Blog

“I needed time to stop. But it didn’t.”

Sometimes the hardest part of loss is not the moment it happens.
It is the moment you wake up the next morning.

“The day after loss is strange.
The world keeps moving, but your world feels quiet in a way you’ve never known before.”

— Deneen Stone

There is a strange cruelty in the day after.

The sun still rises.
Traffic still moves.
Emails still come.
The trash still needs to go out.

But your world has stopped.

You wake up and for half a second — just half — you forget.

Then you remember.

And everything inside you shifts.

People often think the hardest moment is the moment
– in the hospital room.
– when you get that phone call.
– or maybe during the last breath taken.

Those moments can change everything.

When the doctor said the words,
“He’s gone,”

I screamed,

“STOP. STOP. STOP.”

My mind was racing, and all I wanted was for everything around me to stop.

I needed the clock to freeze.
I needed the second hand to hesitate.
I needed the universe to pause and acknowledge what had just happened.

Because if time stopped, maybe this wouldn’t become permanent.

But it didn’t.

The clock kept ticking.

And then came the funeral.

After everyone slowly walked away from the gravesite, I stayed seated.

I didn’t want to leave him.

It felt like walking away meant abandoning him.
Like he would be alone.

My brothers stood beside me, gently encouraging me to stand.

But my heart resisted.

How do you walk away from the person who was your person?

Eventually, I stood.

But part of me stayed seated at that grave for a long time.

Part of me is still there.

When I walked away that day, I left a piece of myself with him.

He took the part of my heart that remains raw to this day.

And then the days began passing.

Each morning felt like I was getting further and further away from him.

Further away from the last time I heard his voice.
Further away from the last time he looked at me.
Further away from the last ordinary moment that I didn’t know would be the last.

That realization was devastating.

Grief is not just about the moment they leave.
It’s about the distance that grows afterward.

The world resumes.

You don’t.

The day after — and the days after that — are disorienting because everything looks the same.

The sky is still blue.
Cars still drive by.
People still laugh.

And inside you, everything is altered.

You move through grocery stores and paperwork and phone calls feeling like you are underwater.

Death certificates.
Closets full of clothes.
Shoes by the door.

Ordinary objects that suddenly feel sacred.

The bed feels too big.
The silence is loud.
The normalcy feels almost offensive.

It took time — more time than I wanted — to realize something I had to discover on my own.

No one could have handed it to me.

Grief doesn’t work that way.

I had to live it for myself.

I was not getting further away from him.

Time was not erasing him.

The form was changing.

I was learning how to carry him differently.

At first, I thought distance meant loss on top of loss.

But eventually I realized — I would now see him in my memories.

I would hold him in my heart.
I would share stories about him.
I would let his name stay in rooms.

And when I did that, a part of him felt present.

It was okay.

But not okay.

Both can exist at the same time.

“Grief doesn’t disappear. The form changes. And we learn to live with it.”

If you are in the day after — or even years past it — and you feel unsettled by how the clock kept ticking, hear this:

You are not weak.

You loved deeply.

Of course you wanted time to stop.

Grief does not move at the pace of the world.

It moves at the pace of love.

This tension — between time moving forward and love staying present — is something I return to often in my writing. It is one of the quiet spaces I explore more deeply in I’m With You.

Because learning to carry love and loss in the same space is not something we are taught.

It is something we live into.

If today feels like your day after,
I am here beside you.

You don’t have to keep pace with the world right now.
Just breathe in it.

However your grief shows up today, I am here beside you.
— Deneen

#HereBesideYou

Can we be honest for a minute?

Grief just sucks sometimes.

Not every grief moment is soft or meaningful. Sometimes it’s just exhausting.

Not in the poetic, “grief is love with nowhere to go” kind of way.
Not in the gentle reflection, growth, and healing kind of way.

I mean the tired-of-it, over-it, don’t-want-to-talk-about-it-anymore kind of way.

Because some days, you don’t want to explain how you feel — especially when you don’t even know how you feel.

You’re exhausted from checking in with yourself.
Exhausted from trying to find the “right words.”
Exhausted from answering, “How are you doing?” when the real answer would make people uncomfortable.

And let’s talk about that part too…

You get tired of trying to make other people comfortable with your grief.

Tired of the advice you didn’t ask for.
Tired of the comparisons.
Tired of the “at least…” statements.
Tired of the awkward silences that make you feel like you need to fix the moment.

Sometimes you’re not just sad.

Sometimes you’re irritated.
Numb.
Short-tempered.
Detached.
Over it.

And then comes the guilt — because you think grief is supposed to look tender and tearful all the time.

It’s not.

Grief has moods.
Grief has edge.
Grief has days where it throws the blanket off and says, “I don’t want to do this today.”

