Eighteen months after losing my daughter, the rawness has softened - but the ache still lives under everything. This isn’t about “moving on.” It’s about learning to live with the absence, and finding the courage to keep carrying her through it all.

Grief isn’t just missing someone. It’s the fear they’ll be forgotten; and the small, stubborn ways we keep them alive. I say her name so the world won’t let it go.

After Kahlia died, I didn’t want to write.

I didn’t want to do anything; everything that looked like moving forward felt wrong and I simply wanted the world to stop, to honour her absence with silence.

When someone is diagnosed with cancer, people gather.
They make lasagne, they send flowers, they rally around the family with messages and fundraisers and hope.

But when someone struggles with their mental health, it’s different.
People don’t know what to do with that kind of illness.

I never cared much for gardening.
Too messy. Too slow. Too hard.

I never had a gift, I understand there could be joy in it, but it never came to me

‘If in doubt, weed it out’ was my mantra…..

But grief does strange things to you.
Makes you crave dirt under your fingernails.
Makes you want to see something grow
when everything else has withered.

I’ve spent hours — days, weeks, months — staring at the sky, trying to find her.
Trying to feel something. Anything.
Some days, I wonder if I’ve made the whole thing up.
If grief has painted stories over reality just to keep me breathing.

Some people think that when someone dies by suicide, they leave a note. A final message. Some kind of explanation to make sense of what doesn’t make sense.

Kahlia didn’t.

Grief doesn’t show up when it’s convenient. It doesn’t pencil itself in for the weekend or wait until the work meeting is over. It crashes through like a storm, uninvited and untamed, often at the worst possible time.

There’s a strange etiquette around death and grief. A hush that falls when the topic comes up, followed by a scramble to say something comforting — or at least something that sounds like it belongs on a sympathy card.