Grief is love with nowhere to go.

And there’s more than one kind of grief.

You can grieve more than a person who has passed.

You can grieve the life you used to have, or the version of yourself that no longer exists. You can grieve dreams that never happened and friendships that drifted away.

Grief is all-inclusive — it comes in every shape, size and colour.

Sometimes it’s sharp , sometimes foggy and dull.

Do you ever feel grief for your younger self? For the version of you who hadn’t yet known this much loss, this much hardship?

That’s the grief that visits me often.

A foggy, nostalgic grief that makes me long for my twenty-year-old self. This grief walks hand-in-hand with fear: fear of aging, fear of change, fear of what’s to come.

And then there’s the grief of friendship. In the last five years especially, I've had to let go of so many friendships. And not just new friendships, but friends I’ve had for most of my life.

The letting go of people I thought would walk beside me for a lifetime. It’s a strange kind of mourning — one that leaves no eulogy, no closure, just silence and distance. I still ache for those friendships. Sometimes, I can’t even look through old photos without feeling a fresh wave of grief wash over me.

And, of course, there’s the grief of every person and pet I’ve lost along the way. That grief feels permanent, like it’s etched into my bones. Sometimes it shows up as a heaviness in my chest when I hear a certain song, or the sting in my eyes when I smell a familiar perfume.

But even though grief never fully leaves, it changes shape. It softens.

As Rumi wrote, "Grief can be the garden of compassion".

Over time, the dark, heavy cloud becomes a mist — one that still follows you, but no longer blocks the light. It becomes a gentle rain that patter-patters gently on your heart. If you stop fighting grief and instead allow it to walk beside you, it can change you for the better.

Therapist Francis Weller once wrote that “grief and love are sisters, woven together from the beginning. Their kinship reminds us that our capacity to love is also our capacity to mourn.”

And maybe that’s the point — that grief is proof of love’s endurance.

Grief has been one of my greatest teachers.

It’s taught me how to see beauty in impermanence. It’s made me more compassionate, more open, more present. It’s cracked my heart wide open and poured itself into my art.

Because grief, at its core, is love that has nowhere to go.

And yet somehow, it finds a way.

I’ve learned to pour that love into my art, my family, my community (you guys). Into every word I write and every image I create. The love that once had nowhere to go now lives in everything I make.

As therapist Megan Devine says, “Grief is not a problem to be solved. It’s an experience to be carried.’ ”

Maybe grief isn’t something to get over. Maybe it’s something to walk beside. To listen to. To learn from. Grief reminds us that we’ve lived deeply, that we’ve loved bravely. And maybe, if we let it, it can guide us back to the light. Not by undoing the loss, but by teaching us how to live alongside it.

So I’ll leave you with this:

Therapeutic Art Activity:

The Grief Garden

There are some losses we don’t “heal” from. Not in the way people expect. We just learn how to live beside them. To carry the ache. To water what’s still growing.

That’s what this activity is for. A way to sit with your grief. To name the love that’s missing. And to notice what it’s still growing in you—even in the broken places. What to do:

1. In each flower, write something you’ve lost — a person, a memory, a piece of yourself.

2. In the soil, write what still grows in you because of it.

3. Colour the flowers however you want. Use feeling, not rules.

4. Come back to it whenever the ache returns. You can do this alone. With your kids. With your therapist. It’s okay if it makes you cry. It’s okay if it doesn’t.

I created this YouTube video if you need some guidance on how to sit with your grief. This meditation is designed to meet you exactly where you are. Take it at your own pace. You don't have to fix anything—just breathe with me.When grief feels unbearable and there's nowhere to turn, this 2-minute meditation for loss offers gentle, validating space to breathe through your pain.Whether you're grieving a person, a part of your life, or a version of yourself, this guided meditation meets you in the raw reality of loss.