A Moment of Grief 

This article was imagined while recording an episode for Unconditionally Her: Conversations on August 21, 2026.  A podcast with Karen Shayne and Sandy Williams.  

If we walk the planet long enough, we will experience loss.

Loss changes the lens through which we see the world. Life around us may look much the same, but somehow, it feels very different. Loss can feel like someone has taken the pieces of our life, placed them inside a snow globe, and then picks it up, turns it upside down, and shakes it – over and over again.  We cannot seem to find our bearings. 

Loss may leave us questioning everything we believed was true. 

Grief is not reserved for death alone. We grieve people, things, relationships, places, dreams, seasons of life, the imagined future, and the parts of ourselves we had to leave behind in order to survive.

Loss begins in childhood. Perhaps our first loss is a goldfish – our first beloved pet. Then comes the favorite toy that disappears, the friend who moves away, or the grandparent who dies. As we grow, loss may take many forms: the heartbreak of a first love, divorce, miscarriage, infertility, a broken relationship, a career we wanted but did not get, a promotion that passed us by, or a dream that never unfolded.

Sometimes grief is about losing someone we love. Sometimes it is about grieving someone who is still living but could not and cannot be fully present for us.

We may grieve the childhood we needed but did not have, the love we gave that was not returned, the betrayal that changed how we trust, or the addiction that left us shattered.

Sometimes grief is about mourning what we needed, what we hoped for, or what never had the chance to be.

And sometimes grief is not one enormous loss. It is the accumulation of things we could not—or did not know how to—name.

The loss of belonging.

The loss of safety.

The loss of the person we thought someone was.

The loss of the person we thought we would become.

Grief lives not only in our thoughts, but in our bodies—in our fatigue, tears, forgetfulness, restlessness, and the deep ache we cannot explain.

So, how do we navigate a loss we never wanted?

We grieve it.

Not because grief will give us back what we lost. It won’t.

Grief asks something different of us. It asks us to acknowledge what happened, to make room for what hurts, and eventually to discover how to carry what cannot be changed.  It asks us to integrate the loss into our lives and live forward.

And, grief has no respect for our calendars. It can sit quietly beside us while we make dinner and then, without warning, pull up a chair at the table.

Sometimes it arrives as tears.

Sometimes as anger.

Sometimes as laughter at the most unexpected moment.

A Moment of Grief

A woman grieving the death of her husband stood in her kitchen one ordinary morning making coffee and reached into the refrigerator for his favorite creamer.

She stopped. Frozen.

In in that moment, her world became very still.

The reality began to settle.  

He wasn’t there to drink the coffee.  As she stood there holding the carton, tears rolled down her face. Suddenly, she noticed the expiration date.

She laughed through her tears.

It turns out that love and grief do not exempt us from ordinary things—expired creamer, unanswered questions, roles we never thought we would assume, and figuring out passwords no one thought to write down.

That small moment held more than sadness. It held memory. It held love. It held the ordinary life they had shared. The world she once understood had changed, and so had the lens through which she saw it. 

And that is often how grief finds us.

Not only in funerals, anniversaries, or empty chairs, but in grocery aisles, songs, recipes, holidays, familiar smells, expired creamer, and quiet moments when we reach for someone who is no longer there.

We may laugh and cry within the same breath. We may feel grateful and angry, lonely and loved, strong and completely undone.

Even in loss, there is often a quiet invitation, a small whisper nudging us to stay connected to ourselves, to others, and to what gives our life meaning. 

Loss changes the lens through which we see the world.

We cannot return to who we were before the loss.  We are forever changed.

By granting ourselves permission, leaning into compassion, and giving ourselves room to grieve, we may discover that love still remains, meaning can still be found, and life—though changed—still calls us forward to who we are becoming.

An invitation:  Be curious. Ask yourself, “What do I need in this moment?”

Save the date!  

April 8–11, 2027 | Bask Retreat Center | Centerville, Tennessee

In April 2027, I will be joined by Maryann B. Russell and Cindy Wunsch Bowen for the Raised, But Not Really™ Retreat—a gathering created for women carrying the grief of growing up with an emotionally absent or emotionally unavailable mother.

Some grief doesn’t come with a funeral. Sometimes we grieve what we needed but never received—the nurturing, emotional safety, encouragement, or sense of belonging we longed for as children. That is the heart behind Raised, But Not Really™.

More details about the retreat are coming soon. If something in this article resonated with you and you’d like to be among the first to receive retreat details when they become available, I’d love to hear from you.

Simply send a note of interest to pam@pammonjar.com.

I hope you’ll consider joining us for a few days to reflect, restore, connect with your intuition, create tangible evidence that your story can be recreated, and feel held in a space where you can grieve what was missing—and explore what it means to live forward from there.

Come gather with women who don’t need you to explain why it mattered.