair, grief isn’t a disorder to cure. It’s love with nowhere to go.
Our brains are built around expectation. We create thousands of tiny maps for the people we love. We expect they’ll answer the phone. Sit in their favorite chair. Text us back. Annoy us. Celebrate birthdays. Ask us to pick up milk, their kid, dry cleaning, or their slack.
When someone, or something is suddenly gone, those maps don’t disappear overnight. Your brain keeps looking. That’s why grief feels so physical. Your chest hurts. Your stomach drops. Your concentration disappears. You forget words you’ve known your entire life.
You’re not “losing it.” Your nervous system is trying to rewrite a story it never wanted to edit. And here’s the part nobody likes: Healing doesn’t mean forgetting. It means learning to carry the weight differently.
Now Here’s the Plot Twist…
We spend a lot of energy trying to “move on.” But, maybe the goal isn’t to move on. Maybe it’s to move forward with them, with the lessons, with the love, with the scars.
The people we lose don’t stop shaping us because they stopped breathing. The dreams that ended don’t stop teaching us because they didn’t happen.
Grief isn’t evidence that you’re weak. It’s evidence that something mattered. That relationship mattered. That chapter mattered. That version of you mattered.
The pain isn’t proof that you’re broken. It’s proof that you loved deeply enough for the absence to echo.
Here’s What I Hope You Remember…
Black Does Crack 
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