What June Has Taught Me About Grief

I had planned to write something fun for June. Something bright and summery - tips for being present with your loved ones, soaking in the season, all of that. And I still believe in those things. But as the weeks pushed deeper into June, something else kept pulling at me. So I'm going to write about that instead.

June has become a hard month for me. This year especially. It marks five years since my dear father passed away after a short illness. I'm not sharing this for attention, for likes or views, or as any kind of strategy. I'm sharing it because even though every relationship is unique, the experience of grief is one of the most universal things I know. Nearly everyone I love is grieving something right now: the loss of a job, the end of a marriage, the death of someone precious. Or something quieter and harder to name: the slow loss of a parent to dementia or Alzheimer's, watching someone you've known your whole life become someone unfamiliar, grieving them while they are still here.

However it comes, the loss of a parent is profound. They are, in the most literal sense, the keeper of you - the ones who have held the knowledge of who you are since the very beginning of your life. That loss deserves to be acknowledged. So here are a few things I've learned.

Grief is beautiful, and I hate it.

That contradiction is the truest thing I can say. Grief only exists because love existed first. It means I got to love someone so much that my life is genuinely different without them. I carry that as a privilege, even on the days it flattens me. I am now the keeper of his memories, his stories, the sound of his laugh, and that is something I hold with both hands.

What helps most? Talking about him.

I love to talk about my dad. I love when people ask me questions about him, when they say his name, when they want to know something about who he was. It means he hasn't been forgotten by the world. If you have a friend who is grieving, don't be afraid to bring up the person they lost. For most of us, that is a gift, not a wound.

Take photos and videos now - not just of the babies.

We are so good at documenting new life. The first smile, the first steps, every ordinary Tuesday of a toddler's life. But make that same habit with your parents, your grandparents, your beloved aunts and uncles. Take videos. Record their voices. Ask them to tell the old stories one more time and let the camera roll. When they are gone, those recordings become something irreplaceable, a way to hear them again, to feel them close, to keep memory alive in a way that photographs alone can't quite reach.

Grief work is hard. You still have to do it.

There is no shortcut and no way around it - only through. Grief is powerful, and it will find you if you try to outrun it. The kindest thing you can do for yourself is to let yourself feel it, find people who will sit with you in it, and trust that doing the work, as heavy as it is, is also how you heal.

June is still summer. The light is still long and golden, and there is still so much worth savoring. But I think being present with the people we love, which is what I wanted to write about all along, starts with being honest about loss. It starts with understanding that love and grief are the same thing, wearing different faces.

To anyone else for whom June is heavy this year: I see you. My heart is with you.