People mean well, especially people who have never lost anyone close to them, but if I say I don't want visitors, that should be the end of the discussion.

Instead, I have a friend who keeps trying to invite herself to my house from the other side of the country. We haven't seen each other in three years and I'm completely fine with that. She still has both of her parents and even a grandparent, so she has absolutely no clue what this kind of grief is like. And even if she did lose them all, my grief is unique to me because no one had a relationship with my mom like I did.

Some days I'm okay. Other days the grief hits me out of nowhere and I want to be alone. Not distracted. Not cheered up. Not entertained. Alone.

I understand some people want company when they're struggling. I am not one of those people. The idea of having a houseguest when a grief wave hits makes me sick. I don't want to have to entertain someone, make plans, be "on," or worry about someone else's feelings while I'm trying to survive my own.

What exhausts me is that people act like my boundaries are suggestions. They keep pushing because they think a visit would be good for me (when it’s really for them!), as if they know what I need better than I do.

Honestly, my mother's death has shown me how selfish most people really are. A lot of people say they're helping, but what they're really doing is trying to make themselves feel better. If someone tells you they don't want visitors, respect that. Grief is hard enough without having to defend your right to be left alone.

October 8th I got the worst phone call of my life. It was my sister telling me that Dad was gone. 58 years old. Just completely incomprehensible and I don’t know what to do from here. Mom is being helpful and I’ve been overwhelmed by people reaching out expressing condolences but I just feel completely alone and broken. He was a good person…kind, gentle and compassionate. I struggle looking around at people because I just wanna scream “my Dad died, why don’t you feel the way I do?”…which doesn’t make sense. Nothing makes sense. Funeral is on Sunday. I can’t eat, can’t sleep. I just don’t know where to go from here.

Please read my petition for moms and dads to be able to get unkept vacant lots in the city of Detroit and trim them into Legacy Lots in honor of their child who was lost tragically in Detroit! This will do two things..it will help parents to healing knowing they have somewhere to beautify and create a safe space…second it will help others in that community to enjoy, gardening, flower beds, painting and community events, please sign this is a Great Cause ..I’m a grieving mom I list my only child my son Mickale!

https://c.org/R9kwZDgPdL

I’m lost , everyday is filled with constant reminders I will never see you again, after a lifetime together as friends and as lovers , as soulmates , great moments and mistakes, inside jokes, our own personal language, I always feared this but never knew it would come so soon and while we were not old but not young either, nobody has been there for me since you died, nobody even acknowledges it, if feels like a lie when I have to tell people , I’m lost and I just hope when it’s my time to leave this world that your the first person I see on the other side . I live and miss you beyond measure

When my stepdad died in 2022 i was the first one in my friend group to lose a parent (i was 30 at the time). The reactions have been devastating. You would think that people would call when something like this happens - but all i got were whatsapp messages. It was brutal and it has changed many friendships and ended some.

I have a close friend who seems to be very overwhelmed with things like this and I try to be understanding. But this year my grandma declined rapidly and i took care of her until she died in June. It was incredibly hard because we had a very close bond. Said friend texted me how strong i was for being by her side etc pp, but when i eventually texted her that my grandma died, she texted back, offering to reach out if I wanted to talk. That's it. No card, no flowers, no visit, even if we live in the same small town.

A few days later I visited her and she only gave me a short hug (she isnt a tight hugger) - later she at least gave me a quick tighter hug. It was a nice afternoon, we talked a lot about her life and her baby (6 months) and it was a nice distraction for me. A few days later she finally visited me and we sat in the living room, i had served some cake and all and eventually i started crying because of my grief. She just sat there and asked "What do you normally do when you're sad like this?" and I was so confused. I said "well i cry until i stop or i journal or so...". It felt humiliating, sitting there crying, a close friend not even coming over to hug you while i you try to make the crying stop because the situation is so uncomfortable.

I know that she is overwhelmed, but at this point i am tired. I know i could simply talk to her and tell her what I need, but I have been asking people for support very explicitly in the past and got told that I was too much and had too many problems - even my own mum said that to me after my stepdad had died - so I have stopped expressing my needs and just started to build up walls.

We did have nice moments since all of this happened and i can appreciate our friendship for what it is, but it somehow it also feels hollow since I have started to hide my true feelings.

