The Audacity of Carrying On

Feb 20

Written By Get Griefy Magazine

By Annah Elizabeth

Sometimes grief doesn’t feel like a temporary visitor.
It feels like it moved in.

Sometimes loudly.
Sometimes slowly seeping in.

It disrupts your routines and relationships.
It scatters itself in places you didn’t know could ache.

At first, it might feel survivable.
Manageable.
Something you believe—and hope with all your might—will soon leave.

But grief rarely arrives with an exit plan.

Sometimes it stays long enough to rearrange your entire life—
long enough to overstay its welcome—
long enough that carrying on becomes an act of defiance.

This is the kind of grief that doesn’t happen in isolation.

It stacks.

Before you’ve caught your breath from one loss, another lands. And life—utterly uninterested in your internal collapse—keeps moving.

This is the grief that tangles your very existence in knots.

When Life Doesn’t Pause for Grief

Because while grief has moved in, life keeps asking.

You still show up to work, workouts, and PTA meetings.
You still plan celebrations, social outings, and classroom parties.
You still prep meals—even when the well is dry.

And when your reserves run out, some nights family dinner is simply announced as, “Fin-a-ya-self.”

Not as an “I don’t give a flying F*!K.”
As survival.

Because you don’t have the physical, emotional, or mental bandwidth to open a can of beans—much less slice hotdogs into bite-sized weenies and pretend it’s fine.

Because: It’s. Not. Fine.
You’re. Not. Fine.

Yet.
You manage households.
You manage small businesses and employees.
You manage schedules, expectations, and people who have no idea how much effort it’s taking just to stay upright.

You manage grief while everyone assumes you’re managing life.

That’s the silent brutality of it.

I Know This Terrain Because I Lived It

Grief moved in for me, too.

And it didn’t arrive alone.

My son, Gavin, died first.

There is no elegant way to write that sentence.
It didn’t start as a chapter or a lesson or a journey.

It felt like an amputation.

And yet—hours after he died—I had a thought that took up residence.

I don’t want to spend a lifetime mourning my child.

Some people hear that and call it strength.

I didn’t experience it that way.

One thought amidst many.
It, too, settled itself into my very marrow.
Like a refusal to let grief become my only relationship with him.
Like an instinct so primal it arrived before reason.

I didn’t know how I was going to live.
I just knew I didn’t want my love reduced to endless suffering.

What followed was a six-year, ten-month stretch where loss didn’t pause between blows.

It stacked.

Not neatly.
Not one layer at a time.

More like a triple-decker sandwich with all the extras piled on—so tall no human mouth could possibly wrap their lips around it.

You’re not meant to eat it gracefully.
You’re just meant to survive the attempt.
The best way you can. One swallow at a time.

Two second-trimester miscarriages—late enough to be devastating, early enough to be minimized by a world that prefers tidy timelines.

Two pregnancies so complicated they meant months in and out of hospitals, my body treated like a question mark no one could answer with confidence.

I became severely depressed.
Not metaphorically.
Clinically.

I spent six weeks hospitalized in a psychiatric unit for severe depression.

Six weeks.

No drawstrings allowed—which, in hindsight, might have been merciful, because assembling a full outfit each morning felt like an Olympic event when simply being awake felt negotiable.

That’s the tired we don’t romanticize.

Not burnout.
Not overwhelm.

The tired that includes suicidal ideation—not because you want to die, but because staying feels unbearable.
The tired that comes when grief has lived in the body long enough to change it.

And then—because loss sometimes seems to have a sense of humor so dark it borders on absurd—came the final pregnancy.

Six weeks before that child was born, I discovered that my husband—my partner in love and life—was having an affair with my best friend.

That was the morning that took me to the floor. Literally.

This isn’t pain-porn.
It’s chronology.

Because when loss stacks like this, context matters.

At some point, my nervous system waved a white flag.

Some losses knock the wind out of you.
Some take your legs out from under you.

And some arrive like a checklist you never agreed to—each box ticked with a tight smile and a silent Are you kidding me?

I joked that it felt like I had Bring it on tattooed across my forehead.

Not because I was brave.
Because life clearly thought I could handle one more thing.

Carrying On While Falling Apart

I carried on through school calendars and permission slips.
Through employee meetings and payroll deadlines.
Through pregnancy, postpartum days, and betrayal layered into what should have been joy.

I carried on feeling emotionally like my shoelaces had been tied together—awkward, unsteady, hoping not to trip while everyone else seemed to walk with ease.

From the outside, it may have looked like resilience.

From the inside, it felt like a bomb had detonated. My mental, social, physical, emotional, and soul aspects felt as if they were unraveling like worn-out shoelaces.

The Question That Changed Everything

In the midst of that messy life, I found myself asking a question that wouldn’t let me go:

How is it that some people go on to live happy, fulfilled lives following tragedy, mishap, or mayhem, while others succumb to despair, a life of void, or worse?

That query was a lifeline, and the people I perceived to have done just that were my beacons.

It led me to something that runs counter to much of what we’re taught:

Grief doesn’t have to last forever.

Yes, it changes us.
It marks us.
It restructures some of the rooms in our proverbial—and literal, really—house.

But it doesn’t have to be eternal—unless we believe it must.

That belief—unrelenting, stubborn, sometimes hanging by a thread—is what pulled me forward.

Not strength.
Not resilience.

Hope, with clenched teeth.

If You See Yourself Here

If you’re reading this while carrying losses that didn’t arrive one at a time—
If you’re showing up while feeling like you’re unraveling—
If you’re tired in ways sleep can’t fix—

You’re not imagining it.

Your grief makes sense.
Your exhaustion has a history.
And your desire for relief is neither failure nor fantasy.

I didn’t carry on because I was strong.

I carried on because I didn’t believe grief had to be the end of the story.
And it wasn’t, Neighbor.
I, along with countless others, am living proof that you can fully heal and live a life you love.
No matter your adversity.

And the thought I had after Gavin died?
I eventually figured out what I did want. To celebrate his life.
I no longer mourn any aspect of Gavin’s death. I celebrate every moment he lived.

Sometimes hope is the thinnest thread you’ll ever hold.

But sometimes—
it’s enough to pull you forward.

Even when it feels like your shoelaces are tied together.