Today I really tried.
I got dressed. I put on some makeup. I left the house. I even made it all the way to the bank. And then the universe decided to humble me with a sad song playing over the speakers- the kind that sneaks in under your ribs and presses on everything you’ve been trying not to feel.
Suddenly, I didn’t want to be brave anymore. I just wanted to be back in the quiet safety of my house, where no one expects anything from me and no random soundtrack gets to ambush my heart.
That’s what grief is like. One minute you’re functioning- even doing errands- and the next a melody in a bank lobby takes you straight back to the rawest place inside you.
So I came home.
And I wrote.
Because lately, writing is the only thing that feels safe.
Not talking.
Not explaining.
Not trying to make my feelings sound neat or digestible for other people.
Just writing. Pouring the mess out onto a page where it doesn’t have to be logical or palatable. Maybe it’s easier because words on paper don’t interrupt. They don’t try to fix me. They just hold what I give them. And right now, that’s what my grief needs- a place to exist without being managed.
The Counselor Who Wasn’t Prepared
What’s strange is that I’m a counselor. I’ve read the books. I know the theories. I can list the stages of grief, define complicated grief, trauma-bonded attachment, anticipatory loss. I can explain what happens to the nervous system when someone we love dies.
But none of that prepared me for this version of grief- the one where I can run errands but not survive a song in a public place. The one where I can smile at a cashier and then cry in my car because a memory suddenly hits: a laugh, a voice, a moment that’s gone.
This is not a neat journey.
It isn’t linear.
It isn’t polite.
It’s a thousand tiny collisions between who I was when my mom was alive and who I am now that she isn’t.
When Grief Steals Your Sleep and Your Energy
Lately, I stay up late with vivid images of my mom’s face in those last moments. They come back during the day too- uninvited flashes that feel so real I swear I can still see her. And then I sleep until one in the afternoon because my body and brain are completely exhausted.
And then I shame myself for it.
But there’s psychology behind this that the textbooks don’t really teach. When you witness death, your nervous system doesn’t just feel sad- it goes into survival mode. Your brain keeps replaying images because it’s trying to process something it didn’t have the capacity to absorb all at once. That’s why the pictures won’t stop. That’s why sleep feels disrupted. That’s why your body collapses when it finally feels safe enough to rest.
Grief plus trauma drains energy the way illness does.
My brain is working overtime just to hold reality.
That’s why things that used to be easy- getting dressed, going to the bank, answering a text- now feel like climbing a mountain.
I’m not lazy.
I’m not broken.
I’m grieving in a body that is still in shock.
And the strange truth is that while the slow dying was unbearable, there was also a strange comfort in knowing she was still here. Now there is nothing to brace for. The finality is what hurts.
The Five Stages (and the Lie We Were Sold)
After I got home, I did what I always do when things feel unbearable; I tried to understand it. I tried to put language around what was happening inside me.
So I started running through the grief stages in my head:
Denial.
Anger.
Bargaining.
Depression.
Acceptance.
On paper, it looks clean. Almost comforting. Like if I just move through them in the right order, I’ll eventually arrive somewhere that doesn’t hurt this much.
But then I realized something uncomfortable:
I felt all five before noon.
Denial shows up when I reach for my phone to text my mom and forget, for a split second, that she’s not here.
Anger creeps in when I think about how unfair it all was.
Bargaining whispers in the quiet corners of my mind with every “if only.”
Depression sits heavy in my chest.
And acceptance… sometimes it’s there too, even though I hate it.
None of it happens in order.
None of it waits its turn.
You don’t move through grief.
You move with it.
What the 5 Stages Don’t Show
They don’t show the jealousy that sneaks up when a random bank worker looks happy. That feeling isn’t bitterness; it’s grief comparing. My brain remembers what it felt like to move through the world without this weight, and when I see someone else doing it, it highlights what I lost. I’m not mad at them. I’m mourning myself; the version of me who could smile and mean it, who could walk through a day without carrying this much pain.
They don’t show how my brain keeps looking for my mom. Attachment lives in the deepest parts of the brain- the parts that learned who was safe long before I ever had words. My nervous system still expects her to exist. So it reaches for her, thinks of her, searches for her, and then it has to correct itself. That “double-take” that moment of forgetting and then remembering is what attachment grief feels like.
They don’t show identity collapse; the quiet, disorienting way grief takes away not just a person, but the version of me that existed with them. My mom wasn’t just someone I loved; she was a mirror. She held my history, my inside jokes, my childhood, my future plans. She knew who I was before I had to explain. When she passed, all of that disappeared too. My brain now has to exist without one of its core reference points, and everything feels unfamiliar. The roles I played don’t fit. My personality feels muted. I don’t quite recognize myself in my own life. And the haunting truth is that this isn’t weakness; it’s my identity being rebuilt.
They don’t show the trauma of watching someone die. Of seeing their body change. Of hearing sounds you can’t unhear. Of holding a hand that used to hold yours. That kind of grief doesn’t stay in memory- it imprints in the nervous system. My body learned helplessness, love, fear, and loss all at once. That’s why images intrude. That’s why my chest tightens. That’s why exhaustion feels physical. My nervous system is still processing what my heart survived.
And they don’t show the oscillation- the way I can feel okay for a few minutes, then crushed, then numb, then okay again. That back-and-forth isn’t instability. It’s my psyche regulating how much pain I can tolerate at one time. My brain moves me between feeling and not feeling so I don’t drown in it. That isn’t failure; that’s survival.
That’s what the stages leave out.
Not just the emotions- but the neurological, relational, and identity-shattering reality of losing someone who was the center of their world.
The Two Selves Living in Me
So here I am- the counselor and the daughter living inside the same body.
One part of me knows grief isn’t linear.
The other part just wants my mom back.
I don’t have universal answers. None of this is one-size-fits-all. But I do know this: sitting with my grief and writing about it, day by day, feels safe. It feels honest. It feels like the only way I can understand what the textbooks never taught me; the moment-to-moment reality of loving someone who is gone.
So today, I tried to do something normal.
I went to the bank.
I failed.
I came home.
And I wrote instead.
And for now, that’s enough.
Effort Is the Only Victory
Maybe that’s the part we don’t talk about enough- that sometimes just trying is the achievement. Not finishing the errand. Not feeling better. Not having a good day. Just getting dressed. Just stepping outside. Just attempting to live in a world that no longer looks the way it used to.
The psychology of grief was never meant to be a rulebook. The stages weren’t designed to predict us- they were a loose framework that never accounted for trauma, attachment, identity, or how the nervous system actually survives loss. Our brains don’t process grief in steps. They process it in waves, fragments, images, body sensations, memories, and moments of disbelief.
Some days my brain lets me feel it.
Some days it protects me with numbness.
Some days it replays everything.
Some days it lets me laugh.
That isn’t inconsistency; that’s survival.
So if all I did today was try, that counts.
If all I could do was write instead of speak, that counts.
If all I managed was to leave the house and come back, that counts too.
Grief isn’t something you solve.
It’s something you learn to carry.
And maybe this; sitting in it, writing through it, letting it be what it is- isn’t avoidance at all.
Maybe it’s the bravest form of understanding. 🤍
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