WHEN GRIEF CHANGES EVERYTHING
Remembering Love, Finding Ways to Survive
This week is a difficult one for me.
Saturday would have been my daughter’s 25th birthday.
Instead of celebrating with cake and candles, I’m honoring her in a way that reflects who she was — by giving. I’ve put together a small gift basket to give away in her honor, because generosity was simply part of her nature. She believed in kindness, in helping people, and in lifting others up when they needed it.
In many ways, that same spirit is what eventually became Patchies.
But the truth is, Patchies did not begin as a business idea.
It began as a way to survive.
WHEN LOSS COMES AGAIN AND AGAIN
Grief rarely arrives just once.
I lost my father when I was only six years old. Years later, I lost my mother. Then I lost my daughter. The following May, my stepfather passed away. I also lost my best friend in December of 2024.
At times, it felt like the losses never stopped coming.
When grief compounds like that, it becomes something different. It isn't just mourning one person — it's carrying wave after wave of loss while still trying to function in everyday life.
And because of my background in psychology, I understood something important.
That level of grief can become dangerous if a person doesn’t find ways to stabilize themselves.
So I tried everything I knew to try.
TRYING EVERYTHING
I approached grief from both a personal and psychological perspective.
I went to therapy.
I tried massage.
I improved my diet.
I exercised.
I looked for anything that could help restore balance emotionally and physically.
The efforts I made should have been, at minimum, like putting a band-aid on a gaping wound.
But it wasn’t.
It was literally like doing nothing at all.
That’s something people often don’t understand about grief. Sometimes you can do everything you're told will help, and the weight of loss is still overwhelming.
WHAT GRIEF DOES TO THE BRAIN
Grief is not just emotional. It is neurological and chemical.
When someone we love dies, the brain is forced to adjust to something it was never meant to expect. Our minds develop patterns around the people in our lives — when we see them, speak to them, hear their voice, or expect them to be there.
Then suddenly, they are gone.
Your brain still expects them to be there.
It looks for them.
And when the brain realizes they are not there, it releases powerful emotional and chemical responses. Chemicals like dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin drop, which can affect mood, motivation, connection, and emotional regulation.
Those shifts can cause things like:
• exhaustion
• brain fog
• waves of intense sadness
• difficulty concentrating
• emotional numbness
• physical sensations of grief in the body
The brain is not simply reacting to sadness.
It is trying to adjust to a world where someone it expected to exist in your daily life is suddenly absent.
Those chemical changes can also fuel cycles of thought — where the mind keeps returning to the loss, sometimes pulling a person into darker emotional spaces they never wanted to go.
SMALL THINGS THAT HELPED ME SURVIVE
Eventually, I stopped trying to fix grief and started focusing on stabilizing myself within it.
Small rituals began to help.
Things like:
• sitting quietly with a warm cup of tea
• taking a calming bath
• reading a book that allowed my mind to rest
• creating small spaces of peace during overwhelming days
These moments didn’t erase grief.
But they gave my nervous system small opportunities to settle.
Those moments helped me breathe again.
And slowly, those practices became the inspiration behind many of the things I began creating.
WHY I WROTE THE GRIEF SURVIVAL GUIDE
That is why I created Surviving a Broken Heart.
I wanted something that explained what grief actually does to the brain and body, and how people can support themselves through it.
The goal was never to "move on."
Grief doesn’t work that way.
The goal is learning how to function, heal, and carry love and loss at the same time.
HONORING THE ONES WE LOVE
This week, as my daughter’s birthday approaches, I’m reminded that grief exists because love existed first.
We grieve because we loved deeply.
And love does not disappear when someone dies.
Sometimes it becomes memories.
Sometimes it becomes tears.
Sometimes it becomes the quiet work of helping others who are hurting.
And sometimes, it becomes something unexpected.
Like building something that brings comfort to others.
IF YOU ARE GRIEVING
If you are walking through grief right now, please know this:
You are not weak.
You are not broken.
And you are not alone.
Grief is one of the most difficult experiences the human heart can face.
Take it one moment at a time.
One breath at a time.
And if something small helps you find even a little peace — hold onto it.
Because healing often begins with the smallest steps.
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