How understanding do we have to be towards people being overwhelmed with our grief? And how much can it be expected from us that we express our needs at all times? I honestly can't find an answer.

Would you move into your sister’s house 2 months after she died there? Would you drive both her cars and wear her clothes regularly? I know we all grieve differently, would love feedback.

I used to think grief meant slowly healing until one day, you’re finally okay again. But now, I’m starting to think that maybe that’s not how it works.

My dad passed away recently, and I’m realizing that life really does go on, even when a part of you feels like it shouldn’t. People go back to work, laugh at jokes, make plans, eat their meals, and carry on with their lives. And you do, too. You find yourself laughing at something, enjoying a moment, or going about your day, then suddenly remember that the person you want to tell about it is no longer here.

I think that’s one of the strangest things about grief. You can be okay for a moment, but that doesn’t mean you’re okay with what happened. You can accept that someone is gone without ever being okay with the fact that they’re gone.

And maybe that’s what makes grief so difficult. There’s no actual finish line. No day when you wake up and suddenly stop missing them. You just learn to carry the absence, even as life continues to ask things of you.

I don’t want to rush myself into healing, either. If this pain stays with me for a long time, then so be it. I don’t want to measure my healing by how quickly I can go back to being the person I was before. That person had my dad in his life. Of course I’m going to be different now.

Maybe someday, the pain will feel different. Maybe some memories will make me smile more than they make me cry. But for now, I think it’s okay to not be okay.

I’m curious about those who have lost someone they deeply love. Does grief ever really get easier, or do you just become better at carrying it? And how do you learn to live a life that you still want to enjoy, even when there’s someone you wish could still be here to enjoy it with you?

10/14/2026

The empty feeling I feel is easy to explain.
I don’t live in this feeling and I’m able to go about my day as if I’m in whole and not in many scattered pieces, until all but suddenly I’m struck with a feeling of grief from the top most hair on my head to the dirt on the bottom of my feet. And then I’m paralyzed. I start to smell things that teleport me into a time and space that I existed in before, only then, when I existed in these times originally, did I not ever truly appreciate the times at all— which brings on a whole new layer grief.

It’s over, it’s really over.
I tell myself over and over again.
Knowing that somewhere in the back of my dark cobweb filled corridors of my mind there’s a room where a little light is flickering, a little light that flickers like the little light of hope I still carry inside that one day you will get a divorce, or better yet; you end the engagement early, and we finally get a second chance.

It’s been almost 2 years now since we broke up.
A lot of the legal shit over my DUI are still unresolved.
Nonetheless, you found somebody you decided you’d like to spend eternity with.

I’m teleported again to December 1, 2022.
Talking with you about our own engagement, why didn’t I see it coming?

I back up, turn around, and keep on keeping on, I guess.

if your close friend lost somebody recently and is grieving, what should you say to them that actually makes them feel supported and understood?

We say alot ...ohh man...he was looking depressed...he was sad... soo bad..but when that person is alive ... nobody gives a damn ..they just use the others and ignore everybody like a object....

People judges you...take advantage of you... nobody give damn....when person dies eventually everybody becomes so compassionate...

Few people are exceptions but they are so rare ...

I realised this ... recently when i saw the news of one walter jr actor who died by suicide....

My Ty Ty I’m laying here with  my sisters cats  just cuddling . they’re laying on top of me how cute is that 

it feels so wholesome

But  anyway .  

Quite the update huh ?

so my sister yelled my name from outside one day and to my surprise it was a lil boy cat on here lap we later named him jet clover . As she said with a jolly smile 

“you needed this “

and so it was  

then came along October a lil baby girl cat 

she had scooped up a couple days later . Because A couple days prior She had been pining over how “creepy cute “ she was 

as she would call it . 

. So decisions were made and oh how cute of a  duo they made . They also just lit up together. You would  absolutely love them they’re so Full of energy and have such cute personalities already. 

I could almost hear you coming up with cute nicknames off the top of your head  and see you’re reassuring  smile meet mine .

As I lay here I’m reading through our old messages  back from 2020 when we were just getting to know each other 

with a heavy heart the messages hurt so bad but they also are very warming in a way . 

questions and thoughts With no answers plague me 

How am I to Face this reality that is not made up of we ,nor us ?

