Grief is one of the most misunderstood experiences we move through as human beings.
We think we know what it is. We associate it with death, with loss, with the kind of pain that has a clear beginning — a funeral, a goodbye, a door closing. And that grief is real and it deserves all the space we give it.
But there is another kind of grief that doesn’t announce itself so clearly. The kind that doesn’t have a name or a date or a reason anyone else can easily see. The kind that lives in the body quietly, surfacing at unexpected moments, catching you off guard in the middle of an ordinary day.
The grief of a childhood that never felt safe.
The grief of surviving when all you really wanted was to be loved.
The grief of realizing that something you fought so hard to keep was never quite what you believed it was.
The grief of who you had to become just to make it through.
This is the grief I find hardest to hold. Not because it hurts more than other kinds, though sometimes it does, but because it is so easy to dismiss. There is no clear event to point to. No moment when the loss officially happened. Just a slow and accumulating awareness that something was missing for a very long time, and that you built your entire life learning to live around that absence.
And then when you start to heal, grief compounds in a new way.
Because healing asks you to see clearly. And seeing clearly means recognizing what was actually there, and what wasn’t. It means grieving relationships that couldn’t hold the fuller version of you. It means grieving the time spent making yourself smaller, the years spent waiting for safety that never came from the outside, the versions of yourself you had to abandon just to survive.
Parts of you have to die in order for new parts to live. That is not a metaphor. It is a real and physical experience. And it is painful in a way that is hard to explain to someone who hasn’t felt it.
I have known many different faces of grief. The loss of my father — the most important person in my life — is a grief that lives in me permanently, reshaping itself over time but never fully leaving. I have grieved relationships that ended. I have grieved betrayal, which carries its own particular weight because it combines loss with the disorientation of realizing the thing you lost may not have been what you thought it was. I have grieved time. I have grieved the safety I never got to have as a child.
And I have learned that if you don’t develop a relationship with grief, it will develop one with you. On its own terms. In ways that can quietly begin to steal from your life without you even realizing what is happening.
So when I find myself in a season of grief, I turn toward growth.
Literally. I surround myself with it. I paint in greens. I plant flowers. I watch things transform in real time — buds opening, light shifting, seasons turning. I let the natural world remind me that dying off and becoming are not opposites. They are the same process.
Because what is true in nature is true in us.
We are going to lose things. Again and again, throughout our entire lives, we will experience loss. It will compound. It will surprise us. It will arrive when we least expect it and stay longer than feels fair.
But grief is not the enemy of growth.
Grief is the evidence of how deeply we have loved, how honestly we have lived, how courageously we have allowed things to matter to us.
And if we can learn to sit with it — not to rush it or fix it or explain it away, but to actually let it move through us — it becomes something we carry differently over time.
Not lighter, exactly. But less alone.
Because grief is not a sign that something went wrong.
It is a sign that something was real.
And the parts of you that had to die to get you here deserved to be mourned.
You are allowed to grieve them.
30 Seconds With Beth
Take a slow, gentle breath.
Ask yourself softly: Is there something I am grieving right now that I haven’t given myself permission to name?
It doesn’t have to be a big loss. It doesn’t have to make sense to anyone else.
Just let it exist for a moment without rushing past it.
Sometimes the most healing thing we can do for grief is simply acknowledge that it is there.
You are allowed to feel this. All of it.
About The Author
Beth Inglish is an artist, leader, and transformational speaker who creates spaces where people feel seen, supported, and invited to grow. Through her abstract paintings and keynote experiences, she helps people reconnect to themselves, regulate their nervous systems, and move forward with clarity and confidence. Her work blends creativity, emotional intelligence, and storytelling to create meaningful moments of reflection and change. Whether on stage or in the studio, Beth focuses on helping people feel grounded, aware, and empowered in their lives. Visit her online gallery to explore her work and learn more about the stories behind each piece.
