Does Grief Ever Go Away?

I don’t think I will ever forget the moment when my nurse said the words that changed everything for me. The words that single-handedly stopped time and crushed my soul. “He no longer has a heartbeat.”

I rushed to the hospital on March 26, 2022, hoping I was overreacting and being silly. I cried the entire way, praying the decreased movement I noticed was just an irrational and farfetched fear. However, I was right. My mom-tuition was real.

I never wished to be more wrong in my entire life. When I arrived at 8:30 PM that night, he was already gone. Weston, my perfect 7lb 1 oz baby boy. Thirty-nine weeks of hoping, praying, and preparing for him, and he was gone. Without reason or any medical explanation.

Grieving the Loss of a Child

If you are reading this post, I am so sorry for your loss. Chances are you stumbled upon this as a means to connect with others that share your pain. Let me first start by saying, You are safe here. You are welcome here. You belong here. Gloves for Grief is a community that not only shares your pain but was created out of two women’s deepest darkest moments.

As someone that is inching towards the two-year mark from “that day,” the “day” that changed everything for me AND in me, I want to share what I have learned so far about my own grief… and the grieving process. In the spirit of honesty and transparency, I am going to tell you something. The short answer to the question of whether grief ever goes away… is no. Your grief will always be present and a part of you. But keep reading with me as I explain further. Think of this post as a conversation you would have between a trusted friend. Someone that is standing next to you that KNOWS how dark grief can be, and someone that promises to never try to take your grief away.

The first few months after my loss, I was in acute grief. It was physical, unrelenting, and debilitating. The smallest and easiest tasks felt difficult. I remember getting up from bed to make my 4-year-old son’s lunch a few days after THAT day. It took me 45 minutes to pull out the supplies and figure out how to make his sandwich. If you are in the fresh and acute stage of your grief, give yourself grace and understanding that all things will feel hard for a while. The simplest tasks will take longer than expected. Don’t compare to how it used to be because you will never go back to those days. You are forever changed now.

A Personal Story of Grief, Healing and Hope

I tried to get rid of my grief for a while, to go back to who I was before it. I looked for the 12 steps of grief, thinking if I could just make it through each of these steps, I could move past this whole “Grief Thing.” But I didn’t know then what I know now. Grief isn’t just a feeling you experience after devastating loss. It’s a scar we wear eternally for those we have deeply loved and painfully lost. You see, from the outside looking in, or for those that haven’t experienced grief, they look to “fix you.” People try to take your grief away or find the right words and say the right things to make it better. But grief doesn’t work like that. Grief is like a backpack you will always carry with you Earthside. Some days that backpack feels so heavy you cannot pick it up. Other days, you feel the weight but have the strength to forge ahead. Some of us have many grief experiences that fill our backpacks. Others like myself have one- and it still feels painfully heavy. No matter what’s in your backpack, and how long you’ve been carrying it, the truth remains the same. You will never take it off. However, you do not have to carry that backpack alone. We are here to support you and help you carry that weight on the heaviest of days.

But remember this… over time you will build up the strength to carry the backpack with the weight of your grief inside. You will learn how to continue forging forward with it on, and you will learn to love that backpack because it serves as a reminder of someone you deeply loved.

Hang in there. Take it one day, one hour, one minute, one second at a time.

-Terra, Gloves for Grief Co-Founder and the owner of a backpack I’ve been carrying for almost 2 years