I know sometimes people think we should only tell the calm, tender, soft side of grief. But the reality is — it simply sucks sometimes, and it’s okay to say that. It’s okay to feel this way.

If this is you right now, the best thing you can do is be honest and ask for patience from others. Ask for the help you need. Ask for understanding. Let people know what you’re struggling with and allow them to meet you where you are.

Sometimes just acknowledging that this sucks is what helps you get to the next breath… the next moment where you can breathe.

So pause right now if you need to.

Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Listen to your breathing as it slows and steadies.

Make it over this hill. Then keep going. You’ll prepare for the next one when you get there.

That doesn’t make you cold.
That doesn’t make you unloving.
That doesn’t mean you’ve forgotten the person you lost.

It means you are human and grief is heavy to carry every single day.

This is why I tell people:

Feel what you feel. When you feel it. How you feel it.

No one else gets to define your grief timeline.
No one else gets to decide what your emotions “should” look like by now.
No one else lives in your body, your memories, your quiet moments.

Your grief is yours.

Messy.
Inconsistent.
Sometimes deep.
Sometimes dull.
Sometimes loud.
Sometimes just plain exhausting.

All of it belongs.

And on the days when grief just sucks and you’re tired of carrying it — that’s allowed too.

I’m with you on those days especially. 🤍

I am here beside you.

---

Watch for my next post on March 1st!

There’s a moment when grief shifts —
when it stops being an event
and becomes your reality.

Not the day they died.
Not the phone call.
But the quiet moment when you realize… this is permanent.

In my next post, The Moment Grief Became Real, I’ll share that moment — a story that also lives inside my upcoming book, I’m With You, releasing this July.

Because there is always a moment when grief becomes real.

I’ll meet you there.

I am here beside you.

✨ A Gentle Reminder

“Grief is the price we pay for love.”
— Queen Elizabeth II

There’s something no one really warns you about grief.

It doesn’t just make you sad.
It makes you feel like someone you don’t recognize.

You wake up in the same house.
Your phone still works.
The world keeps moving.

But inside, something fundamental has shifted — and you don’t quite know who you are anymore.

If you’ve felt this, you are not alone. And you are not losing yourself. You are grieving.

---

Grief Changes More Than Your Emotions

Most people expect tears. They expect missing someone. They expect heartbreak.

What they don’t expect is:

• Forgetting simple things
• Losing track of conversations
• Feeling disconnected from people you love
• Not recognizing your own reactions
• Feeling numb one minute and overwhelmed the next

Grief doesn’t just affect the heart.
It affects the brain. The body. The nervous system. Your sense of safety in the world.

Loss shakes the foundation that made life feel predictable. When that foundation shifts, you feel like you’ve shifted too.

---

“I Don’t Feel Like Myself”

I remember thinking that exact sentence.

The old version of me didn’t fit the life I was suddenly living.

The person I was before loss:
• didn’t carry this heaviness
• didn’t scan rooms for who was missing
• didn’t measure days by what hurt the least

Grief forces us to rebuild our sense of self in a world that no longer looks the same.

That’s not failure.
That’s adaptation.

---

Your System Is Trying to Protect You

Brain fog. Exhaustion. Emotional shutdown. Forgetfulness.

These can feel scary, but often they’re signs your system is overwhelmed and trying to slow things down, so you don’t completely overload.

Have you ever felt a weight so deep that it stopped you in your tracks?

That heaviness, as uncomfortable as it is, can be your body’s way of protecting you — guiding you to pause, to breathe, and to stay in the present moment instead of pushing yourself forward.

In those moments, nothing is required of you except to be.

Grief is not just emotional pain — it’s neurological stress.

You are not “bad at coping.”
Your body and mind are trying to survive something that feels impossible.

---

Becoming Someone New Doesn’t Mean Losing Who You Were

One of the hardest parts of grief is realizing we don’t go back to the person we were before.

But here’s the gentler truth:

You don’t lose who you were.
You carry them forward.

The love you had
The memories you hold
The strength you didn’t know you had

They all become part of the person you are now.

Grief changes you — not because you’re broken, but because love mattered.

That is a great way to honor someone.

---

If You Feel Different Right Now

If you feel distant
If you feel unlike yourself
If you wonder whether you’ll ever feel “normal” again

Take a slow breath and hear this:

Nothing is wrong with you.

You are responding to loss in a human way.
You are adjusting to a world that changed without your permission.
You are still you — just in the middle of becoming.

You are allowed to move through this slowly.
You are allowed to not recognize yourself for a while.
You are allowed to grieve in the shape your grief takes.

You are not alone here.
And you are not doing this wrong 🤍