Genesis EQ Group, LLC

01/27/2026

I find myself overwhelmed by two distinct waves of grief in response to the ongoing violence and political turmoil in this country. The first wave comes unexpectedly, triggered by graphic videos and urgent news about federal agents fatally shooting U.S. citizens during immigration enforcement operations. These tragedies are both deeply disturbing and, for many of us, feel inescapable amid a relentless news cycle dominated by protests, official statements, and competing narratives about what actually occurred in Minneapolis and beyond.

The second wave of grief hits as I witness the public and social media response. I see people I know and care about-those who are kind, compassionate, and loving in real life reduced to reflexive rage, meme sharing, and tribalistic commentary online. Instead of grappling with the complexity of loss and the profound questions raised by these events, much of the discourse becomes performative, shallow, or driven by outrage. This contributes to a shared sense that our collective response has become a spectacle, overshadowing both accountability and empathy.

All of this unfolds against the background of everyday social media content like vacation photos, pet videos, advertisements, celebratory posts as if state violence and national grief are just another item in the algorithmic feed. That juxtaposition only deepens the emotional dissonance, making it harder to process the scale of loss and the fractured nature of our public conversation about it.

The emotional weight I’m describing reflects something real and profound: we are trying to make sense of violence carried out in the name of law or order, mourning lives lost, and confronting how collective outrage, social media dynamics, and political polarization amplify pain rather than heal it. That second wave, the frustration with the response to grief isn’t shallow. It’s a signal of how disoriented we are as a society when tragedy becomes a meme and empathy gets drowned out by discord.

01/27/2026

Being a motherless daughter without a death certificate is its own quiet injury. There’s no funeral, no casseroles, no socially sanctioned grief. Just a long, confusing ache where guidance should have lived.

It’s growing up with a mother who was physically present but emotionally unavailable. Someone who withheld truth, or offered it selectively, or twisted it until you learned not to trust your own perceptions. You’re taught early that clarity is dangerous and that asking for honesty makes you “too much.” So you learn to read moods instead of words, silences instead of explanations. You become hyper attuned, not nurtured.

There’s no soft place to land. No reliable witness to your inner life. When you’re hurt, you’re minimized. When you’re confused, you’re blamed. When you succeed, it’s reframed, ignored, or quietly competed with. Love feels conditional, transactional, or performative. You internalize the idea that closeness costs you something.

What makes it especially brutal is the gaslighting. Society tells you you’re lucky. She’s right there. Other people have it worse. You start questioning whether your pain is legitimate because nothing “bad enough” happened. But emotional neglect doesn’t leave bruises. It leaves fractures in self trust, attachment, and identity.

As a motherless daughter, you often become prematurely self reliant. You mother yourself. You mother others. You gather mentors, therapists, books, friends, fragments of wisdom wherever you can find them. You build yourself from spare parts. People call you strong, not realizing strength was never a choice. It was survival.

There’s also grief for what never was. Not just the mother you didn’t have, but the daughter you didn’t get to be. The version of you who might have felt safe asking questions, making mistakes, being held emotionally instead of corrected or dismissed. That grief resurfaces in milestones. Weddings. Breakups. Illness. Motherhood itself. Moments when guidance should arrive and doesn’t.

And still, many motherless daughters grow into deeply truthful, emotionally literate adults precisely because they had to seek truth elsewhere. They learn to name what was missing. They learn to offer themselves the honesty and care they were denied. That doesn’t make the wound a gift. It just means they refused to let the absence define the ending.

It’s a grief without a headline, a loss without permission. It deserves to be named, not minimized, because a mother can be absent long before she’s gone.

01/26/2026

01/25/2026

11/30/2025

Holidays and Grief

For many people, this time of year isn’t lights and joy. It’s heaviness. It’s nostalgia. It’s the reminder of what used to be, what never happened, or who isn’t here anymore.

Grief doesn’t care about holiday schedules.
It shows up when the music starts, when the decorations come out, when families gather, when routines shift, and when expectations rise. It hits at the exact moment we’re “supposed” to be cheery.
There’s nothing wrong with you if this season feels harder than usual.

Grief has many forms:
• The death of someone you love
• The loss of a pet who was family
• The end of a relationship you weren’t ready to lose
• The dream you outgrew or never reached
• The version of yourself you miss
• The life you thought you’d be living by now

These are real losses. They deserve space. And during the holidays, they can feel doubled.

What grief can look like in the body:

Grief isn’t just emotional. It hits the nervous system hard. You might notice:

• Tight chest or shallow breathing
• Racing heart
• Hot flashes or cold sweats
• Trouble focusing
• Fidgeting or pacing
• Feeling frozen or flat
• Emotional numbness
• Over-talking to fill the silence
• Irritability that feels “out of nowhere”

These are not personal failures. These are physiological stress responses.
Here are a few ways to regulate when you feel activated or overwhelmed:

1. 4–7–8 Breathing
Inhale for 4, hold for 7, exhale for 8. This lowers your heart rate, slows your internal alarm system, and signals safety back to your body.

2. Cold-to-Warm Reset
Place something cool (ice, cold water bottle, chilled washcloth) on the back of your neck for 10-20 seconds. Follow with something warm on your chest or hands. The contrast grounds the vagus nerve.

3. Name Five Things
Look around and name five things you can see. Then four things you can touch. Three things you can hear. Two things you can smell. One thing you can taste. It pulls you out of the mental loop and into the present.

4. Plant Your Feet
Sit or stand with both feet firmly on the ground. Press down until you feel your legs engage. Slow your breath. Let your body remember it’s safe.

5. The 60-Second Check-In
Ask yourself:
What am I feeling?
Where do I feel it in my body?
What do I need right now?
This takes one minute. It interrupts spirals before they get bigger.

6. Reach Out to One Person
Not with a performance. With honesty.
“I’m having a grief spike.”
“I’m feeling overwhelmed.”
You don’t need solutions. Just connection.

And here’s the most important part:
There’s no “strong” way to grieve. There’s only real, honest grief.

You don’t have to hide it to make the holidays easier for everyone else. Your visibility here matters—especially in the moments you feel the smallest.

If you’re willing, share this with the community:
What kind of grief gets stirred up for you this time of year, and what helps your body come back into balance when it hits?

Someone reading your comment may need exactly your words.

11/21/2025

The holidays can be a beautiful mess. They stir up grief you thought you’d outrun, loneliness you didn’t sign up for, and memories that hit harder than any Hallmark commercial ever warned you about. If this season feels heavy, you’re not broken, dramatic, or “failing at being festive.” You’re human. And your heart is telling the truth.

You deserve support that actually helps you breathe again, find your footing, and feel like yourself without pretending everything is fine. Whether you’re wrestling with old wounds, navigating complicated family dynamics, or just trying to stay grounded when the world expects you to sparkle, you don’t have to do it alone.

At Genesis EQ Group, we help you build emotional regulation, resilience, clarity, and self-leadership so you can move through this season with steadier hands and a softer heart. Your healing doesn’t get put on pause just because it’s December.

If the holidays are poking at places you’ve worked hard to heal, reach out. You deserve care that meets you where you are, not where people expect you to be.

09/13/2025

His family is grieving. His words were harmful. Both of those things can be true at once. If we can’t hold that tension with empathy and integrity, then we’re just contributing to the same cycle of outrage that poisoned our culture in the first place.

I want a society where we stop long enough to feel the weight of what violence costs, even when it takes someone we opposed. Because if we lose our humanity while pointing at someone else’s, what’s left to build on?

08/20/2025

Seek environments where you don’t have to question what’s true.

08/20/2025

08/13/2025

08/12/2025

Consistency is the key.