Complicated Grief

And other thoughts this week

It’s been one of those months where time doesn’t line up correctly. In the past two weeks I have experienced a rollercoaster of emotion, which is why I have been unable to publish anything. Every draft has felt unfinished and I would pause the scheduling to begin again.

We went on a weekend trip to the mountains and applied for an apartment that Monday. House hunting has felt impossible and stressful. Since November 2023, we have lived in one of the two bedrooms in my sister’s condo, packed tight in all corners. I’m not ashamed to say we made that decision due to my chronic illness depleting my paycheck and underestimating the cost of living. But we never intended to be here more than a year.

Last Tuesday morning we went on a run and I felt peace about moving. But before we went home to sign a lease, our realtor called and asked us to consider an off-market home. The moment I had decided to forge my own path, God has stopped us with a seemingly impossible seller offer.

This could all go wrong at the last moment but we might get a house. The offer was accepted and now we wait for appraisals. When I got the news the seller accepted our offer a week after my run, I sobbed at work out of gratitude and disbelief.

And yet, there is grief.

The next day I sat in the parking lot again, crying because my aunt had passed away.

It is so complicated, this grief. How do I even begin? Would you believe me when I say I started a fictional story in November about a woman who is grieving the loss of her aunt after a falling out? It is such a surreal time for me to be grieving a woman who I haven’t spoken with in five years, but whom I deeply loved.

My aunt was fierce in all she did. She loved fiercely. She was always willing to take on a challenge and I can close my eyes and see her throwing back her head in laughter as she says “we’ll see about that.”

She is here in the sunshine with me, barefoot and encouraging us as kids to rub the mud on our legs because “people pay big money for mud baths” but we can get that benefit for free.

Everything was a secret that she wanted to reveal. Here is a cooking trick. Here is a beauty tip. Here is a behind the scenes look at how the marketing world works. Here is how you can live like the rich for half the cost.

She took me in whenever I needed her but I was such a mess in my twenties. I had been so ungrateful, yet she kept the door open. But when I was pregnant in 2020, the door closed and I pushed it shut. So many harsh words and walls without resolution.

I mourn my aunt. I mourn the woman I had known and the one I never got to know. I grieve that she never found the healing I had hoped for her. My family has always been too tightly bound by the generations of trauma. These women love so damn fiercely but can we love one another without holding on too tight until we bruise? I hope we can. I think we can.

Letting go of our relationship was what I had to do in order to find healing but I hadn’t imagined a cost like this. These unspoken words remain lodged in my throat.

In the morning hours of grief this week, this is what came to my mind:

One day I won’t have to tell my daughter about a lineage of brokenness that she must carry upon her shoulders. Instead I will say:

Addiction runs in our family but so does recovery,

Trauma runs in our family but so does healing,

Loss runs in our family but so does hope.

There is no darkness that cannot be overcome in Christ. There is no work you can do that is greater than the work He can do for you. There is no greater freedom than the peace he provides. That is our true heritage: grace.