I Was Learning to Grow While Learning to Grieve

Talking about grief feels weird to me, even after attending to 14 funreals and being 29 years old.

A gentle content note! This essay talks about grief, loss, death and losing people you love at a young age. It comes from a deeply personal place and some parts may feel heavy. Please read gently and take whatever space you need.

Burying family members, watching family friends grow old and eventually pass away, or seeing people I love face different kinds of health problems - sadly, none of that is new to me.

Before I go deep into my experiences and talking about the process of burying and grieving my grandmother and my mother being a child, I want to take a step back and mention that there are resources, support systems and people who can help when grief becomes too heavy to carry it alone. I don’t share my own experiences as a guide for how grief should look like. Everyone experiences loss differently and if you are currently going through something similar, please know that you don’t have to navigate it entirely on your own.

This is a deeply personal story and putting it into words has meant more to me than I expected. The rest of this story is for paid subscribers. If you’d like to continue, subscribing gives you access to the full piece and supports me more than you know. If you choose to support my work by subscribing - thank you!