The Power of Grief
The other day, I crossed paths with another lovely soul—one of those brief but poignant encounters that stays with you.
A mutual friend had shared with them what I do for work, and within moments, they opened up to me, tears in their eyes. They had just helped their beloved cat transition out of pain. As they spoke, something deeper surfaced: they admitted that one of the most unexpected parts of this loss was how it unearthed grief from past pet losses—ones they hadn’t even realized were still quietly alive within them.
We were in a public space, and emotions were already running high. I didn’t want to press too deeply, but I did take a moment to validate the insight they’d had. Because they weren’t wrong—grief does that. It doesn’t stick to the current storyline. It brings with it the whole thread.
You see, grief is like an old monk with wild eyes and weathered hands. It doesn’t knock politely. It shows up unannounced, takes a seat in the quiet corners of your life, and begins its teachings—whether you feel ready or not.
Grief is a shape-shifter. A storm, a silence, a memory, a weight, a mirror. Sometimes it whispers. Other times, it hollers. One of its most powerful roles is that of the merciless teacher in disguise—the kind that doesn’t coddle or give you the answers, but instead hands you a mirror and waits for you to look.
It takes you places within yourself you never intended to go. It makes you question everything—your capacity for love, your sense of identity, your memory, your meaning. And just like the monks we hear about in temples and mountain retreats, grief will test you. The more you resist, the harder the lesson becomes.
But here’s the thing: grief carries wisdom. It doesn’t come to punish. It comes to reveal. It knows we humans like to do things our own way—and often, that means taking the long road home. Grief will walk beside us on that road, patiently, until we’re ready to stop resisting and start listening to what’s asking to be healed.
And when that moment of surrender comes, something softens. We stop trying to “get over” it, and we begin to move through it. We make space for it. And in doing so, we begin to realize that grief isn’t here to break us—it’s here to make room.
Room for the parts of us that were never fully seen, felt, or acknowledged before.
Grief doesn’t just show us what we’ve lost. It shows us what’s been quietly waiting to be loved back into wholeness.
