Everybody moved on. I stayed there, dust collected on my pinned up hair.

@lilyflxwers/hold this - fortesa latifi/@trxuma-system/the good witch - maisie peters/@heavensghost/@archivedsmile/unknown/@lilyflxwers/@therezeegoes/right where you left me - taylor swift

Btw, if you have not had tragedy dropped on you before, grief does fuck you up in unexpected and physical ways. If you can’t sleep or sleep more than expected or have more or reduced appetite, or energy goes weird— your brain just had a bunch of emotions dropped on it and sometimes it reacts by hitting every button in your brain. It will pass. Just try to not get too frustrated with yourself.

It’s also fine if you feel normal. Grief literally hits everybody differently, and some people are made to be able to to keep the farm going the day after a death, and some of us turn into sleepless gargoyles and get really into trying to help, and some of us are just unspeakably sad. Grief is weird. Be kind to yourself.

Something else I want to say is that grief is cyclical. It is very common to go "why am I just a wreck today/this week" and then you check the calandar and see that something awful happened at this time last year. Or a couple years ago. Or a decade ago (my decembers are a wash every year).

So if you find yourself having memory issues or unaccountably grumpy or anxious for no reason or however it hits you, be gentle with yourself.

It's also cyclical in that you can cycle back and forth between feelings. Angry, then sad, then calm, then angry, again. You may find yourself saying "I thought I was past being angry!" No. Your brain processed all it could before it ran into another layer of something else to deal with, and once it deals with that, it moves to a third, and then maybe back to the first. So it's very much a process of excavating your emotions, and you will run into the same sorts of layers all the way down. It's okay. It means you are processing things.

Also, specific grief counseling is really helpful and free or sliding scale support is often available. Even if you don't normally do therapy, or especially then, look into it. I signed up before my mom was even gone because we knew it would happen soon. Really good choice. It helped a lot. There are also often grief support groups you can attend, and many meet online.

Don't be frustrated or upset by what you are feeling. Whatever it is? It's natural. Be gentle with yourself.

Jihyun Yun, from Some Are Always Hungry; “Reversal”

In case you are full of doubts while stumbling upon this post: You are more than your bad days. You are more than your sadness. You are more than these bad thoughts telling you that you have no purpose. You are loved. You are important. You are irreplaceable. You are so damn worthy. Nothing and no one can ever take that away from you.

Alex Dimitrov, from "Love"

i can't breathe when i think about it too much.

— Anna Akhmatova, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

—Marya Hornbacher, Waiting

— Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet  

on grief

1. the chronology of water, lidia yuknavitch

2. grief, ewa szymanska

3. jamie anderson

4. inconsolable grief, ivan kramskoi

5. taking care, callista buchen

6. at eternity’s gate, vincent van gogh

7. the chronology of water, lidia yuknavitch

8. on earth we’re briefly gorgeous, ocean vuong

"I sit with my grief. I mother it. I hold its small, hot hand. I don’t say, shhh. I don’t say, it is okay. I wait until it is done having feelings. Then we stand and we go wash the dishes. We crack open bedroom doors, step over the creaks, and kiss the children. We are sore from this grief, like we’ve returned from a run, like we are training for a marathon. I’m with you all the way, says my grief, whispering, and then we splash our face with water and stretch, one big shadow and one small."

— Callista Buchen, Taking Care

— Kate Jacobs