Grief Brought Me To My Knees Today

There’s no rule book for grief. No map to follow or tidy timeline that tells you when the pain will ease or how to move through it “the right way.” Today marked the tenth birthday I’ve spent without my brother. Ten years. Even though I’ve lived with his absence for nearly a decade, today felt different. Today, grief took me by surprise. It brought me to my knees. Wracking sobs moved through me like a wave I couldn’t stop. It was raw, consuming and yet strangely sacred. This, I’ve come to learn, is part of what it means to embody freedom.

Embodiment isn’t only about joy, self-love or feeling at home in our bodies when life feels good. It’s also about letting ourselves fully feel what’s real, even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts.

Grief lives in the body. It’s not just a thought or a memory. It’s a physical experience from the lump in your throat, the ache in your chest, the trembling in your hands. For years, I tried to make peace with my grief by understanding it in my mind. But today, my body reminded me that grief doesn’t need to be understood. It needs to be felt. So today, I let myself grieve. I let the tears come. I didn’t try to be strong or hold it together because strength isn’t about keeping it all in. It’s about allowing ourselves to feel, fully and honestly and trusting that we can rise again after the storm passes.

My brother took his own life and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wish things were different. But there are also days, like today, when I can feel his presence, not in the way it used to be, but in quiet, beautiful ways. In a song that plays at just the right moment. In a gust of wind that feels like a whisper. In the way I’ve learned to love more deeply because of him.

He is still with me. Every day. He’s with me in the stillness, in the laughter and in my own healing journey. If you’re grieving, whether it’s been ten days, ten months or ten years, please know this - there is no “right” way to do it. Some days will be lighter, some heavier. Some days you’ll smile at the memories, others you’ll find yourself on the floor, just trying to breathe. All of it is valid. All of it is love.

Grief, in its rawest form, reminds us that our hearts are still capable of immense love, even through loss. It’s not something to fix or escape. It’s something to feel and to let shape us into more compassionate, more open human beings.

When we allow ourselves to move with our grief and to let our bodies tremble, our hearts ache, our tears fall, we are practicing self-love in its truest form. We are saying to ourselves, I am worthy of feeling everything that comes with being alive.

That’s what Embody Freedom means to me - learning to trust the wisdom of our bodies, to feel deeply without shame and to find liberation not by avoiding pain, but by moving through it with tenderness and truth.

So today, even through the tears, I feel gratitude. Gratitude for the years I had with my brother, for the love that still binds us and for the way grief continues to teach me how to live more fully in my body, in my heart and in freedom. Grief, in its truest form, is love that refuses to fade. When we allow ourselves to embody that love, even through the pain, we set ourselves free.