Memorial Day weekend carries a particular weight for those who know what it actually costs. For most Americans, it arrives as a long weekend. The first real exhale of summer, marked by backyard grills, parade routes, and a Monday alarm that mercifully stays off. But beneath the char lines on the burgers and the brass of the marching bands is a grief that doesn’t take the weekend off. For the families of the fallen, there is no three-day reprieve from the absence at the table.

As a military spouse, a grief advocate, and Editor-in-Chief of two publications that support both communities, I often carry those two identities in opposite hands, rarely juggling them, more often setting one down to tend to the other. But this Memorial Day weekend, I found myself sitting squarely at their intersection, inside a ballroom filled with hundreds of people who needed no explanation for why both belong in the same room. And for once, I wasn’t choosing which hat to wear. I was wearing both, and so was everyone around me.

The 32nd Annual National Military Survivor Seminar and Good Grief Camp, hosted by TAPS — Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors — is exactly the kind of gathering that stops you mid-step. As I entered, the Army Band Downrange was playing “You’re Welcome” from Moana, and children were zooming between banquet tables in their group themes draped with capes, silly hats, and filling the air with a particular kind of electricity that doesn’t immediately read as grief— It was joy. Loud, unabashed, intentional joy. This I learned, was the whole point.

A Room Dressed in Purpose

It didn’t take long to understand the language of the room.

The colored t-shirts worn by adults and kids weren’t a coincidence, they were a map. Purple shirts belonged to Legacy Mentors: once-young campers who attended Good Grief Camp during their own seasons of loss, now returning to guide the next generation through theirs. Blue and White shirts marked active duty and veteran mentors and group leaders, volunteers who gave up their long weekend to remind military kids that they are, in every way, America’s young people. Red shirts were for the survivors themselves — the living, breathing reason this weekend exists.

Together, these three groups form the architecture of the entire program: a peer mentorship model built on the radical premise that the best experts in grief are the people living it. Lisa Zucker, TAPS Senior Director for the Institute for Hope and Healing, articulated more about their philosophy clearly when we spoke. “Training and structure matter”, she said, “but from there, the most powerful experts are the grievers themselves.” The goal of the weekend isn’t to pathologize grief. It’s simply to make space for it, to let it exist without being rushed, fixed, or explained away. And the most important era of Grief? Making Meaning, and this weekend is oozing with purpose.

How a Table Became a Movement

TAPS founder Bonnie Carroll traced it all back to something simple: a meal.

In 1992, an Army plane crash took the lives of eight soldiers. Carroll was among the surviving spouses left in the wake — along with seven other families — all of them quietly wondering, now what? People didn’t know what to say. But they knew everyone had to eat. So they sat together, around a table, and shared both food and the particular ache of their new reality.

That table is now thousands of families wide.

Thirty-two years later, what began in commiseration has grown into an organization offering more than 1,300 events in 2025 alone. Standing before the ballroom, Carroll offered the words that seemed to hold the entire weekend together: “We are the living legacies.” The deaths, she reminded everyone, may be what brought them all into the same room. But it is how they live together that keeps the relationships flourishing.

She also shared a touching story from the funeral procession of President John F. Kennedy, recalling how young Caroline Kennedy rolled down her window and reached out to a Secret Service agent, who held her hand for the entire procession. She reminded the audience that this is exactly what the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS) does — you just have to begin by rolling down the window.

Two Girls, One Grief, Every Variation

Grief, of course, is not monolithic. That truth showed up most clearly in a pair of twins.

Molly and Lilian Blais are attending Good Grief Camp for the fourth year, here to honor their father, Master Sergeant Scott Blais. Seated beside each other, they displayed in real-time that every grief journey is unique. Molly reserved, watchful, absorbing the room in her own deliberate way; Lilian open and effusive, already counting down to next year before this one has ended.

When I asked Lilian what she loved most about the weekend, she didn’t hesitate. It was being surrounded by kids who truly understood. “It feels like a moment when I actually have someone to talk to,” she shared.

What she expressed next was heartbreaking. At school and at home, she often feels like she doesn’t have anyone she can turn to who truly understands her loss. Yet even at such a young age, Lilian is already learning how to advocate for herself and others. Just days earlier, she had visited Capitol Hill on Thursday, and she lit up talking about the experience. “It was really cool,” she said with a smile.

What makes this weekend so meaningful isn’t just the activities or events — it’s the connection. Not well-meaning teachers or peers who may not fully know how to hold the weight of what she’s been through, but children who carry the same specific shape of loss.

And the hardest part of the weekend? Saying goodbye.

When I asked about her dad, her face changed in that particular way that happens when love and grief arrive together. He was silly, she said. Always making jokes. “There was never a moment when I was sad around my dad.” And so she has found a way to honor him by leaning into laughter — to spend the weekend in the spirit of the man he was.

The Mentors Who Continue to Show up

Lilian’s group mentor, Adison Horne, knows exactly what it felt like to be her.

Horne began attending Good Grief Camp in eighth grade, after losing his brother, Sergeant Trey Horne of the Army National Guard. He remembers the pull of DC, the relief of finally being around kids who understood, the bond with his favorite mentor, Thelonious, who met him in his love of comics and marvel superheroes. Now he continues to come back — not just as a mentor, but as a living proof of concept.

“I think I became a mentor for others before I officially became a mentor,” he told me. Returning each year feels like coming home to family, and he shared how disappointed he was to learn that one of the legacy mentors he grew up alongside wasn’t able to attend this year.

When asked what most people get wrong about grief, his answer landed without hesitation: “That it’s something to be sorry about. I’d rather celebrate the life that was lived. The death was only .01% of their life. Let’s talk about the way they lived.”

Adison laughs when talking about Trey, who taught him to box. He Loved wrestling. Would absolutely walk up right now, Horne says with a grin, and give him a noogie — and tell his little brother he’s proud.

The Grief That Follows Service

Not every form of grief in that ballroom shared the same origin.

David Van Roeyen came to TAPS as a combat veteran navigating a different, often unacknowledged kind of loss: the grief that arrives when service ends, when identity and purpose seem to detach alongside the uniform. But layered within that transition was another kind of sorrow too, the grief of deployments marked by fallen peers, brothers and sisters in arms whose absences never fully leave you. The military teaches service members how to keep moving forward, even while carrying loss after loss, often without ever being given the space to process it.

He describes what we know as disenfranchised grief, mourning that is not always recognized because there is no single, easily identifiable loss to point to. Instead, it accumulates quietly over years: the end of a career, the loss of structure and belonging, the memories of those who never came home, and the invisible weight of surviving when others did not.

