The Unspoken Reality of Grief

Summertime always invites a natural period of reflection for me, but this July, the reflection carries a much heavier weight. My family is approaching the first anniversary of my father’s passing. It was this exact time last year that I visited him for the very last time before seeing him again while he was actively dying. I don’t use AI to write my blogs; I write straight from my heart because that is what moves me, and I learned long ago that writing is a powerful form of processing. Over this past year, a few hard truths about grieving have struck me deeply.

As a culture, we simply don’t handle grief well. We don’t know how to support someone through their loss over a sustained period of time. People stop checking in, operating under the false assumption that time heals the hole, but it doesn’t. For those of us in the thick of it, we feel joy one minute and the depths of hell the next. Absolutely anything can trigger a memory, often arriving in surprising ways that might not make a bit of sense to anyone else. We, the grievers, simply do not have the same capacity for output or input as we once did. This capacity may eventually return to our old baseline, or it may be permanently shifted.

All in all, it is a deeply personal experience that can feel incredibly isolating because people often avoid bringing up the loss, which can feel like evasion. Because of that silence, it becomes difficult to be vulnerable and talk about it. Personally, I have recently started intentionally bringing my father into conversations, sharing things he used to say or do. I take walks and talk to him. I’ve saved a few phone messages he left after that last visit, listening to them and sharing them with a couple of close people. Those voice messages bring me the most comfort. In one in particular, he thanked me for helping him with a few tasks while I was there. It’s what he said, but beneath the words, I feel he was saying goodbye while he still could.

I am blessed to know that I need to fully feel these feelings, yet I self-manage them so I don’t remain stuck in suffering for long periods. Family and friends are wholeheartedly your best allies through this careening experience. If you don’t have that immediate circle, seek out someone who has truly walked through loss, not just someone who has read about it in a textbook or a bestseller. Live connection is crucial for our existence to see us through this time.

I see you, I hear you, and I genuinely care if you are experiencing a loss that has you feeling stuck. Please reach out to me, kendra@kendragoheen.com 

With love,

Kendra