Episode 25: The Hard Truth About Grief and Life

In today’s episode, we explore the often unspoken reality that both life and grief are not meant to feel effortless — even though we’re often told they should.

This conversation gently challenges the idea that healing should feel good, easy, or resolved… and instead offers a more honest perspective on what it can actually look like to move with grief over time.

Inside this episode, we talk about:

• Why discomfort doesn’t mean something is going wrong
• The emotional weight that can come with doing real inner work
• The fear many people feel around opening the door to grief
• Common misunderstandings about what “healing” is supposed to feel like
• What it means to redefine healing in the context of love and loss
• How emotional capacity is built over time — slowly and quietly
• The difference between fear and capacity when it comes to seeking support

If you are in a heavy season right now, or if you’ve been questioning whether you’re “doing grief right,” this episode is a reminder that you are not alone — and you are not doing this wrong.

If this episode resonated…

If something in this conversation spoke to you, you’re invited to take the next step in whatever way feels supportive for you.

You can:

• Share this episode with someone who may need it
• Reach out for support
• Or simply sit with what came up for you today

If you’re looking for a space to be held in your grief — one that honors both the pain and the possibility of what comes next — you can learn more about my offerings below.

 www.laurenlentz.com

Stay Connected

If you’d like more support, reflections, and gentle reminders throughout your week, you can connect with me here:

