Adrian Grief Support

Adrian Grief Support YES, WHAT YOU FEEL IS NORMAL!

Kym Hinchey, Author, Certified Grief Educator & Coach
Bereaved mother & widow
Passionate about normalizing grief in our grief illiterate world.

In the early days, I was afraid to heal. Really afraid of it.Because healing sounded way too much like letting go, and I...
09/22/2026

In the early days, I was afraid to heal. Really afraid of it.

Because healing sounded way too much like letting go, and I was not willing to do that.

I thought the pain was somehow tied to the love. That if the pain got smaller, maybe the love would too. Every horrible day, every breakdown, every reminder felt like proof that they mattered. That we mattered.

So when people said, “You will feel better in time,” I did not find that comforting.

I did not want to feel better.

I wanted them.

And if hurting was the closest thing I had to holding onto them, then some part of me was willing to hurt forever.

What I did not understand yet was that love does not need pain to prove itself.

That took me a long time to learn.

The love did not disappear when I laughed again. It did not disappear when I had a good day. It did not disappear when I stopped crying every single time I said their name.

The pain changed. The love did not.

If you are still in that place where feeling even a little better scares you, I get it. I really do. Sometimes easing the pain can feel like loosening your grip on the person you love.

But the love is still there.

Sometimes the emotions just show up.Anger. Sadness. Panic. Guilt. Regret. Fear.They do not wait until you have time for ...
09/21/2026

Sometimes the emotions just show up.

Anger. Sadness. Panic. Guilt. Regret. Fear.

They do not wait until you have time for them. They do not care that you are at work or in the grocery store or trying to get through dinner. Sometimes they just come up hard and fast, and your first instinct is to shove them right back down.

I did that a lot. Tried to explain them away. Tried to distract myself. Tried to keep moving because I did not want to completely fall apart.

But feelings do not disappear because we ignore them.

Sometimes they need somewhere to go.

For me, that might mean crying until there is nothing left for the moment. Writing. Walking. Putting on a song I know is going to get me. Sitting there and admitting, ok... this is what I feel right now.

None of that fixes the loss. It does not make the person come back. It just means I am not fighting myself on top of everything else.

And sometimes that is enough.

If you are trying really hard to hold everything in right now, I get it. Sometimes letting even one feeling out feels scary because you are afraid the whole damn thing is going to come with it.

But you do not have to contain every bit of your grief every second of the day.

I will miss you every day I have left, and still want one more with you.One more laugh. One more story. One more complet...
09/20/2026

I will miss you every day I have left, and still want one more with you.

One more laugh. One more story. One more completely ordinary moment where I could look at you and know you were still here.

I do not think that wish ever really goes away. Maybe it gets quieter. Maybe it does not sit right on the surface every single day. But it is still there.

I still have moments when I think, just one more. One more hour. One more conversation. One more chance to hear your voice or tell you something I wish I had said.

And the missing shows up everywhere now. In jokes you would have gotten. In good news I still want to tell you. In little moments where I automatically think of you before I remember.

I have gotten better at living with the missing. That is different from missing you less.

If you still find yourself wishing for one more day with your person, I get it. I think a lot of us would trade almost anything for one more ordinary day.

I think about all the little things that made you who you were, and I still want to say your name out loud.Part of me fe...
09/19/2026

I think about all the little things that made you who you were, and I still want to say your name out loud.

Part of me feels like if I stop talking about you, the world will slowly forget you. And I cannot stand that idea.

People stop asking after a while. They stop bringing your name up because they think they are protecting me from pain. But hearing your name does not remind me that you died. I already know that. Hearing your name reminds me that you lived.

You were here. You mattered. You had a laugh and opinions and habits and stories and people who loved you.

Some days I can talk about you and laugh. Some days I cry before I get through the story. Either way, I am still going to tell it.

If you are grieving someone you love and you still want to say their name, say it. Tell the story again. Tell it for the hundredth time if you need to.

The people we love do not become less important just because the world gets quieter about them.

There are days when nothing feels worth it.You finish something. You get good news. You have a moment that should feel g...
09/18/2026

There are days when nothing feels worth it.

You finish something. You get good news. You have a moment that should feel good. And instead of feeling proud or happy, there is just that empty ache because the person you want to tell is gone.

That part can hit so hard.

You still have the instinct to turn toward them. To say, “Guess what happened.” To send the text. To tell the story. To hear their reaction.

And then you remember.

That is what can make even good things feel flat. It is not that you do not appreciate them. It is that the person you wanted to share them with is missing from the moment.

People will say they would be proud of you. Maybe they would. I am sure that can be comforting sometimes. But it does not change the fact that you wanted to hear it from them.

If you know that feeling, I do too. Sometimes the good things hurt because they remind you exactly who is not there to see them.

Grief is carrying too much while pretending you are ok with empty hands.That is what it can feel like. You are carrying ...
09/17/2026

Grief is carrying too much while pretending you are ok with empty hands.

