Hi Friend
Last week I asked you this:
What has your younger self been vetoing that your wiser self is finally ready to overrule?
Here is my honest answer.
My younger self never let the cracks show. Not once. I was the one who held the container for everyone around me. The strong one. The steady one. The one people brought their falling apart to because I never seemed to fall apart myself.
What I didn't know then was that hiding your cracks isn't strength. It's just a very convincing performance. And performances are exhausting to maintain.
My wiser self is learning, slowly, to let someone see me fall. This newsletter is part of that. Last week I told you I cried myself to sleep. That was not easy to write. But I wrote it anyway because I think there are enough of us pretending to be fine and not nearly enough of us admitting what it actually costs.
So. That's my answer.
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Now I want to talk about grief.
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The grief nobody warned us about
A few weeks ago I sat in conversation with a woman who has known more loss than most of us will in a lifetime. In a very short period of time, several people she loved deeply left her world. The kind of loss that would bring most people to their knees permanently.
But here is what she said that I haven't stopped thinking about.
If she had to choose between having them back or becoming the woman she is today, she wouldn't trade it.
She didn't say it lightly. She sat with the question. And then she said it anyway.
I love that kind of honesty. The kind that tells the full truth even when the full truth is complicated. Because what she was really saying is that grief changed her into someone she couldn't have become any other way. And that the missing never goes away.
She said she wishes they could come back for a visit every once in a while.
I understand that completely.
Grief is not a problem to be solved. It is a passage. And that passage changes us. For women in midlife, it shows up in more ways than we ever expect.
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The grief we don't have words for
When we hear grief we think death. And yes, death is grief in its most undeniable form. But for women moving through their 40s, 50s and beyond, grief comes wearing many different faces.
There is the grief of the active mother role ending. The house goes quiet and nobody warns you that you might mourn that noise even while you were desperate for it.
There is the grief of the body you once had. The one that moved differently, recovered faster, looked back at you differently in the mirror. Letting go of that body without bitterness is its own kind of work.
There is the grief of friendships that quietly dissolved. Of marriages that ended or changed shape. Of careers that no longer fit.
There is the grief of who you thought you would be by now.
All of it counts. All of it is real. And very little of it gets named out loud.
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What Elisabeth Kübler-Ross actually said
Most of us have heard of the five stages of grief. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Kübler-Ross introduced this framework in 1969 and it changed how the world understood loss.
What often gets lost is that she never meant these stages to be linear. You do not move through them in order and arrive tidily at acceptance. You move in and out of them, sometimes on the same afternoon. Sometimes you land in anger years after you thought you were done. Sometimes acceptance shows up before you expect it and disappears again just as fast.
What I find most useful in her work is not the stages themselves but the permission they give.
Permission to not be over it.
Permission to feel something other than what you think you should be feeling.
Permission to still be in it even when the world has moved on and expects you to as well.
Grief has no deadline. And it does not only belong to death.
In her later work, written with David Kessler, Kübler-Ross introduced a sixth stage: meaning. The idea that grief, when we let it, can eventually move us toward something. Not because the loss was worth it. But because we are still here and still capable of becoming.
That woman I spoke with found her meaning. She didn't trade the loss away. She carried it into who she became.
That is not a small thing.
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Your question for next week
Grief is personal and grief is universal and I want to hear where it has lived in your life.
Here is your question to carry this week:
What has surprised you most about your own grief? Was the loss a death, or something else entirely? And were you surprised by how much it felt like grief when it arrived?
Sit with it. Reply if something moves in you. I read everything. Next week I will answer it myself.
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Come be in the room
If any of this is sitting in your chest right now, I want you to know there is a space being held for you.
On May 14th at 7pm Eastern I am hosting a free live session on Zoom. We are going to work through five questions together. The kind that show you what you have been saying no to and why. You do not have to be ready to change anything. You just have to be willing to name it.
Register for the free session here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/mXQuk8VCRdKCPMy1BLg-Iw
And if you are ready to go deeper, the Unearth Your Yes live workshop is May 28th at 7pm Eastern. 90 minutes. $47. This is where we do the real work together.
Grab your spot here: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/unearth-your-yes-live-workshop-tickets-1987791247130?aff=oddtdtcreator
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The life we don't examine stays the life we didn't choose.
In love, light and laughter — Karen