Instagram: @imsorrywerefriends

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome to the Widows Collective, where grief meets hope, healing, and community. I'm Lauren Lentz, grief coach, fellow widow, and the heart behind this space. There is life before loss, and then there is life after. If you're here, it likely means your life has been turned upside down by the death of your person. Maybe you've just found yourself in this new world that feels unrecognizable, or maybe you've been walking it for a while, trying to figure out what healing looks like now. I want you to know you are not alone. This podcast is a gathering place for widows living in the after. Together, we'll name the eight, honor the love, and share tools, truths, and stories that help you feel supported along the way. My hope is that every episode gives you a sense of community, comfort, and permission to meet yourself exactly where you are. So stick with me because I'm going to move from the life portion into the grief space as I continue. Early in my own experience of widowhood, I was reading Untamed by Glenn Doyle, and she said something that really stuck with me. She said, you will never change the fact that being human is hard. So you must change the idea that it was ever supposed to be easy. Her words have stayed with me ever since because it speaks to a truth we often overlook. Life and grief isn't meant to be effortless. The truth is we live in a culture that constantly tells us that things should be easy, that if we're doing something right, it should feel smooth and natural. We are inundated with messages like if it's meant for you, it will flow. Everything happens easily when you're aligned, or if something feels uncomfortable, maybe it's not right for you. And while there may be a small piece of truth inside some of those ideas, the reality is they often paint a picture of life that just isn't accurate. When you step back and look at most experiences that truly shape us, whether they are joyful or heartbreaking, they're not easy. They require effort and patience. They require time. And more often than not, they require a willingness to sit with discomfort rather than avoid it. This realization really landed for me recently when I was talking to a friend just about the hardships that I was experiencing in my personal and professional life. And so she recommended an app called Pep Talk. I hadn't heard of it before, but because I trust her, I downloaded it and I started listening. And I ended up binge listening to a bunch of different pep talks throughout the day. What struck me most was how many of them touched on the same theme. Somewhere along the way, we started believing that discomfort meant something was wrong, that if something feels too hard, we should question it. But the speakers kept coming back to a different idea. The idea that difficulty is often part of the process of life, the human experience of learning and growth, that moments that shape us deeply rarely come without effort or sacrifice. Building something worthwhile, whether it be personal or professional, often requires dedication and persistence through moments that feel uncomfortable. And as I listened to those talks, I found myself thinking about grief. Grief might be one of the clearest examples of this truth. Grief work is hard, really hard. And I think there is a quiet expectation in our culture, the one that values productivity and solutions and positivity and moving forward quickly, that grief should somehow become easier or lighter sooner than it truly does. That eventually you should move on or find closure or reach some moment where things finally feel resolved. But the reality is that grief doesn't work that way. That's what I want to talk about today, because there's an elephant in the room when it comes to grief. And the elephant is this grief work is truly uncomfortable. It asks a lot of us mentally, emotionally, physically, and oftentimes spiritually. Sometimes the experiences that feel the heaviest are actually part of the process of opening into and integrating our grief, not signs that something has gone wrong. A way to understand this is to think about something many people experience if they've ever been to therapy or done any kind of emotional work. Sometimes you leave a session feeling lighter. You feel like something clicked. Maybe you gained a new perspective, or you felt heard in a way that brought relief. But other times, the experience is very different. You may leave feeling completely drained, emotionally raw. Maybe you're crying in the car on the way home. Maybe you feel like you have more to think about than when you walked in. And in those moments, it can be really easy to wonder if the experience was helpful at all. You might think things like, why do I feel worse right now? Did I open something that I shouldn't have? Am I actually making progress? But often, those are the moments when something important is happening internally. When we do emotional work, we are often touching places inside ourselves that we've spent a long time protecting. And that is normal and natural. I don't want to take away from that. But these places, they hold pain, they hold grief, they hold memories or fears or questions that don't have easy answers or answers at all. So when those places are acknowledged, the emotions connected to them can surface in a very real way. And that in itself can feel exhausting. But exhaustion doesn't mean the process isn't working. In fact, usually it's a sign that something real is finally being felt. And this is also part of the reason that grief support can feel so scary for so many people, because on some level, we know that if we open the door to these parts of ourselves, we might actually feel what's there. And that can feel incredibly exposing and vulnerable. It can bring up thoughts like, what if I can't handle what comes up? What if it's too much? What if I fall apart and I can't put myself back together? Many people, because of this, stay just outside of the space of support, not because they don't want it, but because part of them is trying to protect themselves from what support might ask them to feel. That fear makes so much sense. You have gone through something life-altering that has turned your world upside down. And when that happens, our sense of safety is also turned on its head. And yet, if we can take a small step through that fear, we begin to see what healing might actually feel like messy, honest, and real. And this is where I think one of the biggest misunderstandings about healing shows up. We often imagine healing as something that feels good, something that brings relief, something that's easy, something that eventually leads to a sense of resolution. But when it comes to grief, healing looks very different. It can look like sitting with emotions that feel overwhelming. It can look like allowing tears that seem to come out of nowhere, or acknowledging how much someone matters in your life and how vastly their absence is felt. It can look like moments of longing that catch you off guard or memories that feel both comforting and sharp at the same time. It can look like wanting to move forward while also not wanting to let go of what was. That doesn't always feel good. In fact, a lot of the time, it doesn't feel good at all. But that doesn't mean something is wrong just because it's hard. It can still be real, honest, a reflection of love that hasn't disappeared. Sometimes healing looks like learning how to stay with yourself in those moments instead of trying to rush past them. Sometimes it looks like softening your resistance to what you're feeling, even just a little bit. And sometimes it's simply