When Grief Has No Address
The body always knows first
There’s a kind of grief that doesn’t come with a clear return address.
It doesn’t arrive as one clean loss you can point to and say, that’s the thing.
In the last two weeks, a neighbor passed away unexpectedly. A dog, I’ve loved and nannied, was diagnosed with cancer. And Monday, I held space for her and her two-legged while she crossed the rainbow bridge. And underneath both of these was another grief I’ve been quietly living with and did not realize until a conversation with a friend.
The slow release of a former self.
The pressure valve on every unresolved ending I haven’t fully faced.
The unnamed something I’m becoming.
Three losses. No single address.
And I don’t think I’m alone in this.
Look around. People are leaving careers they built their identity around. Friendships are quietly dissolving. Relationships are shifting in ways that don’t have clean endings or clear beginnings. Kiddos are graduating. Bodies are changing through illness, injury, surgery, things that alter not just how we feel but who we are.
We are all, in some way, letting go of something right now.
The grief is collective. And it has no address either.
Grief doesn’t arrive singularly. It comes in waves, and sometimes you can’t even sort out which one is hitting you hardest.
For me, grief doesn’t always arrive as sadness first.
Sometimes it arrives as exhaustion. Brain fog. Walking in circles. A heaviness in my chest that makes everything feel farther away than it should.
Sometimes it’s the sudden need to rest more. Or the inability to make simple decisions. Or moving through the day like I’m underwater while the mind keeps insisting everything is fine.
The body and heart already know.
The mind, the brain, is what struggles to organize, interpret, or accept the experience.
Monday, after I said goodbye to the dog, I spent the rest of the day making a keepsake photo book, page after page of photographs I’d taken while dog nannying.
I cried and laughed at the same time. I didn’t plan it. My hands just knew what to do.
The waves keep coming. Let them.
So if you’re in it too, if loss has arrived at your door without a name tag, if you’re somewhere in the unnamed in-between of who you were and who you’re becoming, here’s the only permission slip I have to offer:
You don’t have to look away. You don’t have to sort it into neat containers or know what it means yet or what to do.
The in-between is not a waiting room.
It’s the work.
Feel it. All of it. Even the part that doesn’t have a name.
Just don’t stop the waves from coming.
Especially that part.
The Circle is gathering. Sunday, May 31st.
Twice a month, I host a small and intentional gathering called The Circle.
It’s a 60-minute online gathering held in rhythm with the moon cycles, a grounding guided meditation to support you in moving from feeling overwhelmed, disconnected, or carrying something you can’t quite name, into feeling calmer, lighter, and deeply seen.
No performance. No pressure to share. Just a small group of people willing to slow down together for an hour.
If you can’t make it this week sign up to receive notifications.