Years of mentoring at Good Grief Camp have given him language for what he has been carrying. Compounded grief, he now sees, has the capacity to become compounded growth, but only if you are willing to sit with it, face it, and let it teach you something.

At first, he questioned the very idea of Good Grief Camp. He reflects on his initial reaction to the concept, “What? How can grief be good?” he shares. But after years of volunteering, his perspective shifted. “Nothing anyone says is completely new,” he reflected, “but hearing it said in a new way, from a new perspective, can only equate to growth. Compounded grief will turn into compounded growth.”

His metaphor for grief is one I will carry with me: “grief”, he says, “is like gravity. You can jump, but you will always come back down. It is inevitable. It exists because we love. You cannot outrun it — only learn how to land.”

Filling the Gaps

Major Mandy Carnes, a Marine Reserve officer who has volunteered with TAPS since 2012, came to this work through a reckoning she didn’t anticipate.

When a colleague died by suicide while she was at Officer Candidate School, she was confronted with something she’d never fully examined: how normal death can start to feel in the military, and how dangerous that normalization becomes when it hardens into isolation. “You don’t realize how normal death gets,” she said quietly. “And we can either isolate ourselves and have those dark thoughts, or we can cope together, in a positive way.”

Her read on the landscape is measured and direct: the military does a meaningful job of honoring its fallen. TAPS fills the space that comes after. And she’s clear that the mentors don’t show up just to give— they receive just as much as the children they serve.

Showing Up

My time at TAPS concluded with Jessica Arendt, a surviving spouse who lost her husband in 2019.

For a while, COVID was, as she put it, “a convenient excuse” to avoid engaging with her grief in the community. It wasn’t until some gentle encouragement from the TAPS helpline nudged her toward attending events that things began to shift. Now, she can’t imagine missing the in person events. Her children already talk about becoming Legacy Mentors someday.

As we spoke, her eyes filled— and mine did too. We laughed about it, the way you do when you’re in a room where that kind of thing is entirely expected and entirely fine. She told me what doesn’t hurt about this weekend: knowing her kids are having the time of their lives, knowing she’s cared for, knowing no one is going to look at her sideways for bringing up her husband’s name.

And the food. Three meals a day, dessert included. That we joked, is one sweet way to finish.

This is what Memorial Day looks like when you mean it — not as a holiday, but as a promise. A promise that the people who didn’t come home are still being spoken about, still being loved, still seated at the table. The same table that Bonnie Carroll built all those years ago, that gets longer, every year.

Photo Credits: Ashley Cross and David & Barb Hiltz from TAPS

TAPS (Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors) provides compassionate care to all those grieving the death of a military loved one. To learn more or find support, visit taps.org.

Get Griefy Magazine is dedicated to normalizing grief through honest, human storytelling. Because grief isn’t the end of the conversation — it’s where the most important ones begin.

MILSPO Social Co. Magazine is dedicated to the empowered Female Military Spouses, telling stories that prove that our community is so much more than Dependents.

From the time we are girls, the timeline is already drafted for us. Be kind, but not too loud. Be ambitious, but not intimidating. Find love. Build a home. Have the baby before the clock runs out. Keep the body tight. Keep the marriage healthy. Keep everyone else okay.

We are taught to spin gracefully, beautifully, on an axis built from expectation.

I was on track once, in a relationship that was toxic but could have “checked the boxes.” It wasn’t fine, not to anyone. It was tumultuous, exhausting, sometimes terrifying. But I was insecure, and I didn’t yet know my worth. At the time, I thought it might be all I was ever going to get. There could have been a ring. There probably would have been children. And we all would have been miserable.

I chose me instead. I walked away. I rebuilt. I found my voice. I found my confidence. I found myself. And that self-discovery led me to him. The person who made possibility feel expansive instead of performative. With him, love was real. It was not perfect but it felt like a joy I had never known.

And then grief hit.

He died of an overdose. The future we were building evaporated. And suddenly, everything I thought I understood about timelines, love, and expectation was gone. Again.

Widowhood as a woman is not simply the absence of a person. It is the unraveling of a shared identity. You were a partner. A “we.” You were part of a future with plans, with imagined milestones. Even the mundane held meaning because it was shared.

When that person dies, the world does not continue spinning on the same axis.

Everything in you (and often everyone around you) will whisper the same message: power through. Get back to normal. Be strong. You’ve always been strong.

But here is the truth no one prepares you for:

Your normal is gone.
And it is not coming back.

There is a strange violence in trying to force yourself back into a life that no longer fits. You cannot squeeze yourself into the shape you were before. The woman you were existed in the context of a shared life. But that context has changed.

And so have you.

Grief changes your nervous system. It changes your priorities. It changes your tolerance for nonsense. It changes your body. It changes your friendships. It changes the way you look at couples in grocery stores and pregnant women in waiting rooms. It changes how you think about time.

It changes your world’s axis completely.

The most radical thing you can do as a grieving woman is not to “bounce back.” It is to pause. To sit in the wreckage long enough to ask yourself:

Who am I now?
Not who I was before.
Not who everyone else needs me to be.
Not who fits neatly into society’s timeline.
But who I am? In this body, in this pain, in this season.

Widowhood strips away illusion. It exposes what was chosen and what was inherited. It forces you to confront the expectations you were carrying simply because you were told to. Marriage by a certain age. Motherhood by a certain year. Career stability by a certain milestone.

And when the future you planned evaporates you realize something terrifying and powerful: You get to decide.

You get to choose the degree of your new axis.
How fast you spin.
What you carry forward.
What no longer serves you.
You get to question whether the timeline was ever truly yours.

This doesn’t mean grief becomes easier. It doesn’t mean you stop missing the life you had, the life you envisioned, or the person who made it meaningful. There will always be a piece missing, a phantom limb of love that aches in quiet moments.

But you are not solely made up of what you have lost. You have agency.

I had to look inward and reflect: what patterns brought me here? What choices kept leading me down paths I didn’t want? What failures could I own, and which were not mine to bear? Owning those truths, the messy and uncomfortable ones was part of reclaiming my life.

Finding yourself again is not about replacing what was. It is about integrating it. It is about honoring who you were with them while allowing space for who you are becoming without them. And that act of becoming may surprise you.

You may find your voice is stronger.
You may find your boundaries are sharper.
You may find you care less about pleasing and more about peace.
You may find that survival cracked you open in ways you never would have chosen but that you also would not undo.

Womanhood has always required resilience.
Widowhood demands reinvention.
And reinvention is not betrayal.
It is not disloyal to build a life that looks different than the one you planned. It is not disrespectful to laugh again, to love again, to travel alone, to move cities, to change careers, to choose motherhood in a different way or not at all.
It is not selfish to rebuild.
It is survival.