allowing what's there to just be there, not fixing it, not forcing it to change, not trying to make it more palatable, just acknowledging it. Because in grief, healing isn't always about feeling better. It's about becoming more able to be with what you feel without abandoning yourself in the process. And that shift, although quiet, can change everything over time. All of this, the sitting with discomfort, the moments that catch you off guard, the ache that refuses to be ignored, starts to reveal something important. Our usual ideas of healing don't quite fit grief. Grief challenges the very way we think about what it means to heal. And that's what I want to explore next. In many areas of life, healing means something is fixed. If you break a bone, it heals. If you get sick, your body heals. Eventually the wound closes and the body returns to the way it was before. But grief does not follow that same pattern. There is no traditional healing because grief exists in relationship to love. And love doesn't disappear simply because someone is no longer physically here. The bond still remains, the memories remain, the impact that person had on your life remains. So grief isn't something we fully heal from. And when we recognize this, the question then becomes: what does healing and grief actually look like? For many of us, healing begins to look less like fixing something and more like learning how to live alongside it, learning how to carry the love and the loss at the same time, learning how to allow grief to move through your life without believing that it defines every moment forever. Sometimes I describe this as learning how to dance with your grief because grief does have a rhythm. There are moments when it will feel loud, moments when the waves come in unexpectedly and just continue crashing. And then there are moments when life feels lighter, when you laugh, when you feel connected to other people, when something softens even briefly. At first, that rhythm can feel really confusing. You might question yourself when you notice moments of happiness. You might wonder if it's okay to feel lighter when someone you love is gone. But over time, many people begin to understand something important. Grief and joy can exist in the same life. The presence of one does not cancel out the other. Another important part of grief work is something that is often living in the confines of grief support, but not necessarily something you hear on social media or in everyday conversation. And it's the idea of building emotional capacity. When grief is fresh, the intensity of the emotions and the physical sensations can feel all-consuming, like the waves never stop, like the pain might swallow you whole. Many widows describe moments in early grief where they truly wondered if they were ever going to be able to fully breathe again, to feel stable again. But something slowly begins to shift over time. You have a day where the grief rises and somehow you make it through. You cry deeply, you're on the floor, and you get up and the tears slow down. You feel this ache, but eventually your body settles. And then the next morning you wake up again. And every time that happens, something subtle but powerful is taking place. Your nervous system begins to learn. These feelings are survivable. You can allow them and still keep going. You can experience sadness and still have moments of connection or presence or even quiet steadiness. It doesn't mean the grief disappears, but it does mean your capacity to hold it expands. That growth often happens so gradually you don't even notice it at first, until one day you look back and you realize you are still here, that you've made it through days that felt impossible. So if you are in this season right now where grief feels immensely heavy, where the emotional work feels exhausting, where you sometimes wonder if you're doing something wrong because it still hurts so much. I want you to hear this. Feeling deeply does not mean you are failing at healing. It means in many ways that you are allowing the process to unfold honestly. Grief asks us to stay present with emotions that most people spend their entire lives trying to avoid. That takes courage, real, often unseen bravery. Before we move into closing, I want to offer a moment of reflection to ask yourself Am I hesitating to seek support because I fear that sitting with grief will be too hard or too uncomfortable? Or is it that right now I truly don't have the capacity to hold all that? And that's my truth. Both are honest, valid, and human responses. Recognizing the difference can help guide your next steps with support and self-care. If you've been standing just outside of support, unsure if you're ready to step into a space where these feelings might surface, I want you to know that you are not alone in that hesitation. So many women feel this way. It's natural to wonder if you are ready, if you'll be able to handle what comes up, or if stepping into a supportive space might make things feel heavier before they feel different. And the truth is, sometimes it might, but not in a way that harms you, in a way that allows something honest to move through you. It's okay to move at your own pace. It's okay to wait until the day feels right. It's okay to take small steps instead of big ones. It's okay to show up imperfectly and to bring whatever version of yourself is available in that moment. Because support isn't about fixing your grief or telling you how you should feel. It's about creating a space where your story, your love, your pain, and your becoming can exist without pressure, where you can be witnessed, all of you, where you don't have to carry it all alone. Grief has no timeline. There is no should. Some days will feel heavier than others. Some days might feel quieter. All of it belongs. Even when it feels like the waves will never stop, even when you feel completely raw and exposed, you aren't doing it wrong. Grief work is hard. It is a reflection of what you've been through, the ache that you're feeling, your life having been turned upside down. Every time you allow yourself to feel it, even when it's uncomfortable, even when it's messy, you are moving, even if it doesn't look like it from the outside. So if you've been waiting for this right moment, consider this your invitation to release the idea that there is one. There is no perfect moment. There is only a next step. And that step can be small, but that step is yours to choose. Thank you so much for spending time with me today. Thank you for allowing yourself to sit with something real. Thank you for allowing me to share a very honest conversation and for continuing to show up here in whatever way you can. Until next time, take gentle care of yourself. I am holding your heart with compassion, big hugs, and lots of love. You've been listening to the Widows Collective. I'm Lauren Lentz, and it means so much to me that you spent this time here today. If you found comfort or connection in today's episode, I invite you to please subscribe, leave a rating, or share it with someone who might need a little support. You can also follow me on Instagram at I'm Sorry We're Friends and join my email list at LaurenLentz.com to explore my one-to-one grief coaching, group program, retreats, and other tools designed to help widows navigate loss with understanding and guidance. I hope you'll join me next week for another conversation where we'll continue exploring grief, healing, and ways to reimagine life after loss. I'm sorry you're here, and I'm so grateful that you are. Thank you for being a part of this community. Your presence is an act of courage and self compassion, and I'm honored to walk this path alongside you.