And grief doesn't have shortcuts. There is no easy fix for grief. Just that way where your heart breaks into a thousand pieces and then with time, patience, tears, care and support, you put them back together. In another shape, never the same, never perfect.

Grief is a healing in progress. A mourning for what you lost. For past memories, for what once was your joy, your sense of being, your identity, your life. 

Grief hurts.

But there is no healing without grieving. Because you heal learning how to let go. How to shed old identities, old ways of being, thinking, feeling. 

Healing means grieving the loss of your fantasies. Your projections. Your dreams about a future that will never be possible.

Grief humbles us. It strips away the illusions of control. It brings us to our knees, not to punish us, but to invite us into the rawness of what it means to be alive.

I’ve sat in that space myself, more than once. In the quiet after endings I didn’t choose. In the stillness of nights where the ache in my chest felt louder than any thought in my mind. I’ve grieved not only people, but versions of myself I had to leave behind to grow.

There is no healing without grief because healing asks for truth.

And the truth is, we can’t become who we are meant to be without mourning who we used to be.

The girl I was in my twenties… the woman who thought love meant sacrifice… the mother who was trying so hard to be perfect… the partner who tolerated too much in the name of connection…

I’ve grieved them all.

And I’ve learned that grief doesn’t mean weakness.

It means you dared to love.

It means you allowed yourself to hope.

It means you were brave enough to care deeply, about a person, a dream, a version of life that once felt safe or beautiful.

Grief is love with nowhere to go.

It teaches you how to hold yourself when no one else can.

It clears out space for the truth to settle.

And eventually, it makes room for new life to root itself in the soil of what you’ve lost.

So if you are grieving, something big or something quiet, please don’t rush it.

Let yourself fall apart if you need to.

Let yourself be tender. Let yourself be wrecked. Let yourself be slow.

You are not failing. You are transforming.

You are remembering how to love without abandoning yourself.

You are learning to rebuild, not from desperation, but from wholeness.

Grief doesn’t end. It integrates. It softens. It becomes a sacred scar that tells the story of who you had to become… when life called you deeper into your truth.

With care, 🤍

Aniela

photo: Pinterest