Grief is something we think we understand—until it happens to us. I’ve lost grandparents, an aunt I was very close to, friends, and people I’ve loved. While those losses hurt, I was able to focus on their full lives—the memories, the years they lived, the stories they left behind. But losing my child? That was a different kind of grief altogether. It wasn’t just the loss of the person I loved—it was the loss of his future, our future with him, and everything he was supposed to become.
Grief after losing a child is isolating in ways no one can prepare you for. Suddenly, you’re faced with reminders of everything they will never get to do and be. You aren’t ready to see their classmates graduating college, starting their careers, falling in love, getting engaged, or having babies. You feel happy for them—of course you do—but at the same time, it feels like you’re being pulled underwater, drowning in what-ifs and could-have-beens. You learn to hold your breath through the milestones and to smile through the heartbreak, but deep inside, there’s an ache that never truly fades.
Before we lost Garet, I thought sadness and depression were things that made you think you wanted to die. What I never understood was that this gaping hole in your heart could make you not want to live. I learned you can not want to die while not wanting to live at the same time! I never knew that something as simple as breathing could hurt so much—that taking another step, another breath, another day without him could feel impossible. But no one talks about that part.
People try to prepare you for sadness, but grief is so much more than that. It’s unpredictable, messy, and full of things no one warns you about. Here are five things I never knew about grief—until I was living it. When you lose a child, people don’t know what to say—but they feel like they have to say something. And while most people mean well, their words often feel like salt in an open wound. At first, I told myself they were just trying to comfort me, that they didn’t understand how their words landed. But grief makes you hypersensitive, and there were days when even the most well-intended comments made me want to scream.
Here are some of the phrases I heard over and over again:
💔 “Everything happens for a reason.” – No. There is no reason good enough for my child to be gone. This phrase doesn’t bring comfort—it just feels dismissive.
💔 “At least he’s in a better place.” – But his place was here, with me. No parent should have to imagine a “better place” that doesn’t include their child. Not to mention the guilt you already feel of them being gone.
💔 “You have other children to live for.” – As if grief is a math equation. As if losing one child should hurt less because I have others. I love all of my children, but one does not replace the other.
💔 “Time heals all wounds.” – Time may soften grief, but it never fully heals. Some wounds are forever, and that’s okay. We must learn to live with this “new normal” that simply isn’t normal.
💔 “You’re so strong.” – I didn’t choose this strength. I just wake up and survive because I have no other choice. This does not feel like strength. In fact it feels quite the opposite.
The truth is that grief makes people uncomfortable. They don’t know how to sit with our pain, our anger, our sadness. We don’t even know how to do it ourselves sometimes! So they try to wrap it up in platitudes, thinking it will help. But sometimes, the best thing someone can say is:
💜 “I don’t have the right words, but I’m here for you.”
💜 “I can’t imagine your pain, but I will sit with you in it.”
💜 “Tell me about Garet. I want to hear about him.”
Because grief isn’t something you fix—it’s something you carry. And the best kind of support isn’t in the words people say, but in the way people show up. Grief isn’t linear. There are no neat stages, no predictable timeline, no moment when you wake up and feel “healed.” Instead, grief comes in waves—some small, some so massive they knock the breath out of you. And the worst part? You never know when a wave is coming. One moment, you’re functioning, surviving, even smiling. And then—out of nowhere—it crashes over you. Maybe it’s a song on the radio, a stranger’s laugh that sounds just like theirs, or a memory that sneaks up on you when you least expect it. Sometimes, it’s something so small and seemingly insignificant that you can’t even explain why it shattered you.
For me, some of the hardest moments have been the ones I never saw coming:
💔 Seeing someone Garet’s age and realizing he’ll never get to grow older, find his career path, find the girl of his dreams, and have his own family.
💔 Hearing a joke I know he would have laughed at and instinctively wanting to tell him.
💔 A random video game reference, a scent, or even a quiet moment that feels too empty without him.
The hardest part about these waves is that they don’t care where you are or what you’re doing. They hit in the middle of the grocery store, in the car driving down the street, during conversations where you were fine just seconds ago. And suddenly you’re drowning—and the world is too big—and your mind is spinning—and the tears are streaming—and you can’t catch your breath….
At first, I thought these grief waves meant I was going backward, that somehow I wasn’t healing. But now, I know that this is just what grief is. The waves will always come, but over time, I am learning how to breathe through some of them. Some days, I let them take me under for a while. Other days, I find something to hold onto—a memory, a deep breath, a reminder that I’m still here, still carrying love for him in everything I do.
People love to say, “Time heals all wounds,” as if grief is something that fades away or eventually disappears. But if you’ve lost someone you love—especially a child—you know that’s not true.
Grief doesn’t just go away. It doesn’t shrink, dissolve, or reach some magical endpoint where you feel “healed.” Instead, grief changes. It shifts. It becomes something you carry differently as time moves forward.
At first, my grief was all-consuming. It was every breath, every thought, every single second of my existence. It was waking up and remembering all over again that he was gone and reliving the horror of the morning. It was the unbearable pain of knowing that no matter what I did, I couldn’t change reality.
Over time, though, I’ve noticed that grief no longer takes up all the space in my life—but it’s still there in everything I do. I am still learning how to navigate this new life. Some days, it’s a quiet ache in the background. Other days, it roars back to the surface like no time has passed at all and pulls me under all over again.
I’ve learned that grief isn’t about “moving on”—because you don’t move on from love. Instead, you move forward with it. We learn how to live with the loss, rather than in it. We find ways to carry their memory, to let love exist alongside the pain. You realize that grief doesn’t have to mean suffering forever—it can also mean carrying their light forward in the way you live.
Some days, grief still feels just as heavy as it did in the beginning. Other days, it feels like a shadow, a presence that will always be part of me. But I’ve come to understand that grief isn’t the enemy—it’s the evidence of how deeply I love my son. And that love? It will never go away.
Grief is unpredictable. Some days, it feels like an unbearable weight. Other days, you might find small moments of peace—only for a wave to crash over you again when you least expect it. There is no right or wrong way to grieve. No timeline, no finish line, no perfect way to carry this loss.
If you’re grieving, know that everything you’re feeling is valid. The sadness, the anger, the moments of numbness, the unexpected flashes of joy—it all belongs. You are not broken for feeling this way. You are grieving because you loved deeply.
💜 I’d love to hear from you. Have you experienced grief? What’s something no one told you that you had to learn on your own? Let’s share, connect, and remind each other that we don’t have to carry this alone.
Love and light, Mandy
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