value of grief

Grief doesn’t go away — it changes shape.

In this episode of Notes, Kathy reflects on grief as something we carry rather than something we overcome. Through story and metaphor, she explores where grief comes from, why it hurts, and what it’s actually made of — including the kind rooted in love that never had a place to land.

This is a quiet, honest reflection on grief, presence, and the unexpected strength that comes from loving deeply.

hosted by Kathy Patalsky

healthyhappylife.com

IG: KathyPatalsky + notes.kathy

Transcript

"self-protection becomes self erasure. Step back until you're easier to be around."

Welcome to Notes with Kathy Patalsky Today's episode is called The Value of Grief. It asks what happens when grief stops being something you survive and starts being something you carry.  

 Welcome to Notes by Kathy Patalsky.

Today's piece, The Value of Grief.

Today I have a cold, not a dramatic one, just the kind that makes everything feel muted. Heavy limbs, a foggy head, that slightly hollow feeling behind your eyes. The kind of day where the couch feels like a solution. A blanket, a screen. And today I felt something else too. An aftertaste of grief. Grief is strange in that way. It doesn't arrive with announcements. it just shows up as a sensation, a familiar weight.

I'm familiar with grief. I've learned to think of it as like tiny pebbles. I've just been carrying around in my pocket sometimes for months, sometimes for decades.

 When you carry pebbles, sometimes you feel them. So when I feel one shift in my pocket, my first instinct is to curl up, recoil, and terror, and kind of hide out for the day until the feeling passes.

 📍 that was how I handled grief. I isolated. I quietly removed myself from rooms that felt too full of things I couldn't hold yet.

There have been three periods in my life where grief fully rearranged me. When my dad died, when my cat was dying of cancer, and throughout my entire infertility journey, each one was different, but the message from the world was the same every time.

Be sad, quietly, tell a few people, protect yourself and reemerge when you're all healed. I've always felt frustrated by how easily that message turns into disappearance.

You don't wanna bring people down, so you hide away either physically or you just start to hide those feelings. You never talk about them again. They get pushed away.

How quickly self-protection becomes self erasure. How easily confidence erodes when you're told again and again to step back until you're easier to be around. Go over there. Let us know when you're better. Okay? Cool.

Another way I kind of picture grief is like one of those inflatable balls that you bring to the pool. Neon pink, impossible to sink. You bounce it in the air. You push it under the surface, you try and sit on it, hide it away, and it's really hard. The pressure up against your palms.

It's still there. And honestly, the most comfortable thing would be to just let it bounce to the surface, float on top to let it bob along where everyone can see it. But we don't do that with grief. Grief is awkward. It changes the temperature of the room. It makes people quiet. So instead we hold it down.

Standing there today, holding that familiar weight, I realized something I hadn't really put into words before.

Fact: grief never goes away. We all kind of know that.

It just kind of changes form and intensity. But the reason why it never goes away is because grief does not exist without love. And no, that's not just a sappy sentence. It's true. Grief doesn't exist without love.

Every single piece of grief comes from one or two places. Some of it comes from memory. Love you had. Things you got to experience that filled you with joy and love and light. When you lose that, it's grief.

That kind of grief still hurts, but it has somewhere to land. You can touch it, you can remember it. The other kind comes from foreshadowing. Love you were ready to give that never found a home. A life you imagined. A version of love you could feel, but never lived. That grief feels heavier, not because it's bigger, but because it's, unfinished

And you might be asking, well say it, name it. Give me some examples of those types of grief and I will. Miscarriages. Parents who have lost their babies. Wanting so badly to have a picture of love in your life that just doesn't exist. Some people picture getting married at a certain age and having a spouse and kids, and maybe you reach that age and you're like, I don't have that.

That's grief. Being pregnant, seeing a pregnancy test, say positive, or if you went through IIVF and it didn't work, seeing your hormones go up, seeing the embryo report, working, and then all of a sudden it's not, and all of a sudden there's no heartbeat. All of a sudden it's gone. But that love. It was real In your mind.

It's so heavy because it's unfinished.

Here's the real thing I realized today, standing in my kitchen with a cold, that love, that intense love that still exists in your head. It does not disappear you guys. It doesn't evaporate just because it never became a real life living memory.

You still carry it, which means something really, really important. A grieving person isn't empty. They're full. Full of care, full of empathy, full of compassion, full of attention. They're holding more than most people can realize. So today, instead of sinking into the couch, instead of treating grief like an illness that requires isolation.

And this is my way of doing something small. Staying in the world. Just being present and maybe even sharing some of that love with someone else. Because grief isn't something that disqualifies you from life. It's evidence that you showed up for it.

The pebbles in your pocket will never disappear, and quite frankly, I love my pebbles. They remind me of things that I had, or things that I pictured for myself that I will never have, and that grief still hurts. That part is true. It still catches me in my chest. It still shows up when I'm tired or sick or quiet.

You don't outgrow that. Once you understand what those pebbles are made of, they stop feeling like punishment, and they start feeling like proof. Proof that you loved something deeply. Proof that you lived. Even when that love had no place to go. That hurt. It never goes away, but there's a softness in sharing it and letting it exist without hiding it.

And I will say that my most raw form of grief right now is that I did try to have another kid and I did try IVF again and it didn't work. And I will forever grieve that. But that is love.

 That love has places it can go. That love has work that it can do, and that's a good thing.

 So here's one more thing I wanna leave you with, because the world doesn't say it enough. When you are grieving, the world will quietly suggest that you stay small, that you soften your presence, that you take up less space until you're better. Don't start preaching. Don't start being sad. Don't start talking about it.

And that message erodes self-esteem. It breaks confidence at the exact moment you need it most. And I wanna offer you a different truth. Your grief does not make you less valuable. I will argue that it makes you more valuable.

It makes you deeper. You have swam depths of feeling that give you wisdom, tenderness, range.

You have visited places in the human experience that some people never touch. That is not weakness. That is strength. Sturdy, earned, real. So don't disappear. Show up as you are carrying what you carry. The world needs people who know how to love so deeply as to have grief.

  This was Notes by Kathy Patalsky

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