Some kinds of grief don’t come with rituals.
Just silence…
and the feeling that your pain is too messy, too inconvenient, or too invisible for the world to hold.
This piece is for those moments… the ones we don’t talk about.
When love is lost, but you’re expected to keep moving.
When you’re not over it and maybe never will be…
There’s this strange dance we do around grief – that moment when people start tiptoeing away from pain they can’t fix. If you’ve ever felt yourself becoming invisible in your darkest moments, or watched connections fade just when you needed them most… this is about that space between what hurts and what heals…
I understand, maybe more deeply than I ever wanted to, all the different forms grief can take; and when I say grief, I don’t just mean mourning someone who’s no longer here. I’m talking about that tangle of emotions that hits from every direction without warning.
Sometimes it’s a relationship that went south or love that slipped through your fingers. Sometimes it’s dreams that went up in smoke, or the death of a beloved pet who was more family than animal… Each type of loss leaves its own hollow inside you.
Over time, I’ve heard well-meaning people say things like ‘move on,’ ‘let it go’ or ‘you’ve got to get over it’… and I know (I hope) this advice usually comes from a place of care. But let’s be honest – it often lands like a slap. Like you’re being erased, mid-sentence. It’s as if they’re denying the reality of pain that’s become part of your daily existence.
And I’ve noticed this strange thing – when you’re deep in grief, it’s like you become invisible to people who haven’t felt that kind of loss. They don’t quite see the depth of what you’re going through. But this invisibility… it doesn’t just isolate you – it shows you how quickly people back away from what they can’t fix… because they can’t…
they can’t fix it…
And in a strange way, that reveals something universal – this quiet, awful truth we all carry: we’re all vulnerable.
This capacity to be unraveled by love, by loss, by things we never saw coming is in all of us. In a strange way, grief connects us, even if it’s misunderstood. Because it’s a fundamental part of being human, this capacity for deep feeling and the struggle to remain standing when life pulls the ground from beneath our feet.
Silence has teeth. It bites through every distraction, every carefully constructed barrier, until we’re left facing what we’ve spent so long trying not to feel. In that space between running and surrender, something shifts…
Not because we’re ready.
But because we’re tired of pretending…
You know what I’ve realized?
Healing doesn’t show up when you’re busy trying to outrun your own feelings. It doesn’t show up when you bury yourself in work, zone out in front of a screen, or reach for something to take the edge off.
It shows up when you stop running. When you stop trying to fix it, or shrink it down,
or hide it behind a smile…
Just feel it.
Really feel it.
Even when it knocks the wind out of you. Even when it makes you want to crawl out of your own skin.
And no, I’m not talking about wallowing or drowning in it like in quicksand. I’m talking about letting it be real for a minute. Letting it be what it is – awful, sharp, heavy; without trying to shrink it down, or dress it up, or explain it away.
There’s something oddly freeing in that.
Not easy. Not pretty. But honest.
And maybe that’s the point – not to “get over it,” or power through, but to get real with yourself.
To tell the truth about how much it hurts.
To acknowledge the impact of your loss.
And that alone… that changes something.
We all have that difficult friend. The one who exhausts us. The one we dread seeing pop up on our phone. The one who fills the room with uncomfortable silence, with messy emotions on the table and stays way too long.
Grief… Grief is that difficult friend; and I’ve found only one thing worse than sitting with it – running from it.
So, we approached our grief like that difficult friend – not trying to fix it, not rushing it out the door, but simply being there, letting it breathe next to us… Maybe the healing we’re looking for doesn’t happen by pushing away, but by sitting quietly beside the thing we wish wasn’t ours. Because sometimes, being real with grief means treating it like the hardest friend you’ll ever love.
I’ve learned that trying to sidestep grief just gives it more room to grow in the shadows. Because when we push it away or pretend it’s not there, it shows up later – unexpected, uninvited, in your body, in your dreams, in those sudden tears over something that seems unrelated.
But when you face it, when you sit down with it like you would with a difficult friend, you begin to understand it. Not control it, not solve it, just… know it.
And in that knowing, you start to move through it.
Not past it, not beyond it, but through it.
You know, there’s this whole universe of difference between the grief you read about in self-help books and the grief that lives in your body – that primal, aching need to tear your way out of YourSelf just to get some relief from the weight of it, when the pain becomes too much to bear.
In 2022, I wrote these, I wrote these during a time when I was tired…
tired of being told how to feel, how to heal, how to make my pain more convenient for other people.
No Apologies
I’ve been told to toughen up, to get a grip,
to smile pretty and let it all slip.
It’s not good, they say, to live with such pain,
as if my feelings should go down the drain.
But this ache, it’s not a mask I can wear,
it’s a tempest inside, beyond compare.
They want me serene, a calm, gentle breeze,
when I’m a hurricane brought to my knees.
This hurt, it’s not dainty, not soft or demure,
it’s raw and it’s ragged, it’s anything but pure.
I won’t package it neat or tie it with lace,
this pain demands space, it needs to take place.
So don’t tell me to hush, to keep it inside,
I’ve spent years unlearning how to hide.
This pain?
It’s real.
It’s valid.
It’s mine.
And I’ll feel it fully, no apologies this time.
(2022, © Julia Delaney)
So… if you’re sitting there right now, feeling like the world has gone quiet around your pain, like no one sees you – I do.
I see you.
And more than that – you’re not broken.
You’re not doing it wrong – you’re human.
Grief isn’t proof of weakness – it’s proof that you loved, that you cared, that something mattered.
There’s no map for this, no timeline, no finish line,
but there is something steady in the middle of it all – your presence,
your willingness to feel, even when it hurts,
your truth, spoken softly, shouted or written down in the dark…
That’s your strength.
That’s your aliveness.
And that matters more than being okay.
So if you’re not okay today, that’s okay,
but don’t let anyone make you feel invisible for feeling;
because, you’re still here,
still breathing,
still holding space for what’s real…
and sometimes, hat’s the bravest thing of all.
Be Alive 🌱
Love ❤️, Julia
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