Your world may never spin the way it once did. But you get to decide how it spins now.

The woman rebuilding her life does not erase the woman who shattered, she carries her forward with tenderness and intention. There is a quiet authority in that: in knowing you have been broken, and choosing in your own time, on your own terms, with reflection, with grief, with anger and joy intertwined to shape what comes next.

Timelines are bullshit. Expectations are bullshit.

The playbook we were handed as little girls? Trash.

I have walked through trauma, abuse, grief, love, and loss, and I will not shrink for anyone. I will live messy, imperfect, real, and on the axis that is mine. My grief, my choices, my life, my joy, they belong to me, and I will honor them fully. So should you.

Journal Prompts: Owning Your Axis

1. Who am I now, without the timelines and expectations I’ve been handed?
   

2. Which parts of my past relationships or life choices do I need to honor and which do I need to release?
   

3. What do I want my life to look like if no one else’s approval matters?
   

4. Where do I feel anger, grief, or resistance to societal milestones?
   

5. What does it mean to rebuild myself intentionally, on my own terms?

Shawn Dinneen is the founder of HeartStrings Journals and a contributing writer for Get Griefy Magazine. After losing her fiancé, John, to an overdose in 2022, Shawn has dedicated her work to creating safe spaces for conversations around grief, resilience, and mental health. Through writing, workshops, and prompted journals, she helps others navigate loss and find healing in authentic, personal ways.

HeartStringsJournals.com

Instagram: @Heart_StringsJournals

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Growing up, I always equated graduation day with joy — pure, uncomplicated celebration. A day for honoring a milestone that also culminates years of work, effort, and memories. As a teacher, it was one of my favorite duties to attend. I loved wearing my black gown, my baby blue and yellow velvet and silk master’s cape, and the Harry Potter sleeves that — when you have no pockets — serve as the world’s most academic clutch bag. Keys, lip gloss, phone: all accounted for.

But the first time I attended graduation after my mother died, everything shifted.

I looked out at the stadium — hundreds, if not thousands, of people packed in with balloons, flowers, and a buzz of collective pride — and I saw something I had never noticed before. I worked at a school with a large population of immigrant families, and for many, this was the first person in their family to graduate high school, the first to prepare to attend college. I had always seen the joy. That day, I saw the grief woven inside it.

The grief of families separated across borders, of missing members who couldn’t be there. The grief of parents carrying unrealized dreams, watching them finally bloom in their children in real time. I saw the deer-in-headlights look of students for whom high school had been a relentless uphill climb — and this day felt less like a finish line and more like being released into the wild, unsure of which way to run.

I saw the students who had shown up in September with rejection after rejection from the colleges they’d dreamed of, quietly reconciling themselves to a community college plan. Ready to fly, forced to stay put — at least for now.

And then I wondered: how many students were sitting in those seats without a single person there for them? Parents who had to work, no matter what. Parents struggling with addiction, maybe passed out at home on the couch. Students celebrating the biggest day of their young lives, completely alone in a crowd of thousands.

The reality is this: grief exists even on the most momentous and joyful days.

My friend and colleague Nina Rodriguez of The Grief and Light Podcast has a name for this — she calls it Felicitrieza: the experience of grief and happiness coexisting, neither canceling the other out. It is not one or the other. It is both, at the same time, held in the same body, on the same folding chair, under the same May sun.

This is the entire premise behind my program, Grief U for EDU. My work isn’t about turning teachers into therapists. It’s about something far more achievable and far more powerful: developing what I call the sixth sense of grief — the awareness to notice what students are carrying, even when they’re smiling in a cap and gown.

Here’s the thing: you don’t even have to fix it. The act of seeing is enough. When we acknowledge what students carry, when we don’t look away, something shifts in the culture of a school. And that culture — the one built on genuine human awareness — is the same culture that shows up in attendance rates, performance data, and every other metric that the people in charge care about. Grief literacy isn’t soft work. It’s foundational work.

So, hats off to the Class of 2026. We are proud of you, and we see what it took to get here.

If you’re lacking the support you need in this season — if you’re missing someone important, if you’re not sure what comes next, if the celebration feels heavier than it looks — we see you. You are not invisible in your joy, and you are not invisible in your grief.

Grief U for EDU is a professional development workshop and resource hub for secondary educators, grounded in the belief that grief support does not have to be clinical to be effective. Created by Kera Sanchez, Editor-in-Chief of Get Griefy Magazine, the program draws on her 15 years of experience in education as a bilingual secondary educator, Spanish teacher, and Dean of Students.

To learn more, visit griefuforedu.com and follow along on Instagram and LinkedIn. Please share with your educator friends as we work to ensure every school has the resources and training needed to become grief-informed.

What’s on YOUR Mother’s Day heart, Neighbor?

As Mother’s Day approaches, the world fills with messages of celebration—gratitude, flowers, brunch reservations, and reflections on what it means to be celebrated as a mother and to be loved by a mother.

For many… that lands beautifully.
For many others… it doesn’t.

For some, this day brings an unmistakable sense that something is problematic, missing, or downright messed up.

Two days after I gave birth to my firstborn, Gavin, I received a Mother’s Day card, and I wept. What kind of mother has no child? It was a question that stayed with me for years.

Several days later, as we were leaving the funeral for my son, my good friend told me what a great mom I was.

Neighbor, I literally fell to the floor, as that same question left my mind and echoed out in an audible wail of a broken mother’s heart. What kind of mother has no child?!?

It took me years to recognize that, even though I didn’t have the opportunity to do the traditional “Mom” things, I was his mother in so many ways—ways that were different than what we expect or envision about Motherhood.

I did feed and nurture him. I sang to him and rocked him to sleep. I told him how much I adored him. It’s simply that all of those things took place with him inside of me, where they were invisible to the eye and mind that hadn’t yet broadened their lens of awareness.

In the years since, I’ve reflected on that moment—and the thousands of stories I’ve borne witness to—and I see more and more how much we miss when we try to define these experiences too narrowly.

While we hear about some of those experiences through growing grief awareness platforms and programs, they most frequently appear in two forms:
Missing My Mom. Subscript: My mother died.
Moms Missing Their Moppets. Subscript: My child was born and my child died.

Countless stories are rarely talked about as part of the same, shared experience.

If you, Neighbor, are feeling sad, mad, shamed, depressed, deprived, less than special—or [insert your whatever]—please know you are not alone.

There are many paths that lead to this feeling… and they deserve to be named.

