There’s a phrase people use when they don’t know what else to say:
“You’ll move on.”
It’s usually offered gently. Sometimes hopefully. Often awkwardly.
And almost always wrong.
Because grief doesn’t ask to be overcome.
It asks to be carried.
I’ve learned this not from books or theories, but from watching life unfold in ways you can’t unsee. From loving people through illness. From standing at bedsides. From continuing to wake up after losses that permanently rearranged the architecture of my life.
You don’t move on from that.
You move with it.
Grief Isn’t a Chapter — It’s a Thread
We like tidy narratives. Beginning, middle, end.
Grief refuses that structure.
It doesn’t arrive, do its work, and politely exit. It weaves itself into your days — into how you notice light, how you speak softly without realizing it, how you measure time differently now.
Grief becomes a thread in the fabric of who you are.
Not heavier every day.
Not lighter either.
Just… present.
And that presence doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means you remember.
“Strong” Is an Inaccurate Word
People call grief survivors strong because they don’t know what else to call someone who keeps going while carrying something invisible and heavy.
But strength isn’t what’s happening.
What’s happening is adaptation.
You learn how to live while holding loss the way you learn to walk with an old injury — carefully at first, then instinctively. You stop explaining it. You stop justifying it. You stop trying to heal it away.
You make room.
The Quiet Truth No One Says Out Loud
Here’s the part that rarely gets spoken:
Some losses change you in ways that never reverse.
And that isn’t failure.
It’s not “being stuck.”
It’s not refusing to heal.
It’s not weakness.
It’s evidence of love.
If someone mattered enough to alter you permanently, that’s not something to erase. That’s something to honor.
Moving With, Not Away
Moving with grief means:
- letting joy coexist with sadness without guilt
- allowing memory to stay alive instead of packing it away
- recognizing that healing doesn’t mean forgetting
- understanding that peace doesn’t require closure
It means your life grows around what you lost, not in spite of it.
Like a tree growing around a stone — shaped by it, not destroyed by it.
Where I’ve Landed (For Now)
I don’t believe in “getting over” the people, seasons, or versions of life that mattered.
I believe in learning how to carry them with tenderness instead of resistance.
I believe grief doesn’t shrink — we expand.
And maybe that’s the most honest kind of healing there is.
Reflection Question:
What is something you’ve been told to “move on” from that you’re still carrying — and what would it feel like to let it stay without judgment?
