Some days, it feels like I’m walking through life under a thick, gray blanket of sadness—a soft but heavy weight pressing against my chest, dulling even the brightest colors around me. It’s not always dramatic. Often, it’s quiet. Lingering. Familiar. Like a rain cloud that’s made a home above my head, following me even into the sun.
I imagine I look a bit like Eeyore—plodding along, head low, grateful but subdued, aware of the goodness around me but unable to fully soak it in. I know the sun is shining. I see the joy in others. I feel the warmth of love and friendship. But it doesn’t always break through the fog. And that’s the strange thing about complicated grief—it doesn’t block everything out, it just overlays it. Like a sheer veil that distorts but doesn’t entirely erase.
There’s anger sometimes. Not always loud or flaring—but there. Simmering. Not necessarily directed at anyone, but at the loss, the unfairness, the brutal, sudden stillness where laughter used to live. At the dreams that were never realized, the birthdays that won’t come, the milestones left unreached. Anger and sadness twist together like vines, and I’ve had to learn how to walk forward even with them clinging to me.
And yet, alongside them—hand in hand—there’s faith.
It’s not the kind of faith that feels victorious or loud or wrapped in answers. It’s the kind that trembles but refuses to let go. A faith that doesn’t pretend the cloud isn’t real, but believes—on the deepest level—that the cloud will not have the final word. That somehow, some way, light will pierce through, even if only for a moment.
So I keep walking. Not with the spring in my step I once had. Not with the clarity I once knew. But with a determination to honor what I’ve lost and to keep my heart open to whatever joy still remains—or may one day return. I laugh sometimes. I cry often. I long for peace. I cling to hope.
Grief is not linear. It doesn’t obey our schedules or our prayers. It’s complicated, messy, sacred even. But I’ve found that walking with it—honestly, openly, faithfully—is still walking forward. And maybe, just maybe, that’s enough for today.