For Those With A Mother’s Heart

You, who have dreamt of being a mom, but those dreams haven’t materialized as you expected…

Maybe you have experienced the death of a child who entered this world alive…
maybe you experienced infertility… stillbirth… miscarriage… ectopic pregnancy…
maybe you are estranged from your children…
maybe you are feeling lost in an empty nest…
maybe you are in what many label a “non-traditional” relationship or role and bringing children into the world feels almost impossible…

Maybe you are a single father, playing both Mom and Dad roles, and your children are asking tough questions…

[insert your experience…]

For Those Missing Their Mother or Mother Figure

You, who are navigating this day without your mom…

Maybe her death is recent or has stretched across years…
maybe the missing is due to emotional or physical distance…
maybe there is a physical or mental illness that triggers dread or fear…
maybe you’re parenting your own children and grieving the absence of her guidance in both your lives…
maybe you were raised in an adoptive or foster home—whether you felt loved, or not—and are longing to know your biological bloodlines.
maybe you’re longing for even the possibility of what you wish that relationship could have been.

[insert your experience…]

And For These Mothers Whose Struggles Are Not Always Seen

You, who is beating your not-a-super-hero-mom-self up because you’re feeling fatigued, overworked and underappreciated…
You, who feels like a “bad” mom because you’re frustrated or angry at your children for not finishing their chores, today of all days…
You, who is feeling ungrateful because you don’t know what to do with yet another Special Mom Mug or all you really want for Mother’s Day is a day to yourself…
You, the single-parent mom, who feels like she hasn’t done enough because there simply isn’t enough of You to go around…
You, the male mom-figures, who nurture the souls and bodies of your children every day, often without recognition for your contributions…
You, the terminally ill mom who fears she won’t live long enough to witness and celebrate your child’s next success… the mom who is forced to worry about who will mother your child(ren) when you die…
You, the sick mom who, no matter how much you’d like to get out of bed and do something with your child(ren), you don’t have the energy…
You, the mother who, for whatever reason, has a difficult relationship with your child(ren) and longs for easier associations with them…
You, the mom who is feeling guilty for working too much and not spending as much time as you’d like with your dear one(s)…

[insert your experience…]

I don’t see any one of these as labels or as being better or worse than the others.
I see people. Period.

And one of the greatest lessons I’ve learned and shared throughout my years working with loss, grief, healing—and ultimately human potential—is a truth I hope people remember:

There is no universal loss hierarchy, Neighbor.

The only loss hierarchy is the one we claim for ourselves.

There are countless ways that Mother’s Day can touch the heart—
some filled with joy, some filled with sorrow, and many holding both at the very same time.

And perhaps… that is the shared experience.

Not that our stories are the same—
but that we each house both hardship and happiness alongside one another, and that something within them wants to be seen, acknowledged, and honored.

So, Neighbor…
whatever is on your Mother’s Day heart this year—

I see every single one of you.
I honor you. And I celebrate and salute you.

Annah Elizabeth is a Healing Specialist and creator of The Five Facets® Philosophy on Healing, a pioneering framework that helps people live their best lives—even in the face of adversity. A TEDx and keynote speaker, Life & Spiritual Coach, energy medicine practitioner and teacher, international spiritual medium, and published author, Annah blends science and soul to illuminate the many ways we can heal, lead ourselves and others, relate, evolve, and make meaning in the midst of both struggle and success.

AnnahElizabeth.com

Camila Crews, founder of Sorry For Your Loss (Cards), a community fostering honest conversations about grief through culturally fluent support cards. Shop her Greeting Cards- https://www.sorryforyourlosscards.com/cards

Mentioned by not able to attend, Angie Hanson of Butterflies and Halos, shop her casserole card here: https://butterfliesandhalos.com/products/comfort-card-funny-sympathy-empathy-card-grief-card-sympathy-card-compassion-card-friendship-card?_pos=2&_psq=cas&_ss=e&_v=1.0

Together, they explore what helps, what harms, and how even small gestures—like a simple, sincere note—can make a meaningful difference when words are hard to find.

“I know how you feel.”

It’s something most of us have said at some point, often with the best of intentions. It usually comes from a place of wanting to comfort, to connect, to let someone know they’re not alone.

“I know how you feel. My grandmother died.”
“I know how you feel. I watched my friend lose their dad.”
“I know how you feel. I’ve been through loss too.”

And in those moments, we’re trying to build a bridge. But grief has taught me something different. No… you don’t. And even more surprisingly sometimes, neither do I.

When my mom died, my world shifted in a way I couldn’t fully put into words. It was disorienting, heavy, all-consuming. Over time, I learned how to carry it. Not move on but move with it. I began to understand my grief; how it showed up, how it softened, how it surprised me.

So when my dad died six years later, I thought it would be easy because at least I knew what to expect. I told myself things like:

“You’ve done this before.”
“You know exactly how this goes.”
“You know exactly how you will feel.”

But I was wrong. Completely wrong. Because this grief didn’t feel the same.

It wasn’t just the loss. It was the relationship. The role he played in my life. The timing. The version of me that existed when he died versus who I was when my mom died. The layers were different and all the emotions moved differently too. The weight landed in new places.

Even the patterns of grief -the waves, the triggers, the quiet moments - felt unfamiliar.

And that realization shifted something in me.

Grief is not transferable, nor is it comparable. And it is certainly not something we can neatly understand through someone else’s experience or even our own past ones. So when we say, “I know how you feel,” what we may actually be doing (without meaning to) is placing our story onto someone else’s. We’re trying to make their pain fit into something recognizable, something we’ve already processed. But grief doesn’t work like that.

What I have learned instead is the power of saying less and holding more.

Instead of: “I know how you feel.” Maybe it’s: “I can’t fully know how this feels for you, but I’m here.” Or: “I remember what grief felt like for me, but I know this is your own experience.”

Or even just: “This really sucks. I’m so sorry.”

Because the truth is, grief doesn’t need to be matched to be validated - it just needs space.

Space to be messy, space to be different, and space to change… again and again.

If there’s anything my own losses have taught me, it’s this:

Even when grief feels familiar, it is always, somehow, entirely new.

And maybe the most compassionate thing we can offer each other isn’t understanding …but simply showing up, exactly as we are.

Sasha Howell is a writer, advocate, and speaker who has dedicated her life to helping others navigate the complexities of grief. After experiencing profound personal loss, including the suicide of her father and the passing of both her parents, Sasha has been open about her journey through heartbreak, healing, and growth. Her work explores how grief and joy can coexist, the ways anxiety intertwines with loss, and the unique challenges of suicide bereavement. She is a co-author of She Grieves and author of Riding the Waves: A Guide to Grieving, a guide and journal series created to support others in processing the many layers of grief. Sasha has also authored a children’s book, Riding the Waves: A Story of Friendship and Feelings, helps young readers understand and talk about big emotions. Through her writing, speaking, and community involvement, Sasha’s mission is to validate grief in all its forms while reminding others that even in sorrow, moments of joy and connection are still possible.

