I don’t think anyone prepares you for the weird part of grief. Not the crying your eyes out part. Not the “I can’t get out of bed today” part. We’ve all heard about those. I’m talking about the part where your life finally starts going… right. Like, suspiciously right. You know that feeling when you’re waiting for someone to jump out from behind a corner yelling, “Just kidding!”? Yeah. That.
Because lately, life has actually been really good. And honestly? That feels strange to even type. My real estate business is finally gaining momentum. I have listings. I have closings. New clients are finding me. Opportunities I’ve worked so hard for are finally showing up, and for the first time in a long time, I feel like I’m building a life that genuinely feels like mine. My podcast is growing, my blog has become my favorite creative outlet, and little by little, I feel like I’m becoming the person I’ve been working so hard to become.
This is what I wanted. This is what I prayed for. This is what I spent years working toward. So why can’t I seem to fully enjoy it?
Seriously… why does every exciting phone call somehow end with me feeling a little sad? Why do I keep waiting for something to go wrong? Why does every milestone come with this tiny ache sitting quietly in the background? It took me a while to realize it, but I finally understand why.
Every piece of good news reminds me of who isn’t here to hear it. The first person I want to call is my grandfather.
Every single time.
He loved hearing about my day. He wanted all the little details that everyone else probably thought were boring. How did the showing go? Did they like the house? Did you get the listing? What happened? He celebrated the small victories with me because, to him, they weren’t small. They were pieces of my life, and he genuinely cared about every single one of them.
Now, something exciting happens, and without even thinking, I still reach for my phone. For a split second, my brain hasn’t caught up yet. It still thinks, “I have to call Poppop.” Then reality quietly taps me on the shoulder and reminds me that I can’t. That tiny moment lasts maybe two seconds, but somehow it carries the weight of everything.
Then my mind goes somewhere else.
I wish my mom could see this.
I wish my dad knew.
Would my mom be telling every cashier at the grocery store that her daughter got another listing? Probably. Would my dad make some ridiculously cheesy joke about commissions? Absolutely. Would my grandfather ask me seventeen follow-up questions because he genuinely wanted to know every detail? Without a doubt.
I’ll never know.
And I think that’s the part of grief nobody really talks about.
People tell you grief steals your happiness. I don’t actually think that’s true. I think grief steals your ability to fully feel your happiness sometimes. There’s a difference. You can have a beautiful life and still feel the weight of the people missing from it. You can be genuinely grateful while simultaneously wishing someone were sitting beside you to experience it too.
For a while, I thought something was wrong with me. I kept wondering why I wasn’t happier. Why I couldn’t just celebrate without this little shadow following me around. Then I realized… my nervous system has spent years learning how to survive. It learned how to lose my parents. It learned how to keep moving anyway. It learned how to rebuild after heartbreak. Then it learned how to lose my grandfather too. Somewhere along the way, surviving became familiar. Joy didn’t.
Isn’t that the strangest sentence you’ve ever read? Who gets comfortable with surviving?
Apparently people who’ve had to.
I don’t think I’m afraid of success. I don’t think I’m afraid of happiness either. I think I’m afraid of how quickly life has taught me that everything can change. When you’ve experienced enough loss, your brain quietly starts believing that every beautiful moment comes with an expiration date. Instead of soaking it in, you brace yourself for the day it’s over.
It’s exhausting.
Sometimes I catch myself brushing off my own accomplishments. “It’s just another listing.” “It’s just another closing.”
But if I’m being honest, it is a big deal.
A few years ago, I would’ve celebrated every single one. I would’ve called everyone I loved, gone out for dinner, maybe even done a little happy dance in my kitchen. The version of me who was praying for opportunities like these would’ve looked at my life today and thought, “You did it. You’re actually doing it.”
So why do I have such a hard time believing that? I think grief changes the way you experience joy.
Not because it takes away your ability to be happy, but because it changes what happiness feels like. After you’ve experienced significant loss, your brain and your heart don’t experience good moments the same way anymore. Instead of simply enjoying them, you start scanning for what’s missing.
Who isn’t here? It’s almost as if every beautiful moment has a shadow standing quietly beside it. I’ve learned that grief doesn’t always say, “Be sad.” Sometimes it whispers, “This would’ve been better if they were here.” And that’s a completely different kind of heartbreak.
I also think grief quietly changes your nervous system. When you’ve lived through enough loss, your brain becomes incredibly good at protecting you. It learns to expect change. It learns that life can turn upside down without warning. So even when something wonderful happens, a part of you hesitates to celebrate because it’s waiting for the other shoe to drop.
You aren’t being negative and you aren’t ungrateful. Your mind was & is doing what it learned to do in order to survive. The problem is, the things that protect us during our hardest seasons don’t always know when it’s safe to soften. Maybe that’s why so many people who have experienced deep grief struggle to fully receive good things. We become experts at surviving difficult days but complete beginners at trusting beautiful ones. We know how to brace ourselves. We don’t always know how to relax into joy.
And then comes the guilt.
The guilt for laughing too hard.
The guilt for having a really good week.
The guilt for feeling excited about the future.
Almost as if smiling somehow means we’ve left the people we love behind.
But love doesn’t work like that.
Our joy doesn’t erase our grief.
Our happiness doesn’t diminish our love.
Celebrating our lives isn’t forgetting the people who are gone; it’s carrying forward everything they poured into us. The lessons they taught us, the confidence they gave us, the way they believed in us—those things didn’t disappear when they did.
I’ve started realizing that I don’t have to choose between missing my grandfather and celebrating another family trusting me to help them buy or sell a home. I don’t have to choose between wishing my parents were here and feeling proud of the life I’ve built. Those emotions don’t compete with each other. They coexist.
Maybe that’s what healing really is. Not reaching a place where grief disappears, but reaching a place where joy no longer has to ask grief for permission to exist.
So today, I’m choosing to celebrate the listing. The closing. The opportunities. The answered prayers that younger Allison dreamed about. Not because I miss my family any less. But because I finally understand that every milestone I reach carries a piece of them with me.
I can almost hear my grandfather asking me a hundred questions about the latest listing. I can picture my mom proudly telling complete strangers what her daughter is up to. I can imagine my dad giving me that quiet smile that somehow always said, “I’m proud of you,” without needing many words.
Maybe healing isn’t about learning how to miss the people we love less.
Maybe it’s about learning that they would never have wanted us to love our lives less because they’re gone.
xoxo, alli<3
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