Supporting Friends Through the Ebbs and Flows of Grief

A Gift for Mom! 🤍

Grief is a part of life in that there is no way to avoid it, but still no one seems to know how to address it gracefully.

Losing someone you love leaves you feeling like something is missing. Most everyone has experienced grief, but yet when it happens to a friend or loved one, we all stand around, mouths slightly agape, staring wide-eyed and wordless.

I have always admired cultures and families who are able to celebrate the lives of someone who passed instead of mourning and grieving. However, I haven’t been able to embrace that approach myself. In the last several years, our family has been hard hit by death; some tragedy, some expected. None, regardless of the length of prior suffering, did I truly feel ready to accept.

Believe me when I tell you that a loss from nearly 10 years ago of someone I loved is still felt the same as from someone who just passed. Friends, I don’t know how people lacking faith even live through this kind of deep, unshakable pain.

I have grieved loved ones. I have grieved pets. I have grieved the loss of dreams undone and the life I thought my child would have before his diagnosis.

There have been some events in my life that I am still grieving and I am not sure how to move past the numbness and onto something more meaningful than the fake half-smile I try to offer people in response to their condolences. There are people I care deeply for who have lost something or someone who was so much a part of the thread that wove them into the people that they are, they sometimes struggle minute-to-minute, much less a day at a time.

It is true that grief ebbs and flows. But, friend, I want you to know that I see you. I feel the pain that echoes through corridors of pain in you that are so deep and so wide that you feel like you might never recover. You need to know that that’s OK.

You aren’t alone. We are all fighting against something, struggling to make it one more day. Friends, be who you are right now. If you need to cry in the middle of lunch, girl, grab a napkin and get after it!

If you’re a friend of someone going through this, we don’t need anything. Just listen. Just hug us. Just stand there. We know it is awkward. But please—please—don’t tell us to just move on. And if I hear “time heals” one more time, Jesus take the wheel! I will lose my righteousness in a hot minute!

Women, be who you are in the moment and lift each other up. That is what is healing.

So God Made a Grandmother book by Leslie Means

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A GRANDMA

Order Now!

Brynn Burger

Mental health advocate, extreme parent, lover of all things outdoors, and sometimes a shell of my former self. Parenting a child with multiple behavior disabilities has become both my prison and my passion. I write so I can breathe. I believe that God called me to share, with violent vulnerability and fluent sarcasm, our testimony to throw a lifeline to other mamas who feel desperate to know they aren't alone. I laugh with my mouth wide open, drink more cream than coffee, and know in my spirit that queso is from the Lord himself. Welcome!

When I Look In the Mirror, I See My Mother

In: Grief

Woman with mother smiling in older photo

Recently, whenever I look in the mirror, I see a strong resemblance to my mother. People always said I looked like her, but I never really saw it until now. I think it may be because you always think of your parents as being older than you are. At the age of 61, I am now only two years away from the age my mother was when she died. The only good thing about dying young is that everyone will remember you that way. I have only known my mom as the vibrant, personable, and active woman she was. Well,...

Keep Reading

I Lost My Daughter on Mother’s Day: 3 Truths I’m Believing Today

In: Grief, Loss, Motherhood

Editor’s note: This post discusses child loss Child loss changes Mother’s Day. My 19-month-old, Julia, died suddenly on Mother’s Day in 2024. Three months later, her autopsy revealed she had B-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (B-ALL, also known as SUDNIC). Julia died a week after we did an embryo transfer at an IVF clinic in an attempt to have a second child. We found out three days after Julia’s death that the embryo did not make it either. Six months later, we did another embryo transfer that succeeded, and I now have an 8-month-old daughter, Lucy Mei (“Mei Mei” means “little...

Keep Reading

I Miss Having Parents

In: Grief

Grown daughter posing between smiling parents

I have been living with the ache of loss for so long that I truly don’t remember what it feels like not to carry it. Sometimes it rests quietly beneath my ribs, dormant and almost polite. Other times it rises without warning—on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon, in the middle of a coffee line—and cuts straight through me. Today, it was a song. I was waiting for my coffee when “Pictures of You” by The Cure drifted through the café speakers. I hadn’t heard it in 20 years. In my twenties, it meant heartbreak—young love unraveling, relationships ending before they were...

Keep Reading

What No One Tells You about Losing a Sibling

In: Grief

Nobody tells you that when you lose a sibling, your entire childhood flashes before your eyes. There’s no better witness to what you experienced growing up than that one person who was standing nearby for all of it. And when they’re gone, a part of that childhood and a part of that story goes with them, because it was only ever known between the two of you. There’s no last chance to say, “Remember when?” or to laugh about the things that made you laugh to tears together, a million times at the kitchen table. There’s no last conversation about...

