10/17/2025
This is so hard to comprehend but so true. When you feel like you’re gaining ground and learning how to function without your loved one, a wave of grief knocks you down. It can make you feel like all the work you’ve been doing hasn’t helped and you haven’t made any progress. It’s very scary, and can leave you feeling uncertain and hopeless. We don’t expect such a big setback. There will be more than two waves of grief and they will happen years later. All we can do is acknowledge it, feel it, sit with it, and if you need additional support don’t hesitate to reach out. What you are experiencing is “normal”. Nothing is wrong with you. ❤️🩹
The Second Wave
It’s the one you never see coming.
The one that shows up years later,
long after people stop checking in.
You think you’ve done the work.
You’ve cried, survived, rebuilt.
You’ve convinced yourself you’re finding your footing again.
Then one random day, grief kicks the door back open.
It hits like it did in the beginning—
sharp, cruel, and familiar.
You don’t ease into it. You drown in it.
That same ache in your chest, that same lump in your throat.
You remember the exact sound of that day,
the way the air felt when your world split.
It all floods back like no time has passed at all.
And the people around you—they don’t see it.
They think you’ve moved on.
They think time has done its job.
But time doesn’t heal this kind of wound.
It just teaches you how to look functional while you bleed.
The second wave makes you realize how deep it still runs.
How love this real doesn’t expire just because life keeps going.
It reminds you that no matter how strong you’ve been,
grief still knows your name.
And when it hits, all you can do is stop fighting it.
Let it come.
Let it wreck you for a while.
Because it’s proof they still exist somewhere inside you.
You’ll stand up again—
you always do—
but for a moment,
you’re back there.
And that’s what the second wave really is—
not starting over,
just remembering how much it still hurts to love someone who’s gone.
