The Language You Learn
On naming the grief — and the new shapes that arrive without words.
In the beginning everything hurt because it was all new. You didn’t have words for any of it. The grief was wordless — just a pressure, a weight, an ache without a name.
Over time you learn the language. You learn to say: this is a grief bubble. This is a hard day. This is the part where I sit in the car for a few minutes before I go in. You learn to name the shapes of it, and naming makes it smaller. More survivable.
But every now and then something happens that you don’t have words for yet. A new grief, a new shape, something you haven’t encountered before and haven’t learned to name. And you are back at the beginning — wordless, winded, starting the vocabulary over.
You always find the words eventually. That’s what this community is for.