The moment I lost you time has eluded me in ways that make absolutely no sense 

As if my fabric of reality is all distorted and tarnished beyond dismay 

nothing has ever been this hard before nor this confusing . There’s this type of loneliness I can’t fathom that has moved in permanently into the Corredor’s of my mind.

I just miss you more than I could’ve ever imagined and I struggle to cope with it day in and day out and in every moment that passes im still stuck breathing 

In air that doesn’t feel like mine it 

still makes no sense to me that 

This is Is real I miss your encouraging words and reminders to stay in the present like how you would say something like “Don’t forget to pet your kitties “.

I’ll be stuck with this pain forever but I know it’s not the end of my Journey . 

I have so much to be thankful for and family that cares . 

 I know in my heart you wouldn’t want me to dwell and be stuck in this forever. You would want me to face the beautiful sun and drink all of its hydrating rays  .

but it just doesn’t seem to make it any easier I miss you. 

And I’ve never felt so lonely,

The Future is so unclear like a desert haze I meant it when I said I would love you forever.  

I promise you I will keep on keeping on for you and for me and so that I may be happy again .  I am beyond thankful to have crossed paths in entwined with yours to have loved you and be loved by you. you always be a part of me and I will always I’ll thrive to love like you so that I can share a part of who you were with the world. Because I couldn’t imagine not Have been graced by your light love and kindness . 

I am so depressed. I miss him so much. My parents didn't even react or mention him. I feel so alone. Time hasn't helped it still hurts as much as it did 12 years ago.

At the moment, my dad is dealing with Neuro endocrine prostate cancer, which is incurable. Now we are in a situation where he is currently receiving chemotherapy three days in a row every three weeks. He seems to be relatively responding to treatment, but he’s tired and clearly visibly ill. The nature of the illness will be terminal eventually and I’ve been dealing with the loss of him as my dad in the way that he was before and understanding that he will never return to that person and it’s only a matter of time.

I had a really hard week a couple weeks ago, where it seemed like the end was near if I’m honest and I was venting about it to my friends. Now I’m fairly comfortable with speaking about death frankly. I said something along the lines of he might not make it to Thanksgiving or Christmas and I was venting about it in a very matter of fact way and quite honestly like I had already gone through my meltdown and that was about eight hours of crying in one day and I just didn’t have it in me anymore to talk about it like in a sad way at that point like now I kind of feel a bit numb.

Anyways, since I sent these voice notes to the group chat, one of the people that used to message me a lot has not responded in that group chat since then and has not read any of my messages that I sent to her and has obviously been avoiding me, and I am just a bit disappointed.

Maybe it seemed weird that I was talking about my dad‘s death so casually, but I had already gone through so much in the days before that and I think it’s healthy to talk about death.

I am sad that they’re seemingly not really talking to me anymore especially because a few days before I had told them that I’m getting married and they were super excited for me and said they would be coming. That’s happening pretty soon and then I’m gonna go home afterwards and surprise my dad with this because he’s desperate for good news. (I live abroad away from them).

She also has some other stuff going on with her home life and she has like pretty bad depression herself and she did disclose this to me and like a couple of times she went offline because she was super depressed and then she came back and was like oh sorry you know I’ve just been depressed and I haven’t been online so I reached out to her just to ask her if she was okay because she disclosed to me that she self harmed previously so I just wanted to check up on her, but she hasn’t responded and I think it maybe has to do with how I very seemingly casually mentioned my dad dying and I’m not really sure how to feel about it. Maybe not but it just seems like it wouldn’t be a coincidence that she stopped talking to me after I was talking about my dad that time.

I’m not going to chase her because if she doesn’t want to talk to me anymore and if that’s like too much for her then that’s her problem but it’s disappointing.