@the_grieving_daughter

When I heard the news of the KC-135 tanker that went down in Iraq last week, my stomach dropped. My first thought: That could have been my husband. That could have been my family. My husband was picked up as a pilot for the 121st Air National Guard Wing back in 2020, after years of pursuing a coveted slot that rarely opens up. We now know three guardsmen from this crew perished on March 12th.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, that chapter never unfolded the way we hoped. It wasn’t until 2024 that he returned to service—this time with the Navy.

But that “could have been me” quickly spiraled into something darker: an entire imaginary funeral, my children heartbroken and fatherless, a grief my heart knows intimately. I lost my mom unexpectedly in 2022, and I know all too well that surviving one loss doesn’t exempt you from the next. It’s easy to spiral. The treadmill is always running.

Then my thoughts shifted to the families who are actually living this. The ones who kissed their husbands and wives on the forehead, watched them take off, and waved goodbye—thinking see you soon, not see you in my dreams.

What many people fail to understand is that the men and women who fill these boots do so with an immense sense of pride—pride in their mission, their unit, and the flag on their shoulder and everything it represents. They sacrifice their time, their energy, milestones with family and friends, and the comfort of a rooted life. Frequent moves, long stretches away, nights and weekends and months gone. And if called upon, the ultimate sacrifice.

What makes these losses even harder to carry is the spectacle that follows. The world rushes to find out who was affected, and people gawk—hungry for more details. Curiosity is human. But there’s a line between curiosity and turning someone’s worst moment into public commentary, projecting your own discomfort with grief and the political climate onto the families, spouses, and children left behind.

What Gold Star families need—what they deserve—is simply to feel seen. To know that the person they lost was a gift to this world, and that their life will be honored with legacy and pride, for every way they made things better.

And there’s another layer to this nuanced grief: military spouses everywhere are holding their breath as conflict unfolds. We don’t need commentary from those who couldn’t tell you what PCS stands for, or who ask why we can’t “just fly home” without a leave chit. We know what this life costs. We carry it quietly, every day.

We also carry guilt. If it wasn’t my husband who deployed, someone else’s did. Who took his spot? Were they part of this mission? The questions flood our nervous system. Why is my family safe? Why are we not the ones deployed right now? There’s no answer that satisfies—but it’s nearly impossible to step off that hamster wheel once you’re on it.

Military life is hard enough. The idea that the two loudest responses to tragedy are pity and division—it’s exhausting. And it helps no one.

As a Certified Grief and Resilience Expert who still struggles with finding a healthy balance in grief and loss, I can say with certainty that the best thing we can do is honor these men and women, highlight the good they did in the world, show up for these spouses, and invest your time and resources in organizations that support the families who paid the ultimate price for freedom.

Many of us feel helpless—and in grief, that helplessness is honest. There is no magic pill, no words that will fill the gaping hole these families are now living with. But there are organizations that show up equipped, experienced, and ready to walk alongside them.

If you’re looking for a meaningful way to help, we encourage you to explore and support organizations that walk alongside these families—not just in the immediate aftermath, but in the long road that follows:

• America’s Gold Star Families — americasgoldstarfamilies.org

• Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS) — taps.org

• Travis Manion Foundation — travismanion.org

• Gold Star Teen Adventures — gstadventures.org

• Tunnel to Towers Foundation — todaysveterans.org

• Gold Star Wives of America — goldstarwives.org

These organizations don’t just show up in moments of crisis—they stay. They provide community, resources, and a steady hand when life feels unrecognizable.

Because while we can’t take away this kind of loss, we can make sure no one has to carry it alone.

Kera Sanchez is a Certified Grief and Resilience Expert, trauma-informed secondary educator, and Editor-in-Chief of Get Griefy Magazine and MILSPO Social Co. Magazine. As a military spouse actively engaged in both the grief and military spouse communities, she is dedicated to supporting each distinct space through the power of storytelling.

To learn about her Magazines visit:

• getgriefymagazine.com

• milsposocialco.com

I am the Gretchen Wieners of Grief, I suppose.

I haven’t gotten a haircut since back-to-school time — back when I was still living in Illinois with my safe-space hairstylist who had also lost her mom.

A hairstylist isn’t necessarily a friend, but she’s someone you have to sit with for approximately an hour and fill that hour with conversation, or sit in uncomfortable silence. (And I would honestly rather take a shear to the eye than let that happen.) My previous stylist was so easy to talk to, and it felt genuinely good to know that she saw my grief for what it was — something living, something evolving.

But as many of you know, I recently moved to a new city, about 800 miles from home. The idea of finding a new person to divulge life’s messiest chapters to sounded exhausting. So I just let my hair be unkempt. Dead ends. Stringy. It had gotten out of control, so on an impulse I booked a modestly priced cut — just to feel the place out.

There were literally three opportunities to mention that my mom was dead, and I politely sidestepped every single one.

• “So have your parents come to visit yet?” — “My dad has!”

• “How do your parents feel about you moving away?” — “My dad’s always traveling, so it’s just a new place for him to visit.”

• “Did you have a ton of help at home?” — “Totally had a village.”

Three times. I bobbed, I weaved, I smiled. And afterward I sat with the question that always follows: Why? Why, as the editor-in-chief of a grief magazine — someone whose entire purpose is to normalize this experience — do I still shrink from it in small talk? Why does the word mom catch in my throat when a stranger asks a casual question? Maybe it’s self-protection. Maybe it’s not wanting to watch someone’s face shift into that particular look of pity. Maybe grief, even when it’s your life’s work, still doesn’t always feel like yours to hand to a stranger.

It wasn’t until I mentioned needing a haircut for an upcoming TV appearance that the levy finally broke.

“I run a Grief Magazine — which I know sounds psychotic, maybe dark or weird, to anyone who hasn’t come across it. But it’s totally the opposite. It’s vibrant and full of bold, raw humor and community. Its whole goal is to make sure no one feels alone in how crappy grief can feel.”

From there, the conversation opened up completely. She learned about my grief journey — my traumatic birth, topped with losing my mom while she was on vacation. We talked about anticipatory grief, identity grief, the particular exhaustion of starting over somewhere new. It all came out, easy as that.

My dead ends were chopped off. A new connection was made. All while wearing a cape. Turns out grief and split ends have something in common: you can only ignore them for so long before someone has to help you cut through them.

