Some Days Grief Is Just A Room I’m Sitting In.

Today is one of those days where grief feels heavier than my body.

Not dramatic. Not cinematic. Just… heavy. Like gravity has been turned up a notch and no one told me. I don’t want to leave the house. I don’t want to get dressed. I don’t want to see anyone accidentally. I don’t want to explain my face.

And yet, staying inside doesn’t feel restful either. It feels like pacing a room with no windows. I sit. I stand. I scroll. I wander. I open the fridge. I close it. I open my laptop. I stare at it like it’s personally offended me. Nothing sticks. Nothing distracts. Nothing helps… but I’m not asking it to.

That’s the part people don’t always understand about grief. Sometimes you’re not looking for relief. You’re just trying not to disappear inside it. Grief isn’t always about what just happened. Sometimes it shows up without checking the calendar or respecting the fact that you’ve already “done a lot of work around this.” Sometimes it arrives quietly and just… sits down next to you like it owns the place.

Today it does.

I don’t feel productive. I don’t feel inspired. I don’t feel broken either. I feel paused. Suspended. Like the world is moving but I’ve stepped slightly out of sync with it. Everyone else seems to be doing things: posting, launching, showing up, pushing through. I’m just here, aware of my ache, aware that pretending would take more energy than I have.

There’s a strange loneliness to days like this. Not the kind that comes from being alone, but the kind that comes from knowing that even if you were surrounded by people, this feeling would still be yours. Grief is deeply personal that way.

And I hate how quiet it makes me. I hate how it dulls my edges. I hate how it makes time feel both too slow and too fast. I hate how it turns the simplest decisions, like leaving the house or answering a message, into something that feels weighted, even though it’s completely benign. But logic doesn’t get a vote today.

There’s also guilt layered in, because of course there is. Guilt for not doing more. Guilt for being “fine” yesterday. Guilt for knowing this isn’t the worst grief I’ve ever felt and still feeling flattened by it. Grief loves to stack itself like that, emotion on top of emotion until you’re not even sure which one you’re reacting to anymore.

I dont want comfort. Or words. Or reassurance. I just want space to admit that today hurts. That today I am not resilient. I am not reframing. I am not extracting meaning or lessons or growth arcs. I am simply here, feeling something I didn’t invite and can’t rush. Maybe tomorrow I’ll move again. Maybe I’ll write something sharper or lighter or more useful. Maybe I’ll leave the house. Maybe I won’t.

Today is not about progress. Today is about sitting with the truth that grief doesn’t always announce itself with tears. Sometimes it shows up as restlessness. Sometimes as numbness. Sometimes as a deep, quiet sadness that makes even staying busy feel impossible.

If you’re in a day like this too, I see you, not in a “here’s what to do” way, but in a we’re both sitting in our own rooms with this way. No fixing. No rushing. Just acknowledgment.

This is what today looks like for me.

x Kristin

The Comparison Trap (a familiar one)

Social media loves a “Day One.”

Someone announces a fresh start and somehow it already looks finished. Branded. Polished. Profitable. Meanwhile your version of Day One feels like a pile of half-formed thoughts and a Google Doc named final_final_v3.

So you assume you’re behind. But you’re not. You’re comparing your private mess to someone else’s public edit. Their “overnight success” is usually just Chapter 10 of a story that started years ago, in another career, another life, another version of themselves.

When you stop believing in the myth of the blank slate, something shifts. You’re not starting over. You’re starting from experience. And that’s not losing the race. That’s just being on a different lap.