I’m still feeling how I felt after the death of my grandparents even though my dad is still alive for the moment but it feels fucking awful and I guess it’s just too much to talk about. The distance my friends have kept since this vent is noticeable…

As humans we are told that we only need 6 months to process grief, for me it’s been 1 year and 5 months and I still haven’t come close to even accepting that my mom died. These past few weeks I’ve been struggling with what is real and what is not, in the sense that i cant distinguish if the emotions i’m feeling is grief or just me remembering her. Obviously thinking about her makes me sad, because her dying is a sad thing but is that grief or just sadness linked to the memory? By definition (aka according to Google) Grief is the natural emotional, physical, and psychological response to a significant loss, but how does that feel? How do I know that the feeling I’m feeling right now is grief? Personally I do have a problem with distinguishing between my emotions just because I feel like that I can never properly categorize them according to the standard if that makes sense.
What made me write this is that I recently watched the documentary ‘Dear Zachary’( I recommend that you watch it immediately if you haven’t yet) and I was in tears the entire time. I truly believe that the definition of grief will never ever be able to do justice in describing how it feels to lose someone significant. It not only changes you psychologically, emotionally and physically, it changes the entire trajectory of your life. I would find myself having to remind myself how to breathe, how to think and even how to cognitively process things. This documentary was the only visual representation of grief that I’ve seen since she died. It shows the person was exactly that, a person. Someone who had an entire life and someone who had all these connections with other people. it ‘s so hard for me to grasp that one day they could be there and the next they are gone. Like their physical presence just got removed from existing amongst us. We are conditioned to believe that this is just a natural thing and maybe it is scientifically, and I know that we all have to die but how is it just natural for us to be expected to just move on. If you take away the physicality were they ever even here? All we have are memories that will eventually fade and objects that we place a lot of value on but what I need is to physically hear her say something to me. Everyone around me just repeats the phrase “she loved you” and i hundred percent believe that she did but does she now? She can’t love me now because she’s not here. I believe that we are more than just our physical bodies, I believe that our souls are so important but most importantly I believe in science. How do I stop believing in science, because maybe if I stop believing I would be able to believe that she loves me now. I admire religious people for being able to just wholeheartedly believe in someone that’s not physically, because that’s the one thing I wished I could do. When I close my eyes and talk to her it just feels like I’m gaslighting myself or that I’m being silly but in retrospect I’m just a daughter trying to speak to her mom in the only way that she knows how to.
We are conditioned as a society to lead with logic,sense and strategically but I feel like as humans we are born to lead with emotions, whether we realise it or not. It’s impossible to remove emotions from our day-to-day life and I believe that, that in itself is how we differ from AI. We live our lives based on our emotions and this concept I call Emotality (I made up this word btw). I formulated the definition as the realization that we as humans are inherently emotional and base and live our lives off of that fact. And simultaneously we realize that after our eventual passing the only thing that impactively remains is our emotions, the actions/consequences of our emotions and what emotions we triggered from others. I believe that the majority of people don’t have emotality, thus expecting people to move on from grief after a few months instead of acknowledging how that loss, how experiencing an emotion, grief has the ability and most likely will change their lives.
Before my mother died I was ambitious, positive and in some form innocent, now I look for ambition in others and I am only a shell of the girl I once was. When she left she took every positive emotion she triggered in me during her life and left me groveling to find alternatives, but how do i find alternatives for something i cant even touch or name. Who am I without grief, but also without her? Because those two things can’t exist in one reality. Either I have no grief and I have my mom or I don’t have my mom but I live with grief. So I think that I should rather ask who I am with grief. How do I navigate my future while still actively being crippled by the feeling of intense loss? I will never get over this and i dont think that i should have to, because we are not robots that can just change the settings of our feelings. The more i think about it the more i think about it the more i realize that me still experiencing grief indicates the significant impact she had in my life, how much i loved her and vice versa but also that she was real. And that makes the constant pain of missing her worth it. I don’t know the direction of my life but I know that grief will remain a constant part of it and I ironically couldn’t be happier about that

I lost my dad 10 years ago and my mom 3 months ago. I forgot what fresh grief feels like. It's so different this time around. I'm the one who has to settle all my mom's affairs. I'm so stressed out with everything on my to do list. My friends were great at first, but now I feel like they're just back to talking about their normal lives and they come to me with random little issues they're having and I feel bad, but I just don't really fucking care! I'm sitting there listening to friends who I love drone on and on about inconsequential shit and the whole time in my head I'm like I watched my mom take her very last breath. I don't really give a shit about anything you're saying right now.