By Editor-in-Chief, Kera Sanchez

Last week, someone shared the news of a death on social media.

Almost immediately, the comments followed, not about the person who died, not about the life they lived, not even about the grief left behind, but about the word used.

“Dead feels so harsh.”
“Maybe say passed.”
“Couldn’t this have been softer?”

And I found myself wondering: When did honesty about death become the problem?

Let Me Be Clear About Why This Matters to Me

Both of my parents died.

Not passed.Not lost. Not no longer with us.

They died. They are dead.

And saying that doesn’t make me cruel. It makes me honest.

What was cruel was how unprepared I felt when it happened. How little language I had. How few places there were to talk openly about what grief actually feels like when it moves in and refuses to leave.

The Softening That Didn’t Save Me

When my parents died, the softened language didn’t protect me. It didn’t make the pain gentler. It didn’t make the loss easier to carry. It made everything feel more isolating.

Because my reality was sharp and real, while the world around me wanted it wrapped in polite phrasing. People didn’t know what to say, so they avoided saying anything at all. Or they reached for words that felt safer for them, even when they felt hollow to me.

Grief doesn’t need euphemisms. It needs truth, space, and permission.

Why I Write About Grief at All

I write about grief because when I was drowning in it, I couldn’t find anything that felt truly honest or genuinely helpful.

I found plenty of advice about “moving on.”
Plenty of timelines I was apparently failing.
Plenty of silver linings I didn’t ask for.

What I couldn’t find was language that said:
This is brutal. This will change you. And you’re not broken for feeling that.

So I started writing the thing I needed and couldn’t find.

Not polished grief. Not inspirational grief. Real grief.

The Cost of Avoiding the Word “Died”

When we refuse to say dead, we don’t make death kinder, we make grief lonelier.

We teach people that their reality is too much. That their loss needs to be edited. That honesty about death is impolite.

But death will still come. And when it does, softened language won’t catch you when you fall.

Preparation doesn’t come from avoidance. Resilience doesn’t come from silence.

Why I’ll Keep Saying It Out Loud

My parents died. I grieve them every day in ways that evolve but never disappear.
And I talk about death because pretending it isn’t real doesn’t help anyone survive it.

Talking about grief doesn’t invite darkness. It invites connection. It invites understanding. It invites people to feel less alone when their world cracks open.

So yes - the word dead might make some people uncomfortable.

But silence makes grief unbearable.

And that’s why I’ll keep writing. That’s why I’ll keep talking. And that’s why I won’t soften the truth into something unrecognizable just to make it easier to scroll past.

Sasha Howell is a writer, advocate, and speaker who has dedicated her life to helping others navigate the complexities of grief. After experiencing profound personal loss, including the suicide of her father and the passing of both her parents, Sasha has been open about her journey through heartbreak, healing, and growth. Her work explores how grief and joy can coexist, the ways anxiety intertwines with loss, and the unique challenges of suicide bereavement. She is a co-author of She Grieves and author of Riding the Waves: A Guide to Grieving, a guide and journal series created to support others in processing the many layers of grief. Sasha has also authored a children’s book, Riding the Waves: A Story of Friendship and Feelings, helps young readers understand and talk about big emotions. Through her writing, speaking, and community involvement, Sasha’s mission is to validate grief in all its forms while reminding others that even in sorrow, moments of joy and connection are still possible.

Instagram @the_grieving_daughter

with Professional and Expert Insights by Emilio Parga, M.Ed

Over the past week, many of us have been glued to our screens — watching the big game and the Olympics unfold in real time. We’ve celebrated the triumphs and felt inspired by the victories. But as grievers, we can’t help but notice something else: the athletes who give everything to a dream years in the making — and fall short.

Because sports are never just about a trophy. They’re about identity, sacrifice, hope, and the future we imagine for ourselves. When that vision doesn’t come to pass, the loss can be profound.

So we reached out to our resident sports grief expert, Emilio Parga, to explore three key questions: What are athletes really losing when they lose? Why do sports losses cut so deeply — even for fans? And what can these public moments of heartbreak teach us about grief itself?

Get Griefy: What kind of grief shows up for athletes and fans when everything comes down to one defining moment—and it doesn’t go the way they hoped?

Emilio: When major sporting events conclude — such as Super Bowl LX or the Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina — both athletes and fans can experience forms of grief that often go unnamed. Because no death has occurred, these reactions are frequently minimized as “just part of sports.” Yet grief is not limited to bereavement. It is the natural emotional, cognitive, and physiological response to meaningful loss, identity disruption, or unmet expectations (Worden, 2009; Stroebe & Schut, 1999).

For athletes, one of the most significant losses involves imagined futures. Training cycles, sacrifice, and daily discipline are organized around mentally rehearsed outcomes: winning a title, reaching a podium, completing a career-defining performance. When reality diverges from that vision, athletes grieve not only the result but the hope for future that suddenly disappears. This loss can produce rumination, self-doubt, emotional withdrawal, and identity disturbance.

Closely connected is identity grief. When seasons end, performances disappoint, or careers conclude, athletes may experience a profound absence of structure, belonging, and purpose. The removal of a uniform or role can feel like losing a core part of the self, particularly for those whose identities have long been intertwined with sport. Athletes may also grieve the effort and sacrifice invested — time away from loved ones, physical strain, and emotional cost — which can feel heavier when outcomes do not reflect the perceived price. In performance-driven cultures, this grief often turns inward, surfacing as anger or self-blame rather than being recognized as a natural response to loss.

Fans experience parallel processes. Collective grief emerges from shared identity and belonging, as teams symbolize community, continuity, and meaning. When seasons end or expectations collapse, that shared narrative fractures. Symbolic grief may also arise, as major games carry hope for joy, pride, connection, and validation. When those meanings dissolve, disappointment can feel deeply personal.

Across both groups, secondary losses — routine, anticipation, emotional intensity, and social connection — contribute to the disorientation often felt after major events. Grief in sport is not weakness; it reflects the ending of something psychologically meaningful.

After the Super Bowl or an Olympic event ends, what emotional crash do athletes experience—and why do fans often feel a version of that same emptiness?

Emilio: When massive sporting spectacles like Super Bowl LX or the Winter Olympic Games in Milan-Cortina, Italy come to an end, both athletes and fans can experience surprisingly intense emotions. These reactions are rooted in psychology, identity, anticipation, and the deep social meaning attached to sports (Baumeister, Vohs, DeWall, & Zhang, 2007).

