Grief Doesn’t Care About the Calendar

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.

When Kahlia died, people said things like, "The first year is the hardest." As if grief cares about your neatly stacked months or the tidy timelines that make everyone else feel more comfortable. I also don’t understand why this is advice! it made me feel worse, I didn’t care about time, it was day by day. Every day forward felt like a betrayal, I only wanted to somehow get the days to work in reverse, back where she was still here and everything felt ‘normal’..

People warn you about holidays, and ‘big’ days without them. But here’s the truth: it’s not just the big days that break you.

Yes, birthdays are brutal. Anniversaries slice you open. Christmas feels like a crime scene. But sometimes, it’s the ordinary Tuesdays that hurt the most. The empty chair at dinner. The smell of her shampoo on a hoodie you forgot you hadn’t washed. The song in a shop that takes you back without warning.

The calendar doesn’t catch those moments. But your heart does.

People think there’s a pattern to this. That you hit Month 3 and start coping. That by Month 6, you’re smiling more. That by Month 12, you’re “doing better.”
But grief doesn’t read spreadsheets. It doesn’t follow trends.
It lingers. It ambushes. It softens and sharpens without notice.

Some months I can breathe. Others, I can barely get through a day.
There are no milestones here, only landmines.

I’m learning not to judge myself for this. Not to hold myself to the world’s expectations of what mourning should look like. Some days I function. Some days I fold. Some days I find a moment of peace and think, maybe I’m healing and then the next day, I’m screaming in the car again.

Grief is not linear. It’s not polite. And it sure as hell doesn’t care that it’s been “a year.”

So if you’re here, trying to survive your own unspeakable loss, please, throw out the calendar.
Mark your healing by moments of breath, not months on a timeline.
And know this: just because time is moving forward doesn’t mean you have to race it.

You're allowed to grieve in spirals.
You're allowed to not be okay on a random Thursday.
You're allowed to begin again, as many times as it takes.