The World Is Busy. I’m Still Talking With Her.

The world is busy right now.

My world is busy too, in good ways.
Books moving outward.
Podcasts lining up.
Interviews booked.
Conversations opening.
Advocacy growing legs and walking further than I ever expected.

I am grateful for it. Truly.

This work matters. Saying her name matters. Changing the conversation around suicide and grief matters.

But underneath all the motion, there is something else still happening, every day.

I am still in quiet conversation with Kahlia.

Not metaphorically. Not poetically. Practically.

I talk to her when I make coffee.
When I sit down to write.
When something good happens and my body turns, automatically, to tell her.
When something hard happens and my chest says, I want my girl.

It is not dramatic. It is not performative.
It is constant.

And sometimes I feel split between two worlds.

One where I am speaking publicly, advocating, recording, explaining, teaching, saying the hard things out loud so other people don’t feel alone.

And saying her name into microphones.

And another where I am simply her mother, still mid-sentence with her, still including her in decisions, still looping her into ordinary moments.

The outside world sees movement.
The inside world feels like presence.

People sometimes assume that when you are busy in grief work, you are “moving forward” from the person.

But for me, the opposite is true.

The more I speak, the more she is here.
The more I write, the more I feel her beside me.
The more conversations I have about her life, the more alive she feels in the room.

Busy does not mean distant.

Busy does not mean resolved.

Busy does not mean healed.

It means love has found a voice instead of only a sob.

There are moments, in between the calls and the writing and the logistics, where everything goes quiet again.

And there she is.

Not as memory only.
As relationship.

I tell her what is happening.
I ask what she thinks.
I imagine her rolling her eyes at the parts she’d find ridiculous and lighting up at the parts she’d love.

This is not denial.
It is continuing bonds.
It is how attachment survives physical absence.

The world is loud about progress.
Grief is quiet about connection.

Both are happening at the same time.

If you are grieving and functioning and even succeeding on the outside, while still talking to your person on the inside, you are not stuck.

You are bonded.

There is no rule that says advocacy cancels ache.
Or that purpose replaces presence.
Or that meaning erases missing.

I can be deeply grateful for this platform and still whisper to my daughter while I use it.

I can be publicly strong and privately mid-conversation.

I can be moving and still.

Both are true.

Both are love.