For athletes, the conclusion of a major event often brings what is commonly described as “post-games blues” - a letdown from the intensity of elite competition. After years, sometimes decades, of physical, emotional, and psychological investment, the event that structured daily life is suddenly over. The towering goal disappears. The strict routine vanishes. The shared mission with teammates dissolves. This abrupt shift can create a sense of emptiness, loss of purpose, and emotional flatness. Many elite competitors describe it as an “emotional vacuum,” fueled by the sudden absence of adrenaline, dopamine, and collective energy that sustained them.

Even athletes who perform well are not immune. The high of achievement can fade quickly, replaced by the question, “What’s next?” The transition from peak performance mode back to ordinary life can feel disorienting. For those who fell short of personal goals, this period may be layered with disappointment, self-doubt, or grief over what might have been.

Fans experience a different but parallel emotional shift. Events like the Super Bowl and Olympics create powerful communal bonds - through rituals, watch parties, traditions, and shared anticipation. Fans are not just observing; they are participating emotionally in a collective story. When the event ends, the buildup, social gatherings, and emotional intensity suddenly disappear. This can lead to temporary “post-event blues,” marked by sadness, irritability, or a sense of letdown - especially for those deeply invested in the outcome.

While athletes and fans do not share the same experience, both may feel emptiness and emotional adjustment after major sporting events. For athletes, it often centers on identity and purpose. For fans, it reflects the loss of connection and shared excitement. Recognizing these reactions as natural helps normalize the emotional downturn that can follow the world’s biggest sporting moments.

What grief shows up for athletes after a major loss or retirement that the world tells them to shake off?

Emilio: Grief shows up for athletes in distinct yet overlapping ways following a major loss, the end of a global event, and retirement. These emotional realities are often acknowledged indirectly through athletes’ own reflections. Following defeat in Super Bowl LX, Drake Maye spoke candidly about the pain of loss, noting how deeply such moments can hurt. Upon retiring from professional tennis, Rafael Nadal emphasized meaning and closure, expressing peace of mind in the legacy he leaves behind. Similarly, after international competition, Alex Morgan reflected with pride on the broader impact of her career, highlighting the pathways opened for future generations.

Although these moments are considered normative within sport, their psychological impact can be significant. Grief after a defeat is rarely limited to the scoreboard. Athletes often grieve lost possibilities - the championship moment that will not occur, the milestones left unreached, the validation they hoped performance would bring. This can manifest as rumination, self-doubt, emotional withdrawal, irritability, and identity disruption. Research on athletic career transitions consistently shows that losses tied to performance and role expectations can produce responses similar to other meaningful life losses (Stambulova et al., 2007; Park, Lavallee, & Tod, 2013).

When global events such as the Olympic Games conclude, grief often becomes more layered. The Olympics represent years of structure, sacrifice, and singular focus. Their ending can trigger what many athletes describe as an emotional drop or “post-games blues.” Routine, intensity, and collective purpose vanish almost overnight. Even medalists may experience unexpected emptiness once the adrenaline fades. For others, grief may include finality - an awareness that this opportunity may never return — alongside a sense of loss for the version of self-forged through pursuit, discipline, and anticipation.

Retirement frequently evokes the deepest grief. Athletes are not simply stepping away from competition; they are separating from identities that shaped their schedules, relationships, bodies, and sense of worth. Whether voluntary or forced, retirement can bring feelings of disorientation, sadness, anxiety, and a loss of meaning. Secondary losses — including structure, recognition, community, and physical capacity - often compound the transition.

Across all three contexts, grief remains under-recognized because sport culture emphasizes toughness, emotional control, and rapid recovery. Naming these experiences as grief rather than weakness creates space for healthier adjustment, identity integration, and long-term well-being.

In the end, sports remind us that loss is not separate from greatness — it’s woven into it. The same passion that fuels extraordinary achievement also makes disappointment ache. By understanding the grief behind the game, we gain a deeper compassion not only for athletes, but for ourselves. Because whether on the field or in our own lives, courage is found not just in winning — but in showing up again after loss.

About Our Expert:

Emilio Parga, M.Ed., is the Founder and Executive Director of The Solace Tree in Reno, Nevada, a nonprofit organization providing grief and loss support to children, teens, adults, and families.

With more than 24 years of experience, Emilio has coordinated grief support groups and counseling services at The Solace Tree and across seven Nevada school districts. He also created the Good Grief Project, a specialized initiative offering trauma-informed, on-site support for K–12 students, student-athletes, educators, coaches, and families following a death and any loss.

As an Adjunct Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno in the College of Education and Human Development and as an Adjunct/Clinical Faculty for the Nevada School of Medicine, Emilio teaches courses on death and dying and helping children and teens cope with death and all loss. A nationally recognized speaker and trauma-informed educator, he provides training and consultation to schools, hospitals, social service agencies, sports teams, funeral homes, first responders, organizations, and businesses. His work has included bereavement consultation following large-scale traumatic events, including school and mass shootings and wildfire disasters across California and Nevada.

He is the author of No Child Should Grieve Alone, Love Never Stops, and several additional grief-support books, journals, and articles on children and teens sold nationally and internationally. He has co-founded four grief centers in Nevada and one in New York, and continues to advocate for accessible, compassionate grief education, and support across communities and cities.

In addition, Emilio founded the Death and Trauma-Informed Grief - Special Interest Group (SIG) with the Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP) one and a half years ago. This SIG was created to provide space for all members of AASP to begin and or continue meaningful conversations about death and dying within sport and performance settings, and to strengthen and build grief-literate programs, psychological safety, for teams, and organizations.

References:

Worden, J. W. (2009). Grief counseling and grief therapy: A handbook for the mental health practitioner (4th ed.). Springer Publishing.

Stroebe, M., & Schut, H. (1999). The dual process model of coping with bereavement: Rationale and description. Death Studies, 23(3), 197–224.

(Baumeister, Vohs, DeWall, & Zhang, 2007).

Stambulova, N., Alfermann, D., Statler, T., & Côté, J. (2007). Career development and transitions of athletes: The International Society of Sport Psychology (ISSP) position stand. International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology.

Park, S., Lavallee, D., & Tod, D. (2013). Athletes’ career transition out of sport: A systematic review. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology.

By Editor-in-Chief, Kera Sanchez

I was living in the first house my husband and I purchased when my mom died in 2022. She was an integral part of the process—the closing, coming along for the ride during final walkthroughs, furniture shopping—and the memories created in the space my growing family called home for just over five years.

The irony was that when we originally purchased the home, we called it our “five-year plan,” anticipating we’d move to something a little larger, with more land, in our dream neighborhood a few years down the road.

Then we realized we already had all we needed. We were content with the space where we started our family and loved all the ways we made that house our home.