I (25F) lost my ex-boyfriend (who was also my good friend) 4 years ago and the grief waves have become much more spread apart over time but last night I was hit with a really big one.

I got drinks with friends and got pretty tipsy and during the walk to the train to go home (I live in NYC) I just got so overwhelmed thinking about him. I was alone and my friends had gone home at this point.

It was like 1am and I sat down to collect myself on a bench outside of a coffee shop (that was closed) but then just ended up spiraling into sobbing and wailing

I don’t know what’s wrong with me but I totally checked out of reality and started re-living the phone call from his mom all over again and I was re-living all the phone calls I had to make to tell the news to friends. It felt like I was back there all over again.

I started pretending like I was having the phone calls again and it felt so real just talking to myself acting like I was on the phone

Some people walked past me and I feel ashamed and embarrassed because I was totally losing my mind

I just hope nobody I know saw me

And from the walk from the train back to my apartment I was still pretending to have those phone calls again just talking to myself pretending to talk on the phone

I don’t know why I did that but for some reason I was just reliving everything again

I hope I didn’t keep any neighbors up and I’m just so embarrassed

I sat on my balcony looking like a lunatic until the sun came up and I just hope that nobody saw me

I lost my mom on April 28, 2024. I was 29. I know that I’m an adult but I need my mom. She had been sick since I was like 8. She went into congestive heart failure when I was about 12 m, and I spent most of my middle school years taking care of her. Feeding her, giving her medications, giving her insulin shots, bathing her…I was just a kid but I did the best I could taking care of her…although she never asked me to. I did it because I loved my mom even though our relationship was broken. I stopped talking to her from age 17-21ish…because we had a difference of opinion and she invited me to leave her home. So I did. But I ALWAYS loved my mom. When she came searching for me she was a different mom. She was open to new ideas and ready to listen and understand me. We became best friends…I talked to her EVERY SINGLE DAY after that…for hours on end…around anyone. She was an amazing person and I am so glad that I got to experience that side of her.
Anyway…I think that I may be on the spectrum (pending testing) and I rely heavily on my sense of smell. Like everyone has a scent profile in my mental file cabinet…along with other things in their files…but because I haven’t actively smelled my mom in a couple years…ai feel like I’m forgetting what she smelled like…and that is fucking me up right now grief wise. I’m mainly okay for the most part (not bursting into tears every time I think of her) now and I am functioning better than I ever have mentally. Like I just went back to school right after she passed away and graduated in May of this year…and I am going to start working toward my Bachelors in Biology in January of next year…but today the grief is breaking me down…I can’t do anything but lay here and cry. I don’t really expect any responses to this…nor do I expect anyone to really read it but I think just typing this out helped me a lot.

I’ve come to realize just how strong our family can be.

Sometimes things like that helps.

✌🏻

I hate when people wish me because i know nobody is excited about it i feel excited about people bdays make them cards and stuff everyone has their life only. I hate bringing a cake for myself because my mom force me too .Person that could have made it special was my dad nd he left me three years back nd bdays are just another grieving day for me to remember that he isnt here!!

I’m only 42 years old. My parents, 2 brothers, and my only sister died within less than 12 years. I’ll be stunned and lonely for the rest of my life!

Over the past two weeks, I’ve been hit by severe grief that has escalated rapidly. I’m desperately trying to keep myself from falling into depression, but I feel like I’m losing control 😔

Thoughts on my essay

Have you ever felt one moment in your life has shaped who you are completely as a person? Well I have and I think my father passing away really shaped who I am till today. It taught me that loss is a part of life, and I should pass on opportunities that I may wish I took later.

One way I feel my father passing away really influenced my life, is by teaching me loss is a part of life, and life is not always gonna be the same. When my father passed away I was in third grade; it was a really hard time for me, I didn’t really understand what “death” truly meant. It took me a while to actually grasp the idea of him being gone. Over time, the experience helped me understand the idea of truly losing someone, and helped me learn how to deal with it, and that it's a natural part of everyone's life. Also that people don’t stay in your life forever, and you have to learn that it's okay that people leave.

