To the one caught off guard this week,

Grief doesn’t always arrive with warning. Sometimes it ambushes you in the middle of an ordinary moment, standing at the sink, driving home, reaching for your phone.

One second, you’re coping. The next, your chest tightens and the tears are already there.

These are the moments that break you open. Not because you’re weak, but because grief doesn’t run on schedules, milestones, or logic.

December makes this worse. Everything is louder. Brighter. Faster. And grief moves in the opposite direction; inward, heavy, sudden.

If you’ve found yourself overwhelmed by a flash flood of feeling this week, please hear this:
you didn’t lose progress.
You didn’t undo your strength.
You were simply human in the presence of love and loss colliding.

One true thing:

Sudden grief isn’t a setback … it’s your nervous system responding to meaning.

Quote:
“Grief is not a disorder, a disease or a sign of weakness.
It is an emotional, physical and spiritual necessity.”
- Earl Grollman

Song:

“Liability” - Lorde
(For when the tears come fast and you need somewhere honest to put them.)

A gentle invitation:
When the wave hits, don’t rush to contain it.
If you can, pause for sixty seconds.
Place one hand on your chest, one on your stomach.

Breathe slowly … in through your nose, out through your mouth …
and let your body know it isn’t in danger, even if the feeling is big.

You’re not required to make sense of the moment.
Just to survive it.

Journal prompt:
What was happening just before the wave hit?

Not to analyse or blame, simply to notice.
What did your body need in that moment?

One thing to remember this week:
Being broken open is not the same as falling apart.

A note from me:

If I’m honest, these moments still catch me too. I can be doing something ordinary, something safe, and suddenly I’m right back in it. Heart racing. Throat tight. That familiar, unbearable ache.

For a long time, I thought those moments meant I was failing at grief. That I should be “further along” by now.
I know better now.

Those moments aren’t regressions. They’re reminders of how deeply we loved, how much mattered, and how the body remembers what the world expects us to move past.

If this week cracked something open in you, please know you’re not alone in that experience.
You’re not dramatic. You’re not unstable. You’re responding to loss in a world that doesn’t slow down for it.

You can reply to this if you need to. One sentence. One word. Or nothing at all. I’m here, and I’m listening.

With care,

Kirsten