Episode 29: When You May Look Okay… But You’re Not

Episode Description:

There’s a moment in grief when the outside world begins to respond to you differently.

You’re getting out of bed.
You’re showing up for your kids.
You’re going to work, answering messages, maybe even laughing again.

And from the outside… it can look like you’re “doing better.”

But internally, it can feel like something completely different.

In this episode, we explore the quiet, often unspoken tension between how grief looks… and how it actually feels.

Because functioning isn’t the same as healing.
And surviving isn’t the same as being okay.

If you’ve ever felt unseen in your grief… misunderstood… or questioned whether your experience “matches” how you appear—this conversation is for you.

What We Talk About:

•  The disconnect between external perception and internal experience in grief 
•  Why others may see you as “strong” or “okay” before you feel that way 
•  How functioning can be mistaken for healing 
•  The emotional toll of feeling unseen or misunderstood 
•  The nervous system’s role in adapting after loss 
•  Guilt that can arise as you begin to re-engage with life 
•  The “push and pull” (yo-yo) experience many widows face 
•  Why moments of lightness do not reflect the depth of your love 
•  How support can unintentionally fade as you appear more “okay” 

Key Reminders:

•  Just because you’re functioning doesn’t mean you’re okay 
•  Your grief doesn’t have to match how it looks from the outside 
•  You are allowed to feel both—moments of presence and deep pain 
•  Your ability to keep going is not a betrayal of your person 
•  This isn’t inconsistency—it’s grief 

Gentle Tools to Support You:

• Name the experience:
  “This is that space where the outside doesn’t match the inside.” 
• Release the need to perform:
  You don’t have to meet others’ expectations or explain your grief. 
• Be intentional with support:
  Seek out spaces where you feel seen without needing to translate your experience. 

Work With Me:

If you’re looking for a space where you can be fully held in your grief—without pressure to rush, fix, or perform—I’d be honored to support you.

You can explore 1:1 coaching or my group programs at, laurenlentz.com

Connect & Continue the Conversation:

If this episode resonated with you, I’d love to hear from you. You can reach out, share, or write a review. 

Closing:

You are someone learning how to live inside of loss… while still being asked to keep living.

That is a lot to hold.

Until next time…
Big hugs, and lots of love. 

