The Moment I Stopped Carrying it Alone

Dear Friend,

There are certain kinds of pain that are easy to hide; to keep to ourselves.

They don’t make a big entrance.

They don’t interrupt your day in obvious ways.

They just… deepen.

Quietly.
Slowly.
Until one day you realize you’re carrying something so heavy, it’s starting to pull you under.

That’s where I found myself this past week.

In something I can only describe as cavernous grief.

The kind that echoes.
The kind that distorts your thoughts.
The kind that convinces you you’re alone, even when you’re not.

And if I’m honest, I stayed there longer than I needed to.

Not because I didn’t have people.

But because I didn’t ask.

There’s something about grief that makes everything feel final.

Binary.

Your mind starts telling stories that feel absolute:

This is how it will always be.
There’s no way through this.
You’re alone in this.

And when you’re inside it, those thoughts don’t feel like thoughts.

They feel like truth.

So you carry it.

You move through your day.
You keep showing up.
You keep functioning.

And all the while, something inside you is quietly saying,

This is too much to hold alone.

Eventually, I listened.

I reached out to a couple of women in my life whom I trust.

Honestly? The kind of reaching that feels a little exposed.

“I’m struggling.”

And they met me there.

Fully.

No fixing.
No rushing.
No minimizing.

They held space in a way that felt… safe.

Like I didn’t need to edit myself.
Like I didn’t need to make it more palatable.
Like I could just be exactly where I was.

And then, after they listened…

They spoke.

And something in me broke open in a different way.

They each separately told me the truth.

Not the distorted version my grief had been feeding me.

The real one.

They reflected back what they saw in me.

They reminded me of who I am.
Of what’s actually true.
Of the nuance I had lost inside the overwhelm.

And I wept.

Not just because I was hurting.

But because I realized I had been suffering longer than I needed to.

Because I had been trying to carry something that was never meant to be carried alone.

And the moment I asked…

They were there.

That experience has stayed with me.

Not just because of the relief.

But because of what it revealed.

A few things that feel simple, but not always easy to live:

Support is often only an ask away.

Not always.
Not everywhere.

But more often than we let ourselves believe.

And yet, so many of us don’t ask.

We assume people are busy.
We assume we’ll be a burden.
We assume we should be able to handle it.

So we stay quiet.

And we carry more than we need to.

It also reminded me of something else.

When someone you love is going through something…

Check in.

Even if you don’t have the perfect words.
Even if you’re not sure what to say.

A simple, “I’ve been thinking about you,” can be a lifeline.

You don’t have to fix anything.

Just let them know they don’t have to be alone in it.

And maybe the one that landed the deepest for me:

If you are someone who is trusted with another person’s vulnerability…

Don’t stay neutral.

Be a safe space, yes.

But also…

Be a mirror.

Reflect their light back to them when they can’t see it.

Tell them what you see.
Tell them what’s true.
Tell them what they’ve forgotten.

Because when we’re in the depths of grief or fear, our perspective narrows.

We lose access to ourselves.

And sometimes, the most healing thing someone can do is remind us who we are.

There’s a phrase we hear often:

Give people their flowers while they’re living.

It’s easy to nod at that.

To agree with it in theory.

But in practice?

We get busy.

We assume they know.

We move quickly from one thing to the next.

Meanwhile, the people in our lives are carrying things we can’t see.

Battles we don’t know about.
Thoughts they haven’t said out loud.
Grief they’re holding quietly.

Life is fragile.

And the people we get to experience it with?

They are not guaranteed.

They are precious.

As a result, I’ve been thinking about how I want to move differently.

More honest when I need support.
More intentional about offering it.

More willing to speak what I see in the people I love, instead of assuming they already know.

Because we all forget sometimes.

We all lose sight of ourselves sometimes.

And we all need someone, at some point, to gently say:

I see you.

You’re not alone.

You’re still who you’ve always been, even if you can’t feel it right now.

If you’re carrying something heavy today…

This is your permission to not carry it alone.

To reach out.
To let yourself be held.
To risk being seen in the middle of it.

(Crisis Text Line if needed)

And if you’re on the other side of that equation…

If someone trusts you with their tenderness…

Meet them there.

And don’t be afraid to remind them of their light.

We need each other more than we’ve been taught to admit.

And there is something deeply healing about letting that be true.

With so much love,
Adrian Hygge, FNP 🖤