The Grief Nobody Sees Is the One You Carry on the Good Days
You are allowed to be happy for someone else and heartbroken for yourself in the very same breath.
The grief nobody sees is the one you carry on the good days.
At the baby shower, you smiled all the way through. Scrolling past the announcement, you double-tapped anyway. In the exam room, when they said "unexplained," as if that one word could hold everything it just took from you.
You nodded. You said thank you. You drove home.
Two Things Can Be True
You are allowed to be happy for someone else and heartbroken for yourself in the very same breath. That does not make you bitter. It does not make you a bad friend, a bad sister, a bad daughter. It makes you human.
Grief in this community rarely looks like grief. It looks like a caption you liked. A gift you wrapped. A smile you held in place a beat too long. It looks like showing up, again, when part of you wanted to stay in the car.
For the Woman Holding It Together for Everyone but Herself
If that is you today, this is your permission slip.
You do not have to translate what you feel into something more palatable. You do not have to be further along in your healing than you are. You do not have to explain why the shower was harder than you expected, or why the word unexplained still catches in your throat weeks later.
Wherever you are today, you are not carrying it alone.
Send this to the woman who has been holding it together for everyone but herself. Sometimes the softest thing we can do for each other is say: I see it. Even on your good days, I see it.
From the publisher
You don't have to carry the cost alone.
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