Grief is Not Karma

One particular set of beliefs I hear over and over again across cultures, faiths, and backgrounds sounds like this:

“We’re God-fearing people. This shouldn’t have happened to us.”

“We did everything right. Why did this happen?”

“We’re good people. Why are we being punished?”

“Tragedies like this don’t happen to people like us.”

“Why would this happen to us?”

To which I usually respond: “Say more, please.”

What follows is some version of the belief that the death of their beloved (whether a person or a pet) is a form of punishment, karma, or the result of a moral failure. As if death were the consequence of a misstep, a failure, a lack of devotion, effort, prayer, or goodness.

The underlying belief is that there was a direct, measurable correlation between what they did/didn’t do, who they are, and whether the person they love lived or died.

And I want to say this gently, clearly, and with conviction:

Your loved one’s death was not your punishment.

Please read that again. And again. And one more time, for good measure.

(Big hug.)

As a grief-informed guide (and griever myself), I have supported hundreds of people through major loss.

My role is not to “fix” grief, or help someone “move on faster”. It’s certainly not to find a “silver lining” in the death of their beloved.

Instead, my role is to hold space for people to come undone, honestly and authentically. To say the thing out loud—the thoughts and feelings that have been circling for months, sometimes years, pressing against the inside of their chest with nowhere to land.

The things they’ve swallowed because of shame, fear of judgment, or because they didn’t want to sound ungrateful, faithless, angry, dramatic, or “bad.”

Grief needs to be witnessed, and I become a heart-centered witness to their lived experience. I notice the way their breath catches when they name something too painful to say, how their bodies tremble as they allow themselves to express what has been hiding beneath the surface, and their “grief tears” arrive just in time to do what they were divinely designed to. I attune to the language of their nervous system, their heart, their mind, and their spirit.

(Note: According to Dr. Dorothy P. Holinger’s article What Do We Know about Tears? and book The Anatomy of Grief, “Chemically different from basal and reactive tears, emotional tears contain leucine-enkephalin, a neuropeptide related to endorphins. It is this chemical that makes us feel better after we cry.”)

Loss strips everything down to the studs. Like a wildfire, it burns away excuses, masks, and any BS we were holding on to. It incinerates socio-spiritual platitudes. It exposes the beliefs we didn’t even know we were carrying until they’re suddenly sitting in our lap, demanding to be reckoned with.

Although each person and grief-tending circle has its own energetic resonance, I have noticed some common themes emerge as people reconcile long-held beliefs against the truths loss reveals.

We live in a culture obsessed with control and certainty. Control disguised as empowerment. Control masquerading as spirituality, religion, and moral superiority. Control wrapped in affirmations, vision boards, productivity hacks, and “high-vibration” living.

It’s not entirely our fault, as our “predictive brain” is wired to seek patterns that reinforce certainty, filtering out anything that threatens predictability. In the chaos of life after loss, our minds instinctively try to find meaning, a reason, or a moral explanation, because uncertainty feels unbearable.

This is where I often reflect with those whom I help guide on the “if only” and “what if” loops, explaining how the brain clings to patterns like life rafts, despite how cruelly inaccurate they can be. The sense of familiarity with that long-held belief often overrides a gentler, more honest reframe, even if it’s to our detriment.

And yet, this does not mean that prayer, meditation, ritual, or intention are flawed or useless. On the contrary:

I embrace prayer.
I believe in meditation.
I honor rituals.
I love a good mantra.
I believe intention matters.
I believe presence matters.
I believe love matters.

I welcome anything that supports me and the people I love.

AND, even with all of this, sometimes the outcome is out of our hands and wishes.There are circumstances when death arrives anyway.

Grief shatters the illusion that if we are good enough, faithful enough, careful enough, evolved enough, we can out-maneuver mortality.

It reminds us of a universal truth we don’t like to sit with:

We are powerful beings. Just not as powerful as we think we are. Not in the ways we’ve been taught to believe.

There is a fine line between sovereignty and omnipotence.
Between agency and the fantasy that we can control every outcome if we just try harder.

We do have influence.
We do have choice.
We do get to shape parts of our lives.

AND… there are limits.

Death is one of them.

This also reminds me of a recent conversation with Dr. Tasha Faruqui, physician, speaker, advocate and author of the USA Today National Bestseller— “Keep Your Head Up: A Mother’s Story of Chasing Joy in the Face of Grief” — on the Grief and Light podcast:

This episode is available on: Apple Podcasts • Spotify • YouTube • Other Platforms

It’s a mother’s story of love, advocacy, and finding joy while parenting a child in hospice.

You read that correctly, and it is both as heart-wrenching and inspiring as it sounds.

The conversation with Dr. Faruqui taught me (and continues to teach me) about the (seemingly impossible) ways we find harmony between hope and embracing what is. Never a one-and-done. It’s more like a spiritual practice that evolves moment by moment, shifting with each challenging life experience.

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This is where resignation, acceptance, and perhaps even surrender become an act of mercy and grace.

It’s why the Serenity Prayer has endured:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

And it’s why one of my personal touchstones is Hoʻoponopono, a traditional Hawaiian practice of reconciliation and forgiveness, centered on this simple mantra:

I’m sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
I love you.

In Ho’oponopono, I find physical and spiritual centering as a way to fold loss, regret, shame, resentment, and pain into love, rather than punishment. It helped me fall asleep during those early days after my brother died unexpectedly. It’s a reminder that we can honor what happens without turning it into a moral failure.

These prayers/mantras are a way of integrating what cannot be undone, helping us process this new reality without turning it into self-punishment. They honor both our agency to adapt AND the truth that loss happens to everyone. Death is a part of life. It’s not a failure.

They help us accept what we cannot change without assigning blame, and carry grief without turning it into a moral verdict on our worth. Tragedy is not a referendum on goodness.

So in case you need to hear it today:

Your loved one did not die because you weren’t faithful enough.
Or vigilant enough.
Or healed enough.
Or positive enough.
Or obedient enough.

Their death was not a lesson you failed. It was not bad karma. It was not a punishment you earned.

Both are true. Both matter. Neither cancels the other out.

If you are carrying the weight of “if only,” “what if,” or “why us,” I want you to know: nothing is wrong with you for thinking these thoughts. AND you do not have to keep punishing yourself to honor your love.

You loved deeply.
You showed up.
You did your best with what you knew and had.

That has always been enough.

And it still is.

Nina Rodriguez is a Grief-informed Guide, podcaster, writer, and speaker who helps people navigate grief with hope and agency. Following the unexpected loss of her only sibling, Yosef, she founded GRIEF AND LIGHT, an award-winning podcast and supportive online community to educate and empower individuals navigating loss and life-altering change. Through her work and collaborative spaces, Nina aims to foster a more grief-informed, hopeful world. Learn more at: griefandlight.com.