Seven Things Getting Me Through This Week

I’m not trying to make this week beautiful.
I’m trying to make it bearable.

These two weeks of December and January have always been loud, but now it roars.
Christmas. Kahlia’s birthday. Mine. Zac’s.
Every celebration carries the outline of a missing shape.

People expect something to shift with time; that grief becomes softer, manageable, domesticated.
But the truth is simpler and harder:
the love doesn’t shrink, so neither does the ache.

So here are the seven things getting me through this week; not because they’re impressive, but because they’re real.

1. Avoiding the shops

Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is not go where it hurts.
The world says joy is mandatory in December, that lights and tinsel are harmless.
But grief rewires the senses:
noise feels violent, crowds feel suffocating, glitter feels cruel.
Avoidance isn’t denial.
It’s intelligence.
It’s listening to the body instead of the calendar.

2. Writing (because it’s how I stay alive here)

I write to her.
I write with her.
I write to remember, and to forget, and to feel, and to not feel.
People talk about “processing” like it’s linear: step-by-step, cause-and-effect.
It isn’t.
Writing is how I let my grief move instead of calcify.
It doesn’t fix me; it holds me.

3. Comfort TV

I don’t need inspiration right now.
I need something familiar, predictable, safe - a world where the ending won’t break me open.
There’s a strange shame around comfort, as if surviving with gentleness is cheating.
But comfort is not avoidance.
Comfort is medicine.

4. Letting myself feel numb

People assume numbness is a problem.
It isn’t.
Numbness is grief’s shock absorber; a mercy the nervous system grants when pain exceeds capacity.
Feeling nothing doesn’t mean you don’t care.
It means you care too much to let the full force in all at once.

5. Doing nothing (deliberately)

Stillness isn’t stagnation.
Stillness is the body saying:
“I’ve carried enough for today.”
Doing nothing allows the space grief needs to unfold.
Rest isn’t the absence of progress, it’s the foundation of it.

6. Taking care of Buster

Buster has cancer.
And it feels unbearably unfair to add loss to loss; another grief waiting in the wings.
Feeding him, comforting him, watching him - it reminds me that love doesn’t end with death.
It reshapes itself.
It shows up in new forms.
Love isn’t fragile.
We are.

7. Saying no

No to events.
No to pressure.
No to pretending.
Mark is celebrating Christmas with friends, and I’m completely at peace not going.
Saying no isn’t isolation.
It’s self-trust.
It means I’m learning to belong to myself first - even when the world is dressed for celebration and I am dressed in loss.

That’s all I have to offer this week.
Not hope in capital letters.
Not certainty.
Not inspiration.
Just truth:

Sometimes the kindest thing you can do for yourself is refuse to perform being okay.

If you’re spending this week avoiding the world, protecting your heart, choosing stillness, guarding your energy, or simply breathing; you’re not doing it wrong.

You’re doing it human.

And for those of us grieving, that’s more than enough.