To the one living more than one reality at once,

Grief doesn’t divide your life neatly into before and after.
It splits it another way.

Inside and outside.
Visible and invisible.

There is the life people can see.
You answer messages. Show up. Pay bills. Speak in full sentences.
From the outside, you look like someone continuing.

And then there is the life no one sees.
The conversations that can’t happen anymore.
The reflex to reach for someone who isn’t here.
The ache that runs quietly under ordinary moments.

Both lives are happening at the same time.
That’s not failure.
That’s grief.

You can be functional and devastated.
Capable and changed.
Present and carrying an absence that never clocks out.

This is not “before and after.”
Because the before still lives in you.
And the after is not clean.

It’s layered.

You are living with memory, love, loss, and continuation; simultaneously.

And there is another split no one talks about enough:

What is visible,
and what is invisible.

The world sees what you manage.
Only you feel what it costs.

The effort.
The restraint.
The private negotiations just to get through a day that looks ordinary from the outside.

If you recognise yourself here, if you’ve ever thought, no one knows how hard this actually is - you are right.

They probably don’t.
And that does not make your grief less real.
It makes it more bravely carried.

One true thing:
Functioning is not the same as healed. Visible strength can sit beside invisible pain.

Quote:
“Grief is the most honest autobiography we will ever write.”
- Glennon Doyle

Song:
“Runaway” - AURORA

A small ritual, if it feels right:
Once this week, let your inside and outside self meet.
Put a hand on your chest and say, quietly:
Both of you are real. Both of you belong.
No choosing. No correcting.

Journal prompt (if it feels okay):

What does the world see, and what is true underneath?

One thing to remember this week:
You are not inconsistent. You are layered.

A note from me:
For a long time after Kahlia died, I felt like I was living two lives at once; the one people could see, and the one I was actually surviving. I could speak, work, organise, write - and still feel like the ground had disappeared underneath me.

That split is real. It’s not weakness. It’s adaptation to unbearable change.

It’s also one of the reasons I wrote The Year After Kahlia. Not to explain grief from the outside, but to give language to the inside life of it. The part most people carry quietly and think they’re alone in.

If this letter feels like something someone else needs, you’re welcome to share it. Quiet recognition is how we find each other. As always feel free to reach out, I love to hear from you.

With you,
Kirsten