Grief Mind, The Call You Can’t Make

Your hand reaches for the phone before your brain catches up. For a split second, it feels perfectly natural to call your dad, your mom, your person and then reality hits, and the grief rushes in.

I share a moment that happened to me this morning: that honest, almost comforting impulse to ask my dad a question, followed by the ache of remembering he’s not here to answer. 

If you’ve had that experience, I want you to hear this clearly: you’re not broken. You don’t need to be fixed. That reflex doesn’t mean you’ve taken steps backward in your healing or that you’re “doing grief wrong.” It can be a sign of how real the bond still is, and how much you still want to share your life. It’s the reality of your love. Love that just needs to be carried differently. 

We also talk about how the grieving process actually moves, not like a neat checklist, but more like water. Sometimes grief hits like a wave. Sometimes you drift, then get caught on a rock, then move again. As The Caring Death Doula,  I offer grief support you can use in the moment: sit with what comes up, breathe, cry if you need to, and don’t compare your loss to anyone else’s. Your relationship was unique, so your grieving will be, too.

If this helped, subscribe, share it with someone who’s grieving a loved one, and leave a review so more people can find it. 

With care, Frances

I would love to hear: What’s the moment that catches you off guard most lately?

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Transcript

Why That Feeling Isn’t Wrong

Grief As A Changing Current

Stop Comparing Your Grief

Let The Waves Move Through

Holding Love Differently

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Hello and welcome to this episode. Thank you for joining me. Have you ever woke up and your first thought was you needed to call someone? And you even get excited just a bit, and then it hits you. You can't. Or perhaps you are thinking of something, and your thoughts are moving along, and you're like, oh, I need to call dad, mom. And then you realize you can't. That happened to me this morning. I woke up and I I don't even remember what I was thinking, but I was just thinking through my thoughts, and I was just wondering about something, and I thought, oh, I need to call dad and ask him about this. And it felt so good, it felt so right. It felt so true and real. But then I realized, oh, I can't, can I? You know, and then it it gets you crying, or maybe just tears in your eyes. And I want you to know that that's okay. I know it's hard. I know. I know it's hard, and sometimes we let that hardness weigh us down. But I want you to know that it's it can actually be a good thing. It can possibly mean for you, because it did for me. It made me feel good that I was, that I wanted to share my life with my dad, that I wanted to ask him. And yes, it's sad that I can't, but for some reason I didn't dwell so much on the sadness. But I I just sat there for a moment and just absorbed how real the connection to my dad, to my thoughts felt. And that felt good in a strange way. And I know maybe some of you won't understand this. But I want you to understand you're not broken. You don't need to be fixed. If you wake up and you want to call your loved one or you want to reach out for them. You're not broken, you don't need fixed. There's nothing wrong with you. You haven't taken ten steps back in your grief. You're not losing your mind. Like I said, it can be a good thing. Because that love that you have for your person, the memories, the desire to share your life, to have the thoughts, to hear what they would say. If you just sit in that for a moment, that connection, it can be healing or it can reveal that your grief has, oh, I don't want to say turned a corner, but has come to a different point. Because as we know, grief is there's different words. You can call it it's a path, it's a journey. Some people don't like that word journey because they say there's no map, there's no, there's no map. And so how can it be a journey? But I tell you that it can be a journey, it can be a path. Whatever word works for you, if it's a process, if it's a there's just a variety of words. But I want you to know that as the ocean comes in and out and it's flowing, or if you stand by a river or a creek that flows, you can be at, you can step into it and you're at this point, and the grief hits you like this. Or maybe you're like that stick and you're moving along in the stream of the river, and then you get stuck on a rock. But then you get free and you're moving on, and it's never the same, it's always changing, and that's the way grief is. So when you're feeling these different feelings in your grief and you're wondering things or you're questioning things, just know that you're not doing anything wrong. There is no right way or wrong way. Don't compare yourself with somebody else. Don't think that you're taking longer or grieving harder or longer. No one can completely know your grief because they didn't have the love for your loved one. Only you did, and the way that you did, and the experiences that you had together, the memories that you have together are like nobody else's. And so your grief can't be like anybody else that knew your loved one. It's not the same. And so just know that when these different occasions come up and these different feelings and these different experiences, and there's nothing wrong with them, don't be afraid of them. Sit in them, cry if you need to cry, laugh, smile if that's what comes up. But let whatever comes up, however things hit you, however things flow through your memories, through your love and grief. Let it happen. Sit in it. Breathe. And just know that your love is forever. You're just learning how to hold it differently. I am the caring death, doula. I'm holding space for you. I'm here for you. I'm thinking of you.