Keep Reading

Grief Didn’t Break Me, It Rearranged Me

In: Grief

I survived losing my father after his long, grueling battle with cancer. It was one of the most difficult seasons of my life. I had a front row seat to watch cancer pick him apart piece by piece. When you lose a parent, you lose a part of yourself. They say time heals all wounds, but you never stop missing the good ones, and there are days when it feels like it just happened. By the grace of God, I survived, but I will always miss my father. Then, almost a decade later, I lost the career that helped me...

Keep Reading

I’m Learning To Be Soft and Strong

In: Grief

During the weeks we cared for my grandmother in hospice, survival mode felt necessary. There were medications to track. Visitors to update. Logistics to manage. I remember sitting on the couch that served as my makeshift bed and listening to the rhythmic hissing and puffing of the oxygen machine one night. While my mom showered off the day, I texted my sister updates and sent my husband a quick message of love. I could still smell the lavender candle we had lit earlier in the day to mask medical scents. The house was quiet, but my mind wasn’t. I was...

Keep Reading

The Legacy Our Mothers Leave Is In the Details

In: Grief

Woman's hands holding beautifully wrapped small gift

It has been two months and nine days since my mom passed away. The first several weeks were spent on the details and logistics of planning her service. She passed in December, so once her beautiful service had passed, I busied myself with the preparations for Christmas. By mid-February, I finally began to process some feelings of grief on a deeper level. The quiet of this less-busy season is allowing the grief to soak in a bit more. Not the big things; not the obvious, grief-heavy reminders that stop me in my tracks. Instead, I’ve been noticing the small things....

Keep Reading

You Never Get Over Losing Your Mother

In: Grief

It’s been 10 years since I last heard my mother’s voice. Ten years since I could pick up the phone and ask a question I already knew the answer to, just to hear her say it anyway. Ten years since someone loved me in that very specific, unconditional, occasionally annoying way that only a mother can. My mom died in 2015. And while “passed away” sounds softer, more polite, the truth is that she left. Suddenly. Permanently. With no forwarding address. She was gone. What I’ve learned in the decade since is not what I expected. I thought the biggest lesson...

Keep Reading

My Husband Is By My Side Through Every Storm

In: Grief, Marriage

The year 2025 began as a quiet storm. I was slipping into the fog of depression while navigating the early chaos of perimenopause, and some days simply getting out of bed felt impossible. My thoughts felt dark and heavy, my body unfamiliar, my energy nonexistent, and my moods uncontrollable. And yet, in the haze, there was one constant: my husband. He noticed the subtle shifts I barely acknowledged. The sighs, the quiet retreats into myself, the moments I almost broke. Instead of judgment or frustration, he offered presence. He held space for my struggle without trying to “fix” it, and...

Keep Reading

Losing My Mom Shaped Me As a Mother

In: Grief

Becoming a mother has a way of bringing old wounds back to the surface, even ones you believed had healed. I never imagined grief would surface so strongly in my motherhood journey. I thought it was something you carried silently, something that faded with time. But becoming a mother felt like my loss rising to its feet and saying, I’m still here There are moments when I reach for my phone to call my mom, only to be met with the reminder that I can’t. I want to ask her if what I’m feeling is normal, if the exhaustion softens,...

Keep Reading

When Parenting Costs Us Something

Kids

When Parenting Costs Us Something

Religion Can Be Hard; Faith Doesn't Have to Be

Faith

Supporting Friends Through the Ebbs and Flows of Grief

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A GRANDMA

Brynn Burger

When I Look In the Mirror, I See My Mother

I Lost My Daughter on Mother’s Day: 3 Truths I’m Believing Today

I Miss Having Parents

What No One Tells You about Losing a Sibling

Grief Didn’t Break Me, It Rearranged Me

I’m Learning To Be Soft and Strong

The Legacy Our Mothers Leave Is In the Details

You Never Get Over Losing Your Mother

My Husband Is By My Side Through Every Storm

Losing My Mom Shaped Me As a Mother

Get It Now

So God Made a Mother

Supporting Friends Through the Ebbs and Flows of Grief

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A GRANDMA

When I Look In the Mirror, I See My Mother

I Lost My Daughter on Mother’s Day: 3 Truths I’m Believing Today

I Miss Having Parents

What No One Tells You about Losing a Sibling

Grief Didn’t Break Me, It Rearranged Me

I’m Learning To Be Soft and Strong

The Legacy Our Mothers Leave Is In the Details

You Never Get Over Losing Your Mother

My Husband Is By My Side Through Every Storm

Losing My Mom Shaped Me As a Mother

Previous Post

Next Post

You May Also Like