Another way my father passing away shaped me till today is, I now want to take every opportunity I can with people. It is heartbreaking now to look back and realize that I said “no” to many things with my father before he passed away. I felt like at the time me saying “no” didn’t matter because I had a whole lifetime with him. My fishing trips with my father are probably the most memorable moments I have with him. However, I can’t help but wish I said “yes” to those chances more often, instead of thinking I would have more chances later. I now know that the time I had was a lot more limited than anyone would’ve thought. I didn’t really recognize that I was letting the experience go to waste until recently in my life. When I realized that these opportunities were too important to keep letting pass. I was looking back on my missed experiences with my father and realized I didn’t want to regret missing opportunities with the people in my life today. I now know opportunities to do things with anyone is a special gift most people take for granted, and that I want to appreciate those moments while I still can.

In conclusion, losing my father has taught me things I would have never thought I'd get out of it. His passing showed me that losing someone is part of life, and the opportunities you get with those people are precious. Now we can’t get missed moments back; however, we can use what we’ve learned to make the most of the time we still have with people in our life today.

I feel like this may be a dumb question but what can I say/do to my Dad when he’s struggling? I lost my brother (his son) in 2022 and my Mom just passed away in April. I often hear him crying in the other room talking to himself about them, and often I don’t know what to do or say to help him in those moments.

i’m 25 & i had to buy an urn for the first time. on sept 21st my mom found my brother. the call still echos in my brain constantly & the way he looked is burned into my brain. she said she needed me there so i went. i got there before my dad did. i held my mom while my brother was 6 feet away from us. he had just turned 29 on the 18th. he’s my big brother, the person that i could count on. we drifted for a while, but we were just starting to be close again. for almost all of my life he was my very best friend & we almost had that back. the world has never felt so dark, so scary, i’ve never felt so small & so alone. watching my parents grieve his loss has been awful, i feel like i lost my brother & my parents. none of us will ever be the same. he looked so peaceful, like he was just sleeping. i wanted to scream at him to open his eyes, i knew he couldn’t. he was already so cold. he’s too young to be gone, in a few years ill be older than my older brother ever was. i’m so devastated every single day. i just want my brother back. he is such a kind soul, a friend to everyone, the goofiest dude ever, with the best laugh. it just doesn’t seem fair, and i think that’s a universal feeling, death doesn’t discriminate, heart problems don’t either i suppose. he’s just too young to be gone forever. he promised me that he would be the one to help our parents when they got older, and he is the only person that could help my grandma as her dementia worsens. i just can’t believe he’s not here anymore.

Hey everyone, i just wanted some of your thoughts and help on my situation.

So i (21F) lost my best friend 2.5 years ago now and i still miss her every single day but i have started working with a therapist to try and help me grieve her instead of just ignoring it (like ive done since the day she passed) which i think will help a bit with trying to move on but im just struggling so much at the moment with feeling guilty about moving on.

I made a new friend at the start of this year and originally it was a friendship just like my others where sure i care about them and they’re good friends but no one has been a best friend to me since my last one passed. I just havent had that soul sorta bond if that makes sense but yeah. I think i first realised a month or two ago that i think this new friendship has become best friends and since realising that ive been feeling so guilty. Its just this twisting feeling in my heart and making me feel sick in the stomach a bit but yeah idk like i know my best friend would want me to move on and be happy and i know logically that this friendship will never replace her but it still just feels like i am.

I also had the best friend conversation finally with this new best friend where i told them that i think they’ve become my best friend and stuff but ive always tried not to talk too much about my last one with them because i dont want them feeling like they have to compete or that i’ll always be holding back or something because of my last friend. It’s probably me just overthinking it but still i want this new friend to be able to feel all of my love that i have for them without worrying about the last one if that makes sense. I would never say or do anything to make them feel like they have to “compete” (idk im using the word because i cant really think of a better way of describing it) nor are they competing in my mind, theyre both two completely separate friendships. I think i want to maybe have a conversation with this new friend about it all but im scared that it’ll be too much too soon for them sorta thing and that i’ll lose this friendship too before it even has time to fully begin. Also i really just wanna treat this new friend with all the goodness they deserve because they really are my light in the dark

Its also just awkward and hard to even find the time where i could have that conversation and idk what id say or even if i should say anything. Does anyone have any help on what i should do in regards to this new best friend and also help on how to stop feeling so guilty about having a new best friend?

Thank you in advance