That is what it can feel like. You are carrying the missing, the memories, the questions, the anger, the guilt, the things you wish you had said, the things you wish had gone differently. You are carrying entire years of your life with someone who is no longer here.

And somehow, from the outside, it can look like you are carrying nothing.

You go to the store. You answer texts. You show up to work. You have conversations. You do all the ordinary things while inside you are dragging around this huge invisible weight.

That is the part people do not always understand. Grief can make you feel completely overloaded and completely empty at the same time.

Your arms feel full of everything you lost, and your hands are still empty because the one thing you want to hold is the one thing you cannot.

If you know that feeling, I do too. There is nothing simple about carrying this much and having almost none of it be visible to anyone else.

It really is crazy how loud silence is.I never understood that until they were gone.The world did not actually go quiet....
09/16/2026

It really is crazy how loud silence is.

I never understood that until they were gone.

The world did not actually go quiet. It just felt empty. Their voice was gone. Their laugh was gone. Their footsteps. Their texts. All of those little sounds that used to mean they were here.

And somehow that absence had a sound of its own.

I could hear it in the house. On the couch. In bed at night. In the spaces where they used to be. It was this constant reminder that they were not here anymore, even when nobody was saying a word.

I used to think silence was peaceful. Grief changed that for me. Sometimes silence feels brutal. It can follow you from room to room and make the whole house feel wrong.

If you know that kind of silence, you know exactly what I mean. The silence after someone dies is not empty. It is full of everything that used to be there.

And if you are sitting in that kind of quiet tonight, I am sorry. So many of us know that sound too.

I have asked myself this more times than I can count.Why does grief make self-destruction feel easier than taking care o...
09/15/2026

I have asked myself this more times than I can count.

Why does grief make self-destruction feel easier than taking care of yourself?

Because sometimes taking care of yourself feels completely pointless. Drink water. Eat something. Go outside. Take a walk. Ok... and? The person I love is still dead.

That was genuinely how it felt to me sometimes. What difference did any of that make when the one thing I wanted was the one thing I could not have?

Letting myself fall apart was easier. I did not have to work at that. I could isolate, stop caring, ignore my body, go numb, stay in bed. There was something about it that actually matched how I felt inside. Taking care of myself did not.

And then there is that question people love to ask grievers... “What would they want for you?”

I HATED that question.

Please do not use the person I love to try to talk me out of my grief. Do not tell me they would want me to be happy or healthy or living my best life as some kind of shortcut through what I am actually feeling. That never helped me.

But here is the annoying part. Sometimes, when nobody else is saying it to me, I ask myself that question.

What would they want?

And somehow it feels different when it comes from me. Because there have been days when I could not find a single reason to take care of myself for me... but I could do one small thing for them.

I could drink the water because I knew they would tell me to. I could eat something because I could practically hear them asking if I had eaten. I could go outside for five minutes because I knew they would want me to get out of the damn house.

It did not suddenly make me want to take care of myself. It did not fix anything. Sometimes it just got one glass of water into me. Or one meal. Or got me outside for a few minutes.

And honestly, sometimes that was enough.

If you are in that place right now, where caring for yourself feels almost impossible, I get it. Maybe you cannot do much today. Maybe you do one tiny thing because your person loved you and you know they would care that you did.

Sometimes that is all we have to work with.

Do not comfort yourself with the words you say to a griever.People get really uncomfortable around grief, and then they ...
09/14/2026

Do not comfort yourself with the words you say to a griever.

People get really uncomfortable around grief, and then they start talking.

“At least...”

“Everything happens for a reason.”

“They are in a better place.”

“You will see them again.”

Maybe those things are true for you. Maybe they are even true for the person grieving. But sometimes saying them right then is really just a way to make the moment less uncomfortable for you.

And that is the part I wish more people understood.

You do not have to make grief sound better. You do not have to find the silver lining. You do not have to wrap it up in something easier to hear.

Sometimes the kindest thing you can say is, “I am so sorry.”

And then just stay.

If you are grieving and somebody has said something that made you feel even more alone, I know that feeling. Sometimes silence would have hurt less.

Nobody told me how much it would hurt when other people stopped expecting me to still be grieving.In the beginning, peop...
09/13/2026

Nobody told me how much it would hurt when other people stopped expecting me to still be grieving.

In the beginning, people understand that everything hurts. They expect tears. They expect you to be distracted. They expect you to not be ok.

And then enough time passes that they stop expecting it.

They stop asking as often. They stop checking dates. They stop thinking about how a birthday might feel, or what month it is, or what song might suddenly knock the wind out of you.

Meanwhile, you are still grieving.

Maybe differently. Maybe not as loudly. Maybe you are functioning better and laughing more and doing all the things you have to do. But that does not mean the loss became small.

I think that can be one of the loneliest parts of later grief. Realizing that other people have quietly moved your loss into the past while you are still living with it in the present.

If you are there too, I get it. You are not the only one wondering why everyone else seems to think you should be done talking about someone you still love.

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