09/10/2026
Today is the 13th anniversary of my mom’s death. I don’t usually get personal here on Instagram, so apologies for the break in happy wedding content. In her memory, I wanted to share a beautiful Iron Gate wedding alongside some thoughts I’ve had recently about grief.
It’s been 13 years since my mom passed and 7 months since my dad left this world. Even now, I still have moments when the grief hits hard. It’s like I am continually reaching out to touch someone who can never touch me back. Like missing a step, over and over again, forever. I never know when these painful moments will come; I know they will inevitably show up, often at really inconvenient times.
On the one hand, these moments of grief cut deep; on the other, I can’t help but think, “How lucky am I to have loved someone so much that I feel this much pain now that they are gone?” In a weird way, grief is how I communicate with them. It’s the way that my parents are still in my life.
Losing my mom when I was 24 and my dad at 37 forever changed me as a person on a molecular level. It has to, right? The person who felt like home; gone. The person who I went to dinner with every week; gone. The person I called when I needed someone to ground me to this earth; gone. After deep loss, you reorient yourself. I used to see this process as pure survival, and it honestly is. You have to learn how to exist in a world without a pillar that used to hold you up. Now I look at this reorientation as a way that my parents left their last mark on this world by changing me into a more empathetic, understanding, and compassionate person through the experience of losing them.
For anyone going through grief, my best advice is to give yourself grace. There’s no timeline for processing loss. The pain can come out in weird ways. Try to sit in it. Find others who have experienced your kind of grief. Friends and family will show support in the ways they know best, but nothing compares to sitting with people who have been through what you have been through. They will provide a kind of relief that no one else can. Find a support group. Find a grief instagram page. You’re not alone even when it feels like you are ❤️