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 ache, 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. And this is something I see so often in grief. There's this discrepancy between how the outside world sees us and what is actually happening inside of us. Because as you begin to come out of that initial fog, you are moving through the world in a way that looks more functional, if you will. You're answering messages, you're showing up for your kids, you're going to work, you're putting one foot in front of the other. Maybe you're going out for walks or exercising again. Maybe you're even laughing from time to time or finding moments where you can be present with family and friends. And people respond to that version of you. They see you as strong, resilient, doing better. But internally, something completely different is happening. There's a more complex, heavier experience unfolding, one that doesn't always match what the external world is noticing. When those two realities don't line up, it can start to feel really confusing and sometimes even unintentionally invalidating, like your experience isn't fully seen or fully understood. Or you question yourself and ask if you should be doing worse, or if it's some type of reflection of how much you care about your person. And it matters that we talk about this. It's an experience that happens often and can create additional friction and isolation inside of something that already feels impossible to navigate. So to take this a little deeper, I want to name what this actually looks like: this contrast between how we're seen and how we experience ourselves. I recently shared an image of myself and my son on Easter, less than two years after my husband was killed. To the outside world, my family, friends, acquaintances, it looked like I was doing well, that I had started to figure things out. I would constantly get comments that I was courageous, patient, and calm, that it was impressive how well I was functioning, handling something that felt impossible gracefully, that I was moving forward, that I was present, resilient, capable, inspiring. I remember hearing some of those things and feeling conflicted and frustrated. If I stepped back just a little bit, I could see what people were responding to. I could see the version of me that was showing up, still moving through the days, still doing what needed to be done. But it did not feel like a choice. And it felt far away from the whole truth. Because the way I experienced myself was very different from how they saw me. Internally, the ways were still crashing down. Most days I was irritable, extremely anxious, fearful, hanging on by a thread, restless, on edge, easily overstimulated by crowds of people and noises, and taking it all out on my son. Everything felt heavy, like I was carrying something that never really sat down. Emotionally raw in a way that made even small things feel like too much. Hyper-vigilant, like my body was constantly scanning, trying to keep me safe. Exhausted to my core, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally too. And still very much deeply missing my person, my old life, and the version of me in the before. I think this is what made me so frustrated at times, that people couldn't see what was actually going on inside of me, that just because I was surviving didn't mean I was better. I wanted the people around me to understand that this life was hard, that it still felt impossible on most days, that getting out of bed, going to work, being a solo mom took everything I had, that by the end of the day, there was nothing left. Then what I started to notice was that the more I appeared okay on the outside, the less people checked in, the less they asked about me or Kevin, the less they leaned in and got curious about how I was actually doing. And it created really painful tension. Because on one hand, I needed support. I needed people to still see me, to still hold space, to still recognize that I was in it. But on the other hand, life didn't stop. Even when it felt like mine had. There's nothing to fix, nothing to solve. And for a lot of people, that's unfamiliar territory. They don't know what to say, they don't know how to sit in it. And sometimes instead of staying in that discomfort, they reach for signs that things are improving. So when they see you functioning, they hold on to that. They interpret it as progress, as healing, as you being okay. Not because your pain is gone, but because it gives them something to orient to, something that feels a little more manageable for them to hold. And this isn't about blame. It's just about understanding that sometimes the way people respond has just as much, if not more, to do with their own capacity and comfort as it does with what you're actually experiencing. And while that helps make sense of what's happening around you, it's only one side of the story. There's also what's happening inside of you. And it's not that you're getting better. It's that your system is adapting to a life that didn't stop, even though everything inside of you did. You're learning how to exist inside of a world that looks the same on the outside, but feels completely different on the inside. And you're learning how to carry something you didn't choose and you didn't have time to prepare for. And that adaptation can start to look like functioning. It can look like getting up, getting dressed, going to work, responding to text, making decisions, cooking dinners, showing up to things that life keeps asking of you, whether you feel ready or not. But none of that necessarily means you're okay. It just means you're still moving because underneath all of that, your system is very much in it. Your body is still trying to make sense of what happened, trying to find safety again in a world that no longer feels familiar, still scanning for stability in a way that can feel exhausting and constant. And this isn't something that resolves just because time is passing or because life demands your participation. For many women, this is a much longer process. Months, sometimes years before there's even a subtle internal shift, before your body starts to soften, before your nervous system begins to trust that you're not in immediate danger, before there are moments in your day that don't carry that underlying tension. So what the world often sees as she's doing better is really just your capacity expanding to keep going inside of a life that didn't stop. It's survival with motion, in motion. And layered into it, there's another experience that tends to come up for a lot of us, especially as time goes on, guilt. That fun little feeling that sits along so much of our experience of grief. Because as you start to function more, as you begin to re-engage with parts of your life, you also become more aware of how that's being perceived. And that awareness can feel really uncomfortable because there can be this quiet question running underneath everything. If I look okay, what does that mean? Does it mean people think I'm over it? Does it mean people think I've moved on? Does it mean I'm somehow leaving them behind or minimizing what this loss actually was? And for a lot of widows, this creates a kind of push and pull. You might start to open up a little, feel a small moment of lightness, allow yourself to be present and then almost instinctively pull back. Not because you want to stay in this feeling of being stuck, but because it can feel like too much too soon, or like it doesn't match what you're carrying inside. Sometimes it can even feel like a betrayal. If I can laugh, if I can function, if I can have moments where I feel okay, what does that say about how deeply I love them? And I just want to make sure I say this here because this comes up so often. Your ability to function, your moments of lightness, your capacity to keep going is not, are not reflections of how much you love your person. They are a reflection of your humanity, your nervous system doing what it needs to do to survive, and our innate ability to carry forward even through our darkest times. When you step back and look at all of this together, you can start to see a fuller, more honest picture of what's actually happening. Because this isn't inconsistency. It's not a reflection of your effort or your strength. It's not you getting it wrong or not doing grief well enough. This is what it looks like when your mind, your body, and heart are all trying to process something that doesn't have a clear timeline. Grief doesn't move in one direction. It expands, it contracts, it softens, it intensifies, sometimes all within the same day. And your experience of it is allowed to shift. You're allowed to have moments where you feel more present and moments where it all feels heavy again. You're allowed to function and still feel like you're barely holding it together underneath that. None of that cancels the other out. And within that, there are small ways you can begin to support yourself, especially when this tension starts to feel really loud. So if you find yourself here, I want to offer a few things to hold on to. None of this is a way to fix what you're feeling. It's more a means to support yourself inside of it. So first, just start to notice. Notice when that disconnect shows up, when the outside doesn't match the inside, when you feel misunderstood or unseen or like you're carrying more than people realize. And instead of immediately trying to explain it or push it away, just name it. This is that space. Second, give yourself permission to not perform. You don't have to meet people's expectations of how you should be doing. You don't have to match the version of you that they're responding to. And you also don't have to overexplain yourself if you don't have the capacity. And third, be intentional about where you go for support, because not every space is going to be able to hold this. So finding even one place, one person or one community where you don't have to translate your experience, where you can just be in it as it is, can really make a meaningful difference. As we start to close, I want to bring this back to you. If you're listening today and you recognize yourself in what I just shared, where the outside looks one way and the inside feels completely different. I want you to know there is nothing wrong here. Nothing about this means you're behind or grieving incorrectly. Nothing about this means you're deceiving the people around you. You are someone learning how to live inside of loss while still being asked to keep living. And that's a lot to hold. I want you to take a moment to really honor that. It makes sense that it feels heavy. It makes sense that it feels confusing, frustrating, and conflicting at times. It makes sense that there are parts of this that feel unseen. It really is impossible to show someone what is going on inside of you if they have never experienced it themselves. If you're looking for a place to navigate this experience and other experiences like it, either one-on-one or in a group space, you can find a link to my website in the show notes. I would be honored to walk alongside you. Until next time, I hope this sat in your soul somewhere. I hope this spoke to you. 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.