Yet—with great loss comes great realizations. My husband, who had also lost his mom the year before mine, stopped forcing himself into a box at his finance job and chose to pursue his dream of re-joining the U.S. Navy, this time as an Officer. Life was too short to play small.

I had over a year to slowly detach myself from the home—a solid “anticipatory grief,” if you will. But suddenly it was the week before the move. Each day I came home from work, more of the house was packed into mighty cardboard boxes. Our home became a maze of bubble wrap and memories.

We weren’t just moving—we were walking away from an entire way of life. Every goodbye felt like ripping off a wax strip. Saying goodbye to my children’s school and the teachers who cared for them so deeply, who supported us immensely while I was solo parenting during my husband’s military duty, broke my heart in quiet ways.

The only career I have ever known—the school I worked at for over 13 years—was coming to an end. Saying goodbye to colleagues and superiors who offered glowing remarks about my work felt both affirming and devastating.

There were also the goodbyes to friends—the kind that don’t feel real until you’re in the car afterward. One last girls’ day before I left reminded me that I was walking into a new life without my safety net. No familiar faces down the street. No quick coffee dates or last-minute playdates. Just the knowing that the people who held me through so much would now be held at a distance.

And of course, my family. The little village that supported us through this season of transition will now live hundreds of miles away. The idea of hosting gatherings, birthday parties, and casual weekend dinners is something I now have to reimagine. What once felt automatic will take intention, planning, and patience—and that realization carries its own unexpected grief.

But most of all, it was stepping into a new life—different, exciting, full of possibility—that my mom would never know.

The secondary loss arrived loudly once again. I felt echoes of my initial acute grief: guilt for leaving and “moving on,” pain and despair from wanting nothing more than to call my mom, confusion over how everything happened so fast.

Grief doesn’t only live in death—it lives in transitions, in growth, in the lives we continue to build without the ones who were meant to witness them. This move wasn’t just a change of address; it was a reckoning with how much love once lived here, and how deeply it still does.

I carry my mom with me into this next chapter—not in the walls of a house, but in the courage to keep choosing a life that feels honest, meaningful, and full. Even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts.

Grief has a way of resurfacing when we least expect it. What are some unexpected ways it’s shown up for you? Let us know in the comments

While commuting to my 9–5 job this morning—as a high school Dean of Students—I was jamming out to The Greatest Showman soundtrack, reflecting on this past year and all that has unfolded since I took an incredible chance on life.

I launched a grief magazine from the worst experience I have ever known: the unexpected death of my mother while she was vacationing in Italy—at the very same time I was sitting in the NICU with my premature daughter.

I planned my mom’s funeral from a hospital room while my daughter was still on feeding tubes. I learned how to exist inside quiet, isolating grief during maternity leave. And somewhere in the middle of survival mode, I realized something was missing.

I couldn’t find grief resources that fit my life. Everything felt like an invitation to contort myself into spaces that didn’t leave much room for hope, complexity, or forward motion. So, piece by piece, I began building what I couldn’t find.

Nearly two years ago, I remember listening to this same soundtrack while jogging on a treadmill, dreaming about what a magazine like that could someday become.

The lyrics to “A Million Dreams” hit differently now.

“I close my eyes and I can see, a world that’s waiting up for me, that I call my own. Through the dark, through the door, through where no one’s been before. But it feels like home”

Because now, I can hold the proof.

I can now see the pages of a magazine that has told the stories of dozens of people learning how to live with grief and loss—while still finding meaning, purpose, and breath again.

Since that moment on the treadmill, we have:

• Published hundreds of pages across seven issues

• Seen our logo on not one, but two billboards in Times Square

• Distributed copies at an Oscars gifting lounge

• Been featured on daytime news in Chicago

• Built meaningful partnerships with global movements, thought leaders, and organizations supporting grievers (Shout out to The Global Resilience Project for making so much of this possible)

• Created a community of small business owners grounded in the belief that if we’re going somewhere incredible, we bring people with us

Recently, one of my SBC members asked a simple but powerful question:

“When have you found light in what felt like impenetrable darkness?”

My answer brought me right back to my mother’s death.

I have found the light.

I won’t ever say the loss was worth it.

But I will say this: it has made life worth living again.

And sometimes, that is the bravest, truest miracle of all.

‘Cause every night I lie in bed
The brightest colors fill my head
A million dreams are keepin’ me awake
I think of what the world could be
A vision of the one I see
A million dreams is all it’s gonna take

Oh, a million dreams for the world we’re gonna make

P.S. We need your vote for Talk Death Daily’s Reader’s Choice Award. We are nominated for the categories

-Best Book of 2025 (non-fiction) that deals with death, dying, loss or grief. Vote Get Griefy

-Death/grief educator who made notable contributions to the field in 2025. Vote Kera Sanchez of Get Griefy Magazine

First of all: we’re sorry for your loss.
No, really. This sucks. We hate that grief is the reason we’re friends — but we’re genuinely glad you found us.

We’re Get Griefy Magazine:
A grief ecosystem (yes, we’re embracing the drama of that word) made up of:

• Social media content that slaps

• A networking group full of griefy geniuses

• A full-blown magazine covering grief & loss through cultural relevance, storytelling, inspiration, and big-time relatability

We exist to help people feel seen, supported, witnessed, understood — and sometimes, against all odds, amused.

Grief sucks, but life doesn’t have to. And this community rallies hard for grievers of all kinds — whether you’re newly initiated or have been haunting this corner of the internet for a while.

“But why a Substack if you already have a magazine?”

Great question, imaginary reader we just made up.

Because we’re more than features and expert advice.
We want to literally pass the mic to our community — creators, writers, healers, feelers, griefy weirdos, and wise humans who have something to say.

This Substack lets us:

• Boost brand awareness for our FREE resource

• Make collaborating with us even easier

• Give our small business collective a platform to share what’s on their griefy minds

• Push out updates, newsletters, seasonal reflections, and medium-form content that deserves a home

• Amplify voices doing meaningful work in the grief space

• Build a time-sensitive, real-time conversation hub instead of waiting for publication cycles

The magazine is staying.
This is just another branch of the grief ecosystem we’re growing.

Grief isn’t one-size-fits-all — and neither are our resources.

We’re building a multi-colored, multi-dimensional, community-led grief universe. And this Substack is one more place for it to thrive.

Want to get involved?

• Subscribe → get the goods instantly

• Comment & participate → we want your voice

• Write for us → join our networking group and get your griefy brain on the page

Welcome to the stack, babes.
Let’s make this the coolest, weirdest, warmest grief corner of the internet.

Be sure to follow us on Social @getgriefymagazine and check out our website to learn more getgriefymagazine.com!

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