TCF #1114

🧡💛❤️
When your heart cries but your eyes don't, that's a different
kind of pain.
- Jesse Pedigo

There is a kind of grief that doesn’t show itself. No tears, no breaking down, no outward signs that something is wrong. Yet inside, the heart is crying in ways the body has learned to silence. This is the grief that lives quietly, carried into work, conversations, and ordinary days where the world expects you to be fine.

When your heart cries but your eyes don’t, the pain can feel lonelier. Tears would at least make the suffering visible. Without them, grief becomes easier for others to miss and harder to explain. You may even question your own pain, wondering if it counts, if it’s real, if you’re allowed to feel this broken when nothing looks wrong.

But this kind of grief is no less heavy. It is the ache you carry in your chest, the constant awareness of what’s missing, the exhaustion of holding yourself together. It is loving someone who is no longer here while continuing to live among those who are. And that, grieving quietly, deeply, without release ... is a different kind of pain altogether.
Artist Credit: Unknown via Pinterest

🧡💛💙
When a loved one dies, something shifts in ways that are hard to explain.
We don’t just miss them, we learn, slowly and unwillingly, to carry their absence with us everywhere we go.

And somehow, by what often feels like a cruel twist of nature, we adapt. We keep breathing. We keep moving forward. We become stronger than anyone should ever have to be.

Not the kind of strength people admire. The kind that comes from having no choice.

Because grief doesn’t ask to be set down. It becomes something we live alongside, something we learn to hold while life continues to move around us.

We endure the weight of it, not because we are meant to, but because love doesn’t disappear when someone dies.

💛💙💜
When did it become normal to make grief easier for everyone except the person actually grieving?

Somewhere along the way, we began to measure how well someone is coping by how little their grief affects the people around them.

We call them strong when they return to work.

We are relieved when they can smile again.

We admire the way they keep going, hold themselves together, get through the day and manage to function in a world that has been completely changed by the death of someone they love.

And none of those things are wrong.

But they are not proof that grief has become easier.

A person can laugh and still be devastated.

They can go to work and still be carrying unbearable pain.

They can join a conversation, celebrate something, make plans and appear completely present, while grief remains there beneath everything.

And when they do speak about the person who died, when the tears come, when they say they are struggling, when their grief becomes visible, the discomfort around them can be felt.

The conversation changes.

People search for the right words.

The subject is gently moved elsewhere.

And without anyone ever having to say it aloud, the person grieving can begin to understand what is expected of them.

You can grieve. Just try not to make other people feel too much of it.

So grief becomes something managed.

Tears are saved for safer places.

Their person's name is sometimes left unsaid.

"I'm fine" becomes easier than explaining the truth.

And being called "strong" can begin to feel less like recognition and more like a responsibility to keep appearing that way.

This is not about blaming people for finding grief difficult to witness. Death frightens us. Pain can make us feel helpless. We want to make things better and, when we cannot, we often do not know what to do with that helplessness.

But the answer cannot always be for the grieving person to make their pain easier for everyone else to bear.

Grief is already asking enough of them.

They should not also have to protect everyone around them from the reality of what losing someone they love has done to their life.

Maybe we need to stop praising people only for how well they carry their grief out of sight.

Maybe strength can also look like saying their person's name.

Crying when the tears come.

Admitting that today is unbearable.

Saying, "I'm not okay."

Talking about the person they love for the hundredth time, without wondering whether everyone has heard enough.

Grief does not need to become smaller to make the rest of us more comfortable.

We need to become more comfortable with the fact that grief is allowed to be seen.

Because the person grieving should not have to become better at hiding their pain.

We can become better at being with them in it.
- TCFV
Artist Credit: Anne Virlange via Pinterest

The hardest thing to convey to the world about grief is that so much more is lost than meets the eye.
There is the loss of innocence.
The loss of hopes and dreams.
And the loss of the simple joy of saying their beautiful name in normal, everyday conversation without the room going quiet.
Grief carries the loss of the person we love, and all that was lost with them.

When someone we love dies, the loss does not stop with their death.
Grief reaches into parts of life we never imagined losing.
There is a before that can never be returned to. A future that no longer looks anything like the one that had been imagined. A sense of certainty about life that can disappear completely.
Even their name can change.
A name once spoken freely and naturally can suddenly carry a weight that others do not know how to hold. Conversations change. People hesitate. Rooms fall silent.
And yet, to the person grieving, their name is still beautiful.
They are still deeply loved.
This is collateral loss.
The countless losses that came with losing them, many unseen by the world, but deeply felt by the person left to live with them.
- TCFV

September's Newsletter. We remember them.

2026 - Google Drive

We spoke a little about this last night. What's hidden beneath your grief iceberg? Let us know...you need not walk alone...we are The Compassionate Friends.

We're meeting tonight at 7 p.m. DM if you need the zoom link. We look forward to hearing more about your child.

Send a message to learn more

Today is National Grief Awareness Day.
A common misconception about grief is that it’s an individual emotional experience with predictable stages and a defined timeline. But the reality is that everyone responds to grief in a unique way and grief can last a lifetime…and that is completely normal.

is a message of understanding and hope to help people who are grieving, and those who wish to support them. Find out how you can help with 10 ways we can implement grief-informed knowledge and access additional resources at www.dougy.org/UnderstandGrief

August 30th is both National Grief Awareness Day and International Bereaved Father's Day - an opportunity to recognize grief in all its forms and to remember fathers who are grieving the death of their child.

A grieving father may not always talk about his grief.

He may return to work.
He may take care of everyone else.
He may find it difficult to put his feelings into words.
He may laugh, smile, and carry on while missing his child every day.

None of these things mean he isn't grieving.

Today, we honor bereaved fathers and recognize that there is no single way to grieve.

If you know a bereaved father, reach out. Say his child's name. Listen to his story. Let him know you remember - and that he doesn't have to carry his grief alone.

The Compassionate Friends is here for bereaved families, including fathers, whenever they need support and understanding.

Today's heart was found at my sister's in Anacortes, WA. This Tuesday August 24th at 7 o'clock is the 4th Tuesday meeting. Let me know in the DM if you need the zoom link.

New resources that we talked about at the last meeting are:

Home - COPE Foundation https://share.google/4fufMwIDVvxQkzbKA

Speaking Grief | Public Media Documentary and Awareness Initiative https://share.google/hJQeBEGqeKPmo64Mb